We all hear lots of talk about “The Compound Effect" and “Try to get a little better everyday".

But honestly, it’s tough sometimes, there’s so much advice out there and from some very shady sources. So it can be tough to decide which ones to apply to your life.

I’m not here to tell you what to apply, this is just what I’ve experienced trying different things, maybe you can learn from my mistakes.

What’s so hard?

Many times, I’d be trying to get some things done at work or on a project, I’m giving it my all, but it just doesn’t feel like I’m making enough progress, it feels like a waste of time and like I’d be better off doing something else. The longer it goes on, especially when issues arise with whatever I’d been working on, it adds a mental and emotional weight to me. …

So here we go again!

But wait, something’s different this time…this bot is actively being used in a production environment :).

You know what that means? It actually works without any mods!

So before we get started, let me explain what the reasons behind this bot are and the objective.

So first Objectives:

1. Login to Instagram using Headless Chrome
2. Fetch Account and Posts Data from Instagram
3. Follow Private Accounts to get Access to their Posts

Now…Why?

Instagram no longer allows anonymous views to account pages, I suspect this is due to the increased traffic since the pandemic.

So regular HTTP requests no longer do the job when trying to get data from and Instagram Account. …

I recently order my first pair of glasses online and oh boy was it a hassle.

So I figured I’d take the opportunity to help others by making a checklist of items and give a bit of advice for purchasing glasses online.

I haven’t received my pair yet, so this won’t be a complete and comprehensive review, but it’ll cover all the basics and I’ll update when I receive them.

So these are the things you’ll need to know when purchasing glasses:

Frame Width

This is how wide your glasses need to be, from ear to ear, this will probably be the most difficult measurement for you to find out, this delayed my purchase by at least a week. …

So, my first direct experience with Pinglinks was when my phone, a Samsung Galaxy S8 needed to be checked out.

I found them on Google looking for phone repair shops that would actually be open during the Covid Pandemic.

Thumbs up to them for not only being available, but discoverable online!

I was pleased with this, I called around a few places, but Pinglinks customer facing staff was the most pleasant to speak with, so I decided to take my business there.

The issue was that my phone had suddenly stopped reading the sim card overnight, which was very strange.

Whether it was plugged in or not, it would not pick up the sim card (you’ll see why I mention such a strange thing later). …

Hey all, I’m going to be honest, I thought I knew JavaScript (JS), but then my boss threw me headway into a particular project. Using jQuery as a base, I was supposed to build a thin framework for a content management system. This was some years ago, and trust me when I say, the javascript battle was hard fought. And I learnt a lot, so today I want to share it with you.

I ran into many issues when developing this application, one of the most annoying was with how different browsers handled the JS. Thankfully, today I know better. What to do and what not to do, so testing in various browsers becomes easier, because you’re not having to run into a bunch of errors and having to go fix and test all over again. …

Puppeteer is the official tool for testing with Headless Chrome.
It’s used for many applications including web-crawling, page-testing and pre-rendering. One of the benefits of using Puppeteer is that, using Headless Chrome, it allows you to render full web pages, Javascript and all. Meaning you can get information that’s loaded onto web pages after the initial DOM load.

This can be useful in a number of ways, just a few that come to mind.

• Testing for Javascript Errors
• Crawling Sites which load information with Javascript
• Testing for Page responsiveness
• Checking full page load times for those pages with API calls.

You can extract much more information than just these from the browser but these are some common use cases. …

I did it! I am a graduate of the University of the West Indies! Woohoo! This is awesome! lol.

Yesterday was filled with great memories I won’t soon forget. I graduated from my university alongside people I’ve grown up with since the 7th grade and onward, good friends, acquaintances and new friends. It was really great.

I honestly went in with the attitude that — well this is going to be one of those long ceremonies that we just have to sit through and listen to these people talk about things that we don’t really care about.

I’m glad I was wrong. …

A Personal Project I’m Very Proud Of.

Honestly, I wasn’t sure what to write about today, I had mentioned that I wanted to post high quality content and that I’d talk about FleekSite, a project of mines. So I figured this would be appropriate.

I work at a Digital Marketing Agency, we work with Travel Organisations, a part of this marketing involves building websites for them if needed.

So this really sparked my interest in building websites and api’s as I was mostly working on micro-services for marketing.

I decided I’d build a platform for hosting websites, not only would it allow me to host websites for myself but also make a business out of it and start earning some money outside of my regular job. …