Byte High, No Limit

My translation workflow

Last week, I wrote about how I added localization to my website.

Adding languages to a Hugo site

I’m a long-term advocate for localization, but this site has been monolingual for over a year now.

Surviving an uncivilized workplace

I’ve been fortunate in life to work for some companies that were genuinely great places to work.

Setting up a free personal website with GitHub, Hugo, Netlify and TinaCMS

My first article of 2022 was on setting up a free personal website with GitHub, Hugo, Netlify and Forestry.

A security alternative to giving online services your personally identifiable information

You’re probably familiar with the social media memes that try to elicit password reminders from you to access your accounts.

Writing a résumé or curriculum vitae

As the tech crunch continues, it’s entirely possible that you’re one of the many people who suddenly find themselves looking for a new job.

Low budget developer portal

Back in 2019, I had to create a developer portal with no budget.

Using the Domain Object Model with JavaScript

This week, I had a look at the Domain Object Model (DOM) for the first time since graduating from my computer science degree over a decade ago.

Migrating from Markdown to structured authoring

I’m a huge fan of Markdown. It’s great for wikis and writing content for static sites (most of the content on this site is written using it).

Sales for developers

You’re a developer. Have you ever wondered how the software you write gets into the hands of users?

Running Intel binaries in Debian ARM with Rosetta

I’ve mentioned UTM before. It’s a nice wrapper for QEMU that enables you to create ARM virtual machines and emulate non-ARM machines on macOS.

Migrating a Hugo site from Forestry to Tina

I launched the current version of my website a year ago.

2023: Predictions for the Year Ahead

I like to think that I have a fairly good track record of predicting the future, although usually in fairly vague terms.

How to survive a pandemic

If you’re reading this then, at the time of writing, thus far, through a combination of luck and guile, you have survived the pandemic.

2022: The Year in Review

At the beginning of the year, I committed to publishing a weekly article on my DevRel blog.

My curated list of podcasts

The original Apple iPod was announced on October 23, 2001. The final model was discontinued on May 10, 2022.

Adobe at 40: impact and alternatives

Adobe is 40 years old this month. Founders John Warnock and Charles Geschke both previously worked at Xerox PARC, where desktop publishing (DTP) was first developed.

Creating documentation in XML

If your documentation has reached the limits of what’s possible in Markdown, and you’d prefer not to fall back to HTML, it’s time to consider authoring in XML.

How to offend most of your international users all at once

We love icons. They’re a great way to convey information simply, even if many of them are skeuomorphs from a bygone age.

Converting images with Image Magick

Photoshop is old. Really old. Well, in computer terms anyway. As of writing, it’s currently on version 24.

Using GitHub Actions to automatically unpack a zip archive

I was recently working with some software that could push a zip archive of content to a Git repository.

Getting started in developer relations

It may surprise you that the field of developer relations has been around for nearly 40 years at the time of writing.

Creating a code style guide

I’ve written previously about the importance of a style guide for written content.

Creating taxonomies

The hashtag has become ubiquitous. Chris Messina was inspired by the way chat rooms were identified on Internet Relay Chat (IRC) servers, when he first proposed its use in a 2007 tweet.

Creating documentation in an agile environment

Google for images of agility, and you’ll get dog trials. So let’s go with that analogy.

Getting started with REST APIs

REST (representational state transfer) APIs (application programming interfaces) have been around since the turn of the century, when they were defined by Dr.

An introduction to intellectual property for developers

This week, I’m going to take a brief look at intellectual property as it affects developers.

Setting up a home office for video production

In August 2021, TikTok increased the maximum length of videos on its platform to three minutes.

Revisitng DocBook

The Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and DocBook are two XML-based authoring frameworks.

Using LanguageTool to improve your writing

As I’ve previously remarked, I missed two things on switching from print journalism to technical writing.

Creating a writing style guide

When I switched from journalism to technical writing, the two things I missed the most were style guides and editors.

Running Xilinx ISE on an M1 Mac

Back in March 2022, I did a write-up of how to run Xilinx Vivado on an M1 Mac to generate cores for the Artix-7 series of FPGAs (as used on the Mega65).

An introduction to API first

This week’s article is the long-promised expansion of the lightning talk I gave at SUGCON 2022 in Budapest.

Disambiguating Jamstack and MACH

Earlier this year, I gave a lightning talk on API-first. I’ve been planning write an article on it ever since, but first I wanted to lay the groundwork.

Explaining event-driven architectures

Modern software development is all about automation, continuous integration, continuous delivery and software-defined life cycles.

Getting the most out of MasterClass as a developer advocate

First off, the obligatory disclaimer. I was gifted an annual subscription to MasterClass by my employer, and I’m not getting paid to write this.

Managing packages on macOS with Homebrew

If you’re a Linux user, or you read my article on Scoop, you’ll be familiar with package managers.

Updating a 40-year-old computer design

In my last article, I wrote a lot about the development of the firmware for my hobbyist microcomputer project that became the Chloe 280SE.

Reusing code, reverse engineering and collaboration

In this article I’m going to talk about code reuse, reverse engineering and the importance of collaboration.

Assessing machine sentience

I’ve long been interested in the field known as artificial intelligence (AI).

Charting the evolution of the console and personal computer

The history of the evolution of consoles and computers is a tangled web.

Fostering security awareness

Today’s article is based on a presentation I gave at a security conference in the 2010s.

Playing the greatest 4X game of all time on modern hardware

Having spent my free time over the past couple of weeks binge-watching all 12 seasons of Tony Bourdain’s award-winning CNN series Parts Unknown (because it’s leaving Netflix in June), I haven’t been doing much extracurricular development.

Bulk updating documents with XSLT

XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) is a language for transforming XML documents into other documents.

Managing a ReadMe.io site from a Git repository

ReadMe.io is a popular user docs site. It has a Markdown editor, theme builder and Swagger / OpenAPI file import.

Managing packages on Windows with Scoop

If you have even a passing familiarity with Linux, you’re probably aware of the concept of package management.

Creating release notes from a Jira query

In this article, I’ll describe a solution to simplify the process of creating release notes in MadCap Flare on Windows from a Jira query.

Creating diagrams with Mermaid

I’m a convert to writing docs in Markdown. Most of this website is written using it (displayed with Hugo).

Creating API docs for assembly language projects

This week, I’m releasing what I hope will be the penultimate beta of SE Basic IV (an open source classic BASIC interpreter).

Converting JSON string collections to binary assets for non-UTF-8 compliant devices

Last time I wrote about localization with Weblate. This week, I’ll show how the SE Basic IV project takes JSON output from Weblate and converts it into binaries that can be used with 8-bit code pages by the interpreter.

Doing continuous translation with Weblate

This week, I want to give a shout-out to Weblate, a web-based translation tool with Git integration that’s available free to open source projects.

Writing for a global audience

At the end of last week, I attended a conference in Budapest.

Tips for public speaking

In my day job as a developer advocate, and in my volunteer role as community manager for the Chloe 280SE project, I’m sometimes called upon to speak in public.

Choosing a mechanical keyboard switch

One of the things I do is design keyboard layouts and legend designs.

Changing email provider in the age of 2FA

Changing email provider is simple, right? Wrong. After the week I’ve had, I think there’s an argument that you should be able to transfer your email address to another provider, just like you can with a cell number.

Running Xilinx Vivado on an M1 Mac

I’ve written before about running non-Apple Intel binaries on an M1 Mac.

Using GitHub Actions and Hosted Runners

You’ve probably heard of DevOps. You’re probably aware of the term CI/CD (continuous integration and delivery).

Running non-Apple Intel binaries on an M1 Mac

Since late 2018, I’ve been developing on Apple Silicon. You can read about it in an earlier article.

Running ARM Linux on an M1 Mac

Next week, I’m going to look at running non-Apple Intel binaries on M1 Macs.

Creating a developer portal with no budget (part 3/3)

In this three part series, I’ll outline how to create a fully featured dev portal for your Swagger or OpenAPI 3.

Creating a developer portal with no budget (part 2/3)

In this three part series, I’ll outline how to create a fully featured dev portal for your Swagger or OpenAPI 3.

Creating a developer portal with no budget (part 1/3)

In this three part series, I’ll outline how to create a fully featured dev portal for your Swagger or OpenAPI 3.

Using an iPad Pro for development

This is my 2018 iPad Pro. It has replaced the Hackintosh workstation I built that I ended up installing Windows 10 on (story for another day) as my main computer outside work hours.

Setting up a free personal website with Forestry, GitHub, Hugo and Netlify

Back in May 2021 I started a new career as a developer advocate.

Using letter frequency to solve Wordle

As a writer, Wordle (the latest internet gaming sensation) piqued my curiosity.

A DevRel blog

When I started writing this DevRel blog, nearly a year ago, I didn’t even have a name for it.