Picks of the month - May 2016

Posted by Gjermund Bjaanes on May 31, 2016

Welcome to Picks of the month, where I share a few things I have found useful the last month.

It can be anything from blog posts and software tools to books and techniques.

#1 Angular Performance: Tuning the Engine by Todd Motto

I recently attended a neat webinar with Todd Motto about Angular 1.X performance tuning.

I knew a lot of the stuff covered, but I learned a few new things, and got reminded of a few others that I had forgotten about.

Even if you know a lot of Angular performance tricks, there is always more to learn! If you develop Angular 1.X applications, I suggest that you take a look at the recording.

 

#2 Jekyll

Jekyll is a static website generator. It allows you to create a nice and simple blog with Markdown files and simple configuration.

Jekyll Logo

I recently moved this very blog from Wordpress to Jekyll.

I have worked with it for the last couple of weeks, and it has been a blast. Always fun with new technology of course, but I was actually able to primarily focus on my content rather than the platform.

Being able to have a much lighter footprint, and simpler technology stack is very neat, but having all my content on Github, that is just gold!

I mean:

  • Everything is source controlled
  • I can publish with “git push”
  • I can accept pull requests (to fix spelling mistakes for instance, or even new posts if someone wanted to write one)
  • Less backup to worry about (I trust Github <3)

I wrote in more detail about the reasons for the switch here: The blog is now on Jekyll instead of Wordpress!

If you want to take a peak under the hood of this blog, be my guest: https://github.com/bjaanes/bjaanes.github.io

If you want to read more about Jekyll, take a look at the website: https://jekyllrb.com/

 

#3 Hackathon

This is perhaps a slightly abstract pick, but I recently attended Angular Attack 2016, an online Angular hackathon: https://www.angularattack.com/

Angular Attack Logo

It was a bunch of fun and I learned a lot about Angular 2, MQTT and Websockets. All in all it was a fun and educational.

If can attend either a physical or online hackathon that fit you, I really recommend that you do it. It allows you to really let yourself loose and just learn something new and cool within a short period of time.

If you want to read some more about what I created, you can read my blogs post about it: Angular Attack 2016 Submission

The app allows you view MQTT data in real time. I called it the MQTT Dashboard. The technology behind it is described in the blog post linked above.

If you just want to take the app for a spin, you can find it here: http://bjaanes.2016.angularattack.io/

The code is as always available on Github: https://github.com/rumblex/angularattack2016-bjaanes

And if you would like to view a quick demo of it, I’ve got you covered on that as well:

Follow me on Twitter: @gjermundbjaanes