[Photo by Lukas](https://www.pexels.com/photo/blue-retractable-pen-574070/)

Fix 'Cannot Rebase Onto Multiple Branches' error once and for all

A Guide to using git pull --rebase effectively Using git pull --rebase as your default merge strategy offers several benefits, particularly in maintaining a clean and linear commit history, which can simplify collaboration and code review. However, users may occasionally encounter the error “Cannot rebase onto multiple branches”. This article explains why this happens and provides a solution to make git pull --rebase work seamlessly. Benefits of git pull --rebase Linear History: Rebasing applies your local commits on top of the upstream changes, creating a straight line of commits without unnecessary merge commits....

2024-05-27 · 2 min · timor
[Photo by @felipepelaquim](https://www.pexels.com/photo/electronic-book-subscription-in-an-electronic-gadget-8531176/)

Remove Password From PDF documents

I use a Pocketbook Touch HD first gen. to read ebooks and I bought it in 2017 (oh dear!). It’s a really good device, despite being terribly slow according to current standards and battery have probably only 20% capacity comparing to the day I bought it. Anyway, it outperformed any of my smartphones on it’s longevity. I don’t use it that often anymore but it happen to me to read some stuff that I find on the Internet....

2024-05-27 · 1 min · timor
[Photo by Marina Leonova](https://www.pexels.com/photo/world-map-made-of-cork-board-on-white-wall-7634440/)

Optimizing Hugo Sitemaps to prioritize posts crawling over taxonomies

You might notice that I’ve been struggling recently with SEO and that I’ve been trying some tricks to improve it, but it feels not enough. I’ve been thinking about Google’s Crawl Budget1 and the way I could influence it to focus more on new and important content. Adding lastmod should help, but together with each new post added, Hugo generates a ton of taxonomy pages (tags, categories, etc) which also would have lastmod updated....

2024-05-17 · 3 min · timor

Nostalgy for old RPG games

I’ve been cleaning up old backups and found few screenshots from Ice Wind Dale, Baldur’s Gate 2 and Throne of Bhaal expansion. I’ve spend many good hours playing those games. I’ve read a dozen books from the Forgotten Realms realm . I remember being in a library (in the game) and spending there quite a lot of time, just to read few books. Playing those games was like a deep dive into the fantasy world, side by side to the characters from the books, or sometime against them....

2024-04-29 · 3 min · timor
[Photo by MART  PRODUCTION](https://www.pexels.com/photo/person-holding-burning-money-7230878/)

Rising costs of running legacy Amazon RDS systems

Amazon recently faced challenges in maintaining support for legacy Relational Database Service (RDS) systems and even considered upgrading instances forcefully1. This situation is not unique to Amazon; many companies struggle with the costs of maintaining legacy systems. However, as a service provider, Amazon must support older systems as long as there are customers willing to pay for them. In December 2023, Amazon announced1 plans to upgrade legacy RDS instances to versions still under active development, citing the rising costs of maintaining outdated systems....

2024-04-27 · 3 min · timor
[Photo by Pixabay](https://www.pexels.com/photo/books-in-black-wooden-book-shelf-159711/)

Create a Virtual Bookshelf with Hugo and PaperMod

TL;DR If you don’t care about my reasoning, just jump to the description of installation and usage . Click here for a demo . I try to read at least one book each month. It’s not much, but that’s what I can afford. I read a lot of technical books, building my technical skill set, but a lot of random topics from business, psychology or fantasy. It happen to me many times that when I’ve been asked about specific book, I couldn’t remember “Where did I read it?...

2024-04-26 · 4 min · timor

Installing Oracle Instant Client on Ubuntu 24.04

New system, old problems. Getting Oracle Instant Client to work was a trouble 10 years ago and it’s not different today 🤣 There are two ways to install it on Ubuntu/Debian. First is “recommended”, but boring. Second is “crazy”, but have some benefits. As I’m doing it mostly in Docker images, that’s how I will present it. First, check for up to date versions  external link and links on Oracle’s official site....

2024-04-17 · 4 min · timor
[Hugo](https://gohugo.io)

Automatically setting 'lastmod' in Hugo pages with Git modification date

Following my recent SEO issues , I’m actively exploring ways to bolster my website’s ranking. One aspect I’m keen to address is expediting Search Engine indexing for pages that have been altered or updated. This is precisely the purpose of Sitemaps, a feature fully supported by Hugo1. However, there’s a limitation in how Hugo handles this by default. It sets the lastmod parameter to either the page’s creation time or the last build time....

2024-03-24 · 2 min · timor
[Photo by Harrison Haines](https://www.pexels.com/photo/rusty-ships-on-rippling-water-6292339/)

How old are Official Docker images? 2024 Edition

Around 3 years ago I’ve checked the age of various base images available on Docker Hub. Curiosity recently got the better of me, prompting another investigation into the current state of affairs. Since then, there have been significant changes: CentOS 8 has reached its end of life  external link , prompting a shift to CentOS 8 Stream  external link , which is also nearing its demise 🤣 OpenJDK images have been deprecated  external link and no longer receiving updates....

2024-03-24 · 2 min · timor
[Zed](https://zed.dev)

Zed Code Editor as an Atom reincarnation

I was a big fan of the Atom1 code editor, so when it was discontinued and replaced by M$’s VS Code2, I was both sad and dissapointed. While I can admit that VS Code is a solid editor, my personal preference always leaned towards Atom. However, over time, Atom started to feel sluggish. I collected numerous plugins over the years and it began to weigh heavily on performance, not just during startup but also during regular usage....

2024-03-19 · 2 min · timor