Published in Nerd For Tech·Jan 18innerText in ScrapyIn Javascript, there is this wonderful property called innerText, which is rendering aware and will return all descendant's texts as you would expect in plain text. We don’t need to worry about the internal structure of an element. For example, if it has tags for bold text, spans, lists etc…Scrapy3 min readScrapy3 min read
Published in Nerd For Tech·Jan 17Flutter test coverage in Gitlab CIShowing test coverage and whether it is going up or down on a pull request can change whether or not coverage gets added by your team. Visualizing and giving a feedback signal when test coverage changes encourage adding more tests. In Gitlab, you can get the test coverage added like…Flutter3 min readFlutter3 min read
Published in Nerd For Tech·Nov 9, 2022Have you set a budget for your cloud project yet? It saved us $40 a dayMaintaining a server yourself is a lot of work. Cloud services usually outperform cost and effort-wise unless you have poor luck and no safety controls in place. The cost of a cloud project I worked on recently, suddenly and without warning, increased by $40 a day. …Gcp5 min readGcp5 min read
Published in Nerd For Tech·Oct 19, 2022Make any element text changeable with contenteditableI found the contenteditable attribute a while back when I was trying to find a way to build a WYSIWYG. Simply put, adding the contenteditable attribute to any HTML element allows you to edit the content of that element. Within the limits of what the browser and the element support…HTML2 min readHTML2 min read
Published in Nerd For Tech·Oct 5, 2022Jupyter for JavascriptObservableHQ is an online script notebook for javascript. With ObservableHQ, you can quickly run and rerun each line. Document or explain side-by-side and display outputs as they are generated. It’s like running Node inside Notion.Java Script3 min readJava Script3 min read
Aug 25, 2022Improve your project docs with journallingYou have better things to do than write and maintain long documents that rarely get read. I have used strong words to share my dislike for documentation in the past, and I still feel the same way today. Yet here I am, asking you to write more. A whole lot…Writing4 min readWriting4 min read
Published in Nerd For Tech·Aug 14, 2022Switching from Handlebars to PugWhen creating japapps.com, I wanted a minimal and easy way to generate HTML from a database of articles. I chose to start with HandlebarsJS. This worked well until recently. I wanted to define OpenGraph data for each page to get nicer unfurls when sharing on social and to improve the…Pugjs4 min readPugjs4 min read
Jul 25, 2022Service for hosting JSON filesThere is an easy an simple way to store JSON data without needing a full backend or server. Several times past weeks, I wanted this as I was building small tools and PoCs and today, I want to share what I found. My Googling came up short and I even…Json3 min readJson3 min read
Feb 27, 2022Become a better listener by asking what words meanI think words are important. I have always liked how stringing together the right ones makes poetry. Switching a single word in a sentence can change the sentiment completely. Words have power. They inspire emotion and can bring us together, or apart. If I ask you to think of Spring…Leadership4 min readLeadership4 min read
Published in Nerd For Tech·Feb 26, 2022Scrape faster with Scrapy shellAre you adding print statements and rerunning your scraper time and again to test your output? Do you wish you could set breakpoints? Do you have chrome open in the background and using jQuery to test those selectors live on the website you are trying to scrape? I know this…Scrapy3 min readScrapy3 min read
