Rectangle Filling

Packing with Rectangles using the Open Processing website.

Source Code

Circle Packing

Been watching some more old Coding Train Videos so have written a basic circle packing script.

p5* Script output

Source Code

Online p5* Editor

Picked this indie retro style platform game for my Playstation 5 cheap recently.

It was released in 2013, so old now but still a good play.

Links

Game Wiki

More fun playing with BBC Twitter Bot.

https://tco/ks0jhudxdM

https://t.co/xBabCMPWCX

https://tco/jVpUMLBa8D

https://tco/Rt3DOf1FOh

Six Months

Doesn’t time fly, been at my new job with the DWP six months now.

Still enjoying it, learning new tools (Nomad, Pact, etc) and techinques as they say everyday is a school day.

I a major part of it is the team I joined, most welcoming and helpful bunch, looking forward to the next six months.

Learning Rust

New year, new programming language, decided to go and learn Rust programming.

Some interesting concepts so far.

Learn Rust Repo

Resources

• https://www.udemy.com/course/learning-rust/
• https://www.rust-lang.org/

Devops Docker images

I’ve built a few Docker images with some tools useful for devops lately.

SpaceVim

SpaceVim Docker image with NeoVim https://github.com/alastairhm/spacevim

CFSSL

CloudFlare’s SSL tools Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-cfssl

Terraform Security

TFSec and TFLint tools Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-terraform-check

Bitwarden CLI

Bitwarden CLI tool Docker image https://github.com/alastairhm/docker-bw

I wrote a simple Python script to monitor the clipboard and write any unique text content out to a YAML file for a history. It might turn into something better eventually.

Update

Updated to use a settings file for file location and size.

#!/usr/bin/env python3

import pyperclip
import time
import yaml
import toml
import os
from yaml.loader import SafeLoader

script_path = os.path.dirname(os.path.abspath(__file__))
settings = toml.load(os.path.join(script_path, "clippy.toml"))
history = settings["history"]
max_size = settings["size"]

cliptext = ""
clip_array = []
with open(history, "r") as f:
    clip_array = list(yaml.load_all(f, Loader=SafeLoader))
    clip_array = sum(clip_array, [])

while True:
    tmptext = pyperclip.paste()
    if tmptext != cliptext:
        cliptext = tmptext
        if cliptext not in clip_array:
            clip_array.insert(0,tmptext)
            if len(clip_array) > max_size:
                clip_array.pop()
            with open(history, "w") as f:
                f.write(yaml.dump(clip_array))
    time.sleep(1)

Script on GitHub https://github.com/alastairhm/automate_python/blob/main/clippy.py

Devops Tips

Here are a couple of DevOps tips I’ve picked up after a week at my new job which are worth sharing.

IAM Policy JSON to Terraform

This is a useful command to convert AWS IAM Policy JSON to corresponding Terraform code.

https://github.com/flosell/iam-policy-json-to-terraform

AWS Extend Switch Roles

This browser extension allows easy role switching with AWS.

https://github.com/tilfinltd/aws-extend-switch-roles

New Job

After nine years and nine months at William Hill I will be starting a new job next Monday.

Looking forward to the new challenge but also sad to say goodbye to my co-workers who have been on the journey with me since I started at William Hill back in November 2011.

I have certainly grown and learned a lot at my time at William Hill and am grateful for all the opportunities they provided with me to improve.