I’m writing this fresh from a technical screening. My first ‘infrastructure work’ in a few weeks. It’s reminded me I love what I do. Otherwise, life has been brutal. I won’t dwell, but my time and energy have gone to things I’d never choose. But one technical task has sent me back to my flow state. With that comes perspective. A realization that I’m deeply fortunate. That I’m anchored by a…
In my experience, IaC can be a bit contentious, especially for new adopters who struggle to see why it’s worth the time. There’s something to it though - once you learn, it’s hard to go back, and there’s a point where standardized infrastructure is essential. As Terraform is still my tool of choice, I thought I’d quickly break down the practices I find most key to productivity. 1. Right-Size Your…
The Story That Led Me To NixOS Like many kiwis at the time, my partner and I were preparing for a shift overseas. She was finishing her master’s and had just accepted a job offer; I was preparing for certifications, juggling work and the move admin, about to start my own job hunt. As I was studying, a notification popped up; for some reason, that seemed the perfect time to try updating Ubuntu on…
Cloudflare took parts of the web down again a few days ago, in another outage. Their response can’t get enough credit: it was clear, concise and quickly delivered. The details told a painful and familiar story. A mistake was made in a networking configuration update a month earlier; because the related configuration wasn’t yet ‘live’, nothing happened. A second update then pulled the pin over a…
Honestly, it doesn’t. Of course it can be. Between the custom language, the litany of optional features, the novel approaches to packaging and configuration, the tweaks to Linux conventions, the lack of consensus on structure and all the jargon to express everything Nix - you can burn weeks. But to actually get things done? To get a working machine, customize it with the latest and greatest in the…