When it comes to Docker containers, the smaller, the better. Smaller containers are easier to work with, deploy faster, and tend to have fewer security vulnerabilities. Big is Bad I worked at WePay during the transition from a monolithic application in the datacenter to a series of microservices running in the cloud. I spent a lot of time working on the Vagrant-based CentOS development environment for the monolith, and also started maintaining a custom CentOS base image in Google Cloud.

After reading Dear Nintendo…, a friend today asked me “How do you feel about the Switch?” Well, let's go down the list. Nintendo Account I can log into my account online, yes. Apparently, Nintendo Network ID is simply an OAuth provider for the rest of the Nintendo website. But you can also have a standalone Nintendo.com login. I deal with this stuff every day, and I still get confused on Nintendo’s website. I have a Switch, a Wii U, the original 3DS, the original 3DS XL, and now the new clamshell 2DS XL.

TL;DR: How I improved the performance of case-insensitive XPath queries by 30–35%, reducing an 8× performance hit to only 4.5–5×. This was originally posted to the SimplePie NG blog. Parse-at-all-costs Most feeds are a mess. The old SimplePie “OG” took a parse-at-all-costs philosophy, and could handle many of the most broken feeds you could find — at a cost. While the early versions of SimplePie supported the letter of the RSS 2.0 specification, there were a surprising number of feeds which didn’t.

Today, I’m introducing a refresh of the SimplePie logo and the most visible part of its brand. I’m calling this new branding style SimplePie Neue. This was originally posted to the SimplePie NG blog. The Icon I designed the original SimplePie logo back in 2005. At the time, Web 2.0 and Ajax were brand-new things to most web developers. Mac OS X “Tiger” 10.4 was the latest OS running on my 17” PowerBook G4, and while the hard glossy feel hadn’t yet taken over the Internet, shadows and gradients definitely had.

After retiring from SimplePie development in 2009, the project more or less went into maintenance mode. While I am thankful to the folks who have contributed to its development over the last 8 years, it’s time for a reboot. This was originally posted to the SimplePie NG blog. SimplePie NG is a modern, next-generation PHP package for working with syndication feeds. It is being re-written from the ground-up to take advantage of the changes that have happened in the PHP community since the SimplePie project was started back in 2004.