For a Happy Workplace — This article attempts to offer some of the rules for a productive, cohesive and enjoyable working environment for tech teams. It is a semi-working article that I will add to over time. Meetings Always include an Agenda and Objective to meeting invites. …

A list of values the engineering team live and work by — Simple Code is Elegant Tidy, readable, simple code is paramount. It makes reviewing PR easier, it makes coming back to the code after 18 months easier, it makes your peers like you more. Anti-Gossip Constructive conversations over background criticism. Call it out when you see it (even if in other parts of the company). …

Deadline: 31st October 2017 at 23:59 GMT tl;dr To keep your integration with Ravelin secure, we are removing support for the following old technologies: SHA-1, TLS 1.0, and TLS 1.1. (these protocols currently power the ‘Secure’ in ‘HTTPS’.) All Ravelin APIs and websites, will only be served over the TLS 1.2…

An Overview of Ravelin’s Technology — I write this post as an overview of each aspect Ravelin’s technology stack; almost not worthy of the hours and days that each component has taken to implement. This overview will not attempt to deep dive into any given topic but, where possible, link out to sources and reference material…

Because security matters The Idea External Pen Testers are useful, but only have a limited amount of time to get to know our systems and are not intimately familiar with the Ravelin codebase. On the other hand, engineers and data scientists within Ravelin know the codebase inside out (they wrote it…

The demise of the permanent address tl;dr A “permanent address” has become less relevant as society is driven forward by technology. I no longer need (or want) physical post, at best it is an inconvenience and at worst it causes me to miss important information. I’m removing my postbox. Proof of Address (PoA)? As I…

I’m always on the look out for new great “how to” videos or books for setting up and marketing web apps. I’ve always liked the presentations and talks from Aaron Patzer from Mint.com, which he started and sold for $170 Million within 3 years. …

Three of My Favourite Business Videos — I’m not sure how many videos related to business I’ve watched (probably hundreds) but only three come to mind when asked to recommend some. How to Start a Movement | Derek Sivers Start With Why| Simon Sinek How To Run A Company With (Almost) No Rules | Ricardo Semler

How Ravelin moved from a multi-repository to a mono-repository — Introduction Ravelin moved from a multi-repository set-up to a mono-repository. We run a microservices architecture, originally with a separate Git repository for each service. The implicit dependencies between different versions of different services were not expressed anywhere, which led to various problems in building, continuous integration, and, notably, repeatable builds.