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Pi-Hole & DNS over HTTPS

There are some cool things about running your own DNS server. I use it to reference some web services that I run internally more easily, like my Unifi Controller, PiAware, and my home-grown Linux Server. It’s a lot easier than trying to keep track of the IP addresses of everything in your network. For that…
Code Complete Notes, Chapter 3, Section 5: Architecture

Architecture, according to the book (which draws from other sources as well), is: Software architecture is the high-level part of software design, the frame that holds the more detailed parts of the design. S. McConnell, Code Complete, second edition. Redmond (Washington): Microsoft Press, 2004. Now that’s out of the way, let’s talk about how we…
Code Complete Notes, Chapter 3, Sections 2 and 3

Defining the Problem Section 2 of Chapter 3 is very simple: you should know what problem you’re trying to solve before you try to solve it. It normally shouldn’t be stated in technical terms. Instead, it should be the simplest issue that you’re trying to solve. For example, “We need developers to be able to…
Code Complete Notes, Chapter 3, Section 2

Different types of software require different types of planning. If you’re working on your own blog, for instance, the stakes are a lot lower than if you’re working on, say, an automated flight control system. If you’re working on one of those high-stakes projects, your planning should be much more thorough & much less iterative.…
Code Complete, Chapter 3, Section 1 Commentary

This is the second post in my series on Code Complete, covering my notes and commentary from Chapter 3, Section 2. The title of this section is Measure Twice, Cut Once: Upstream Prerequisites. Essentially, this section is talking about the importance of developing prerequisites before beginning work on a project. It reminds me of a…
Code Complete, Chapters 1 and 2

Hello, everyone! I’ve recently started reading Code Complete (the second edition), by Steve McConnell. I haven’t made it very far into it yet, but I figured that I’d share the things that I learn or find interesting here. I realized that when I read, it helps me to take notes and focus on highlighting so…
Using `xarg` to pass to `find`

I just found myself needing to run wc -l on all the files in a list of directories – in my case, I had a big old list of directories with a matching name. But I wanted to calculate the total number of files in those directories. Unfortunately, find is very particular about where its…
Working with Bare Repos in Git

When we think about git and git repos, we don’t often think about separating the .git repo itself from the working directory. But we can actually have a lot of fun with bare repos. They give you a lot of flexibility, and when you’re doing things like deploying code or running builds, that’s useful. Searching…
Wildcard Certs w/Let’s Encrypt & Cloudflare

Awhile back, when wildcard certs first became available from Let’s Encrypt, I wrote a post about using Google Cloud DNS to create wildcard certificates. Since then, however, it’s come to my attention that Cloudflare offers DNS for free that interacts with an API. So I figured, why not move over to use Cloudflare’s DNS, instead?…
Revamping my Dotfiles with Zgen

I’ve recently spent some time reworking my dotfiles repo. Up to this point, I’ve mostly just taken what someone else has made available, changed it to work just enough for me, and left it at that. Finally, I’ve put in some time to update them so that they’ll work better for me. As part of…