Monday, Feb 7, 2022
A major rewrite of my Docker Ansible project to make it easier to manage Ansible versions inside the projects. For users of the containers, it should be no difference, however, it makes it easier if you want a specific version of Ansible running inside your CI/CD pipelines.
Seems a bit weird linking it to GitHub, but that is pretty much where the community views it (although technically that is just a mirror of the GitLab repo Docker Ansible.
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Thursday, Jan 13, 2022
Had a good moment yesterday. I spent 2 hours “troubleshooting” a problem where I had terminated 2 ends of armoured ethernet in my house… Turns out that I had wired them upside down. Reminded me of years ago getting dusty cabling up buildings in the middle of the night.
Actually, I’m pretty glad that I don’t have to do that anymore.
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Monday, Jun 28, 2021
There is so much great documentation within the AWS docs, sometimes it is as much about finding the right article to lead the way. I just stumbled on [AWS’s Security Reference Architecture guide(https://docs.aws.amazon.com/prescriptive-guidance/latest/security-reference-architecture/architecture.html)], this is like a treasure map for cloud security fanatics! It’s built around a simple three‑tier web app (web, app, data), but the twist is that every layer is build with security in mind: IAM, logging, network defenses, encryption—you name it, it’s diagrammed and explained. You get clear advice on account structure (Security, Infrastructure, Workloads OUs), where each AWS service fits, how they talk to each other, plus pointers to code templates in CloudFormation or Terraform.
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Tuesday, Jun 15, 2021
New sidebar menu inside GitLab.com - I’ve shown the infrastructure parts with Terraform state. Exciting to see more options in there all the time.
What’s particularly exciting is how GitLab continues to expand what’s available in that sidebar. It’s not just about code anymore—more options for CI/CD, infrastructure, and even security are becoming increasingly prominent. It’s a nice reflection of how GitLab is growing into a truly comprehensive DevOps platform. I’m looking forward to seeing what else they sneak into that ever-evolving sidebar. Little upgrades like this show that the GitLab team is really paying attention to user workflows.
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Friday, Jun 11, 2021
Docker Hub will be [removing Autobuild for free users from June 18th(https://www.docker.com/blog/changes-to-docker-hub-autobuilds/)]. I have recently (about 3 weeks) transitioned away from Autobuild for my biggest container project (Docker Ansible) and actually have been nicely surprised that building with GitLab has resulted in build completing quicker and with better error handling.
It does seem a bit of another end of an era for Docker Hub as initially, I used it for all of my container builds. I guess maybe we can’t have nice things because of crypto miners.
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Wednesday, Jun 9, 2021
I have had a lot of discussion over the past couple of days over what it means that HashiCorp Terraform is now at a v1.0 release. In summary, I think it suggests at the maturity of the tool, which is something I have seen with businesses onboarding Terraform, it is hard to make a guess as to when long terms support for systems will continue, especially for everyone who remembers the v0.11 -> v0.12 migration.
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Thursday, May 13, 2021
It is really great when small things come along that simplify or reduce the amount of code you need and the implementation of Tags as part of the Terraform AWS Provider does exactly that. Thanks for making my future life easier. This has just come out Default Tags in the Terraform AWS Provider,
The Terraform AWS Provider (v3.38.0+) now supports defining default tags at the provider level—letting you centrally assign tags like “Environment,” “Owner,” or “Project” across almost all AWS resources, with individual resource tags overriding these defaults. While Auto Scaling Groups require a manual merge workaround, this feature streamlines tag management, enhances consistency, improves readability in infrastructure-as-code, and aligns with AWS best practices, making global tag enforcement simple and efficient.
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Thursday, May 6, 2021
Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about team collaboration and how best to explain the sometimes elusive magic of effective teamwork. One analogy that keeps coming to mind is netball. While it may not be the most obvious metaphor, netball actually provides a surprisingly rich lens for understanding how strong teams operate. Yes, netball.
For starters, in netball, everyone has a specific position with clear boundaries — both in terms of where they can move and what they’re meant to do. Sound familiar? Like in any good team, you’re not meant to be everywhere, doing everything. You need to know your zone, play to your strengths, and trust that others are holding theirs. Chaos breaks out pretty fast if the Goal Defence decides to be the hero and take over the whole court. (We’ve all worked with that person.)
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Tuesday, Jan 21, 2020
I have discussed this slightly before, however, some background may be necessary. I build a relatively well used Docker container with Ansible. Originally this was all based on Python 2 which was the default Python that is installed with most operating systems. However, this was soon to change!
Python 2.7 will reach the end of its life on January 1st, 2020 The longer message that read out when installing using Python 2 was:
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Sunday, Jan 12, 2020
The end of the year is a great time for evaluation and retrospection; and the end of the decade is the same. It often seems that time passes slowly and changes pass quickly but it is probably the opposite. Personally, I have seen a lot of changes over the past 10 years both personally and within work and this post is an effort to evaluate and understand them.
Marriage and Children How could I start without mentioning that within the past 10 years I have gotten married and had 2 children. Anyone who thinks that marriage and children will not change them, frankly is either lying to themselves, or drastically underappreciating life change. I could not think of another event that has changed my life so dramatically as having children. They literally stop your life and alter it.
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