Small form factor mechanical keyboards are popular as they are durable, portable, comfortable and exclusive. The 4 small layouts: 80% (TKL), 75%, 65% and 60% have pros and cons that I will discuss. I will also recommend affordable models, one for every layout, so you can try them out without spending a fortune. NB: This article is based on my own experience and not sponsored in any way. Keyboard size matters The common keyboard sizes are: 100%, 80%, 75%, 65% and 60%. The percentage is not related to the sizes of the key: the actual (letter) keys on these keyboards all have the same size. The percentage relates to the number of keys and their different layouts that take up less space. Below you see these different layouts (as geeky ASCII arts): ...

There are many myths in the software business that have led to wrong best practices. In this post I will address 7 of these best practices and explain on which wrong assumptions they are based. I’m worried about the state of the industry, because I feel these are serious engineering mistakes and nobody is speaking up about them. Here we go: 1. Client side rendering Based on the wrong assumption that client side rendering is faster than server side rendering we frivolous apply React and Vue. Not even the load on the servers is diminishing as escaping data for HTML or JSON is equally expensive. Rendering HTML is faster than executing JavaScript to draw the DOM. But don’t you need to send much more data when you are sending HTML? Well not really, because you can send all dependencies in separate files. It was for HTTP 1.0 that web pages were in-lining CSS and script to avoid TCP connections. In HTTP 2.0 all requested files are multiplexed over the same connection. Today we can have multiple separate files, which increases the ability to cache these files. More cached files reduces the data transfer which makes your site faster. This is also why resource bundles should be avoided. ...

My previous post of a Linux dream machine under 900 euro received quite some attention. Yesterday I have built an even more powerful machine and again under 900 euro. This built hits a sweet-spot between price and performance and that’s why I’ve dubbed it “v2”. NB: This article is based on my own experience and not sponsored in any way. Note: I’m a programmer, not a gamer. Read the original Linux dream machine under 900 euro for a little more background information on my use case. ...

Okay, so I finally updated my two automatic CRUD-UI projects to v2 of PHP-CRUD-API. One is written in Vue 2.6 with Bootstrap 4 and the other in PHP 7 with Bootstrap 3. The result may not be directly usable as a custom web application, but it may provide you with a quick start or as an admin interface. Use case When you are building a mobile or web app you often need to store some data centrally on a server. This is typically done using an API and a database. After creating the tables in your favorite database technology (MySQL, PostgreSQL or SQL Server) you can upload and configure “api.php” from the PHP-CRUD-API project. This gives you an API that allows you to do CRUD (Create Read Update and Delete) operations on your data. In order to manage the data you need an admin user interface interface. Uploading and configuring the “ui.php” file from the PHP-CRUD-UI project will give you this instant admin interface. ...

I’m running Xubuntu (Ubuntu with XFCE) on my desktop(s). My Intel NUC i7 has almost no visible screen tearing when scrolling or when playing YouTube videos. My new Athlon 200GE build (more information) does suffer from visible screen tearing when scrolling web pages or displaying fast moving video. I have found several ways to remove or reduce this ugly video artifact. What is screen tearing? I have found the following clear definition: ...

Running Windows 10 is not that bad these days (I am a Linux user). It is a fast and stable operating system. Unfortunately it comes bundled with a lot of software that you do NOT want. To remove this unwanted software it is recommended to do a “clean install” of Windows 10. While doing this you may run into the problem that you can’t copy the “install.wim” file, because it is larger than 4Gb. This post has a solution to that problem. ...

Ten years ago, Tom Preston‐Werner released his iconic ‘Fork me on GitHub’ banners (original post). 6 years ago Aral Balkan made high-res versions for retina displays. In this post you find the SVG versions that were created for InvoiceLion.com (a project I’m working on). Usage (see upper-right corner) Here are the ‘Fork me on GitHub’ ribbons in SVG. You may save the SVG file using right-click and “Save Image As” and use the HTML next to it. Alternatively you can download github-ribbons.zip containing the HTML page and all the SVG files. ...

Instead of choosing Twig, Mustache or Smarty as PHP templating language I decided it would be much more fun to write my own. In 165 lines I wrote a sandboxed templating system that supports ‘if’ and ‘for’ and can be extended with functions. Considerations The code does not use regular expressions, but it tokenizes and uses a syntax tree (without any dependencies). This means that it supports nested ‘for’ and ‘if’ constructs. The syntax looks a bit like Mustache and Twig, but is stricter to optimize for rendering speed. It outputs rendering errors in the rendered output, so that you can easily debug it as a user. ...

I write this on my current PC: a passive cooled (Akasa Plato-X case) Intel NUC i7 16gb RAM 512 GB NVMe in my living room. It hangs behind a 27’ Philips WQHD screen (VESA mounted) and it has a big Libratone speaker next to it. I use a laser mouse and a mechanical keyboard to operate it. It runs the Xubuntu operating system and it is not only completely silent… it is also lightning fast! ...

Every year the Chaos Computer Club (CCC) has a hacker conference called the Chaos Communication Congress. It has grown out to be one the world’s largest hacker conventions. This year was the 35th time the convention was held. There were an an estimated 16,000 visitors at the convention in Leipzig. If you were not there you can still watch the videos. The videos are posted on the ccc.de website. Videos 2018-12-27 ...