Linux – Finding the largest files in a directory tree

It’s not too hard to combine the sort command with find’s formatting options to locate the largest files in a directory hierarchy. As is so often the case though, one size does not fit all. Continue reading

Scala Quick Start – Making Dropwizard configuration more Scala friendly

Travel very far with Dropwizard and Scala and you’ll eventually encounter a few obstacles. Here’s a solution to one of them, generating Scala collections when processing the configuration file Continue reading

Scala Quick Start – Developing a microservice with Dropwizard

You can make your Dropwizard microservices even more micro if you switch to Scala Continue reading

Puppet 4 – Using an environment’s hieradata with Vagrant

Sprinkle a little hiera data into a Puppet environment and you can easily maintain a single project targeting deployments across a range of VMs. If a Vagrant provisioned VM is one of your targets though, there will be a little extra work to do. Continue reading

Java for the Architecturally Challenged – Creating a valid SOAP request as a String

How to create a valid SOAP request when you’re not actually submitting it to a web-service. Continue reading

Linux – Working with date ranges in shell scripts

A recent request to write some shell scripts to manage a welter of dated, historical files on a Linux server gave me a chance for a little refresher on the power of the GNU style date command. Continue reading

XML Schema – Reusable groups of elements

Want to avoid sprawling, arbitrary inheritance hierarchies in your XML schema but keep the resulting XML free of nested, complex elements? Groups might be just what you’re looking for. Continue reading

Fuse for the Idle Fellow – Re-assigning Fabric container ports

Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence.
The third time it’s a dependable product feature Continue reading

Fuse for the Idle Fellow – Error opening zip file when starting a container

When is an unresolvable artifact not an unresolvable artifact? Fuse’s “Error while downloading artifacts” Red Triangle of Death can have some weird and wonderful underlying causes. Continue reading

Fuse for the Idle Fellow – Short read of block errors when starting a container

The red triangle of death is banished once more,
I may have won this battle,
But I doubt I’ve won the war. Continue reading