| Title | Published | Introduction | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| Digital Ocean Vs Rackspace Vs AWS a Brief Comparison | Published | I have used Digital Ocean, Rackspace and Amazon Web Services (AWS) for infrastructure services since 2012. I started with Rackspace which allowed for good low level control and had outstanding support. AWS is the most popular provider however, and contracting to companies large and small, if a SAAS provider was already in use, it was invariably AWS. Digital Ocean is a newer less ubiquitous option that now provides better support and has a user interface that I find easy to navigate. | 22/05/2025 |
| Staff are not Patrons - Django Users | Published | I have been working with the Django framework since 2012, and see some trends that have a foundation more in dogma than utility. One such trend is subclassing the AbstractBaseUser model and getting Django to recognise it thru the AUTH_USER_MODEL setting. The reason for doing this is to change the field called username into a field called email or phone or something else that is unique to your users, and having some user_type field to determine the user as staff or visitor to the site, and using permissions and other processing to make sure that the user experience is appropriate, and the authorization is appropriate. I put forward the argument that there is a better way. | 17/05/2025 |
| Tailwind CSS | Published | I used to hate working in CSS because it is messy and complex. They I found Tailwind. | 20/04/2025 |
| Tracking Errors with Sentry | Published | Tracking errors needs more than just email. Sentry is a solution. | 20/04/2025 |
| Jenkins Server | Published | Jenkins is the tool of choice for Continuous Deployment. Easier to set up and configure with more control and a much cheaper alternative than the commercially available pipelines. | 20/04/2025 |
| Reports | Published | I have a ReportView class based on Django's ListView class. The ReportView uses a filter object allowing me to create filters for any report. In the JobView pictured left, I have a filter for open and closed jobs, and one to filter by clients. I also have a search field which is part of the ReportView. This was inspired by the excellent Django Suit application along with some clever programming by my predecessor at INTRO Travel, Jared Quin.<br /> | 20/04/2025 |
| Enumerated Types in Django | Published | Waking up at 3am in the morning and wanting to execute an idea is a good indication that you have chosen the right career. It came to me one early morning that the way I was dealing with ordinal types was clunky, and I needed a type that was orderable, quick to compare, easy to display and not prone to typing errors. | 31/03/2025 |