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Guilty, with no chance to prove innocence.

In Netflix blocking all access to their service except through a vanilla ISP connection, the end of both net neutrality and online privacy is coming to a head, much faster than I would have expected.

To be fair to Netflix, I have a fairly bespoke networking setup at home, mostly so that I can play around with my new technology.  I am an ‘early adopter’ – so want to play with things without…

Terraform Design Patter - multiple providers

Having gotten to grips with terraform over the past few months, there’s an awful lot I’ve learned from the multitude of useful posts and books published on the subject, but also from getting firsthand experience.

One of the design patters in terraform that has piqued my interest was the use of multiple providers, as given in the aws_vpc_peering_connection_accepterexample in the terraform…

For the past few months I’ve been working back on Amazon Web Services (AWS) – trying to remember all the knowledge I curated during the earlier years of my career.  It’s been really interesting to see quite how far AWS has developed since I first used it nearly a decade ago.  Whilst I’d seen the headline stats published at the start of the ACloudGuru training course; it’s still a massive shock…

Facebook are currently disputing the idea that they listen in on real-world conversations through over-reaching it’s permissions to access the microphone. Yes – users want the apps to access the microphone when actively recording video or using audio – but not when having a private conversation with someone in the ‘real world’ – with the phone off.

The biggest issue I have with this is the…

For the past few years I’ve been kept away from lower-level coding and ops through being employed to fulfill quite different functions. It’s all part of a wider career ambition, so I can’t fault the fact I’ve not been down and dirty with the code – but coming back to it has been quite a shock (in a good way).

I left full time SysAdmining towards the end of 2011, with puppet becoming mainstream,…

I feel a bit like I’m going back to my roots with this blog post.  Technical documentation on how I’ve setup a relatively niche product, with an opinionated stance on how it should be setup.

What is Apache Nifi?

Apache Nifi is an easy to use, powerful, and reliable system to process and distribute data.  It supports powerful and scalable directed graphs of data routing, transformation, and system…

For the past few months much of the media coverage has been focused on the incompetency of the parliament to execute Brexit.  I say Parliament, for it is not just our incompetent government; but the opposition and machinations behind the scenes that are failing us.  Whilst I fervently disagree with Brexit, a greater concern is that those incompetent chiefs in place now will be the ones left…

Why you shouldn't be too concerned about a lack of Blockchain talent.

The hype around Blockchain has hit fever pitch over the past 18 months, with the current trend in articles focusing on whether your business has the requisite talent to take advantage of this new technology.  I’m sure there are many guys out there sitting down to work out if they are behind the curve, and if Blockchain really is something they need to be ahead of their competitors on or not.

My…

Nick Timothy’s Resignation Letter

Having read through Nick Timothy’s resignation letter [read it here], this really stood out to me:

because modern campaigning techniques require ever-narrower targeting of specific voters, and we were not talking to the people who decided to vote for Labour.

This implies modern campaigning is about winning, about getting power, about putting your party ahead of the country.

When we look at the…

I thought long and hard as to whether to publish this piece about the recent general election in Britain.  The purpose?  Potentially for something for me to read back on to understand my frame of mind this week, but also to set a benchmark for what is likely to become a tumultuous few years for those living in the British Isles.

It’s been frustrating to be waking up on the day after an election…

Those eagle-eyed views of this site will have noticed that I’ve not been so good at my running recently.

Instead of waiting for the ‘right’ time to start, I’ve already started, and I intend to continue my 5k every other day.

I don’t particularly like it at the moment, but I imagine that’s because I’m not running fit – and as I get fitter I anticipate I’ll like it more.

It’s a hard slog getting…

Ionic, for HTML5 app development.

One of the things I’ve always loved doing is creating throwaway apps that solve very simple problems.  Historically these have been to educate me on the ‘art of the possible’, rather than actually produce something workable.  I’d always fall at a hurdle, or find a gap in my learning that would take me off on a tangent – the next gap to try and fill.  It’s been a lifetime of constant learning,…

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If you want to send ether; please do 🙂

I’m having a bit of a sort out at the moment, and that includes getting rid of some of my snowboards.

I’ve listed them all on ebay; at:

My original Burton snowboard

My WIDE LibTech Skate-Banana

My NORMAL LibTech Skate-Banana

If you’re interested in any of these; please bid!  I’ve also got some yellow/green Burton Mission bindings (m) that I may sell, and some size 8 Salomon Boots.

  Thanks,

Andy

Blockchain; gateway to cryptography

“What is a blockchain?” is probably one of the most frequent questions I’ve had to answer in the last 12 months.  What makes it more difficult is the answer more often than not has to take into account the varied knowledge and experience of the inquirer.

I’ve got a reasonable background in understanding the cryptography ecosystem from my days at a systems administrator, and having to secure…

I’ve always been a fan of the concept of HTML5 app development, mostly due to the fact that I knew little Java/ObjectiveC in order to be able to even begin to do native.

That said, in the past 12 months I’ve been able to help out on an iOS app developed in ObjC & Swift; and then a hackathon where we used some neat networking tricks to create the “Internet of Christmas Jumpers” – more on that in a…

Freedom to do evil

One of the key paradoxes about freedom is the freedom to do both right and wrong.  We balance freedom with laws that restrict certain freedoms by providing limits on what society regards as acceptable.  In a completely open model, those freedoms can be used for both good and evil.  Despite being of a liberal mindset, I also understand that we must take responsibility for our own actions, which…