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5 tips for landing a tech job
16.4.2023
Check out these five tips for landing a tech job, including building your skills, networking, customizing your resume and more
How to Get Mac Battery Level from Command Line
10.4.2023
I’m a big fan of having as much information as I can get within the command line. I couldn’t go without knowing which git branch I’m on, for example. Another important piece of information I like having is my current battery percentage. To get the current battery level from...
How to use ChatGPT to learn a language
8.4.2023
Ask ChatGPT for definitions, translations and grammar explanations in your target language
How to Block a Range of IP Addresses
27.3.2023
As much as content creators want traffic to their website, there is such thing as the wrong type of traffic. Sometimes it’s content scrapers, sometimes it’s malicious bots; either way, it’s important to know how to block problematic IPs from your site. To block a range of...
5 basic principles of finance you should know
10.3.2023
Discover the five basic principles of finance to improve your financial literacy, including, time value of money, risk management, compounding and more
CSS ::file-selector-button
20.2.2023
We all love beautifully styled form controls but, due to the differences between operating system displays, styling them can be painful. Due to that pain, we’ve created scores of libraries to mock these controls. Unfortunately that sometimes comes at the cost of accessibility, performance...
How to Open a Tor Brave Window from Command Line
6.2.2023
I love the Brave web browser for many reasons: ad blocking, Brave rewards, crypto integration, and even a Tor tab feature. I’ll often use the Tor feature but wanted to know how I could automated opening Tor windows from command line. To open a Brave Tor tab, you can use the following command:...
How to Open an App from Anywhere on Mac Command Line
31.1.2023
Many engineers like myself live in the command line, and perform actions from command line that most others would click an icon for. I’ve always found opening apps from command line on Macs painful. You need to references the Applications directory, add .app to the name, etc. I just want...
Document.elementFromPoint
30.12.2022
Reacting to events with JavaScript is the foundation of a dynamic experiences on the web. Whether it’s a click event or another typical action, responding to that action is important. We started with assigning events to specific elements, then moved to event delegation for efficiency, but...
Detect Browser Bars Visibility with JavaScript
30.12.2022
It’s one thing to know about what’s in the browser document, it’s another to have insight as to the user’s browser itself. We’ve gotten past detecting which browser the user is using, and we’re now into knowing what pieces of the browser UI users are seeing....
JavaScript print Events
30.12.2022
Media queries provide a great way to programmatically change behavior depending on viewing state. We can target styles to device, pixel ratio, screen size, and even print. That said, it’s also nice to have JavaScript events that also allow us to change behavior. Did you know you’re...
How to Internationalize Numbers with JavaScript
21.11.2022
Presenting numbers in a readable format takes many forms, from visual charts to simply adding punctuation. Those punctuation, however, are different based on internationalization. Some countries use , for decimal, while others use .. Worried about having to code for all this madness? Don’t...
Locate Empty Directories from Command Line
1.11.2022
As a software engineer that lives too much of his life on a computer, I like keeping my machine as clean as possible. I don’t keep rogue downloaded files and removes apps when I don’t need them. Part of keeping a clean, performant system is removing empty directories. To identify empty...
How to Extend Prototypes with JavaScript
31.10.2022
One of the ideological sticking points of the first JavaScript framework was was extending prototypes vs. wrapping functions. Frameworks like MooTools and Prototype extended prototypes while jQuery and other smaller frameworks did not. Each had their benefits, but ultimately all these years later...
How to Use window.crypto in Node.js
27.10.2022
I’ve been writing a bunch of jest tests recently for libraries that use the underlying window.crypto methods like getRandomValues() and window.crypto.subtle key management methods. One problem I run into is that the window.crypto object isn’t available, so I need to shim it. To use...
Create a Thumbnail From a Video with ffmpeg
25.10.2022
Creating a thumbnail to represent a video is a frequent task when presenting media on a website. I previously created a shell script to create a preview video from a larger video, much like many adult sites provide. Let’s view how we can create a preview thumbnail from a video! Developers...
Detect System Theme Preference Change Using JavaScript
24.10.2022
JavaScript and CSS allow users to detect the user theme preference with CSS’ prefers-color-scheme media query. It’s standard these days to use that preference to show the dark or light theme on a given website. But what if the user changes their preference while using your app?...
Skip or Only Run a Test with JavaScript Mocha
10.10.2022
Whenever I start to feel anxiety about a big change I’m making, I start writing more unit tests. I’ll write down my fear and then write a test that attacks, and eventually relaxes, that fear. There are two actions that I’ve been frequently using with test writing: skipping all...
Determine Default App for File Type from Command Line
3.10.2022
One quality of life improvement any developer can make for themselves is ensuring different file types open in the app they’re most proficient in. If you know me, you know I prefer accomplishing as much as possible from the command line. The duti utility allows users to determine default file...
Set Brave as Default Browser from Command Line
26.9.2022
I’ve been a huge fan of the Brave web browser for years. They’re crypto-friendly, provide native ad-blocking features, and even provide Tor integration. Whenever I set up new systems, I automate Brave as the default browser. You can use the following shell command to set Brave as...