Blogs
2024
The only good cloud is a google cloud
2023
Enforcement can have the inverse effect
I live in a small city which is extraordinarily easy to cycle through.
Everything is a short distance, the cycle infrastructure is kept tidy and there is a distinct absence of anything that could even remotely be considered a hill.
2022
That time my manager spent $1M on a backup server that I never used
The games industry is weird: It simultaneously lags behind the rest of the tech industry by half-a-decade in some areas and yet it can be years ahead in others.
What attracted me to the industry was not the glossy veneer working on entertainment products, or making products that I enjoyed using (I wouldn’t describe myself as a gamer): I love solving problems, especially problems that are not easily solved.
Microsoft Teams; using one monopoly to aid another
2021
DevOps; a decade of confusion and frustration
I don't trust Signal
2020
GPG::SSH; notes for current best practices
When I start at a new company, I always do a refresher on my key security.
One thing I always hate about SSH is that the encryption scheme is pretty basic actually, and once your ssh-agent is loaded- anything can just request a sign/authorize.
Cloudflare is turning off the internet for me
Ok, I’ll admit, I’m not the largest fan of centralisation, but rarely do I so swiftly and effectively feel the crushing weight of it.
I happen to use a very nice Chromium-based web-browser which, when it opens has javascript disabled. Often I find that nothing works so I re-enable javascript and continue about my day.
2019
How to survive an open office.
I’ve been struggling for some time to find a decent enough guide to actually accomplish anything meaningful (other than ad-hoc break-fix work) in my office.
One of the things I know is that this problem seems to affect me more than others, so for many people this advice (or lamentation) might seem like it comes from a weird place.
2017
On the importance of self-hosted backups.
A long time ago I built a pretty big storage computer (16TB) which I built because SSDs at the time were pretty small and most laptops came with only a single possible SATA drive bay for storage.