PHPStan custom rules

Recently I discovered that this code passed our PHPStan level 10 checks: use http\Exception\InvalidArgumentException; // … throw new InvalidArgumentException; I was surprised as http\Exception\InvalidArgumentException is not a class in our system. While cooling, I discovered that there's an http PHP extension and it appears that PHPStan has a stub for this which means that it accepts it as existing even if it doesn't. What we think happened is that I wrote throw new InvalidArgumentException; and… continue reading.

Posted on 3 March 2026 in PHP Leave a comment

Feelings

Today has been a struggle entirely due to my own internal negative thoughts and feelings about impacting events that are outside my control. Navigating this to come out stronger rather than letting it consume my self-belief and confidence isn’t easy, especially at the time. I’m not worse at my job and my abilities haven’t diminished, but sometimes it’s hard to remember this. I need to give myself space to remember who I am and internalise… continue reading.

Posted on 27 February 2026 in Me

Dad

I don't often post personal things here, however last weekend my dad died peacefully in his sleep and it feels important to acknowledge this. I have no words.

Posted on 22 January 2026 in Me One comment so far

2025 in pictures

As we reach the end of 2025, I take this opportunity to look back over the photos that I have taken and thing about the year. This year I published 1,064 photos to Flickr with, of course, at least one photo every day as part of my Project 365. The lovely thing is that my photos remind me what happened during my year and I remember many good times through them as I've seen friends… continue reading.

Posted on 31 December 2025 in Me, Year in Pictures Leave a comment

IPTC export changed in Photos for macOS 26 Tahoe

I've recently upgraded my MacBook Air to macOS 26 Tahoe and one thing I noticed was that Rodeo's rules were no longer working. With the help of exiftool, I worked out that when exporting to JPEG from Photos for macOS 26 Tahoe, the Object Name, Caption-Abstract and Keywords IPRC properties were no longer being populated. This is a regression from macOS 15 Sequoia. This is the data from exiftool. Output from macOS 15 Sequoia: $… continue reading.

Posted on 11 November 2025 in Mac, Photography, Rodeo Flickr Uploader

Appending text to Obsidan via Shortcuts

Sometimes it's helpful to add some text to my current Obsidian daily note without having to switch to Obsidian, find the daily note and then type my text. To do this, we can use the magic of Obsidian's obsidian:// URI schema and automate the text capture in Apple Shortcuts, with an assigned keyboard shortcut to activate it. This is the Shortcut: There's a number of steps in the Shortcut. Firstly we Ask For some text… continue reading.

Posted on 14 October 2025 in Mac, Shortcuts

mac-volume: A CLI to control device volume

I've set my Mac up such that video calls such as Zoom use the microphone and earphones attached to my Behringer UMC204HD, which all other audio plays through the my normal speakers which are the default. One issue I have with this is that it's quite hard to change the volume when a call as the volume buttons on the Mac are connected to the default output. This finally annoyed me enough that I looked… continue reading.

Posted on 7 October 2025 in Mac, Swift

Opening Slack Jira Cloud links in the right browser

I use OpenIn to open links in a given browser when I click on them in other applications. This is really helpful to keep various work related stuff in different browsers or profiles and I find it very helpful. One thing that's bothered me is that links from the Jira Cloud Slack App ignore my OpenIn rules and always open in Safari and I finally sat down to work out why. The investigation I create… continue reading.

Posted on 30 September 2025 in Computing

Fixing PostgreSQL collation version mismatch

After pulling a new version of the Docker PostgreSQL container, I started getting this warning: WARNING: database "dev" has a collation version mismatch DETAIL: The database was created using collation version 2.36, but the operating system provides version 2.41. HINT: Rebuild all objects in this database that use the default collation and run ALTER DATABASE dev REFRESH COLLATION VERSION, or build PostgreSQL with the right library version. This seems to have occurred because the underlying… continue reading.

Posted on 23 September 2025 in PostgreSQL

Jumping to the end of bash's history

I use bash's history all the time, via ctrl+r and also with the up and down keys; it's wonderful. Sometimes, I want to get back to the end of my history and I recently discovered that there's a shortcut for this: meta+>. It doesn't matter where you are in your history, pressing meta+> jumps you to the end and you have a blank prompt again. I use iTerm2 on my Mac and have my right… continue reading.

Posted on 16 September 2025 in Command Line, Shell Scripting