Posts
The Journey to Split Keyboards
I’ve been using mechanical keyboards for years, but always stuck with traditional 80% layouts. My first attempt at going split was with a Corne keyboard, but it failed after just a few weeks. However, the appeal of better ergonomics and reduced strain during long coding sessions kept drawing me back to split keyboards. Plus, there’s something oddly satisfying about completely relearning how to type—because who doesn’t enjoy feeling like a complete beginner again?
Disclaimer: My good friend Claude wrote this post. I only created a hack and told him about it.
Ever needed to connect to AWS services like RDS or DocumentDB from your local machine, but they’re locked away in private subnets? Instead of doing something reasonable like setting up a VPN, here’s a solution that involves using your production Kubernetes cluster as an impromptu bastion host. What could possibly go wrong?
The Problem
At my current $job, we recently migrated to ArgoCD from Terraform for application deployments 🙏. With that came a challenge: how do we pass Terraform outputs into Kubernetes manifests?
For example, our AWS Managed Prometheus endpoint lives in Terraform state, but our apps deployed via ArgoCD need that URL. Sure, we could use External Secrets Operator (and we do!), but it adds an extra layer of indirection when you just want to see what values are being injected into pods.
IRSA leverages OpenID Connect to authenticate service accounts, providing a secure and convenient method to access AWS resources. This approach simplifies the management of credentials in your Kubernetes environment.
To test AWS IRSA (IAM Roles for Service Accounts) in a selfhosted Kubernetes cluster, I used a spare Raspberry Pi 4 and Talos (Kubernetes Operating System). This could have easily been done with docker on my mac but I wanted to do a real test so I can migrate the config over to my homelab cluster.
Cheesy post that was generated by chatGPT
Hello everyone! Today, I want to share my intriguing journey of adapting a pre-made Python tutorial on building a URL shortener to use DynamoDB for its backend, and how I successfully crafted a unique, user-friendly frontend with the help of ChatGPT.
As someone who has always been captivated by the simplicity and usefulness of URL shorteners, I wanted to create my own but with a personal touch. I knew that in order to achieve a functional, secure, and scalable URL shortener, I would need a strong backend, an engaging frontend, and an efficient infrastructure.