Author: Steven Eng
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Debugging Linux package installations
One common problem that arises when trying to install packages on Linux is successfully installing a package, running the binary, and discovering that the package doesn’t work. What are some ways to debug this? Typically when running the package command, you’ll get an error message if there’s a problem telling you which file is missing.…
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Upgrading from Ubuntu 22.04 to 24.04 on a Digital Ocean droplet
August is the end of summer, but it’s also the time that Ubuntu lets their servers access the latest distro of Ubuntu. Once you have finished applying your updates, I ran the following: So far so good! When prompted on whether to use the new version of the package’s configuration files, I reviewed and tried…
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Attending the AppSec Days PNW Conference
Last month, I attended the two day AppSec Days Pacific Northwest Conference presented by OWASP Foundation. On the first day, I started off attending a talk on the tradeoffs of static code analysis. After a short break, I went to a talk on how to reverse engineer an undocumented API, in which I learned about…
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Best error handling tips for developing great software
Throughout my software and web development career, there are some patterns that I noticed regarding error handling that surfaces every time. Here I’m going to share some of my favorite tips to make error handling less painful. Return error codes in your API Return error codes as opposed to returning only a message in your…
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Using MySQL Workbench to access database in container
This is my first blog post regarding my ventures into Docker, the immensely popular containerization platform. Docker is great in many regards, but one of the first problems occurred when I had to rename my WordPress site and I needed to check inside the database to see whether or not the URLs were updated inside…
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Fixing security vulnerabilities in JavaScript project dependencies
One of the many tasks developers have to do is to fix security vulnerabilities in JavaScript packages. This may prove to be an onerous task, especially when doing this for projects that haven’t been updated in a long time. Helpful Steps NPM will let you know if there are medium or high vulnerabilities in your…
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API Conventions – Camel or snake case?
In this post, we’ll explore different APIs and take a look at the naming conventions they use. This may seem like a trivial topic, but knowing how other APIs are constructed can give the developer a piece of mind while they are implementing their API. We’ll first explore some of the most common casings used…
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What to do if your UI has too much whitespace
One problem that comes up quite often in user interfaces is that they often can have too much whitespace. As much as whitespace can make a design look more modern and minimalistic, sites can also look plain and lacking in content because of whitespace. I’ve shared some tips below to work around this problem. 1.…
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Upgrade from PHP 7.4 to 8.0
With the latest release of PHP 8.0 in November 2020, it is once again time to begin upgrading your servers to the next PHP version. I’ve outlined the general steps required to do this on an Ubuntu system. Be sure to review the migration plan and fix any backwards incompatible changes in your applications first…
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Top 5 accessibility mistakes you’re making
As developers and content creators, you can always do better to improve the accessibility of our applications and websites. Here are 5 of the top accessibility mistakes you’re making. Not adding enough contrast between text and the background This ensures that there is sufficient contrast between text and the background color to ensure that the…