At Heroku we use Travis CI to run project tests on push to GitHub. While Travis CI offers PostgreSQL in their environment, it’s version 9.1. A project I’m working on recently started using PostgreSQL 9.2’s JSON data type, which 9.1 does not have.

Needing 9.2, I searched for ways to make it available in the Travis CI environment. I found guides that suggested upgrading PostgreSQL in a before_script but I didn’t have much luck with that approach. Plus, it would add time to each build which I was hoping to avoid. I knew Heroku Postgres offered 9.2 by default, what I really wanted was a fresh Heroku Postgres database for every test run.

Since July 30th, I’ve been using ledger (on GitHub) to track my personal finances. What did I use before? I’m ashamed to say nothing beyond my banks’ sites.

I stumbled upon ledger via this blog post, linked from Hacker News. It took me a while to try it, for a few reasons. First, I had a weird notion that there would be a better time in my various “fiscal cycles” to start using such a thing. Should I wait until the end of the monthly statement periods for my various accounts? No, this was just procrastination. Second, I need to easily deal in both USD and CAD. I live in Canada and am paid in CAD but being a US citizen from Arizona I still have many dealings in the US that involve USD. My Canadian and US RBC accounts are linked and it’s easy (and instant) to transfer between them, though I usually only go from my Canadian accounts to my US accounts. That had been a big barrier in trying things like bucketwise, though I do like its concept.