Batch converting Word documents to PDF files using headless LibreOffice. The process is quick, simple and works really well, apart from when the author uses some weird Word layout options.

dayjob

Intranet page load times down from ~0.75 seconds to ~0.005 seconds. The speed difference is noticeable and I'm pretty happy with that. I wonder if any users will notice the difference?

dayjob

Profiling, benchmarking and optimising our intranet. The page load times are pretty slow due to Active Directory integration and conditional content loading based on departments and security groups. I'm targeting the 2 most popular (according to stats) pages to begin with. I'm thinking there is potential for considerable time efficiency savings.

dayjob

Fixing bugs that only appear in the development environment because the error reporting is verbose. There must have been a change to the error reporting levels on the development server since this code was last worked on.

dayjob php

I can’t remember the last time I used a system with a spinning hard drive. I should really put a drill bit through these old drives. Job for the weekend I think.

A collection of old hard drives.

devnull

Searching old storage drives for some software that I think I wrote about 20 years ago. I'm sure the code is junk, but I'm interested to take a look at it as it might come in handy for a project I'm working on. Anyway, I really should organise my backups better.

devnull

The Steam Autumn sale is on and I’m definitely not going to buy any games that’ll sit in my Steam library and never get played.

games steam

This afternoon I've been playing with PHP and GD to dynamically create Open Graph images. I then moved a website from a shared host to a VPS -- the VPS is proper quick in comparison.

dayjob hosting opengraph php

This morning I am mostly writing SQL queries for reports. I've also converted values in a db table column from plain text to json strings to allow for multiple values. Feels a bit hacky, but works ok. Should probably create another table at some point.

dayjob json sql

That feeling when you've been concentrating intensely on solving a problem, you solve the problem and then look up from your monitors to wonder where you are even located in meatspace.

devnull

Starting my day by converting a small CodeIgniter 3 app to CodeIgniter 4. It's a microservice and it only has 2 routes and 2 controllers, so it should be a quick win.

codeigniter dayjob php

Replacing some manually installed PHP libraries with Composer dependencies. I'm sure they were only ever installed manually as a stopgap, but I can't help think it would have been cleaner and possibly easier to use Composer in the first place.

composer dayjob php

I recently read a toot from someone who was frustrated with Ubuntu because of snapd and was asking for recommendations for other Debian based distributions. Why was Debian itself not the obvious choice?

debian linux ubuntu

This is Bumble. Bumble has to be the most chilled cat I’ve ever known. He’s a real mummy’s boy, but he tolerates me as well, so that’s nice.

Bumble the cat.

caturday

Philip Newborough and a donkey enjoying a beer.

About

My name is and I’m a full stack web developer living and working in Lincoln, England. This website (philipnewborough.co.uk) serves as my personal homepage. When I’m not working with tech, I love to ride bicycles with my wife and friends.

An IndieWeb Webring 🕸💍