March 4, 2019

Acer V5-122P display driver issue

I had a rather disappointing experience recently with an Acer laptop that I’d like to make a note of. I think the crux of the issue is a difference between the latest driver available and the best driver for a machine. The details are that the laptop is an Acer Aspire V5-122P. It is a cheap and cheerful laptop that I purchased for the following reasons: Backup machine in case my daily driver broke down, Low powered machine to test performance of websites, Laptop I could take travelling without undue stress as to it’s wellbeing.

October 30, 2018

My favourite bash shortcuts

I recently transitioned from using vi mode in bash to the default command line shortcuts. I had ignored them for a long time but after a brief period sitting and learning a few I no longer missed vi mode. Some of the key reasons that prompted me to change are: vi mode does not have a visual prompt, leading to unecassary escape smashing I only used the most basic motion command, eschewing a lot of the power of the vi commands When ssh’ing into other boxes the switch in interface is jarring.

March 29, 2018

What I’ve learned about cucumber js

CucumberJS is a NodeJS implementation of a test runner which is powered by the Gherkin syntax. It’s integration with our team workflow has been a boon to clarity of purpose for stories in firstly SCRUM and now KANBAN. Here I will share some of things we’re doing and the benefits we reap. When writing a story the team gathers around a screen and we work on a shared text. Straight away this increases collaboration and removes a lot of later disagreements around ‘I thought we said we would do X after Y’.

February 22, 2018

Delete last word

Coming from vim I´m used to a wide variety of keystrokes to manipulate text. The other day at work though my mind was blown when a colleague hit alt + backspace to delete the previous word in macOS. This was particularly useful because in Terminal I am used to pressing ctrl+w. This will delete the previous word as well, but it terminal it does not respect delimeters such as ´_/´_ or ´_-´_.

February 12, 2016

Back to Windows

I recently put Windows 10 onto my little Acer. It was a practical decision. I enjoyed Ubuntu but had a real problem with the impact on battery performance. After 40 to 50 minutes the battery would generally be depleted. So, I downloaded a Windows 8 ISO from Microsoft and began the installation. It took a loooooong time (it’s not a very performant laptop). Eventually I got Windows 8 installed, upgraded to Windows 10, sorted out activation issue with Acer and Microsoft.