Streamline your Git workflow with Russ Mckendrick's tips! Learn how to fork, add remotes, and rebase for maximum efficiency.

Git + Rebase

As you may have noticed, the blog looks different (again). This is because I have moved from Wordpress↗ back to Ghost↗ using their GhostPro↗ offering. One of the things I like about Ghost is the default theme, Casper↗ . While I wanted to keep it there were a few things I wanted to tweak, such as removing the full page header image on main index. When I have previously used Ghost I have forked the theme on GitHub and then manually messed about getting any updates from the original code in....

March 22, 2015 · 2 min · Russ Mckendrick
Unlock the full potential of Docker with Machine, Compose, & Swarm. Learn how to orchestrate containers, and create clusters across different platforms!

Docker Machine, Compose & Swarm

Since I last properly [wrote about Docker](/2014/08/31/docker-fig-nginx-reverse-proxies-and-centos-7/“Docker, Fig, NGINX Reverse Proxies and CentOS 7”) a lot has changed. Docker have introduced some new command line tools which allow for easy orchestration of Docker instances, clusters and container management. These are; Docker Machine↗ — Allows you to easily deploy Docker instances to a lot of different platforms. Docker Compose↗ — A replacement for Fig↗ . Docker Swarm↗ — Native clustering for your Docker instances....

March 21, 2015 · 14 min · Russ Mckendrick
Timeless charm! Exploring the 'Aqua Blue' desktop wallpaper, a MacOS X standard since 2001.

Desktop Wallpaper

It has just dawned on me, I have been using the “Aqua Blue” variation of wallpapers which stated shiping with MacOS X since I got my first iMac G3 in 2001. There have been a few variations of it, however the one I have settled on is the one with came with MacOS X 10.4 Tiger. It has been the first thing I have installed on every Mac, Linux and even Windows machine I have run since 2005....

March 15, 2015 · 1 min · Russ Mckendrick
Get ready for a musical journey! Check out Russ Mckendrick's top picks this month on Spotify.

What’s Been On The Ones & Twos

According to my LastFM profile↗ I have been listening to the following a lot this month … David Bowie — Nothing Has Changed↗ The Smashing Pumpkins — Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness↗ New Order — Get Ready↗ The War on Drugs — Lost In The Dream↗ Amplifier — The Octopus↗ Flying Colors — Flying Colors↗ Depeche Mode — Songs of Fair and Devotion↗ Suede — Dog Man Star↗ The Stone Roses — Second Coming↗ Led Zeppelin — Led Zeppelin IV↗

March 15, 2015 · 1 min · Russ Mckendrick
Discover my must-have desktop & command-line apps, services, and utilities I use daily on my macOS machine.

Day To Day Tools

I am currently using most of these tools day to day … Desktop Apps SublimeText↗ — Still the best text editor around Dashline↗ — Cross device password manager Desk↗ — Great editor for writting blog posts Photoshop↗ — For ermmmmm Photos OmniGraffle↗ — For diagrams and stuff Reeder 2↗ — For reading all the feeds GitHub Mac Client↗ — The Mac GitHub client Commandline Apps Home Brew↗ — Install “missing” stuff on macs Cask↗ — Install Mac Apps using the command line using Brew StormSSH↗ — Key & hosts management known_hosts↗ — A simple cli known hosts manager Packer↗ — Build machine images Z↗ — Jump around the CLI Vagrant↗ — Run machines built with Packer Services Digital Ocean↗ — Server Hosting AWS↗ — Server Hosting CloudFlare↗ — CDN & Stuff Github↗ — Code Hosting Pinboard↗ — Bookmarks Evernote↗ — Note taking RememberTheMilk↗ — Task management Feedly↗ — For managing all the newsfeeds Pocket↗ — For reading articles later Toggl↗ — Time tracking Authy↗ — A nice Two Factor Authentication tool Plex↗ — An impressive cross device media centre … so not much in the way of changes since I last wrote about the tools I use....

March 9, 2015 · 1 min · Russ Mckendrick
Migrate DigitalOcean instance for cost efficiency. Enable swap space to prevent oomkiller issues. Optimize performance with tuned settings.

Migration of Server & Swap Space

I noticed yesterday that my DigitalOcean monthly spend was a little more than I was expecting, turns out I have launched the wrong instance size when I last rebuilt my machine, so to save myself a few dollars a month I migrated the instance to a fresh server with a lower spec. By default DigitalOcean servers do not come with swap↗ enabled, because of this you run the risk of oomkiller↗ killing processes to try and keep the server accessible....

March 8, 2015 · 2 min · Russ Mckendrick
Compile NGINX with ngx_pagespeed on CentOS 7. Automate setup with init script. Configure NGINX for ngx_pagespeed to enhance performance.

NGINX & ngx_pagespeed on CentOS 7

I wanted to have a quick play with Googles Pagespeed module, as I use NGINX and not Apache I needed to compile NGINX from source to enable the ngx_pagespeed module. The following assumes you are have a clean CentOS 7 installation. First off you need to install the packages which enable you to compile NGINX with ngx_pagespeed from source. NGINX & ngx_pagespeed on CentOS 7 1/8 yum install -y gcc-c++ pcre-dev pcre-devel zlib-devel make unzip openssl-devel Now create a NGINX user and make so the user doesn’t have a shell....

February 14, 2015 · 3 min · Russ Mckendrick
Secure backups for WordPress with VaultPress and DigitalOcean.

Backups

In my line of work one of the things you learn quickly is that there is no such thing as too many backups. Call me paranoid, but I would rather be spoilt for choice should the worst happen. So what backups do I have in place? Website While this website is nothing more than a place for me to dump my thoughts and various tech ramblings it does generate a small amount of traffic....

February 8, 2015 · 2 min · Russ Mckendrick