Self nerd-sniping with macaroni cheese
The other day I baked macaroni cheese in an oval-shaped oven dish and ended up going down quite the rabbit hole when wanting to divide it into eight equal po...
Python
Fetching YouTube channel RSS feeds with Python
A bit of irony prompted me to look into RSS feeds from YouTube channels. Consequently, I wrote a quick Python script to fetch and display the feed URL for a ...
Filling in PDF forms with Python
Filling in PDF forms can be a pain. It’s even more of a pain if you have to do this repeatedly and with almost always the same input data. Surely you can a...
A dinosaur learns poetry
Not a real dinosaur and not real poetry. Just me updating my Python project setup knowledge.
Test that forking code!
Not only should the final commit in a pull request patch series pass all its tests but also each commit back to where the pull request branched from main. A...
Throwing a javelin and finding where it lands
As part of tutoring physics and maths to high school students, I sometimes write up deep-dive explanations of questions arising during lessons. Below I disc...
Basic Python project setup
Setting up an existing Python project from a fresh clone shouldn’t be a chore. Automate the process with a setup script.
Evaporating a pot of water
As part of tutoring physics and maths to high school students, I sometimes write up deep-dive explanations of questions arising during lessons. The question...
Better date mocking in Python tests with FreezeGun
A couple of years ago I stumbled across the FreezeGun library. It’s been a great help in making the date/time-related intent in my Python tests much clearer....
Reverting migrations in Django
When developing Django applications it’s sometimes necessary to revert (i.e. undo) a migration, especially if something didn’t quite work as planned. If som...
The curious case of the disappearing PDF text
A case of disappearing text in an auto-generated PDF document led me to dig deeper and learn more about ReportLab: a PDF generation library. Here’s the stor...
Working around the focus-click problem in Selenium
Sometimes Selenium can lose browser focus when running tests, which can cause timeout errors when testing click events in a web application. Here I discuss ...
Automating Use of the PostGIS Backend for Django Tests
Ever had the problem that your automated Django tests wouldn’t work because you didn’t have permissions to create the given extension and you thought: “WTF? ...
Test suite profiling
Recently at $work I found that our test suite was taking longer and longer to run and had begun to slow down development. A long-running test suite smells of...