All things learnt

Sorted chronologically.

September 2021

• Django settings prefixed with an underscore are private on September 20, 2021
• How to reset an SSH session on September 16, 2021
• How to easily copy annotated screenshots to the clipboard on macOS on September 13, 2021
• The names for macOS keyboard meta-characters on September 10, 2021
• About git merge-base on September 8, 2021

August 2021

• You can have SSH sessions via AWS Session Manager on August 9, 2021

July 2021

• Django doesn’t flush caches between tests on July 23, 2021
• How Django’s management commands need to be type hinted on July 22, 2021
• File-level flake8 comments ignore all errors on July 21, 2021
• Git aliases that run an external command are run from the repository root on July 21, 2021
• That Pytest’s “keyword expression” filtering supports Python conditionals on July 16, 2021
• That FreezeGun doesn’t work with Pytest fixtures (unless you use pytest-freezegun) on July 12, 2021

June 2021

• About Chrome’s named windows on June 30, 2021
• About mypy’s unreachable code functionality on June 21, 2021
• About jq’s --slurp option on June 17, 2021
• About mypy’s reveal_type and reveal_locals functions on June 16, 2021
• That mypy only type-checks functions that have at least one type annotation on June 16, 2021
• About git log -G on June 2, 2021

May 2021

• About the :ALEInfo command on May 25, 2021
• About Ubuntu’s alert Bash alias on May 14, 2021
• About Vim’s semi-colon search offset on May 14, 2021
• The ISO-3166 codes for the United Kingdon are inaccurate on May 12, 2021
• That Vim’s uppercase marks are global and persistent on May 6, 2021

April 2021

• Sensitive Terraform Cloud variables are included in Sentinel mocks on April 28, 2021
• The correct sequence of SQL statements for dropping a role on April 28, 2021
• Python’s csv.writer function defaults to Windows line endings on April 20, 2021
• You can use shuf to take random samples of lines on April 14, 2021

March 2021

• That vim-polyglot conflicts with Hub when creating pull requests on March 30, 2021
• About git-absorb on March 28, 2021
• JSON is valid YAML on March 26, 2021
• How to convert SSH2 public keys to OpenSSH format on March 26, 2021
• How to include the date in git reflog output on March 25, 2021
• About xargs -t on March 22, 2021
• What the sections of the Unix manual are on March 22, 2021
• About delta, a viewer for Git and diff output on March 19, 2021
• You can have class-scoped autouse pytest fixtures on March 16, 2021
• That software can be “free as in mattress” on March 15, 2021
• systemd sends SIGKILL signals after waiting for TimeoutStopSec seconds on March 12, 2021
• iTerm2’s “Cursor boost” feature will cause everything to appear dimmed on March 12, 2021
• pdbpp has a useful ‘sticky’ mode on March 11, 2021
• systemd timers can be stopped on March 9, 2021
• You can use Git log to view the evolution of a function on March 5, 2021
• To prefer dateutil over pytz on March 4, 2021
• Pytest doesn’t play nicely with ipdb on March 2, 2021

February 2021

• Chrome has a flags page for enabling experimental features on February 16, 2021
• How to use custom functions with :cdo on February 15, 2021
• The order of permissions matters with chmod on February 6, 2021
• About Github’s @me search term on February 5, 2021
• Recruiters talk about T-shaped leaders on February 3, 2021

January 2021

• Virgin Media’s “Web Safe” product uses DNS on January 29, 2021
• How to scroll horizontally with a mouse on January 26, 2021
• You can take screenshots with Chrome DevTools on January 25, 2021
• You can arbitrarily chain Python comparison operations on January 15, 2021
• How to pipe an argument list into Vim on January 15, 2021
• How to copy the current filepath to the system clipboard in Vim on January 12, 2021
• How to search for fixed strings with grep and ripgrep on January 12, 2021
• How to easily disable a CircleCI workflow on January 8, 2021
• BBC Sounds only works on Alexa if the language setting is UK English on January 7, 2021
• How temporary files are removed on MacOS on January 7, 2021

December 2020

• You can define custom file-type filters in ripgrep on December 29, 2020
• How to enable Docker BuildKit in MacOS Docker Desktop on December 29, 2020
• You can specify the file-type for bat on December 21, 2020
• About envsubst on December 19, 2020
• How to add project-specific Vim settings on December 18, 2020
• You can stack pytest’s parametrize decorators on December 16, 2020
• About YAML’s node anchors and aliases on December 11, 2020
• You can label parameterized fixtures with pytest on December 11, 2020
• Universal Ctags can index more things than I realised on December 10, 2020
• A better way of configuring mypy on December 10, 2020
• How to spell-check markdown repos on CircleCI on December 7, 2020
• How to set per-project ripgrep and fzf exclude rules on December 4, 2020
• Vim-markdown has some useful commands on December 4, 2020
• GSuite’s “Groups Admin” role can read any group email on December 2, 2020

November 2020

• How to run Jekyll in a Docker container on November 30, 2020
• About how to use keywordprg effectively on November 27, 2020
• How to configure ctags to parse Terraform files on November 26, 2020
• You can easily share 1Password items via a link on November 23, 2020
• You can convert a Slack group direct message chat into a private channel on November 20, 2020
• How to use Bandit with Vim’s quickfix list on November 19, 2020
• Exuberant-ctags has been superceded by Universal-ctags on November 16, 2020
• About column on November 12, 2020
• You can hide night-time hours in Google calendar on November 6, 2020
• You can run :grep without using parent shell process on November 4, 2020
• There’s a QuickFixCmdPost event in Vim on November 4, 2020

October 2020

• You can jump to previous quickfix lists in Vim on October 31, 2020
• How to embed markdown content in a Github code block on October 27, 2020
• You can create QR codes for WiFi networks on October 27, 2020
• fd has an option for searching filepaths on October 23, 2020
• datetime.datetime is a subclass of datetime.date on October 22, 2020
• The keyboard shortcut for grabbing a MFA code in 1PW on October 22, 2020
• How to use AWS profiles that require MFA on October 21, 2020
• About the difference between minimising and hiding windows in MacOS on October 19, 2020
• About readonly Bash variables on October 13, 2020
• About shellcheck on October 12, 2020
• About pip-licenses on October 8, 2020
• About Bash’s DEBUG signal on October 7, 2020
• How to resolve Git rebase conflicts on renamed files on October 5, 2020
• There is a “Bongcloud” chess opening on October 2, 2020

September 2020

• How to use xargs with printf on September 29, 2020
• AWS ASGs have an ‘instance refresh’ feature on September 28, 2020
• The MacOS keybinds for en- and em-dashes on September 25, 2020
• How to read from one buffer to another in Vim on September 23, 2020
• SSH config supports multiple host patterns in one block on September 23, 2020
• There’s a Chrome extension for switching AWS IAM roles on September 22, 2020
• YAML has several string-parsing gotchas on September 21, 2020
• Javascript’s unary + operator casts null to zero on September 21, 2020
• How to count lines of code in a Git repo for a given commit on September 17, 2020
• About Vim’s :helpgrep command on September 16, 2020
• Vim recommends using Emacs-style key bindings in command mode on September 16, 2020
• How to conditionally include items in a Terraform list on September 15, 2020
• You can change the font in Slack with /slackfont $font on September 12, 2020
• You can display the typed text in Alfred in a huge typeface on September 7, 2020
• Python 3.7 supports postponed evaluation of annotations on September 4, 2020
• Vim doesn’t create the persistent undo folder automatically on September 4, 2020
• How to use type annotations with Python’s csv module on September 3, 2020
• How to configure Alfred’s Bear workflow to open notes in the main window on September 2, 2020

August 2020

• About better YAML file folding in Vim on August 28, 2020
• OpenDNS provide free porn-blocking DNS servers on August 27, 2020
• AWS Availability Zones have counter-intuitive IDs on August 25, 2020
• You can rate-limit issues using a Sentry DSN on August 24, 2020
• How to list pages with matching tag in Hugo on August 17, 2020
• About :help macvim on August 17, 2020
• About Vim’s :diffthis command on August 17, 2020
• About the stationery pad feature in Finder on August 14, 2020
• About pngcrush on August 14, 2020
• Asana has some magic search terms on August 12, 2020
• You can have SASS asset pipelines in Hugo on August 11, 2020
• About text fragments on August 10, 2020

July 2020

• Renaming a Terraform module is dangerous on July 23, 2020
• Where authentication for the ubuntu user on a EC2 instance is defined on July 22, 2020
• About the phrase “Parking downhill” on July 21, 2020
• About the MacOS screencapture utility on July 20, 2020
• About Quitter on July 20, 2020
• About Alfred’s snippet collections on July 20, 2020
• About Alfred’s clipboard history feature on July 20, 2020
• About Twitter’s min_faves search filter on July 16, 2020