Andy's blog o' goodness – php, web stuff, raspberry pi… even blacksmithing!

November 9, 2023

Easily check your code for PHP 8.2 compatibility

At work, I have the task of upgrading all of our microservices to using PHP 8.2. This isn’t too bad; we’re running on PHP 8.0 anyway, and the PHP developers are known for pushing to retain backwards compatibility. However, the language does change and things get deprecated or tightened up, even between minor versions. So I needed a way to...

General/GitHub/PHP Comments: 0

July 17, 2023

New Photo Organiser application

Following on from me discovering Wails a little while ago, I decided to use it when I realised I had many, many, many thousands of photos scattered around my hard drives, with little to no organisation behind them. What I really wanted was a simple tool that would allow me to put all of the photos into a folder in...

General Comments: 0

May 1, 2023

Rotary controller OLED menu updated

Many moons ago (well, size years – approximately 71 full moons), I put a little python code up on GitHub to show a menu on a 128×32 pixel OLED screen and allow changing the highlighted option with a rotary controller (potentiometer). I had intended to create some kind of clock radio alarm with a raspberry pi, but never swung back...

Python/Raspberry Pi Comments: 2

November 13, 2022

Introducing the Code Clipper desktop app

I’ve only recently come across Wails; a really great solution to creating desktop applications using web technologies and the Go language. It allows you to rapidly create applications that are cross-platform, using your favourite front-end framework (Svelte, React, etc.) or vanilla js which communicates with a Go backend. I had never tried anything with Go, nor had I used Svelte...

Code snippets/General Comment: 1

November 11, 2022

How to replace ::set-output in your GitHub actions

Using ::set-output has been deprecated by GitHub, but thankfully the changes to your action are really minimal in order to use it’s replacement, the $GITHUB_OUTPUT environment variable. Let’s imagine that in your action, you have something along the lines of: The change is to make it look like: Super simple, right? And the create thing is, you can still use...

GitHub Comments: 0

October 6, 2020

Count all indexes on multi-dimension arrays

Following on from my initial I didn’t know PHP did that! post yesterday, it wasn’t long before I had my next realisation about PHP; this time with a simple little parameter to the count function that I didn’t know existed. Everyone knows how to use count, right? It’s super handy in all kinds of circumstances. And, I would hedge bets,...

PHP Comments: 0

October 5, 2020

I didn’t know PHP did that!

For the number of years that I’ve been using PHP (and let’s just say that I know people working in PHP roles today that weren’t alive when I started using it!), I would have thought I’d know a lot of the ins and outs of the language… But I’m very happy to say that it’s still surprising me to this...

PHP Comment: 1

September 19, 2020

Major new version of the PHP OPCache GUI

I have just released a major new version of my OPCache GUI! It looks pretty much the same, but here are the more notable changes: New namespace for the base service class which ensure composer compatibility You can now paginate the cached files list to make it easier to render a large file list Any scripts that have been preloaded...

PHP Comments: 0

July 9, 2020

Making a pewter and resin turtle

A little while ago I thought, “wouldn’t it be great to make something out of pewter? I want to play with resin, too. Maybe I can use them together?” You know, the normal every day thoughts all of us developers have, right? Actually, I say that, but developers really are a creative bunch of people. So many of them that...

General Comments: 0

April 26, 2020

Forged a little candle holder

Today I fired up the forge to attempt my first ‘in a jar candle holder’. It came out alright, though I appreciate that I have a lot of technique to figure out. After I was done forging I needed to coat the candle holder. My mother-in-law keeps bees and gave me some wax which is often used to coat metal....

Blacksmithing Comments: 0