DevContainer CLI
Use DevContainer CLI to simplify your life when working with devcontainers
Posts
2023
Disabling sleep mode on Fire TV
Using ADB to disable sleep mode on a Fire TV
My Personal Daily Briefing using GPT-3 and Home Assistant
Building a personal daily briefing using GPT-3, Home Assistant and Amazon Echos to make sure I start the day with all the information I need.
Stay Ahead of Hay Fever with Home Assistant and Public Pollen Data
Building a system to alert me every morning if pollen levels are high using Home Assistant
Finding Dev Containers With Docker CLI
Finding dev containers using Docker CLI
Controlling Streaming Services with Alexa - Part 2
Building an Alexa Video Skill that can control streaming services on ANY Android based TV.
Limiting paths that trigger Github Actions
Been spending the day experimenting with Github Actions today on a repository that contains multiple backend projects, as well as a front end project. Unfort...
2023 Projects
2023 means it’s time for something new, 12 months, 12 side projects.
2022
Merging Swagger Definitions
Unfortunately Azure API Management doesn’t support swagger files which use a $ref pointer to reference external files source. Which means to import them I’ll...
Controlling Home Assistant with GPT-3
Using GPT3 to with minimal prompt engineering to control Home Assistant
Weather Warning Alerts with Home Assistant
Displaying local weather warning alerts for the UK within Home Assistant
.NET MAUI - Auto Scaling App Icons & App Image Resources
Learn how .NET MAUI generates the right size images and app icons for all platforms, without you having to do anything.
2021
Controlling Streaming Services with Alexa - Part 1
One of the biggest problems that I’ve found with the sheer amount of streaming services is which one has what? Sometimes I’ll miss great content on Amazon Pr...
Xamarin Let’s Build - Biometric Support
Biometrics is a commonly seen security feature on your phone. Whether it’s fingerprint or facial recognition, you’ll see it when you log in to your bank or u...
Xamarin Let’s Build - App Themes
The theme of your app is what makes it stand out, fit in with your brand identity and create a lasting impression. With Xamarin.Forms it’s simple to implemen...
2020
Xamarin Tips - Screenshot your Android Phone from ADB
Having the ability to take a screenshot directly from your command prompt will save you a lot of time over the duration of a project. When I’m building an ap...
Automatic Dark Theme with Xamarin.Forms
Automatic theme switching is coming to Xamarin.Forms. In Xamarin.Forms 4.6 they added a new Experimental Flag called AppTheme_Experimental.
Detecting Dark Mode in Xamarin.Forms
You’ve gone to all the effort of implementing a dark (or light) theme for your latest mobile application, but your user opens the app, with their phone in da...
Supporting Dark Mode with Xamarin.Forms
Dark mode is a really popular colour scheme nowadays, phones have it built into their OS’s, mainstream apps support it, (Whatsapp, Twitter). But by default y...
Xamarin.Forms Navigation Events
Ever wanted to hook into a global navigation event for Xamarin.Forms? We’ve all seen the OnAppearing and OnDisappearing events in Xamarin, but did you know t...
Using Lottie for incredible animations in Xamarin.Forms
Lottie is an extensive animation library made by AirBnB, giving you easy access to add animations to any native platform, applications or web. It simplifies ...
OpenFaaS and Docker BuildX
I’ve been playing a lot with OpenFaaS lately, but one of the things that’s been annoying me about it is how slow it is to build the images on my Raspberry Pi
2019
Handling Network Connectivity in Xamarin Forms
It’s important to plan for mobile applications to be used when there is either poor mobile data / WiFi or none at all. Mobile apps will be used in a wide var...
Dockerising development tools
As a developer I’ve built up a set of tools that we depend on to get shit done, and use them across multiple machines. I use a variety of tools both personal...
MP website analysis
Given that websites are a useful way for MPs to brand themselves, as well as giving their constiuents an easy way to either stay up to date or get in touch w...