debugging

Reaction Commerce Debugging Primer

11 minute read Updated

How to debug a Node.js App Running inside a Docker container.

Reaction Commerce is a full-stack, self-hosted commerce platform you can run for as little as $10 on your own VPS. Think of Reaction Commerce as what WooCommerce might’ve become had it not been dependent on PHP/WordPress and instead was rewritten using modern coding languages and development techniques.

Using self-hosted commerce is like having your own personal Shopify, WIX or BigCommerce right at your fingertips. Only there’s no monthly costs to worry about just to use it. And there’s no vendor lock-in which would otherwise make it too difficult or risky to switch between platforms when the need arises.

After you’ve learned the basics of Getting Started you’re ready to dive deeper into the code and learn how things work. One of the best ways to learn any new system is to look for bugs and figure how to debug them. And in this tutorial I will show you some strategies for debugging source code in Reaction Commerce.

How to Backup & Restore macOS Mojave

17 minute read Enclosure Updated

If there's one thing computers do well, it's malfunction. Plan ahead so you don't lose data should your Mac start behaving more like a computer.

Last month, while download Mojave patches for at least two zero-day exploits a malfunction occurred and I couldn’t upgrade, leaving my machine vulnerable:

During a 10 minute chat with Apple Care it was suggested I back-up and restore Mojave. The resolution wasn’t exactly what I’d hoped for. But not a big deal as I hadn’t created a backup in 3 years and it was about that time.

Unbrick a Micro SD Card using Tails and macOS Mojave

7 minute read Published

Learn to dual-boot a Mac using a second operating system running Linux and use it to troubleshoot hardware problems by unbricking a Micro SD card.

Recently, while creating a physical back-up of my Mac, I ended up corrupting the Micro SD card I was using to perform the back-up operation. This translated into a one line cautionary alert inside the related blog post:

Caution: DO NOT attempt to remove the SD card or adapter during this process.

Turns out removing an SD card during a 100+ GB 77,000 file transfer from a Mac to an SD card isn’t the best idea – despite what a five year-old might tell you.

After several hours of toiling with Disk Utility, diskutil and dd on macOS the furthest I got was to experience the same issues as another individual who posted on Apple Exchange 3 years ago - their question unresolved, until now.

Brew Install Missing Formulas

4 minute read Published

How to recover deleted Homebrew formulas following a brew upgrade.

Okay so I was trying to upgrade to the latest version of Hugo today on macOS and didn’t have the time nor the patience to read man brew again.

tldr brew didn’t show how to install a specific version of a formula so I did what any reasonable person would do and read Jake Trent’s downgrading post so I knew how to go back after an upgrade.

Then I ran a brew upgrade hugo to get the latest Hugo version…

Node.js Debugging Primer

5 minute read Updated

Learn how to get started debugging Node.js applications using Jake.

So I’m putting together this killer new JS front-end development stack called Brunch with Panache, which uses Jake tasks to kick off a custom set of commands for building and managing the app, and I hit a bug while code was running in Node.js. So what now?

Web Development and Debugging Tools

3 minute read Updated

Useful development and debugging tools for web devs and front-end coders.

Following is a list of cross-browser/platform web development and debugging tools useful for client-side developers. Depending on the application, one or all of these tools can be valuable in completing work on a website front-end.

Amp Up CoffeeScript Coding with Sublime Text

3 minute read Published

How to add syntax highlighting for CoffeeScript to the Sublime Text editor.

Sublime Text with CoffeeScript is a JavaScript developer’s dream, but one that doesn’t evaporate in the fog of sleep shortly after waking. After learning about Sublime Text at Fluent Conf 2012 during a plenary talk from Paul Irish, I immediately began looking for ways to incorporate it into my workflow. And now, after having used it for over 8 months in my day-to-day work, I wanted to share a quick primer for those who want to amp up CoffeeScript coding with Sublime Text too.

Switching from Firebug to Chrome Dev Tools

1 minute read Published

Video from Paul Irish on developer accordances in Chrome Dev tools.

Here’s the presentation given at Google I/O this year by Paul Irish and Pavel Feldman that got me to switch to Chrome Developer Tools promptly after watching. If you’re a front-end web developer and haven’t seen this yet take a look. It just may change the way you work.

Optimize Mobile Performance with Jdrop

2 minute read Published

How to use Jdrop to debug mobile browsers without a dev tools IDE.

Last month Steve Souders announced Jdrop, a JSON repository in the cloud. Using Jdrop and Souders’  Mobile Perf bookmarklet, developers can send mobile browser data to the cloud for more careful analysis on other devices.

MSIE 4095 Selector Limit

2 minute read Published

How to identify and debug the nefarious CSS bug in Internet Explorer.

Web applications concatenate CSS files to improve performance, which can result in large numbers of style rules in a single file. Enter the 4095 selector limitation for IE browsers. An IE bug whereby the browser will only apply style for the first 4095 selectors declared per file. Impacted browsers include IE6, IE7, IE8 and IE9.

iTunes Fix for Manually Moving Files

4 minute read Published

How to fix the errors iTunes shows when its unable to locate files.

iTunes users opting not to allow the program to automatically keep their folders organized (the default setting) may be well aware that iTunes does not respond well after changing locations of or renaming files. In fact, any change in the file name or path renders the item inaccessible from within iTunes, almost as if your iTunes library disappeared. To make matters worse, there’s no easy way to have iTunes relocate files moved. iTunes prompts the user to relocate missing files but only one at a time with a dialog that says:

The [type] [name] could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?

Not so useful when a lot of files are moved at once. But if a directory containing hundreds of files needs to be moved, to a larger hard drive for example, locating files individually becomes too much work.