Hi.

I’m Laurence Hughes, a Glaswegian web developer, music maker, player of records and pinger of pongs. Fuzzy Logic is my online home, where I try out web stuff and ramble about code, music and more.

13 February 2019

Certbot troubleshooting
When creating new servers for my projects I use Certbot as a means of installing free Let’s Encrypt secure certificates.

It’s great to be able to get these certificates for free and the whole process is generally very straightforward. However, since working with Let’s Encrypt certificates for the last few years I’ve noticed the same recurring questions occasionally rear their heads.

So, this is a note to “future me” (and anyone else it might help) with answers to those questions I’ve pondered in the past.
1. For servers where you previously used the old, pre-Certbot Let’s Encrypt system to install SSL certs, you can just install certbot on top and it will just work. It will supersede the old certificates without conflict.
2. When creating a new vhost on your Linode, DigitalOcean (or other cloud hosting platform) server, you need only add the <VirtualHost *:80> directive. No need to add a <VirtualHost *:443> section, nor worry about pointing to LE certificate files, nor bother writing rules to redirect http to https like I used to. When you install your secure certificate, certbot will automatically add the redirect into your original file and create an additional vhost file (with extension -le.ssl.conf) based on the contents of your existing file but handling and referencing all the LE SSL certificate files it installed elsewhere on the system.
3. There’s no longer any need to manually add a cron job for certiticate renewal. Auto-renewal of certificates is now handled by a cron job which comes bundled with the certbot package you initially install – in my case usually a certbot ppa package for Ubuntu 16.04 or 18.04. However you won’t find that cron job in the crontab for either your limited user, nor the root user. Instead, it is installed at a lower level (/etc/cron.d) and should just work unless you’ve done something fancy with systemd in your system which in my case is unlikely).
4. If you notice that the SSL certificate for your domain is within 30 days of expiry and hasn’t yet auto-renewed, then you know that something has gone wrong with the auto-renewal process. You can test for problems by running sudo certbot renew --dry-run. You may find that there is, for example, a syntax error in your apache2.conf or nginx config file which needs corrected – not that this ever happened to me, of course!
12 February 2019

Favicons and other icons on MDN

Here’s a useful reference from MDN to use when compiling your site’s favicon and other icons (apple touch etc) at the right sizes for your <head>.
10 February 2019

Elijah – Ice 2 Go (Iridite)

Kicking off the Sounds section with the first track I had released, Ice 2 Go from the 2002 various artists EP Better by Design. When I get the chance I’ll add more of my released tracks, some old sessions that never saw the light of day, and any new works-in-progress.

On reflection this one was pretty naive and raw but I can live with that! I was 27 and listening to a lot of John Tejada at the time, and you can definitely hear that influence alongside other typical Detroit Techno stylings.

I made it in Cubase with a combination of software and hardware. The main bassline sound came from NI Mercury, with an additional bassline from my Walforf Pulse. The drums were programmed in Attack and the main riff with its panning effects was also software-based. The pad and portamento/gliding lead part came from my Juno 106 and Nord Lead 2 respectively.

Fun fact: the name Ice 2 Go came from a night out in Amsterdam with label-boss Jason and the lovely Lydia during which we asked a bar for a bag of ice to take away to make caipirinhas. A mildly merry Jason first heard then signed the track that very night.

I remember that DJs like DJ 3000 and Nomadico/Dex from Underground Resistance played it. Closer to home I heard that Hudson Mohawke was a fan and played it at the Sub Club, while Jackmaster was good enough to showcase it in a “lesser-known gems” feature on Radio 1. And nice people who I respect like Mark still rate it, so that’s good enough for me.
08 February 2019

W3C HTML Element Sampler

In all my years of spinning up "HTML Typographic Elements” lists for designers to reference, I didn’t realise that the W3C provide the very thing I needed in their HTML Element Sampler page. This will be handy for ensuring that all elements are covered when creating type styles and pattern libraries.
05 February 2019

State-based UI with vanilla JavaScript

My latest lab experiment is a little Lunch Picker coded in vanilla JavaScript. The idea was to create a simple, lightweight app which accepts user input and implements a State Based UI pattern. It re-renders the UI every time the data changes state, similar to the way React.js and Vue.js would but without the weight of any frameworks.

I was inspired by a great tutorial from Chris Ferdinandi which I implemented with my own twist.

Give it a whirl, view source if you’re interested, and get some help making that all-important call on what to have for lunch today!
02 February 2019

BBC Four – Jazzology with Soweto Kinch

Loved this BBC documentary which traces jazz’s roots back to Congo Square in New Orleans, explores the origins of the word jazz, and explains the music’s cultural importance as a language – spoken first by slaves – for self-expression and representing community.

My favourite section was the interview with pianist Marcus Roberts in which he explained how jazz came from the blues and described blues music in terms of “dissonance that resolves” and “tension and release… just like life”.

27 January 2019

Codepen Prefill Embeds

Testing Codepen’s new feature for progressively enhancing code hosted on your own site from a basic pre element into an interactive, editable pen. To demo this I’m using a great code snippet from Chris Ferdinandi for CSS-only smooth-scrolling.

<p id="top">
	<a href="#bazinga">Go to the middle</a><br>
	<a href="#1@#%^-bottom">Go to the bottom</a>
</p>

<p>
	.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>
	.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>
	.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.
</p>

<p id="bazinga"><a href="#1@#%^-bottom">Go to the bottom</a></p>

<p>
	.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>
	.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>
	.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.
	.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>
	.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>
	.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.<br>.
</p>

<p id="1@#%^-bottom"><a href="#">Go back to the top</a></p>

html {
	scroll-behavior: smooth;
}

@media screen and (prefers-reduced-motion: reduce) {
	html {
		scroll-behavior: auto;
	}
}

26 January 2019

4 killer serves to destroy your opponents (with Craig Bryant)

Great serving from Craig Bryant. Includes a nice description of the infamous kicker and I also love his no-look Waldner-style long, fast, down-the-line serve too.
24 January 2019

Building a playlist filter with vanilla JS

Nice Vanilla JS approach to array manipulation with map() and filter() in this live coding walkthrough by Chris Ferdinandi.
23 January 2019

Free Image Resizer | Promo

A handy tool for resizing your image to the standard sizes for all manner of social media and other applications.

Page 1 of 5 Next

Hi.

Certbot troubleshooting

Favicons and other icons on MDN

Elijah – Ice 2 Go (Iridite)

W3C HTML Element Sampler

State-based UI with vanilla JavaScript

BBC Four – Jazzology with Soweto Kinch

Codepen Prefill Embeds

4 killer serves to destroy your opponents (with Craig Bryant)

Building a playlist filter with vanilla JS

Free Image Resizer | Promo