A sonnet about Batman in the style of William Shakespeare
Oh Batman, knight of darkness, hero bold
Fierce in battle, strong in heart and mind
Defender of the weak and young, behold
Thy righteous justice, keen and unconfined
With cape and cowl, thou roam’st the gloomy night
In search of evil, lurking in the shade
With batarangs and gadgets, swift and right
Thou fight’st with valor, never unafraid
Thou art the Dark Knight, feared by thy foes
But loved by Gotham, city of thy birth
Thy loyal allies, Robin and Batgirl knows
Thy strength of spirit, unmatched on this earth
Oh Batman, thy courage doth inspire
Thy legend shall never fade, nor expire.
AI Experiments Featuring Monkeys
I was experimenting with AI writing and images and was experimenting. My initial testing was for serious subject matters, and it proved to be surprisingly well-written.
I decided to experiment to see how absurd things could get and was not disappointed. Here’s the first result.
A sonnet about monkeys in the style of William Shakespeare
Oh primate of the jungle wild, with fur so soft and warm,
Your funny face is full of cheer, your spirit full of charm.
Your leaps and bounds are so delight, your antics such a sight,
Your antics bring joy and laughter, day and night.
Your antics full of curious play, never a dull moment today,
Your cries bring life to the trees, your presence is here to stay.
Your chatter fills the air with sound, as you swing from tree to tree,
Your kind is full of joy, of this much I guarantee.
Your life is full of family, and you are never lonely,
Your love and care for one another, is so pure and honestly.
Your life is filled with plenty of adventure, curiosity and more,
Your life is full of joy, and near the jungle floor.
Oh primate of the jungle wild, I sit and watch you play,
Your furry face and kind spirit, I shall never forget today.
Your life is full of joy and cheer, your presence warm and bright,
Your life is full of love and fun, and I am glad to be in your sight.
Using Laravel Vite with MAMP
As seen in other posts, I use MAMP quite a bit for my web development environment. I know I can run docker, or any of the other platforms out there but they use more memory and resources that I’d prefer to devote to my dev tools.
I started a new Laravel project and wanted to use MAMP but Vite was throwing errors due to the SSL not matching out of the box.
When adding
@vite('resources/js/app.js')
to my blade file, I’d get errors including:
This request has been blocked; the content must be served over HTTPS.
I found articles saying to add –https or –host to my package json command but then I got this error:
net::ERR_SSL_VERSION_OR_CIPHER_MISMATCH
Load MAMP Pro, add your host and generate your SSL certificates. For this example, we’ll use set the host name to my-app.test, and assume you’re storing the SSL keys in the default location.
Open vite.config.js and add the following 2 lines:
import fs from 'fs'; const host = 'my-app.test';
Then add this to defineConfig section:
server: { host, hmr: { host }, https: { key: fs.readFileSync(`/Applications/MAMP/Library/OpenSSL/certs/${host}.key`), cert: fs.readFileSync(`/Applications/MAMP/Library/OpenSSL/certs/${host}.crt`), }, },
You should now be able to run npm run dev and have no issues.
Sample full vite.config.js file for easy reference:
import { defineConfig } from 'vite'; import laravel from 'laravel-vite-plugin'; import fs from 'fs'; const host = 'my-app.text'; export default defineConfig({ server: { host, hmr: { host }, https: { key: fs.readFileSync(`/Applications/MAMP/Library/OpenSSL/certs/${host}.key`), cert: fs.readFileSync(`/Applications/MAMP/Library/OpenSSL/certs/${host}.crt`), }, }, plugins: [ laravel([ 'resources/sass/app.scss', 'resources/js/app.js', ]), ], });
How to deploy a React app to Amazon S3 using Gitlab CI/CD
I’ve been trying to build more CI/CD scripts using Gitlab to automate pipeline deployments for work. Here’s a useful one for building and deploying a React app to Amazon S3.
You’ll need to add a variable called S3_BUCKET_NAME to your repo or replace the variable with your bucket path.
stages:
- build
- deploy
build react-app:
#I'm using node:latest, but be sure to test or change to a version you know works. Sometimes node updates break the npm script.
image: node:latest
stage: build
only:
- master
script:
# Set PATH
- export PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin/npm
# Install dependencies
- npm install
# Build App
- CI=false npm run build
artifacts:
paths:
# Build folder
- build/
expire_in: 1 hour
deploy master:
image: python:latest
stage: deploy
only:
- master
script:
- pip3 install awscli
- aws s3 sync ./build s3://$S3_BUCKET_NAME --acl public-read
How to Setup CI/CD of Jigsaw Site to Digital Ocean Droplet Using Bitbucket Pipelines
I created a new personal resume site and decided I wanted to build a static site since it wouldn’t be frequently updated. I evaluated Nuxt, Gatsby, and a few others but settled on Jigsaw, a static site generator based on Laravel. I had never used it before and figured this would be a good learning experience while building something I needed. I was pleasantly surprised by how easy it is to use and setup, so kudos to the Tighten team for putting together such an elegant solution.
I wanted to get a CI/CD pipeline configured to handle the site’s deployment but couldn’t find any working tutorials, so I’m sharing my solution in case it helps others. I’m using Bitbucket for this since it’s a personal private repo, so I’m using Bitbucket Pipelines.
Instructions
After you enable pipelines for your project, you’ll need to configure a Pipelines Repository Variable in your project. Go to the settings tab in your repo, and then select Repository variables:
Add 3 variables:
- USER_NAME – The SSH user name you want Bitbucket to use to connect to your server.
- PRODUCTION_HOST – Your domain that Bitbucket should connect to
- FOLDER – Folder Path where the site should be deployed to
Generate an SSH key (or use your own) and add it to your server under the SSH Keys tab in Pipelines:
I generated a new key and then added it to ~/.ssh/authorized_keys for the account.
Add this YAML snippet to your bitbucket-pipelines.yml in your root. This will use PHP 7.4, install rsync, node + npm, composer, and build the production version of the site to deploy to the specified folder.
The -aVP switch for rsync is to give me verbose progress feedback so I can see what’s happening. If you don’t need the detail, switch it to -a.
image: php:7.4-fpm
pipelines:
branches:
master:
- step:
name: Jigsaw Build
script:
- apt-get update && apt-get install -y unzip
- apt-get install rsync openssh-client nodejs npm -y
- curl -sS https://getcomposer.org/installer | php -- --install-dir=/usr/local/bin --filename=composer
- composer install
- npm install
- npm run production
- rsync -avP build_production/ $USER_NAME@$PRODUCTION_HOST:$FOLDER --exclude=bitbucket-pipelines.yml --chown=www-data:www-data
I received a few errors when rsync ran. In case you run into them as well, here’s the list and fixes. The first was:
rsync: failed to set times on "$FOLDER": Operation not permitted (1)
I added --no-t
to resolve that and then got a new error:
rsync: failed to set permissions on "$FOLDER": Operation not permitted (1)
which was fixed with adding the switch --no-perms
. My final rsync command became:
rsync -avP --no-t --no-perms build_production/ $USER_NAME@$PRODUCTION_HOST:$FOLDER --exclude=bitbucket-pipelines.yml --chown=www-data:www-data
How to use Backblaze B2 with Laravel
I am working on a Laravel project and decided to use a Backblaze bucket as it’s cheaper for storage when compared to AWS S3. I couldn’t find a tutorial on how to get it working from scratch and I tested a bunch of Laravel B2 libraries that didn’t end up working. The good news is that you don’t need a special B2 plugin and instead can use the S3 package recommended by the Laravel docs.
If you haven’t added the flysystem-aws-s3 package, add it to your project using composer:
composer require league/flysystem-aws-s3-v3
Login to your B2 account and create your bucket with your required settings. Once created, you’ll want to create a new application key with the permissions you need for your app. You should get a confirmation once it’s generated:
Open your .env file and locate the settings for AWS. You’ll need to add one key that’s not there by default:
AWS_ENDPOINT=
Match the settings in your .env from the application key to the values below.
AWS_ACCESS_KEY_ID=keyID
AWS_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY=applicationKey
AWS_DEFAULT_REGION=us-west-000
AWS_BUCKET=bucket-name
AWS_ENDPOINT=S3 Endpoint
Now you should be able to call the Laravel storage system like normal:
\Storage::disk('s3')->put('test.txt', 'test');
How to Setup a CI/CD Pipeline for Storybook.js using Gitlab
I just spent a few hours setting up a Gitlab pipeline to deploy a Storybook.js site. Of course the end result ended up being much simpler than I made it out to be. Like everything else on my blog, I’m sharing in case anyone else can use the information to save time.
Just put this in your gitlab-ci.yml and it’ll take care of caching the node modules and building your static version of Storybook to deploy.
image: node:latest
cache:
paths:
- node_modules/
stages:
- build
- deploy
build:
stage: build
script:
- npm install
- npm run build-storybook -- -o storybook-static
artifacts:
paths:
- storybook-static
only:
- qa
- develop
- master
deploy:
stage: deploy_to_aws
# add your deploy code here
How to Clear Archive & Read-only flags on Files in Windows in Bulk
I ran into an issue where I had to move files from one system to another and was running into issues because files had been set as read-only, had the archive flag set, or both. It was causing the system to skip files which wasn’t acceptable. Normally you could just use Windows to clear it in bulk, but that could potentially mess up file permissions. I needed a way to automatically just clear all flags but respect permissions.
I did some searching and didn’t find a utility that would do the job and most of the solutions I found required Powershell which wasn’t available on the system I was on. I ended up writing a quick console application in C# to do the trick. I’ve made it free and open sourced it in case anyone wants to use it.
If you need just the app, you can find the release build here with instructions. The app also prompts for input to make things a bit easier to use. There’s no install, no tracking or metrics, or anything else related to privacy concerns in this app. It’s a simple throwaway utility to get the job done and move on.
https://github.com/gregvarghese/clearflags/releases/tag/1.0.0
If you want to see the source code, that is available here:
https://github.com/gregvarghese/clearflags/
Please note that I did this in about 10 minutes for my own use so error handling is pretty much non-existent. I mention this because I did run into one issue where Windows was somehow seeing a folder with files in it as a file and it couldn’t be deleted or renamed and the utility couldn’t get past it until it was resolved. I didn’t spend much time debugging and just used my Mac to rename the folder and Windows was able to recognize it after the change, so the utility was able to continue processing.
How to execute SSH command with Bitbucket Pipelines
I inherited an old site that someone else setup that is just a basic static HTML, which was deployed using a git pull on the server. I wanted to automate the deployment, and instead of using rsync as the site will be re-built, I realized I could just configure the Bitbucket Pipeline to use SSH and run the pull command. This is probably a fringe case but here’s the bitbucket-pipelines.yml in case anyone finds it useful.
Add the repository variables for $USER, $SERVER, and $FOLDER with the appropriate values and then you should be able to run the deployment.
pipelines:
default:
- step:
script:
- pipe: atlassian/ssh-run:0.2.8
variables:
SSH_USER: '$USER'
MODE: 'command'
SERVER: '$SERVER'
COMMAND: 'cd $FOLDER && git pull'
How to Generate a Page for Each Day of Month in Microsoft Word using VBA
I briefly joined my wife at her practice to help her grow the business and figure out how to make things more efficient. One of the things I learned is that my wife created a sign-in sheet for the office in Microsoft Word. Every week she would open the file and manually enter the date for each day of the week and then print out the documents. I took over the responsibility for a month and it annoyed me due to how inefficient the process was and I decided to automate the entire thing. I couldn’t find a solution to the problem online so I had to roll my own and am sharing the code in case someone else can benefit from it.
Important Details
The script will calculate the first day and last day of the month and then do a loop to append the date in the “Day, Month day, Year” format (i.e. Thursday July 17, 2019) to a text field.
There are a few important steps involved to get the script working as is:
- Create a Word doc with the first page that you want to duplicate.
- Add a text field from the developer tab. To copy and paste the code below as-is, you’ll need to name it txtDate. This is where the date will be added. If you want a different field name, change the name at line 26 and 83. You can also change the date formats to suit your needs here as well.
- Add a second blank page to the document. I was running into issues where the paste was appearing partially on the first. The blank page resolved this and I added code to remove the original page as well as the blank one from the beginning.
How to Use
Open up Word, then open up VBA, and copy and paste this snippet into a module. When you run the function, it’ll create a copy for every day of the month. I also created a function to start at a specific date in case you run it in the middle of the month.
Sub CreateSigninsForMonth()
Dim N As Integer
Dim sCurrentMonth, sCurrentYear As String
Dim sNewDate As String
N = 1
Count = Day(GetLastDayOfMonth)
For CopyNumber = 1 To Count
With Selection
.GoTo wdGoToPage, wdGoToAbsolute, 1
.Bookmarks("\Page").Range.Copy
.Paste
End With
With ActiveSheet
sCurrentMonth = Format(Date, "mmmm")
sCurrentYear = Format(Date, "yyyy")
sNewDate = (CopyNumber & " " & sCurrentMonth & " " & sCurrentYear)
ActiveDocument.FormFields("txtDate").Result = Format(sNewDate, "DDDD MMMM dd, YYYY")
End With
N = N + 1
Next CopyNumber
'Delete template + blank page
For i = 1 To 2
With ActiveDocument
strt = .GoTo(wdGoToPage, wdGoToLast).Start
Set r = .Range(strt - 1, .Range.End)
r.Delete
End With
Next
End Sub
Sub CreateSigninsForMonthStartingDate()
Dim Count As Integer
Dim N As Integer
Dim sCurrentMonth, sCurrentYear As String
Dim sNewDate, sEndDay As String
N = 1
Count = 0
iStartDay = InputBox("Which day do you want to start on?", "Starting Day", "1")
Count = InputBox("Which day do you want to end on?", "Ending Day", Day(GetLastDayOfMonth))
Do While Count > Day(GetLastDayOfMonth)
sEndDay = InputBox("Which day do you want to end on?", "Ending Day", Day(GetLastDayOfMonth))
If iStartDay = vbNullString Or sEndDay = vbNullString Then
MsgBox "You clicked cancel.", vbOKOnly, "Try again later!"
Exit Sub
End If
If IsNumeric(CInt(sEndDay)) Then
Count = CInt(sEndDay)
End If
Loop
For CopyNumber = iStartDay To Count
With Selection
.GoTo wdGoToPage, wdGoToAbsolute, 1
.Bookmarks("\Page").Range.Copy
.Paste
End With
With ActiveSheet
sCurrentMonth = Format(Date, "mmmm")
sCurrentYear = Format(Date, "yyyy")
sNewDate = (CopyNumber & " " & sCurrentMonth & " " & sCurrentYear)
ActiveDocument.FormFields("txtDate").Result = Format(sNewDate, "DDDD MMMM dd, YYYY")
End With
N = N + 1
Next CopyNumber
'Delete template + blank page
For i = 1 To 2
With ActiveDocument
strt = .GoTo(wdGoToPage, wdGoToLast).Start
Set r = .Range(strt - 1, .Range.End)
r.Delete
End With
Next
End Sub
Function GetFirstDayOfMonth(Optional dtmDate As Date = 0) As Date
' Return the first day in the specified month.
If dtmDate = 0 Then
' Use the current date if none was specified
dtmDate = Date
End If
GetFirstDayOfMonth = DateSerial(Year(dtmDate), Month(dtmDate), 1)
End Function
Function GetLastDayOfMonth(Optional dtmDate As Date = 0) As Date
' Return the last day in the specified month.
If dtmDate = 0 Then
' Use the current date if none was specified
dtmDate = Date
End If
GetLastDayOfMonth = DateSerial(Year(dtmDate), Month(dtmDate) + 1, 0)
End Function