https://daniebker.co.uk/ Recent content on daniebker Hugo -- gohugo.io en-gb Thu, 12 Jun 2025 16:28:23 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/kiss/ Thu, 12 Jun 2025 16:28:23 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/kiss/ KISS (Keep it Simple, Stupid) is my favourite design principle. I use it for everything I build and even in everyday life. The principle says it all, keep it as simple as you can. In practice I’ve done this with a few projects recently. The landing page for my new site slowwwtech.com is as simple as a single html file with a font and some basic css. And, my new commonplace site commonplace. https://daniebker.co.uk/now/ Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/now/ This is a now page. It details exactly what I’m focused on at this time of my life. Last updated [2025-05-06] from my home in Spain. Reading Meditations for Mortals Short book from Oliver Burkeman that’s laid out in the form of a 28 day plan to help break some of the productivity tropes you can fall into. The Unconsoled I’ve read a few Kazuo Ishiguro books and this is the most surreal. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/tailwindcss-animated-progress-bar/ Wed, 22 May 2024 00:00:00 +0200 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/tailwindcss-animated-progress-bar/ As part of a project I’m working on I wanted to add an animated progress bar for some visual stimulation in the page. Since I’m using tailwindcss I was easily able to create a progress bar but I was struggling to get it to animate using the solutions I found on stackoverflow. In the end I settled on adding a custom animate-progress class and attaching some keyframes to it starting the width from 0. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/sveltekit-in-docker/ Wed, 08 May 2024 00:00:00 +0200 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/sveltekit-in-docker/ Getting SvelteKit to work in a docker environment is pretty straight forward, you just need to change a configuration option first to build the application for your environment. This example assumes you already have a working SvelteKit app. The steps in this article work on an application created using the Getting Started guide in the svelte kit docs. Following the same steps should work for this article. Once you have a SvelteKit app running locally we’re ready to start preparing the docker image. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/clean-code-solo-dev/ Mon, 27 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/clean-code-solo-dev/ Lately I’ve been trying to refresh my CPP skills by building a game. Part of the problem that I’m having is it’s been a good 10 years since I worked in CPP and a lot has changed since then. When I first started the game I was using raw pointers. I quickly switched to smart pointers but there’s still some aspects of the code using raw pointers. That’s just one example where I started a bad habit without realising it, and I’m still paying the price. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/enable-exceptions-emscripten-cmake/ Sat, 18 Nov 2023 00:00:00 +0100 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/enable-exceptions-emscripten-cmake/ I’ve been working on a game in cpp recently and one of the things I’ve wanted to try is compiling the game to WASM. The template I started from included an emscripten build, but in my haste to get things done I broke it. This week though I fixed that and can happily report that the web build is up and working. One issue I ran into is that my cpp build throws exceptions when you want to do something ‘impossible’. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/ripping-cds-2023-linux/ Fri, 11 Aug 2023 00:00:00 +0200 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/ripping-cds-2023-linux/ I’ve slowly started to drift away from using music streaming services. In fact, I’ve moved away from most streaming in general, preferring to take a slower approach to consuming media. Services like Spotify have more choice than I could ever care to want and I often find myself listening to music that I already own on CD or the same albums over and over. I also have a regular habit of picking up music on Bandcamp since the artists that need the streaming money most are least likely to get any of it[1]​. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/make-vscode-more-like-emacs/ Mon, 03 Jul 2023 00:00:00 +0200 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/make-vscode-more-like-emacs/ I switched back to Visual Studio Code as my primary code editor. There was too much going on with Emacs, and not being able to understand Elisp code that well, I often found myself copy-pasting snippets in the hope of getting something to work. In the end, the breadth and depth of configuration in Emacs were too far gone for me to build a useful editor out of it. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/install-keepassxc-arc-mac/ Mon, 15 May 2023 00:00:00 +0200 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/install-keepassxc-arc-mac/ Figure 1: Photo by FLY:D on Unsplash This last week my lastpass benefit was withdrawn from my work benefits. Our enterprise lastpass subscription included a lastpass families benefit which I was taking advantage of. However, it seems that was removed in cost cutting exercises. Considering trying to move to tech independence I thought it was a great time to checkout open source alternatives. This is where I found KeePass. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/23-19-dev-log/ Sun, 14 May 2023 00:00:00 +0200 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/23-19-dev-log/ This week in dev… Tech Independence Starting to take Tech Independence more seriously. Have my own CalDAV server up and running the last few weeks and that’s serving as my Calendar source and tasks source. I even installed NextCloud on my VPS to start storing small batches of files. I’m actively looking for more things to replace and will continue to do so as time goes by. My Lastpass subscription came to an abrupt end this week, this was prime time for me to move to something more independent and a good example of relying on one company for a service. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/30-04-dev-log/ Sun, 30 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0200 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/30-04-dev-log/ Figure 1: Photo by Kyle Glenn on Unsplash This week in my dev life: Interesting Finds Solar Protocol A network that routes internet traffic according to the logic of the sun, where page requests are sent to whichever server is enjoying the most sunlight at the time. Derek Sivers Tech independence Heard this on the Tim Ferris podcast. Tech independence is not depending on any particular company or software. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/change-default-ssh-port-digital-ocean/ Fri, 28 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0200 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/change-default-ssh-port-digital-ocean/ Figure 1: Photo by regularguy.eth on Unsplash Good security practices can save your ass. If you have a server in the cloud and SSH enabled then you probably have it running on Port 22. Anyone can guess this port and start running a brute force attack. To help mitigate this you can change the SSH port to some random port. This will add an extra barrier to help deter unauthorised access to your server. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/new-templates-in-kindle-clip/ Thu, 27 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0200 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/new-templates-in-kindle-clip/ I love when a product affords me the flexibility to do whatever I want with it. That’s why, in kindle-clip, I added the ability to customise the output format of the kindle clippings. With this new feature the app can output into what ever format you dream up. This level of customization means it’s possible to completely rewrite Amazons format into a format that suites your workflow. By passing the name of the template in the command line params it’s possible to configure the output format of the highlights and notes. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/23-04-dev-log/ Sun, 23 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0200 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/23-04-dev-log/ Figure 1: Photo by Andrew Neel on Unsplash Hi everyone, Dan here. Here’s my first weekly dev log that I plan to post. Hope you enjoy reading about what I’ve been up to this week. Added markdown support in Kindle Clip Refactored a bit how the code works. It’s now possible to setup a template in the directory of the repository and select it from the command line. https://daniebker.co.uk/cheat-sheets/arc-browser/ Mon, 03 Apr 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/cheat-sheets/arc-browser/ Browsing Binding Action CMD + SHIFT + C Copies the current page URL Tabs Binding Action CTRL + TAB Cycle between open tabs. Tabs are ordered by last visited. CMD + [0-9] Jumps to tab at the corresponding number. Starts with pinned tabs. Spaces Space’s in arc browser are a similar to profiles in Chrome and Firefox. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/view-images-kindle-paperwhite/ Thu, 30 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0200 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/view-images-kindle-paperwhite/ Figure 1: Photo by pinho on Unsplash I no longer use a smart phone, which in todays app driven world comes with some difficulties. Namely things like etickets and digital membership cards. Currently the LightPhone 2 doesn’t support QR codes or images so I had to come up with an alternative. Since I almost always have my kindle with me I thought I could use that to also carry copies of the QR codes and tickets I would otherwise use a smart phone for. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/ai-future-of-search/ Mon, 20 Mar 2023 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/ai-future-of-search/ ChatGPT has the potential to revolutionize the way we browse and generate content for the internet. Having used it for a couple of weeks, I believe that it has implications for the websites that ChatGPT crawls to obtain information. In this article, I will specifically discuss the Bing Chat feature, which uses OpenAI technology. Unfortunately, much of the content on the web today is not primarily created for human consumption. Many blog owners and media outles write articles with the sole purpose of pleasing search engines, hoping to have their content appear on the first page of search results. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/fixing-%C3%B8-is-undefined-in-xterm/ Fri, 27 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/fixing-%C3%B8-is-undefined-in-xterm/ Today I had one of the most annoying bugs running emacs in tmux. First off was that fact that backspace was always opening the help dialog in emacs. Next was everytime I hit ALT + x I was getting ø is undefined. Googling around I was searching for things like MOD x not working in emacs and coming up way short. Nothing seemed like it was even related to what I wanted to do. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/macos-tiling-window-manager-yabai/ Sun, 15 May 2022 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/macos-tiling-window-manager-yabai/ I’ve been looking for the macos equivalent of i3-gaps for a long time. I love the simplicity a tiling window manager adds by laying out all the windows in a space equally. Combine that with the flexibility to quickly move and resize windows around with the keyboard and everything feels so effortless. I tried Magnet for a while. Ultimately it fell way short for me. I like the asthetic of small gaps between my windows. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/org-pomodoro-emacs/ Sun, 17 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/org-pomodoro-emacs/ org-pomodoro is an emacs pacakge that adds pomodoro functionality into emacs. By enabling the package and running the command org-pomodoro (SPC t t in doom emacs) the current heading will be clocked in in org mode and a pomodoro timer started. When the pomodoro is up it will also play a notification sound when the session ends and when the break ends. In doom emacs, enabling org-pomodoro is as simple as enabling the pomodoro module. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/auto-start-syncthing-linux-mint/ Sun, 03 Oct 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/auto-start-syncthing-linux-mint/ Enable the service by running. 1 systemctl enable syncthing@myuser.service This will enable the service to run as my user as a system wide service. Then start the service by running 1 systemctl start syncthing@myuser.service THe service should then be started. Run: 1 systemctl status syncthing.service To check the status of the service. It should return something like: 1 2 Loaded: loaded (/lib/systemd/system/syncthing@. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/alpine-linux-eeepc/ Fri, 24 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/alpine-linux-eeepc/ Today was a public holiday so I decided to crack the old eeePC out and try and set up something useful on it. I already had a doom emacs and ssh set up so it was just a matter of plugging it in to get going. One of the first things I wanted to do was get it on my tailscale netwrork. Once I had that working I’d be able to ssh into it even when I’m not on my home network. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/enable-ox-hugo-doom-emacs/ Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/enable-ox-hugo-doom-emacs/ So yesterday in my doom emacs cheatsheet I pushed a snippet on how to setup ox-hugo in doom. Turns out there’s a better way than installing the package and running the require in the config.el. Doom Emacs already supports adding ox-hugo as an option. Fun! So now all I had to do was enable the module. See enabling ox hugo for how to do that. Special thanks to Brian Wisti for putting that down in a blog post. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/update-lastmod-in-theme/ Wed, 01 Sep 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/update-lastmod-in-theme/ I made a fork of the original Paper 5.0 theme I’m using. I’ve updated it to add a new config element which is showLastMod. This enables a new attribute to be shown right below the author of a post that shows the last time the post was modified. For posts this is kind of useful as you can see how outdated the information is in a given post. However, I think it’s helpful most of all in the Doom Emacs Cheatsheet page. https://daniebker.co.uk/about/ Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/about/ I’m a software engineer that loves tinkering. CV ATTACH 2021 Senior Lead Software engineer in the site pages portfolio. 2020 Team lead managing a team of 4 engineers. 2019 Migrating a monolithic website from mostly .net code to React and Gatsby.JS. 03.09.2012 Software Engineer in Vistaprint, Barcelona. 2012 Graduate Staffordshire Univserity with First Class Honors in International Computer Games Programming BSc https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/crafting-doom-emacs-cheatsheet/ Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/crafting-doom-emacs-cheatsheet/ I’m crafting a little cheatsheet as I go through learning doom emacs. It’s linked in the navigation and I’ll be updating it as I go through tutorials and learn new things in doom emacs. The learning curve hasn’t been quite so steep as I was already used to emacs from using it before. Doom Emacs was still new, it took some time getting to grips with evil but I’m geting there. https://daniebker.co.uk/cheat-sheets/doom-emacs/ Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/cheat-sheets/doom-emacs/ A work in progress Doom Emacs Cheat sheet. Check the original org file on github. Doom Commands doom sync doom doctor Checks for errors in your configuration. Can spot mispelled and duplicate modules in the ~/.doom.d/init.el file as well incorrect flags being passed to modules. Modules Doom has a module concept. Modules are a bundle of packages combined into one. Modules are enabled in the ~/.doom.d/init.el file. On initial install many are commented out. https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/my-first-post/ Tue, 31 Aug 2021 00:00:00 +0000 https://daniebker.co.uk/posts/my-first-post/ Starting, again, this blog. Since my photography contnent no lives over at danbakerphoto.com I feel like I can repurpose this one to my development and personal blog. I’m fully on emacs again. This time doom-emacs. Despite the initial hicups with evil it’s actually great to use. Emacs is coming back to me slowly. As part of that learning process I’m also documenting the keybindings I frequently need to look up.