Blog

A mostly technical blog that covers everything from the frontend to making SQL Server go fast. You can also browse posts by tag, or subscribe to the RSS feed.

2023
  1. Half a year to complete the migration to Eleventy. What will I do with the rest of it? April 22, 2023
2022
  1. The next time you see me I will be Eleventy October 13, 2022
  2. Processing images linked from frontmatter with eleventy-img to use in meta tags August 31, 2022
  3. Migrating my digital garden from WikiLens to Foam, and taking it private July 9, 2022
  4. What are the costs of an engineering career progression framework? April 30, 2022
  5. Writing a simple Pocket app in Node.js with no dependencies March 31, 2022
  6. Benchmarking .NET’s Dictionary.TryGetValue by key length and runtime February 28, 2022
  7. Early thoughts on switching to Apple silicon and macOS from Windows January 31, 2022
2021
  1. Don't mistake their kindness for empathy December 31, 2021
  2. Interesting Links - November 2021 November 30, 2021
  3. Deploy an Azure AD protected App Service Website with Pulumi October 23, 2021
  4. Run Pester 5 tests in Azure Pipelines and publish test results September 30, 2021
  5. Interesting Links - August 2021 August 31, 2021
  6. Benchmarking different versions of NuGet packages July 16, 2021
  7. Run benchmarks using multiple runtimes with BenchmarkDotNet June 8, 2021
  8. Publishing a self-contained single-file .NET 5 executable May 29, 2021
  9. Getting a summary of cspell errors with PowerShell April 30, 2021
  10. Updating babel-eslint to @babel/eslint-parser for React apps March 31, 2021
  11. Spell checking your Markdown blog posts with cspell February 28, 2021
  12. Migrating from the official Firestore SDK to Firebase-Firestore-Lite January 31, 2021
2020
  1. Analyze your Create React App bundle size - without ejecting December 31, 2020
  2. Monitoring your GatsbyJS bundle size November 30, 2020
  3. Interesting Links - October 2020 October 31, 2020
  4. You don't have to use graphql to query your Gatsby site's metadata September 30, 2020
  5. Updating to Tailwind Typography to style markdown posts August 31, 2020
  6. Using GistPad to manage your GitHub digital gardens July 31, 2020
  7. Password protect a Next.js site hosted on Vercel June 30, 2020
  8. Tips for 1 on 1s during COVID-19 May 31, 2020
  9. Absolute imports with React April 25, 2020
  10. Getting a list of all performance counters ingested to Log Analytics March 31, 2020
  11. Swapping implementations at compile time with craco and Create React App February 29, 2020
  12. Interesting Links - February 2020 February 7, 2020
  13. Remark Slides Starter January 26, 2020
2019
  1. Adding a new field to a Firestore collection December 31, 2019
  2. More Interesting Links - December 2019 December 19, 2019
  3. Interesting Links - December 2019 December 1, 2019
  4. Link Roundups November 30, 2019
  5. Interesting Links - November 2019 November 8, 2019
  6. Adding cover images to your Gatsby blog October 20, 2019
  7. Migrating from Jekyll to Gatsby September 30, 2019
  8. Styling markdown posts with Tailwind CSS in GatsbyJS August 31, 2019
  9. Allowing only specified users to access Cloud Firestore July 31, 2019
  10. Create React App, Emotion, and Tailwind CSS starter app June 30, 2019
  11. Keeping Application Insights Costs Under Control May 31, 2019
  12. Should I Automate It? April 30, 2019
  13. Understanding space usage in Azure Monitor logs March 31, 2019
  14. Auto scale down all Event Hub namespaces with Azure Functions February 28, 2019
  15. Overhead of Event Hub outputs with Azure Function Apps January 31, 2019
2018
  1. Adding caching to your PowerShell scripts December 31, 2018
  2. SQL Managed Backups and Operating System Error 87 November 16, 2018
  3. Resumable Online Index Rebuilds - SQL 2017's Silver Bullet November 3, 2018
  4. Mitigating SERVICE_BROKER_WAITFOR_MANAGER latch waits October 15, 2018
  5. Saving and reporting on Pester Infrastructure test results in Log Analytics September 23, 2018
  6. Getting started with Log Analytics and PowerShell logging August 26, 2018
  7. Troubleshooting a slow application with Application Insights August 5, 2018
  8. Ensuring your Describe Tags are unique in Pester tests July 21, 2018
  9. Adding Pester tests to a PowerShell module and scheduling CI with AppVeyor June 25, 2018
  10. Setting sp_configure values with SQLChecks May 31, 2018
  11. Cleaning up database mail profiles and accounts April 24, 2018
  12. Better expenses with Monzo and PowerShell April 22, 2018
  13. Improving database Pester tests - per-database checks April 8, 2018
  14. Pattern - SQL Server as a shared cache for expensive stored procedures March 21, 2018
  15. Partitioned Clustered Columnstores - Mind your deltastores! March 10, 2018
  16. Keeping a work journal with VS Code February 28, 2018
  17. Service Broker, Temporal Tables, and the 'Data modification failed' error February 17, 2018
  18. Changing the owner of an SSRS subscription with PowerShell January 24, 2018
  19. SQLChecks v1 Released January 7, 2018
2017
  1. Visualising stored procedure call trees with SQLSpelunker December 23, 2017
  2. Auto deflating Event Hubs with a function app December 10, 2017
  3. Using the SQLChecks library for SQL Server configuration management December 3, 2017
  4. Simplifying alert configuration in the OMS to Slack function app November 8, 2017
  5. Getting funnel metrics right with Power BI when applying filters October 31, 2017
  6. Troubleshooting an SSRS slowdown - portal delays, PREEMPTIVE_OS_LOOKUPACCOUNTSID, and bad plans October 21, 2017
  7. Caching replica state to eliminate HADR_CLUSAPI_CALL waits on dm_hadr_availability_replica_states October 4, 2017
  8. Creating recruitment funnel metrics in Power BI September 10, 2017
  9. View currently executing tasks in tsqlScheduler September 3, 2017
  10. Building an OMS metric alert to Slack bridge with Azure functions August 29, 2017
  11. Migrating function app scripts to a class library August 23, 2017
  12. Monitoring disk, CPU, and memory with OMS August 21, 2017
  13. Analysing blob storage metrics with Power BI August 12, 2017
  14. Building better OMS alerts with function apps August 6, 2017
  15. Using the SQL Infrastructure Tests repo in your environment July 9, 2017
  16. Checking SQL Agent job ownership with Pester April 22, 2017
2016
  1. What makes an excellent database engineer? October 9, 2016