Behold! A QR Code Generator That Doesn’t Suck!

Awhile ago, I got into QR Codes. I’ve found them increasingly handy because I could make QR codes based on documents that I had stored in Google Docs, and then I could invite people to scan those QR Codes in person if I wanted to share what was in the doc. The QR Codes themselves could be printed out on paper, be saved to my phone and scanned from them, or even put on my Apple Watch.

But I ran into a challenge: creating QR Codes. When I did searches for QR Code generators, most of the ones I found online either generated small QR Codes, had ads, required money, or all three! It was very much Not Fun, and I felt it was a minor injustice that being able to create something as useful as QR Codes was off limits for so many people.

So I decided to create my own.

After reading some tutorials on how to do it, I found one that talked about how to make QR Codes in Python. I then remembered, that I had an app with a bunch of API endpoints available, and it was written in Python! So, I figured, why not add a QR Code generator, expose it as another endpoint, and create a form which submits to that API?

And that’s exactly what I did, you can find the QR Code generator here:

https://httpbin.dmuth.org/qrcode/

This is 100% free with no ads, no tracking, and no spam. Just QR Codes when you want them.

Enjoy!

Mirror on Medium.

Introducing Docker in Vagrant

[EDIT: Since this post was written, OrbStack has appeared. It’s really good for running Docker containers and VMs on a Mac. You should check it out instead.]

If you’re a Mac user, you have a few options for running Docker. Aside from Docker’s official client, there also exists Rancher Desktop and Podman. I’ve used them all, and they’re all decent implementations of Docker. However, I ran into some limitations in each platform that are beyond the scope of this post that nonetheless prompted me to try building out my own Docker offering.

Having used VirtualBox and Vagrant before, I found myself wondering if I could use Vagrant to stand up an instance of Docker, proxy connections to Docker over SSH, and mount directories on the host machine’s filesystem.

It turns out I could.

Continue reading “Introducing Docker in Vagrant”