Andrew McCombe - UK Based Lead Web Developer

I'm Andrew, a UK based lead web developer with over 25 years experience. During my career I have contributed to the success of many companies, from small information websites to multi-million pound e-commerce stores.

This is my personal site where you will find snippets and articles I've written over the years.

Latest Articles

Fix for mysqldump: Couldn't execute 'SELECT COLUMN_NAME, JSON_EXTRACT(HISTOGRAM, '$.

Fix for mysqldump: Couldn't execute 'SELECT COLUMN_NAME, JSON_EXTRACT(HISTOGRAM, '$."number-of-buckets-specified"')...

May 11th, 2023

Recent updates to the `mysqldump`command may cause the error `SELECT COLUMN_NAME, JSON_EXTRACT(HISTOGRAM, '$."number-of-buckets-specified"') FROM information_schema.COLUMN_STATISTICS...` on MySQL 5.7. Here's how to fix that.

I asked ChatGPT to write a blog post about the Streetsounds Electro series of albums. Here's what it came up with.

February 25th, 2023

After reading numerous Tweets and blog posts about how good AI is, and how ChatGPT would make bloggers and content creators obsolete I decided to see what the fuss was about. I chose a subject I know a lot about and asked ChatGPT to write a blog post for me. Here's what it came up with.

Remote Debugging Local Websites on Android Phones

Remote Debugging Local Websites on Android Phones

October 8th, 2022

How to test and inspect local development websites on Android phones.

How To Get The Last Entry In A Javascript Array - The Modern Way

September 29th, 2022

Getting the last item in a Javascript array can feel a bit yukky. Luckily for us, there's now a new way of doing it.

Laravel: Update created_at and updated_at timestamps manually

August 30th, 2022

Ever needed to manually set the `created_at` and `updated_at` fields in a Laravel Model? By default the `updated_at` field will be overridden with the current date and time. To get around this you need to pass `false` to the `timestamps` key when saving the model.

Git Ignore File Mode

Git Ignore File Mode

August 25th, 2022

Here's how to tell git to ignore file mode changes.

How To Fix The Footer To The Bottom Of The Page With Tailwind CSS

How To Fix The Footer To The Bottom Of The Page With Tailwind CSS

February 21st, 2022

Here's how I fixed the footer to the bottom of the page with Tailwind CSS.

How to install and start Mailhog on Ubuntu 20.04

How to install and start Mailhog on Ubuntu 20.04

January 14th, 2022

Testing email on development sites can be hard but we can use Mailhog to make it easier. Here's how to install and start Mailhog on Ubuntu 20.04.

Sylius: How to add position to product images

Sylius: How to add position to product images

January 5th, 2022

Sylius doesn't come with functionality to change the ordering of images in the admin area but it would be great if we could do it ourselves. Here's how to add a position to the product images tab.

Vue Not Updating When Changing Array

July 11th, 2021

Today I had a problem with Vue.js not updating when I changed content in an array. Here's how I resolved it.

Feature Estimation: What is the real cost of adding a feature to a website?

January 2nd, 2021

When a client requests a feature, how do you provide a reasonable estimate? What do you base your estimate on. How much contingency do you add?

How To Create a New User in MySQL 8

November 27th, 2020

The command to create a new user on MySQL version 8 has changed. Heres how to do it.