LED strip (WS2812B) with an ATX PSU Project
A small (lol) project to re-use an ATX PSU to power a WS2812B LED strip.
Aaron's Blog
Recent content on Aaron's Blog
Latest posts
Adjusting Prusa MK4S Purge (Clean) Location
I've printed enough on my Prusa MK4S 3D printer that the location for the initial purge to clean the nozzle has ripped a layer off the bed. The fix is pretty simple but requires changing the G-code for your printer.
VS Code Language Servers in Neovim
I've been wanting to do my ESPHome development in Neovim, but the autocompletion and diagnostic capabilities in the dashboard make it hard to leave it. I noticed that it was powered by a VS Code extension . Can I get this running in Neovim?
Fixing my Dyson TP07
Recently fixed an issue with my "Dyson Purifier CoolTM Fan" (TP07) and wanted to share for anyone else that was having the same issue. 
 TL;DR: the cable to the screen was invisibly broken, and this causes the entire fan to not boot.
ESP32-based Smart Switch for PC without WOL
Making a smart power switch for my PC that doesn't support Wake-on-LAN.
How Not to Do Healthchecks
Just because I see it all too often, so here's some examples.
Fixing GoPro videos with ADB, Termux and FFMPEG
A summary of my adventures in the GoPro Quik app, mp4 metadata, root on Android, ADB, static linking and ffmpeg in Termux.
Fixing Security for Terraform Plan
So you want to lock down your Terraform state?
`npm update`, but actually useful
Intuitively, to update a package using npm , you might assume you need to run something like: 
 npm update
 This command does nothing . The correct command is: 
 npm install <package name>@latest

Why We Chose Fluentd Over Fluent Bit
Fluent Bit is a log shipping agent, designed to be lightweight and run in distributed environments. So why did we pick Fluentd, which is written in Ruby and predates Fluent Bit?
SRAM eTAP AXS Front Derailleur Adjustment
SRAM don't make it particularly easy to find a quick reference on eTAP AXS front derailleur adjustment without having to sit through a Youtube video. 
 TL;DW : turn the top screw on the front derailleur clockwise to stop your chain from falling off when shifting up.
VPC Endpoints Without the Magic
A short summary of the two types of VPC Endpoints and how they work.
VPN to any EC2 Instance using SSH
A horrible hack that allows you to create a VPN tunnel from your workstation to any of your EC2 instances -- even one you don't have direct network access to , such as an instance in a private subnet.
A CMS Project
This blog entry is the story of my experience in implemeting a CMS as a consultant. It details some mundane problems I faced in day-to-day work and the solutions that my team and I implemented, probably in more detail than necessary. I make no attempt to avoid the boring and tedious parts of the project. Maybe you can learn something from it, or maybe you can relate to it.
Why You Need PSPs in EKS
Pod Security Policies (PSPs) are an important component of security in Kubernetes. Lets explore what happens without them.
GitLab Monorepo Pipelines
Exploring GitLab's new Directed Acyclic Graph feature to build monorepo CI/CD pipelines.
Git Revert Last n Commits
To revert the last n commits using git: 
 git revert HEAD~3..HEAD

Smoke Testing Infrastructure
Some real-world examples on how to smoke test infrastructure.
AWS Summit 2019
A few thoughts and photos on the Sydney AWS Summit 2019.
gVisor on ECS
Google's gVisor exists to provide a true sandbox for your Docker containers. It replaces runc , the default Docker runtime which recently had a serious vulnerability 1 . 
 In theory gVisor is a drop-in replacement for runc , but does it actually work with Amazon ECS ?
Dark mode on all the things
Arc Dark 
 
 sudo dnf install arc-theme gnome-tweaks 
 nvim 
 
 {
 'catppuccin/nvim' , -- https://github.com/catppuccin/nvim 
 name = 'catppuccin' ,
 lazy = false ,
 priority = 1000 ,
 opts = {
 dim_inactive = {
 enabled = true , -- dims the background color of inactive window 
 -- shade = 'dark', 
 percentage = 0.99 , -- 50, -- 0.15, --…
Antipatterns
Just a list of antipatterns I'm not going to elaborate on in no particular order 
 
 Boiling the ocean 
 Big bang deliveries 
 Developer portals 
 Abstracting the cloud from your engineers 
 Multi-cloud 
 Implementing tooling beyond your maturity 
 Ignoring boring, simple fixes in favour of shiny tech 
 Run the company on your laptop 
 Concurrent…
Google SRE Book Takeaways

 SRE is what happens when you ask a software engineer to design an operations team. 
 
 I just finished reading through the (first) Google SRE book . While a lot of it is what we take for granted today, there were a few worthwhile takeaways for me.
ECS Autoscaling Tips
Amazon Elastic Container Service (Amazon ECS) is a highly scalable, high-performance container orchestration service that supports Docker containers and allows you to easily run and scale containerized applications on AWS. 
 Autoscaling your container orchestration system introduces some complexity. Here are some tips for creating robust autoscaling for your ECS Cluster.
Mass CloudFormation Template Validation
Ever needed to do CI on a centralised CloudFormation repository, and struggled to get template validation done quickly ? Here's how you can do it.
AWS ALB Limitations
Some gripes on AWS Application Load balancers.
Serverless Plugins
Here are some cool plugins for Serverless : 
 
 serverless-log-forwarding 
 
 > I want a log solution that is both durable and has powerful search capabilities
 
 CloudWatch Logs is reliable, but that's about it. You need something that you can search and analyse logs with, and this plugin is the bridge between Lambda and your log aggregation system. 
 
…
Portable Virtualenv
Ever wanted to move a Python virtualenv around but found it didn't work? Here's how you can create a portable virtualenv for Python 3.6.
My First Post
Hello world!