Changelog #2: Grinders and Babies

Hey Friends, welcome to the 2nd edition of the Changelog series. This edition describes some of the happenings roughly between 2022-09 and 2022-10. A self-declared coffee fanatic I would call myself a coffee fanatic (snob?). The range of snobbishness is variable I guess. You only have to visit r/coffee to see what I mean. Around 2016, we bought our first Nespresso pod machine. It was the Nespresso Inissia. At the time both the Wife and I were having our coffees with two sugars and milk....

November 14, 2022 · 5 min · 882 words · Rameez Khan

Giscus for Comments

Giscus is a solid option if you’re looking for a low-impedance alternative to Disqus. Remember when Disqus was a thing? On my old blog I used an off-the-shelf Gatsby template which came bundled with Disqus support. I didn’t know better at the time so I just went with it. So I know I’m probably late to the lets-move-away-from-disqus-party, but now, re-writing this blog and re-thinking the tech stack behind it, it was time to give some more thought to this....

November 1, 2022 · 5 min · 871 words · Rameez Khan

Colima as a Docker Desktop Replacement?

An attempt at finding a drop-in replacement for Docker Desktop on macOS. Why a replacement? Docker Desktop has been the gold standard for building and running containers on macOS. But what is it? Is it just a fancy container GUI? Well, no. The single, downloadable package comes built-in with everything you need to build and run Docker images on your machine. Besides running a VM in the background as a daemon, Docker Desktop provides seamless plumbing into the host machine with sane and secure defaults 1....

October 28, 2022 · 3 min · 571 words · Rameez Khan

Changelog #1: Quarter of the man I used to be

Hey Friends, welcome to the 1st edition of what I’m calling the Changelog series. A series where I hope to get all my thoughts and musings down on to paper (so to say). Since this the first in the series, this post is a high level summary of some the highlights roughly between 2021-08 and 2022-09. Shedding a quarter Around August last year (2021), while playing in the garden with the first born, I found myself completely out of breath just two minutes in....

October 21, 2022 · 3 min · 546 words · Rameez Khan

Once-off Commands with Nix

No need to pollute your system environment In the last post we discussed why it might not be wise to pollute your system (or global) environment by installing programs you’ll only run once. Often, these programs are installed and then forgotten about causing unnecessary bloat. A pristine system is easily maintained. When to use nix-shell or nix run We also showed in the last post how we could use nix-shell to temporarily bring programs into our path....

May 10, 2021 · 2 min · 217 words · Rameez Khan