Monday, 9th April, 2018
A year to the day before the UK leaves the EU, the European Commission announced that all .eu domains registered to a UK address would be dropped.
Horrified at the thought of losing my andys.eu domain name (and with it, my primary email address of 8 years) I tweeted out to EURid – the organisation that manages .eu domain names.
Reflections
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Sunday, 1st April, 2018
There are several scenarios in which you may want to redirect all your website visitors to a single, primary domain in Apache:
- Redirect the www and non-www (root domain) hostnames of your domain to avoid duplicate content and improve SEO
- Redirect an old domain to a new domain, maintaining links and search engine reputation
- Redirect secondary domains (e.g. “spelling mistake” domains, or alternative-spelling domains) to your primary domain
I have recently implemented the following on my own website, and I would like to share this Apache trick.
Software Development, DevOps
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Saturday, 10th February, 2018
It’s the year 2018 and it’s impossible for a software developer to
have not heard about (or used) Github, or a variant like Bitbucket. Even
self-hosted Git evangelist GitLab is a popular choice.
At the start of February 2018, I provisioned a new Cloud VPS to run my website and other apps. I also chose to migrate all my private Git repositories to it and cancelled my paid Github subscription.
This article explores the reasons why I went self-hosted.
Software Development, DevOps
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Sunday, 21st January, 2018
2017 was an exciting year for the bigger players in the cloud hosting arena.
With
all these improvements in cloud hosting, I thought it would be
interesting to focus on a key metric of hosting providers that many
overlook: network speed.
Most modern cloud hosting providers give
your dedicated server or VPS a 100Mbps or 1Gbps network connection. But
how close can you actually get to that speed?
Software Development
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Monday, 27th November, 2017
Content Delivery Networks were created for one reason: to speed up your websites and web applications. In this article, I explore how you can take advantage of Content Delivery Networks (CDNs) to improve your website performance for a small cost.
Software Development
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Thursday, 28th September, 2017
Earlier this week, I couldn’t sleep. So I did what I normally do when I can’t sleep – I watch music videos on YouTube.
The
first video in my “here’s what YouTube wants you to watch” list caught
my eye. I immediately thought I had missed a piece of new music from one
of my favourite artists of the last 10 years: Chris Daughtry.
Reflections, Entertainment
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Tuesday, 12th September, 2017
Buying the new iPhone that Apple will announce today? Interested in photography?
Did you know that you can capture a photo and upload it straight into your Blue Twilight photo gallery directly from your new iPhone or iPad device.
Software Development
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Wednesday, 2nd August, 2017
My second post in a series of articles about James and my
adoption journey is our experience of the first day of "prep group
training."
A
few days ago we turned up at the Halesowen Barnardo’s office for day 1
of three days of prep group training – a course that’s designed to
provide the information, explanation and tools we will need as adoptive
parents – not just to get through the adoption journey, but for the life
of our future children.
Reflections
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Tuesday, 1st August, 2017
This series of posts is an insight into the world of adoption
from the viewpoint of a same-sex, male couple. I decided to publish our
story for a number of reasons: 1) because I’m a private individual and
rather than talk to people, sometimes it’s easier to put it into
writing. 2) to help others who are thinking about going through the
process, and 3) so we have something written down to show our future
children how they came into our lives.
This is the first in hopefully a number of posts charting our journey.
Reflections
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Sunday, 23rd July, 2017
After I finish work on a Friday, I like to reflect on the week
that’s been. Whether it’s in the car on the way home, or with a glass of
wine later in the evening, I think about what we* did well, what we
could do better – and what was just a complete disaster.
This week has been a rollercoaster at complete opposites of the scale.
Reflections
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