I had some data in SQLite, and wanted to sort on the columns (and on a pair of columns). I really like DB Browser for SQLite because it’s free, powerful, has a nice GUI. It turns out that a stable sort on multiple columns is easy, but not well-documented. Here’s the how you do it:

• Open a SQLite file in DB Browser for SQLite
• In the Browse Data tab, click a column head to sort by that column
• Click it again to reverse-sort
• To sort by multiple columns, Control-Click (Command-click in macOS) on a second column heading. You’ll see small numbers next to the field names to indicate their order.
• Ctl/Cmd-click a second time to reverse-sort that column
• Click another column head to clear the previous selection(s)
• Here’s a video that shows how it works: https://youtu.be/KMowPpzZ2Vc

I recently gave a talk to the local Dartmouth-Lake Sunapee Linux User Group describing some similarities between Docker and Ansible.

Both give you a repeatable configuration by executing some sort of script of actions. Here is a link to the slides I used for the talk. https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1W_vEPSZ-rhareK5q56pd10m2Y7JT2mc-LxrHAE6yaSI/edit#slide=id.g14247b9f80b_2_75

Update: March 2023 – I recently learned about Dev Containers that provide the ability to bundle up all the tools required for a development environment. The PRQL project is using it to set up a complicated Rust/Javascript/Hugo/mdbook/Python environment.