Artem’s ramblings

Manager hour - comms during turbulent times

2023-09-24T00:00:00Z

Generally, people have a finite capacity to “deal with things”. Organisational events and changes exhaust that finite capacity, which makes people over-evaluate any further changes to their work environment as they crave stability.

As such, after significant changes such as layoffs, reorgs, pivots, etc., it’s even more critical to over-communicate and communicate with care when doing announcements.

And the most important thing here is follow-up! No one does it 100% right all the time. It’s whether you recognise something is missing and follow up that matters much more.

Management Hour - Interviewing

2023-09-20T00:00:00Z

Interviews should be:

Consistent
Fair
Humane

As such, here are some things to keep in mind:

Ensure that at least 80% of your questions overlap between different candidates. Otherwise, you create an uneven playing field.
A memory of an experience fades extremely quickly, so make sure to jot down your feedback ASAP—ideally, on the same day. I usually block off my calendar right after the interview for feedback.
If you interview in tandem - discuss the candidate after you submit the feedback so you don’t bias each other. If your scores are radically different - it will at least create a learning opportunity for both.
If you know that you will be biased for or against the candidate - make sure you interview at least in tandem or recuse yourself from the process.
No trick or “Aha!” questions should be present in interviews. They just bin candidates into 2 buckets: those who know and do not. More often than not, such binning is not very useful to see who would make a good candidate.
When making an overall recommendation, start with the at - a lot of confusion often happens during the interview process, and this reduces ambiguity in hiring committees regarding role, level, etc. E.g., “HIRE at L4 SRE”, “BORDERLINE at L3 Delivery Lead”, or “STRONG NO HIRE at L5 Principal Engineer”.
Often, interviews are back to back - always ask the candidate if they need a second to get comfortable - get water, turn on AC, go to the bathroom. You’d be surprised just how shy some people are and then sit there uncomfortable, which impacts their interview performance.

SRE Consulting engagements

2021-11-06T00:00:00Z

Due to extreme demand on my Office Hours I’m opening a paid consulting stream for those that want more of my time and are willing to pay for it - i.e. SRE leaders, Seasoned Professionals and Companies that need advice.

Are you a seasoned professional new to the SRE role?
Perhaps you lead a team that struggles with a particular operational or culture problem?
Are you a startup that needs a nudge in the right direction to scale?
Do you need in-depth assistance with one of the OSS projects I maintain?

Then this is for you: https://calendly.com/temikus/consulting
10% of all proceeds go to charity ❤️ https://www.fame.org.au/
Questions? consulting < at > temik.me

FAQ

Q: Are you stopping your free office hours?
A: No, I’m still scheduling those in the same manner for the foreseeable future as my reasoning hasn’t changed.

Q: Why are you doing this?
A: Popular demand. I’m often getting booked out for months in advance and some people/companies have expressed their interest in paid engagements.

Q: How does this work?
A: You go to the calendly link, choose a time, make a payment and get a dedicated office hour to discuss your problem.

Q: Can I book multiple hours?
A: Absolutely!

Office Hours

2020-04-26T00:00:00Z

Following the example of my friend natwelch@ I decided to try my hand at public office hours.

The idea is simple - I have a 60 minute weekly slot that anyone can book through calendly and we can do anything of the following via videochat:

Helping people with non-IT/CS backgrounds get into the industry.

Because we all stand on the shoulders of giants and I’m not an exception. I came to IT with no background and am largely self-taught, but I couldn’t do it without a lot of help from some wonderful folks ( Hi Nat! 👋).
Assisting OSS projects with CI/CD, Monitoring and Infrastructure.

Because I ❤️ OpenSource and maintain a couple of projects w/associated infra myself.
Talking about anything that you think is “Ops” / “DevOps” or “Site Reliability Engineering”.

Since I work for a large company, there’s a small disclaimer:

All opinions expressed during the chats are my own and are not connected with my employer.
I reserve a right to decline certain questions/topics at my discretion.

Please sign up! https://calendly.com/temikus

GCP SSH autocomplete with FZF and ZSH

2019-09-08T00:00:00Z

I got inspired by AffectV post on AWS SSH completion and decided to write something similar for GCP.

Here’s the end result:

Prerequisites

You use zsh as your main shell
You have fzf and its completion set up

Writing the module

First, we need to figure out how to get the list of information we want. gcloud provides a somewhat sensible formatting and filtering options for that, e.g. if I want to get the name, zone and external IP of the instance in a flat tab-separated table, we’ll have to set options like so:

λ gcloud compute instances list \
 --format="table[no-heading](name,zone,status,networkInterfaces[0].accessConfigs[0].natIP)" \
 --filter="status=RUNNING"
my-web-v37r australia-southeast1-c RUNNING XX.XXX.XX.XX
my-web-wp2d australia-southeast1-c RUNNING XX.XXX.XX.XX
my-worker-b96q australia-southeast1-c RUNNING XX.XXX.XX.XX

Perfect.

Note: if you want to add more information to your default output, you can use gcloud compute instances list --format=flattened to figure out what fields you need.

Now, let’s create a dummy ssh function so we don’t mess with default autocomplete and don’t put a latency penalty on autocompleting the regular ssh command:

gssh()
{
 ssh $@
}

Next, we’ll need to write a FZF completion module. For that, we’ll need to write a function _fzf_complete_$YOURCOMMAND, following one of FZF examples, e.g.:

_fzf_complete_gssh() {
 ARGS="$@"
 local machines
 machines=$(gcloud compute instances list \
 --format="table[no-heading](name,zone,status,networkInterfaces[0].accessConfigs[0].natIP)" \
 --filter="status=RUNNING")
 if [[ $ARGS == 'gssh '* ]]; then
 _fzf_complete "--reverse --multi" "$@" < <(
 echo $machines
 )
 else
 eval "zle ${fzf_default_completion:-expand-or-complete}"
 fi
}

Then, we need to tell FZF what to pass back to the executable once completion has been selected. In our case, we want the instance’s external IP, so we select the 4th column using awk:

_fzf_complete_gssh_post() {
 awk '{print $4}'
}

Putting it all together

Here’s how our module looks like:

gssh()
{
 ssh $@
}

_fzf_complete_gssh() {
 ARGS="$@"
 local machines
 machines=$(gcloud compute instances list \
 --format="table[no-heading](name,zone,status,networkInterfaces[0].accessConfigs[0].natIP)" \
 --filter="status=RUNNING")
 if [[ $ARGS == 'gssh '* ]]; then
 _fzf_complete "--reverse --multi" "$@" < <(
 echo $machines
 )
 else
 eval "zle ${fzf_default_completion:-expand-or-complete}"
 fi
}

_fzf_complete_gssh_post() {
 awk '{print $4}'
}

The only thing we need to do is to paste it into our .zshrc (or include it using your favourite plugin manager) and we’re good to go.

Just type gssh **, and then press TAB.

ST3 - Remove Sublime Merge from Sidebar

2019-06-12T00:00:00Z

Sublime Text 3 is my casual editor of choice.

They recently started pushing SublimeMerge which is a GUI Git Client. I’m a fan of Fork so I’m not really keen on the cluttering the context menu with things I won’t use.

I figured out how to remove them and hope the instructions may help others.

Install PackageResourceViewer package
Type a sublime prompt command (Cmd/Ctrl + P):

PackageResourceViewer: Open Resource

Choose Default -> Side Bar.sublime-menu
You can now edit the context menu and trim the unneeded options. For example:

 [
 { "caption": "New File", "command": "new_file_at", "args": {"dirs": []} },
 { "caption": "Rename…", "command": "rename_path", "args": {"paths": []} },
 { "caption": "Delete File", "command": "delete_file", "args": {"files": []} },
 { "caption": "Open Containing Folder…", "command": "open_containing_folder", "args": {"files": []} },
 { "caption": "Reveal Link Source", "command": "reveal_link_source", "args": {"dirs": []} },
 { "caption": "-", "id": "repo_commands" },
 { "caption": "New Folder…", "command": "new_folder", "args": {"dirs": []} },
 { "caption": "Delete Folder", "command": "delete_folder", "args": {"dirs": []} },
 { "caption": "Find in Folder…", "command": "find_in_folder", "args": {"dirs": []} },
 { "caption": "-", "id": "end" }
]

Happy hacking!

Tip: ssh `Match exec` and config for cloud instances

2019-04-13T00:00:00Z

If you work a lot with ephemeral instances you will eventually run into this message:

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
@ WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED! @
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@
IT IS POSSIBLE THAT SOMEONE IS DOING SOMETHING NASTY!

Today I learned about Match exec config option in ~/.ssh/config which allows you to set certain options depending on custom command results.

Since all GCE external IP’s are routed through google LB’s, which resolve to *.bc.googleusercontent.com, we can use that to our advantage to disable recording GCE instances into known_hosts by putting the following into ~/.ssh/config:

# Do not record GCE instances into known_hosts file
Match exec "nslookup %h | grep 'bc.googleusercontent.com'"
 UserKnownHostsFile none

I hope others may find this useful too!

Terraform ACME provider full chain certificates

2019-03-01T00:00:00Z

After rearchitecting my Concourse setup a bit to shard web workers I’ve noticed that fly stopped connecting:

λ fly login -t fog --concourse-url https://ci.saragosa.tv:443 (1)
logging in to team 'main'

could not reach the Concourse server called fog:

 Get https://ci.saragosa.tv:443/api/v1/info: x509: certificate signed by unknown authority

is the targeted Concourse running? better go catch it lol

Which was surprising to me since WebUI was working without any issues and I was getting green checks on the security tab of Chrome’s “Developer tools”

The important bit here is that I was using Terraform to generate acme certificates and pass them into GCP’s HTTPS LB:

resource "google_compute_ssl_certificate" "ci" {
 name = "my-ci-project-${random_id.generation.hex}"
 private_key = "${acme_certificate.ci.private_key_pem}"
 certificate = "${acme_certificate.ci.certificate_pem}"

 lifecycle {
 create_before_destroy = true
 }

After some digging I’ve found this issue. Turns out that whatever lib fly is using to verify the certificates requires full chain of trust to be present. Surely enough running SSLabs on my domain showed:

Certificates provided 1 (1367 bytes)
Chain issues Incomplete

Turns out acme_certificate.certificate_pem doesn’t produce a full chain certificate. Fortunately we can simply concatenate it like so:

resource "google_compute_ssl_certificate" "ci" {
 ...
 certificate = "${acme_certificate.ci.certificate_pem}${acme_certificate.ci.issuer_pem}"
 ...
}

After a brief terraform apply SSLabs showed:

Certificates provided 2 (2541 bytes)
Chain issues None

And fly was once again working correctly. Hope this helps someone if they run into same issues.

Ansible - GCP dynamic inventory 2.0

2019-02-22T00:00:00Z

The GCP module for Ansible has recently been updated to not rely on libcloud but the docs still continue to be slightly confusing, so I’m publishing a new article on how to set up Ansible GCP dynamic inventory.

As last time this assumes you already have:

Ansible installed (version >= 2.7)
A working python installation
Have a service account with Compute Engine API access
Exported a JSON key in Credentials subsection of your console

First, install “requests” and “google-auth” packages.

pip install requests google-auth

Note: if you use Homebrew, you may need to install the module via the built-in python installation that Ansible uses, e.g.:

λ ansible --version | grep "python.*location"

ansible python module location = /usr/local/Cellar/ansible/2.7.8/libexec/lib/python3.7/site-packages/ansible

λ /usr/local/Cellar/ansible/2.7.8/libexec/bin/pip install requests google-auth

Then, create an inventory file ending in ‘gcp.yml’, e.g.:

λ cat inventory.gcp.yml
---
plugin: gcp_compute
projects:
 - my-project
zones:
 - "europe-west1-b"
filters: []
auth_kind: serviceaccount
service_account_file: "/Users/temikus/.gcp/project.json"

Note: I higly recommend setting the zones: parameter as otherwise the inventory script enumerates all existing zones which takes a considerable amount of time.

And boom, now we can control our instances with Ansible:

λ ansible -i inventory.gcp.yml all -m ping

34.76.50.119 | SUCCESS => {
 "changed": false,
 "ping": "pong"
}

Reading large files in Ruby

2019-02-17T00:00:00Z

I needed to slurp up some very large files into a ruby app recently and noticed some interesting behaviour in IO.foreach method.

While it is supposed to read file line by line without loading it up into memory, memory usage is quite significant compared to reading the files via an offset (IO.read).

Investigation

10 MB test file:

λ ls -alh xaa
-rw-r--r--@ 1 temikus staff 9.5M Feb 18 11:24 xaa

Test script:

#!/usr/bin/env ruby
require "benchmark/memory"

BUFFER = 4096

Benchmark.memory do |x|

 x.report("foreach") {
 File.foreach(ARGV[0]) do |line|
 line
 end
 }

 x.report("stream.read") {
 stream = File.new(ARGV[0])

 until stream.eof?
 stream.read(BUFFER)
 end
 }

 x.compare!
end

IO.foreach is using 20x memory:

λ ./cat_compare.rb xaa
Calculating -------------------------------------
 foreach 200.008M memsize ( 0.000 retained)
 5.000M objects ( 0.000 retained)
 1.000 strings ( 0.000 retained)
 stream.read 10.111M memsize ( 0.000 retained)
 2.443k objects ( 0.000 retained)
 2.000 strings ( 0.000 retained)

Comparison:
 stream.read: 10110978 allocated
 foreach: 200008424 allocated - 19.78x more

Then I remembered that the ruby Garbage Collector is working on “mark-and-sweep” principle. The “mark” stage checks objects to see if they are still in use. If an object is in a variable that can still be used in the current scope, the object (and any object inside that object) is marked for keeping. If the variable is long gone, off in another method, the object isn’t marked. The “sweep” stage then frees objects which haven’t been marked.

That could explain it, so I decided to test that theory by putting a small GC ticker in, running GC.start every 100 000 lines:

 tick = 1

 File.foreach(ARGV[0]) do |line|
 line
 tick +=1
 GC.start if tick % 100000 == 0
 end

Surely enough memory footprint has rapidly decreased:

temikus λ ./cat_compare.rb xaa
Calculating -------------------------------------
 foreach 8.424k memsize ( 0.000 retained)
 1.000 objects ( 0.000 retained)
 0.000 strings ( 0.000 retained)
 stream.read 10.111M memsize ( 0.000 retained)
 2.443k objects ( 0.000 retained)
 2.000 strings ( 0.000 retained)

Comparison:
 foreach: 8424 allocated
 stream.read: 10110978 allocated - 1200.26x more

However, calling GC explicitly does give a time penalty:

foreach 0.716403 0.004597 0.721000 ( 0.722513)
stream.read 0.004264 0.003208 0.007472 ( 0.007474)

Conclusion

If you need to work with large files (>200MB) and read them line-by-line in Ruby, it’s better to read them in chunks via IO.read(CHUNK_SIZE). Best CHUNK_SIZE is usually one that matches a memory page size on your system (often 4KB) as that ensures that OS is efficiently reading the file into memory.

Addendum:

All tests performed on Ruby 2.6.1
Old (written by _why!) but still useful article about Ruby’s GC details

Ansible - Bootstrap python

2018-09-09T00:00:00Z

When you’re starting hosts from scratch, you can avoid preinstalling python in your image or startup scripts by issuing a raw command in ansible in a pre_tasks section. This doesn’t require python to be available on the remote host, effectively bootstrapping it to continue with the playbook.

Here’s an example for debian-based hosts:

- hosts: my_host
 remote_user: my_user
 become: yes
 gather_facts: false

 pre_tasks:
 - name: Bootsrap Python2 for Ansible
 raw: bash -c "test -e /usr/bin/python || (apt -qqy update && apt install -qqy python-minimal)"
 register: output
 changed_when: output.stdout != ""
 - name: Gathering Facts
 setup: # Also known as gather_facts

Note: gather_facts is set to false since some advanced facts require running python code on the remote host, hence we disable it in the beginning and then re-run it using setup:

Retrieving GCE metadata map

2018-07-07T00:00:00Z

GCE metadata can be a useful tool for getting the information about the running instance.

One needs to know exactly where to look for a particular key however. For that, the metadata actually supports a ?recursive=true parameter, returning a json of all the data available.

Observe:

# Quick helper function to pretty print JSON 
$ alias to_j="ruby -e \"require 'json';puts JSON.pretty_generate(JSON.parse(STDIN.read))\""

$ curl -s http://metadata/computeMetadata/v1/instance/?recursive=true -H "Metadata-Flavor: Google" | to_j
{
 "attributes": {
 },
 "cpuPlatform": "Intel Broadwell",
 "description": "",
 "disks": [
 {
 "deviceName": "persistent-disk-0",
 "index": 0,
 "mode": "READ_WRITE",
 "type": "PERSISTENT-SSD"
 }
 ],
 "hostname": "vagrant-test.c.graphite-sandbox.internal",
 "id": 77747111415725975,
 "image": "projects/ubuntu-os-cloud/global/images/ubuntu-1804-bionic-v20180617",
 "licenses": [
 {
 "id": "7777592092274602096"
 }
 ],
 "machineType": "projects/1086402177777/machineTypes/n1-standard-1",
 "maintenanceEvent": "NONE",
 "name": "vagrant-elastic",
 "networkInterfaces": [
 {
 "accessConfigs": [
 {
 "externalIp": "35.189.77.77",
 "type": "ONE_TO_ONE_NAT"
 }
 ],
 "dnsServers": [
 "169.254.169.254"
 ],
 "forwardedIps": [

 ],
 "gateway": "10.7.0.1",
 "ip": "10.7.0.7",
 "ipAliases": [

 ],
 "mac": "42:77:0a:98:77:77",
 "network": "projects/1086402177777/networks/default",
 "subnetmask": "255.255.240.0",
 "targetInstanceIps": [

 ]
 }
 ],
 "preempted": "FALSE",
 "remainingCpuTime": -1,
 "scheduling": {
 "automaticRestart": "TRUE",
 "onHostMaintenance": "MIGRATE",
 "preemptible": "FALSE"
 },
 "serviceAccounts": {
 },
 "tags": [

 ],
 "virtualClock": {
 "driftToken": "0"
 },
 "zone": "projects/1086402177777/zones/australia-southeast1-c"
}

Ansible - GCP Dynamic inventory bootstrap

2018-06-11T00:00:00Z

Ansible GCP module bootstrap

The official docs on Ansible GCP module are quite a bit confusing, so I’ve decided to publish some steps to quickly bootstrap a working environment.

Main concept is that Ansible can not only use static files as a source of inventory but also execute a script and use it’s output as an in-memory representation of it. This allows us to make dynamic inventories to load up hosts from your cloud provider, for example. And, conveniently, there’s such a script in the Ansible’s contrib directory named gce.py.

This assumes you already have:

Ansible installed
A working python installation
Have a service account with Compute Engine API access
Exported a JSON key in Credentials subsection of your console

Here are quick bootstrap instructions on how to get it working:

Install libcloud and libcrypto:

λ pip install apache-libcloud pycrypto

Create a working dir:

λ mkdir -p ansible/inventory && cd ansible

Clone ansible repo:

λ git clone https://github.com/ansible/ansible

Copy the gcp.py inventory script and the gcp.ini template from contrib folder:

λ cp ansible/contrib/inventory/gce.* inventory

Populate the .ini file (this is where gce.py will read its’ settings from):

λ cat ~/.ansible/gce.ini

[gce]
gce_service_account_email_address = my-account@my-project.iam.gserviceaccount.com
gce_service_account_pem_file_path = /full/path/to/my_key.json
gce_project_id = my-project

[inventory]
# Use external IP addresses to connect
inventory_ip_type = external

[cache]
cache_path = ~/.ansible/tmp
cache_max_age = 300

You can move it into your home directory and exporting the variable in your .zshrc for future ease-of-use:

λ cat ~/.zshrc | grep gce.ini
 # Export ansible gce.ini
 [[ -s "$HOME/.ansible/gce.ini" ]] && export GCE_INI_PATH="$HOME/.ansible/gce.ini"

Reload your shell and check if it’s working:

λ source ~/.zshrc
λ ./inventory/gce.py --list

If you’ve received a large set of output with your instance data - it’s now set up correctly.

Boom, now you can access your instances by zone:

λ ansible -i inventory australia-southeast1-c -m ping
web-worker-3 | SUCCESS => {
 "changed": false,
 "ping": "pong"
}
web-worker-1 | SUCCESS => {
 "changed": false,
 "ping": "pong"
}
web-worker-2 | SUCCESS => {
 "changed": false,
 "ping": "pong"
}
master | SUCCESS => {
 "changed": false,
 "ping": "pong"
}

, or tag. For that just prepend the network tag name with tag_, i.e. for web-worker tag:

λ ansible -i inventory tag_web-worker -m ping
web-worker-3 | SUCCESS => {
 "changed": false,
 "ping": "pong"
}
web-worker-1 | SUCCESS => {
 "changed": false,
 "ping": "pong"
}
web-worker-2 | SUCCESS => {
 "changed": false,
 "ping": "pong"
}

For more options and further reading, check out the official module docs. Hope it’s helpful!

Materials used:

Orchestrating GCE Instances with Ansible by folks at Vimeo
Official Ansible Documentation

What’s making me happy 08-07-2017

2017-07-08T00:00:00Z

It’s been a while since I wrote one of those - need to keep on track.

USA trip turned out to be a success - got a ton of work done, did quite a bit of progress on my projects, met with dear friends. Nevertheless, I’m very-very happy to return back to Sydney. Missed it (and more importantly Cassie) a whole lot.

Continuing trying to figure out my allergies. Waiting for the blood panel results, new medication seems to be working a bit better *knocks on wood*. Even though there’s no substantial progress in figuring out what it is, it’s still feels good to not be standing still.

Got quite a chuckle out of Louis Rossman’s review of the Surface Laptop construction: “You have to heat gun the laptop… If they included graphics chips in there - it’s now a two-for-one repair!”

Cap your ticket backlog is an interesting article on keeping the list of work items short and some ideas how to address it. It is refreshing to see a different perspective on backlogs rather than “close it all and if it’s important - they’ll return”.

Started playing Zelda: A Link between worlds - which is a twist on “A Link to the past”, with incredibly refreshing 2D->3D gameplay mechanics. Can highly recommend to other 3DS owners.

Persona 5 did not dissapoint - fantastic artwork and visuals, great music and entertaining gameplay. My only nitpick is localization - it’s good, but not great.

What’s making me happy 18-06-2017

2017-06-18T00:00:00Z

Visiting NorCal and Seattle area over the past 2 weeks, it’s been nice to visit some of my old friends. Those moments, although brief do warm my heart.

Took some time walking around Stanford. The Dish trail turned out to be a great walk.

Watched Hamilton in SF with my good friend Ben - it is indeed a great and very modern musical. Can highly recommend it.

Museum of Pop Culture in Seattle turned out to be a very unexpected gem. It’s a great collection of Music, Sci-Fi and other memorabilia. Their Guitar exhibition alone is worth it.

Visited Fremont Fair over the weekend - a very quirky Art fair with a nice vibe to it. Didn’t buy anything but it was nice to stroll around and take in the atmosphere.

New installment of Fire Emblem series is out with Fire Emblem: Echoes - already got a copy - can’t wait to play it!

Humble Bundle - Sekai Project is out. A bunch of great VN’s for a good price. There is a bit of filler there of course, but it’s worth it for the gems like WORLD END ECONOMiCA alone (same writer as Spice&Wolf).

You Are Not Google is a good article spelling out some good questions that you need to ask yourself before using certain design patterns.

What’s making me happy 05-06-2017

2017-06-05T00:00:00Z

Post is almost on time if you count in PST :D

Started running again for the first time in 5 months - it was only 2k and my time wasn’t the best, but it feels so good to get back in the game.

Went to Jenolan caves over the previous weekend - amazing cave system with a lot of stuff to explore in the Blue Mountains

Cassie introduced me to Spawn Point, which turned out to be a cosy geeky bar in central Sydney. Much alcohol-fueled Mario Kart ensued.

Holy cow, it actually happened - Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception is out in English. It’s a strange combination of a Visual Novel and a tactical RPG but the story is excellent. Playing/Watching the first one is highly recommended before starting this one.

Discovered Nidhogg - a fast-paced multiplayer fighting arcade with beautiful retro visuals and fast responsive mechanics.

Falsehoods programmers believe about time is an oldie, but I still find it hilarious.

Got an anti-fatigue mat for my standing desk time at work - made a surprisingly huge difference in my ability to work standing up. I can churn out a couple of hours per day without much issues now, where before I had sore feet after 2-ish hours.

What’s making me happy 14-05-2017

2017-05-10T00:00:00Z

Saw Green Day in concert this week, they really know how to put on a show, enjoyed it immensely.

Took a drive out to Newcastle with Cassie, stopping by the 7-mile beach and Caves beach on our way. It was a nice day trip to get away from it all.

Finished Uncharted 3 this week. Still feels more like an interactive movie than a game but the story is excellent. I’m a sucker for Indiana Jones-like mysteries.

Found a better allergy specialist to continue figuring out my allergy (or whatever it is) situation. Progress is very slow but any progress on this front makes me happy.

“Sleep deprivation is not a badge of honor” is a good writeup on why it’s bad to give up sleep by DHH. So many good quotes from the article, but I’ll pick one:
“Software development is rarely a sprint, but mostly a marathon. … trying to extract 110% performance from today when that means having only 70% performance available tomorrow is a bad deal. You end up with just 77% of your available peak. Bad trade.”

What’s making me happy 07-05-2017

2017-05-07T00:00:00Z

Went hiking to Uloola Falls this weekend - was the first truly lengthy hike since my arrival in Australia, feels good to be back in the game.

Mastodon is another distributed social network which seems to be taking off a bit better than Diaspora. Interesting to see how they’ll fare in the long run.

Scalable Microservices with Kubernetes is a great course on the foundations of Kubernetes held by Kelsea Hightower, who’s a fantastic teacher in my experience.

Great keynote on Jepsen by Kyle Kingsbury. I frequent the Aphyr blog but watching Kyle’s talks is, in my opinion, much more entertaining and digestible. This is one of the more useful talks I’ve seen this year.

A great post on estimates by Dan Slimmon describing how to do more humane project management. Nothing new if you’ve been a PM for a long time and liked statistics in Uni, but I cannot say true to either of those so found it useful.

Remote to my Evolve GT board is finally fixed so I’m back to crusining around. My trip on Saturday was full of detours to escape traffic but boy, was it fun.

What’s making me happy 30-04-2017

2017-04-30T00:00:00Z

New #happy post, even if a bit late :-P

Humane Development
“… sitting a butt in a chair does not magically produce work …” A good article combining some common-sense idioms about software work. I don’t agree with all points wholeheartedly but the main point is solid.

Interesting post in Wealth Simple about Anthony Bourdain, showing a bit of an insight to making money in publishing business (spoiler: it’s hard).

BirdCheese is an absolutely adorable art blog focusing mostly on birds.

Picked up BioShock Remastered as I’ve failed to play it earlier but the style looked fascinating so I decided to give it another go. Did not disappoint.

Picked up Max Frei again, this is about the 5th time I’m re-reading the entire series of books and it somehow continues to be equally entertaining.

Finally visited Taronga Zoo. First time seeing a Kangaroo live, I have to admit, even though I’ve lived in Australia since September.

What’s making me happy 23-04-2017

2017-04-23T00:00:00Z

I wanted to follow Nat’s example for a while, so here we go! This is a collection of small things that made me happy this week. Hopefully those posts will provide some inspiration to others and allow me to better reflect on myself.

Paw is the most advanced API tool I’ve seen so far, it looks like a very good candidate to replace Postman in my tool belt.

What RESTful actually means - interesting article on what makes an API RESTful in practice.

I’m delighted to see that Casey Neistat’s VLOG is back. I find him very inspirational - watching his insane drive makes me want to do more with my life.

After 9 long years since the last chapter of the series, Persona 5 is finally out, can’t wait to play it!

Sword Art Online abridged came to a close with Ep.11. It’s a great parody series and one of the examples where parody (in my opinion, anyway) surpasses the original.