Articles
This page lists all articles in reverse chronological order. Use the Categories page to view the list of categories or Search to locate a particular article.
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Note: An AI Generated pill displayed in the list below indicates that the post description displayed on the page was generated from the post content using Generative AI (GenAI). The post content itself was written by a human (me).
Testing a Bunny.Net CDN
Posted Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 09:25 PM in Miscellaneous, Web DevelopmentAs I worked through the process of publishing a Windows app to the Windows Store, I found that I needed a CDN and this post describes how I addressed that requirement.
Postal Scam Urtye dot com
Posted Sunday, April 14, 2024 at 08:21 AM in MiscellaneousI received an interesting text message yesterday that is clearly a scam. Just in case others received a similar message, I assume many did, this post tears down the message proving its a scam.
Using the DFRobot I2C 16x2 LCD display
Posted Saturday, April 13, 2024 at 10:22 AM in Internet of Things (IoT)Describes how to use the DFRobot I2C 16x2(1602) LCD Display Module for Arduino in a project.
Amazon Digital Music Hell Continued
Posted Friday, April 12, 2024 at 06:31 PM in MiscellaneousEarlier today I posted a rant about the ridiculous customer experience I encountered purchasing digital music from Amazon. If you've read many of the posts here, you probably noticed that I sometimes go off the handle on a topic and don't always think it completely through. After my online rant this morning, I started thinking of the possible reasons why an Amazon Digital music link would fail and I came up with some ideas.
Amazon Digital Music Hell
Posted Friday, April 12, 2024 at 06:19 AM in MiscellaneousAmazon sent me an email this morning letting me know that a digital album I purchased was available for download. You'd think I'd be able to click a link and download my purchase, but you'd be wrong.
Added Timestamp to Posts
Posted Sunday, April 7, 2024 at 07:08 PM in EleventyIn my previous post, I described how I updated my Eleventy New Post utility to add a
timestamp
property to new post's front matter. With that in place, I updated the site's Home Page, Articles Page and at the top of every Post. I encountered a little issue with that implementation related to time zones, so I decided to dig deeper into the implementation on this site and how I solved the time zone issue.Added Timestamp to My Eleventy New Post Utility
Posted Saturday, April 6, 2024 at 08:10 AM in EleventyA user of my Eleventy New Post utility submitted a feature request yesterday suggesting I add the post's timestamp to the generated post instead of just the date.
Building a documentation Site Using Docusaurus
Posted March 30, 2024 in Static Site GeneratorsAI Generated I recently built a website for my software company and needed a place to publish product documentation. After exploring different options, I settled on using Docusaurus, a documentation static site generator. This post describes my first impressions of the platform.
Eleventy Navigation Set URL to First Item in Collection
Posted March 24, 2024 in EleventyI'm building a new web site for a software company I created using 11ty, and one of the things I want to do in this site is have the Products menu item open the product page for the first product in a sorted list of product pages.
Delphi ListBox Move Multiple Selected Items
Posted March 23, 2024 in DelphiI was working on a Windows application project in Delphi that required moving items around within a Delphi standard ListBox. It's pretty easy to swap list item position when only a single item is selected, but once you enable `multiselect` on the component, things become more difficult. As I poked around on the Internet for solutions, I couldn't find a complete example, so I decided to create and publish one.
Google Cloud Exposed Service Key
Posted March 22, 2024 in Cloud DevelopmentAt the beginning of the year, I published a post called Leaked Credentials from Google Cloud Project that described an issue I had, well it was an issue I created, with my Google Cloud account. I wanted to show some Google Analytics stats on this site and the only way I, at the time, could figure out how to do it was to run some code at build time that collected the data I needed from Google's APIs and added it to the site. To do this, the code required an API key for my Google Analytics data. I created a read-only key and included that key in my site repository on GitHub. Google freaked out and sent me a series of emails yelling at me for what I did.
Microsoft Sunsets Visual Studio App Center
Posted March 20, 2024 in Cloud DevelopmentBack in 2017, I had an opportunity to work on the Visual Studio documentation as a contractor. I was trying to find full time work, but jumped at the opportunity to write some docs for Visual Studio. I wrote/updated most of the docs for Visual Studio Tools for Apache Cordova (TACO) and since I had multiple books under my belt about Apache Cordova, I was a perfect fit.
Generating Eleventy Post Descriptions Using Generative AI
Posted March 18, 2024 in Artificial IntelligenceAI Generated Using Generative AI to automatically generate post descriptions is a great way to save time and ensure consistency across your site. By leveraging tools like ChatGPT, you can quickly create engaging summaries that entice readers to click through and read more. The Describer GenAI extension for Visual Studio Code simplifies this process, allowing you to effortlessly generate descriptions for your articles with just a few clicks. With the ability to customize settings and easily integrate the generated descriptions into your site, this tool is a valuable asset for content creators looking to streamline their workflow.
FedEx Foibles
Posted March 8, 2024 in MiscellaneousI noticed lately that FedEx seems incapable of knowing where packages are in their delivery network. As an example, take a look at the following screen shot taken this morning:
The Pace of AI Advancement
Posted March 1, 2024 in Artificial IntelligenceComparing and contrasting the pace of technological advancement against AI advancement.
Bogus Wells SMS
Posted February 23, 2024 in MiscellaneousAI Generated I received a spam text message pretending to be from Wells Fargo, but I quickly realized it was fake. The phone number and currency format were not typical for the US, making it clear that it was a phishing attempt. It's important to pay attention to these details to avoid falling for scams.
New Post Skipping Category Prompt
Posted February 11, 2024 in EleventyI added the ability to skip Category prompt in my Eleventy New Post utility.
Added Folder Selection My New Post Utility
Posted February 6, 2024 in Eleventy, Node.jsAdded an enhancement to my Eleventy New Post utility to support choosing the target folder during post creation.
Delphi Passing Data Between Forms
Posted January 22, 2024 in Delphi, Microsoft WindowsI'm building a Windows application using Delphi and I needed the ability to access data on the main form from another form (a form invoked by the main form). I poked around on the Internet and found different ways to do it.
Windows Path Viewer App
Posted January 21, 2024 in Delphi, Microsoft WindowsA while back I had a problem with my Windows Path that I wrote about in Windows Path Items Not Available in Visual Studio Code. I was thinking about that problem recently and decided to build my own tooling for managing my system path. I didn't do this because I needed to, but I wanted to write some Windows code (Using Delphi) and this topic is interesting.
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Photo by Bernd Klutsch on Unsplash