cover image

Monitoring a Nextcloud snap upgrade

The Nextcloud snap updates automatically. By default it might happen any time, although you can configure that. The snap provides a wonderful, user-friendly indicator that an upgrade is happening: it will become unresponsive and unvisitable until the upgrade has finished. Okay, I’m kidding, this is terrible and something we know we need to work on. My point is, there are times when your snap isn’t responding properly, and you want to know WHY....

March 6, 2022 · 3 min · Kyle
cover image

Nextcloud snap finds a new home

If you’re an avid reader of the blog (and come on, who isn’t?), you’ll know that I’ve been maintaining a snap for Nextcloud since Nextcloud came into existence. Originally, though, that snap wasn’t called “nextcloud”, it was called “nextcloud-kyrofa”. My original goal was that I would bootstrap the snap for them, and then they’d take it over when they were ready. I hosted the code as a personal project on GitHub....

September 3, 2021 · 4 min · Kyle
cover image

Demystifying Rails autoloading

When I first started learning Rails back in the day, it was my first introduction to Ruby: I was learning them both at the same time. As a result, the line between them was rather blurry; I didn’t know what was coming from Ruby, and what was coming from Rails. The Rails approach of monkey-patching Ruby didn’t help. If I’m being honest, I didn’t realize that Object#blank? wasn’t a Ruby method until only a few years ago....

August 14, 2021 · 6 min · Kyle
cover image

My phone isn't as smart as yours

I remember the first mobile phone I ever saw. A “car phone.” It looked a bit like an old corded telephone hooked up to a car battery in a bag that weighed 30 pounds. I thought it was awesome; my father was on the bleeding edge of a technological revolution, and he was pretty much a super hero. Was it pretty? No. Actually mobile? It couldn’t leave the car, but the car could move, so sure....

April 17, 2021 · 13 min · Kyle
cover image

The end of my journey at Canonical, and new adventures ahead

I am a staff engineer at Canonical, where I have worked for six years. My time here has been filled with brilliant people and amazing technology, and I’ve had the pleasure and privilege of playing pivotal roles getting a number of new projects off the ground. As I’ve said in the past, I joined Canonical to help my technical growth, and they delivered in spades. I have really loved my time here, which made the decision to leave all the more difficult....

March 10, 2021 · 3 min · Kyle