Test: Using a Docker image to Build This Blog

I use Docker to run several microservices across my websites. Generally, they are standalone tools and demonstrations, mostly made to teach myself how to get these things done in microservices. I recently came across the concept of utility containers. Up to now, all the containers I run are meant to run all the time, and be easily replaced by spinning up a replacement container. Utility containers, on the other hand, are literally containers that hold the bits needed to process input data into output data, do that process, then exit....

21 May 2022 · 5 min · Gary Allen Vollink

Trying Hugo

This is a post where I’m literally doing nothing but testing hugo to see if it will work for what I need. Turns out, it works pretty well. Here are some features I’m likely to use. Sub With Code Trying a sub-topic my $test = MyStuff->new(); if ( ! $test ) { printf {*STDERR} "Error.\n"; } Final Thoughts It took me over a week to figure out how to extract what I needed from my old Google blogger account, and now that I’ve done that, I’m … happy enough … with the results....

16 May 2022 · 1 min · Gary Allen Vollink

Linux Command Prompt in Color

In this modern world, basically every terminal is compatible with VT-52 terminal sequences. These includes Windows Terminal (free from Microsoft on the Microsoft Store), Terminal.app (on macOS) and most terminals available under Linux. Further, most of these support emoji and 256 colors. Yet, most of the advice out there on how to deal with this suggests hard-coding these escape sequences directly into your prompt. This is great, and probably will work just fine, but I find it to be painful....

19 Nov 2021 · 3 min · Gary Allen Vollink

[Book] Of Curses and Kisses by Sandhya Menon

Book cover I usually don't do the comparative thing, but this one stuck me pretty directly.  Imagine the movie Crazy Rich Asians, but teenagers at a boarding school in the mountains outside of Aspen, with a broadly international cast.  Main point: pretty much everybody is insanely rich. The main character, Jaya Rao, is a princess from an old kingdom of India who is literally there to break someone's heart....

22 Jan 2020 · 2 min · Gary Allen Vollink