AWS Lambda's Bad Interface Is Actually a Feature
Lambda's clunky deployment process forced me to think small. That constraint led me to better microservices design. Sometimes friction is good.
Complete journal / Year
2016
10 notes published in 2016.
Bash on Ubuntu on Windows: What Works and What Doesn't
Microsoft added Ubuntu's Bash to Windows. I tested it for real work and hit some rough edges.
Running PHP 5.6 with Apache on El Capitan
The Apache module path was the easy-to-miss part of running Homebrew's PHP 5.6 on macOS El Capitan. Here is the full setup.
Why Browsers Killed Flash (And Why Designers Lost Out)
I worked in advertising as browsers pushed Flash out. The web gained battery life and privacy controls, while ad production got much harder.
Understanding CORS: Basic vs. Preflight Requests
CORS failures that look unrelated often come down to request type, duplicate headers, or credentials. Here is how the browser treats each case.
Upgrading WordPress to PHP 7: Configuration Changes
Ubuntu 16.04 ships with PHP 7, which broke my WordPress. Here's how to upgrade PHP config and point nginx to the new php-fpm socket.
Edge 14: Microsoft Finally Catches Up to Firefox
Edge 14 hit 460 points on the HTML5 Test and reached Firefox territory. It was Microsoft's strongest standards result after Internet Explorer.
Mocha v3: Major Improvements to the Test Runner
I upgraded two repositories to Mocha v3. The migration was uneventful, and the fixed .only() behavior was reason enough to do it.
Setting Up CORS Vary-Origin Headers in AWS S3
The exact S3 CORS configuration I used to make responses vary by origin instead of letting a CDN cache the wrong header.
Using UglifyJS's screw-ie8 Option in Gulp
Once I stopped supporting IE8, UglifyJS still emitted compatibility code for it. This Gulp option switched those workarounds off.
