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Welcome to my blog. This is mainly about IT, information management and Cyber Security with occasional forays into general technology, science and maybe even politics and beliefs.
I welcome feedback on this site and its content. Please use the contact form if you spot anything amiss with the site and use Disqus to talk about any of the articles.
There are 301 pages currently on this site. 235 blog posts, 60 knowledgebase pages, 6 about pages and 0 project pages.
Latest posts and knowledgebase articles
Switching from WordPress to Hugo
I’ve been fed up with the speed of WordPress for years but haven’t had the time to learn how to properly switch to an alternative. Until I discovered Hugo!
Easily search for contributed nodes on the Node-RED Flows site
Excellent work has been done to make sure that new nodes are discoverable. Here is a quick way to easily search from your browser.
How to create a clone of a message object
Node-RED tried to pass messages by reference not copy. Sometimes though, a copy is needed.
How node.send() works
Some detail not included in the documentation.
How to extract a table from HTML
While Node-RED has some nodes for extracting data from HTML, the nodes are rather simplistic. Here is a quick way to extract the data from an HTML table element.
Installation and running permissions
People seem to get very confused about file permissions when installing Node-RED and associated nodes. This article tries to set things straight.
Secure Home Automation Controls via a Telegram Bot
Shows how to create a secure set of home automation controls without exposing Node-RED to the Internet. It uses a Telegram bot with a number of pre-defined commands.
Understanding the Node-RED Runtime API
Node-RED exposes an extensive API at runtime. While most of this is not available within your flows, much of it is available to custom nodes. Unfortunately, documentation for the API lags behind development. This page documents some of the key things I’ve learned about the API, what it does and how it works.
VSCode - multiple cursors
VSCode supports multi-cursor editing, here are some tips on using it.
Node-RED Dashboard Template Examples (AngularJS)
Some examples of using AngularJS with the Node-RED Dashboard. Not all features of Angular are accessible via the Dashboard.
Making Node-RED available over the Internet
There are already too many people putting up insecure services over the Internet. Please don’t add to this problem. This article explains a simple way to get some level of connectivity to Node-RED over the Internet without security issues. It also explains some of the wider issues and where to go for more details.
How to use the ACE editor in the Function node
The ACE editor is used in the function node to help you create well-formed JavaScript. However, there are now a number of different versions of JavaScript and it is sometimes helpful to use slightly different styles of coding to the defaults.
How to extract a substring from the msg object
Node-RED passes a msg object between node instances in a flow. It is common to need to extract a sub-string and there are multiple ways to achieve this. Here are some simeple examples.
Node-RED - Courses and Tutorials
A list of some tutorials and courses for learning Node-RED and Node.JS, maybe some web stuff too.
Node-RED - debugging flows
Some hints for debugging Node-RED flows
