A Quick Guide to Building a Custom Docker Image for CI

Most of today’s popular CI services support running jobs in arbitrary Docker containers. In this post, I’ll describe why Docker is such a great fit for CI and how it can be made even better with custom images.

Six More JetBrains Shortcuts & How to Combine Them for a Better Workflow

Two years ago, a coworker wrote a Spin post on Seven JetBrains shortcuts. Once you get used to using them and combining them, they significantly improve workflow. So here are a few more I find useful, plus how you can use them together. More JetBrains Shortcuts Duplicate with ⌘D ⌘D is useful when you have […]

Developer Task Automation – It’s Easier Than You Think

You have a lot of things to think about when building the next great app. Remembering the command line arguments for your build system shouldn’t be one of them. Large IDEs make this easy. You can stuff all of your build automation behind one big ▶️ play button. That’s great for traditional iOS or Android […]

Writing Better Test CLI Commands with Laravel and Artisan

Laravel’s Artisan CLI comes with a plethora of useful commands and functionality out of the box. Unfortunately, there’s one thing it doesn’t come with: an easy way to run different types of tests. On a recent project, our team had a desire to write Artisan commands that could run our tests, so we had one […]

Three Tips for Running Windows from macOS with VMware Fusion

On my current project, it’s necessary to host a Windows virtual machine from my MacBook Pro using VMware Fusion. This can sometimes result in a frustrating and slow development process. Out of the box: I found myself unable to use my window manager to move and resize windows as I would’ve liked, I experienced window […]

Turning VS Code into a DIY Notes App

I’ve written several posts, about my search for a great note-taking app with a text editor that uses Markdown. I’ve bounced around between a handful of different apps, but they all have flaws that make me consider switching to something else. So I’ve come back to VS Code, and I’m trying to tailor it to […]

Holding a Key Down with W3C WebdriverIO

Since the summer of 2019, WebdriverIO has fully supported the W3C WebDriver protocol (announced in this post). As part of upgrading to the latest v5 version of WebdriverIO, I decided to also switch over to using the W3C protocol for our tests that use Chrome / ChromeDriver. After switching to the W3C protocol, we found […]

Visualizing Data with Vega-Lite

Have you ever wanted to quickly chart some data without coercing it into a spreadsheet? Perhaps you even want to do something mildly complex, like differentiate the data based on some facet that isn’t being charted, or have the ability to interact with multiple visualizations at once? Vega-Lite provides a lot more power than spreadsheets […]

Command Line Fuzzy Find with fzf

My first project at Atomic Object indoctrinated me into the magic of VS Code’s fuzzy find feature. It was mind-blowing to jump directly to a file by typing a rough approximation of its full name. Then, my next project found me working in Android Studio and Xcode, both of which implement similarly excellent fuzzy finders. […]

A Beginners Guide to htop for Process Management

Are you using memory-intensive processes? Do you need to closely monitor containers and virtual systems on your computer? htop is the tool you’ve been looking for. Its color-coded display makes it easy to understand the status of your system at a glance and gives you the power to manage processes with a single keystroke. What […]

Atomic Spin

Atomic Object’s blog on everything we find fascinating.

Developer Tools