VS Code Dark Background Different Colors

I’ve switched to the excellent Visual Studio Code as my default editor after configuring and trying a bunch of different editors. But more on that in another post. In trying to get everything set up the way I wanted I noticed that in certain cases my external monitor on my MacBook or iMac gave me two different colors on the background. (Note that it didn’t occur when using the retina display at all) One darker set of colored squares where text or code was and a slightly lighter shade on the rest of the background.…

Reaction Commerce on Mac

In case I haven’t talked about it before, I’m really into e-commerce. I love everything about it and I run multiple stores and I’m always watching for new e-commerce solutions that are coming out. I’ve tried Reaction Commerce before, but with it’s recent 1.0 release I figured it was time to get serious and build a store out with it to really explore it’s capabilites. Their install docs are really simple so I charged ahead.…

Going Hugo

I’ve finally updated this blog. In the past I built most of the websites I worked on using the excellent Django web framework built in Python. In switching jobs a little over a year ago, I moved to an team that didn’t run any Python and instead used PHP and the Laravel framework. This greatly reduced my opportunity to work in Django on a daily basis and I instead spent most of my time working on front end code.…

Virtualenv on El Capitan

Step by step instructions for setting up virtualenv on MacOS.…

Mac Too Bright?

Update Jan. 2017 I now use Flux to slowly dim the lights as it gets later at night. If you’re working late and find your screen is just too dang bright this little Shades utility is a beautiful thing. #UsingIt…

Sublime Package Confusion

After switching to a new Mac recently I installed my favorite text editor Sublime Text 3. While most things picked right up because I sync my preferences through my private cloud, the Django template language snippets and highlighting provided by Djaniero were not working. I couldn’t install it again either. If you’re package for Sublime that you are trying to install is not available it’s most likely because it’s already installed (but not working).…

Connect to Vagrant Postgres Database via pgAdmin3 on Mac

For the past year or so I’ve been developing locally at work using Vagrant. After making some updates to models I found I needed to be able to easily inspect my postgres database in the Vagrant virtual machine. Ideally I could use pgAdmin3 to connect to that database and luckily it wasn’t too hard. There may be a step or two in these instructions that aren’t needed but I’m including everything I did because I know that it works.…

Upgrading to Yosemite

So today I took the plunge and upgraded to Yosemite. With all of the Django and Homebrew setup on my mac it’s always interesting to see what breaks when upgrading. First thing that was off was Postgres was not started, which is what I use for local dev so I can use a production dataset when testing. When I tried to run “brew doctor” I got an error: Error: No such file or directory - /Library/Developer/CommandLineTools/usr/bin/clang From experience from past upgrades I know this is because command line tools are not installed correctly.…

Spam Control with jQuery

Recently at work I was faced with a problem. We use an outsourced CRM solution so I send lead forms directly to them. Things work but the only solution they have for spam control is using a captcha. A solution I’m not particularly fond of. Especially since one of those forms is in the footer of our site and it would just be flat out ugly. I was already using the wonderful jQuery validation to validate form input so I wanted to find a way to tie it all together.…

Upgrading Ghost on Webfaction

A while back I started a blog using Ghost to try it out. Webfaction made it easy by having a 1 click installer for it almost immediately after it was available. The site has been up and running for a while and I noticed that there have been several upgrades since I installed it so I wanted to upgrade to the latest version. Here is how I did that. Note that these instructions will only work if you installed Ghost using the Webfaction installer.…