ohryan.ca

A Web Developer in Winnipeg

  • privacy on ohryan.ca

    in

    May 2023 Update: I’ve decided to re-enable cloudflare.
    Three reasons:

    1. To my knowledge, they are still privacy respecting and have solid security record.
    2. While I’ve never written this blog for an audience it is nice to have a general sense of how many people are reading. I like the passive stats you get by enabling CF.
    3. The bot and DDOS protections are sure to save me at some point.

      March 2023 Update: I’ve opt’d to disable the “embed privacy” plugin. I am planning on featuring more Twitter content and it just won’t be quite the same without the embeds.

      In terms of your privacy, be aware the provider of an embed (twitter, youtube, etc) may be tracking you on any pages featuring an embed. In some cases this could be the homepage.

      Inspired by Cory Doctorow I’ve decided to make a concerted effort to make this WordPress blog surveillance and tracker free. Internet privacy is something I’ve always cared about, I’m not really sure why it never occurred to me to bring my blog in line.

      Here are the steps that I took:

      1. Disabled Cloudflare:
        Cloudflare has a good reputation and I trust that they’re taking the right steps to protect users’ privacy. But after refreshing the backend of the site with the help of SpinupWP I no longer feel like I need Cloudflare’s caching services.
        [my DNS is still hosted with CF, however I am bypassing them for this CNAME]
      2. Disabled Jetpack:
        Jetpack has become a bloated beast of a plugin suite. I noodled around with the settings for about 3 minutes to try to figure out how to disable the tracking – I couldn’t so I just decided to nuke the whole thing.
      3. Disabled Google Fonts
        It almost certainly tracks your IP and possibly other information. So I’ve disabled it. System fonts only.
      4. Installed Embed Privacy Plugin:
        I’ve installed Embed Privacy to block all spotify, youtube, twitter, etc external embeds on page load. Users have to explicitly click the content to see it.
      5. Disabled Comments:
        Not really a privacy reason to disable these per se, I just haven’t really found much comment engagement since approximately as long as Twitter has existed.

      The main side effect of these changes seems to be a blazing fast site! Sure I’ll miss out on some stats but I’ve long stopped caring about those.

    • How To: Work From Home, Be Productive and Stay Sane

      How To: Work From Home, Be Productive and Stay Sane

      in , ,

      I just spent a few minutes looking through my draft posts for inspiration to restart blogging.

      I came across the oldest draft in my queue, dated November 11, 2009.

      I missed 11/11 1:11 by 6 minutes!

      The post read as follows:

      I’ve worked from home for 6 of the past 8 years in a variety of workspaces. Initially I worked in my parents basement, I briefly worked in my mother-in-law’s dinning room and for the past 2 years I’ve worked in the common space of a 2 bedroom apartment, with a toddler. Over this period I’ve maintained a 35 – 50 hour work week and managed to stay sane (and reasonably productive). Now that I’ve had my own dedicated works space for a couple of weeks I’ve had some time to reflect on a few of the ways I’ve been able to make it work.

      1. Good Employer
      2. Keep A ToDo List
      3. Don’t Answer The Phone
      4. Set “Business Hours”
      5. Don’t Follow Them
      6. Be Distracted

      Reflecting on this now that we’ve all been covidworkingfromhome for the past 18 months (or is it 32?) and have just started a permanent remote positions, I’d say that list of advice still rings true.

      1. Good Employer

      Simply put: you need an employer who trusts you to work from home. One who understand that things might come up throughout the day and doesn’t have a problem with that.

      If you’re having trouble finding an employer like this in 2021, imagine how rare it was 12 years ago.

      During COVID, even bad employers didn’t have a choice but to begrudgingly let their employees work from home. Good employers will differentiate themselves from by ones by allowing their employees to continue working from home into 2022 and beyond.

      2. Keep a To Do List

      What I really meant by this was “be organized and focused.”

      I still prefer physical to do lists. I like crossing things off with a pen and crumpling up the list at the end of the day.

      Organizational tools and apps have really matured and keeping a physical to do list is not really necessary.

      Don’t forget to include personal/home things on your to do list. Writing everything down is a great way to keep yourself from getting distracted.

      3. Don’t Answer the Phone

      “The phone” is much less of a thing in 2021.

      Better advice would be “don’t read text messages, or non-work DMs”.

      4. Set “Business Hours”

      Over my years working from home this has come to be the main key to success.

      Setting business hours adds the structure that I need to stay focused. It also sets expectations with my family. They’ll know not to interrupt or distract me between 8 – 5 unless it’s urgent.

      Having an office door that you can closes helps, but it’s really not as crucial in my experience.

      5. Don’t Follow Them & 6. Be Distracted

      These two rules are really the same thing “allow yourself to be distracted.”

      I’ve found that giving myself permission to break the rules has been the key to staying “sane.”

      Take a long lunch, grab a coffee, go to the store.

      Just don’t stray too far, too often.

      In 2021, I would only add two additional pieces of advice to this list.

      7. Wear Pants

      Get dressed for work.

      I’ve found that it really puts me in the mindset to get to work.

      This has been a rule I’ve always followed, I don’t know why I didn’t add it to my original list.

      8. Have an Amazing Partner (or I guess, live alone?)

      I couldn’t have made it this far without an understanding wife.

    • LIBTYFI – Leave it better than you found it

      LIBTYFI – Leave it better than you found it

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      Some of my fondest memories from childhood are the times my dad let me tag along on his weekly trips across the expanses of Northern Ontario in his 18-wheeler. As you might imagine, a daily ritual on these trips was one of washing up in some dingy restroom1 before eating a greasy breakfast (“two eggs sunnyside up, bacon soft, rye toast please”).

      All these years later, the biggest lesson that stuck with me was “leave it better than you found it.” In other words, not only “clean up after yourself,” but also “clean up the mess you found.2” After all, the next guy’s going to appreciate a clean space to start his day.

      Old code is like a dirty truck stop restroom.

      As part of working on code guidelines for my day job, I read a bunch of the code standards and adjacent posts. None of the documentation, blog posts and idioms (DRY, KISS, etc) really touch on legacy code. I suppose it makes sense since they are generally aspirational documents. At the same time, I think these documents are incomplete without touching on it.

      As programming languages and platforms mature and fads of the moment fad away, it’s becoming more and more common for developers to run into old code. Maybe even code that’s predates code standards in a given language. This is certainly the case in my day-to-day.

      While it’s relatively straightforward to install IDE tools to format you code properly and keeping it simple can be easy when you don’t have to consider a decade of backwards compatibility. It’s less obvious when you’re not working with a clean slate. What do you do when you encounter ugly code? What about when repeating yourself it the shortest path to a complex fix? Should you re-write an entire library because doesn’t hold up to code standards?

      I propose adding LIBTYFI3 to the lexicon of idioms.

      If the code is ugly and misformated. Fix it4.

      If you’re repeating yourself or having trouble keeping it simple. Step back and assess what you should actually be refactoring. You’ll probably learn something about the application in the process.

      If variable and functions are named poorly. Fix them.

      If comments are missing. Add them!

      If tests are missing. Add them.

      In other word, if code is not holding up to current standards, rewrite as much as possible as long as it’s tangentially relevant to your task.

      Obviously this is going to take more time than a quick fix. Perhaps, if your task is truly a critical fix you should skip some of these steps. But stakeholder should understand that legacy projects are complex and taking time to do it right will lead to a better product in the long run.

      1 – Lest you question my Dad’s parenting choices, I can assure you small town Northern Ontario truck stop restrooms in the 80s/90s were not nearly as sketchy as the image you probably have in your head from movies and TV.

      2 – This rule did not apply to toilets.

      3 – Libby-fi? Sounds like some poorly thought out Liberal social network.

      4 – But please for the love of god, isolate style from functional fixes in their own PRs.