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Most of my blog posts dating back to 2002. Some written here, some written elsewhere and aggregated here.
Ruby logging best practices and tips

Ruby logging best practices and tips

11/11/2017
Ruby is an opinionated language with inbuilt Ruby logging options that will serve the needs of small and basic applications. Whilst there are fewer alternatives to these than say, the JavaScript world, there are a handful, and in this post, I will highlight those that are active (based on age and commit activity) and help you figure out the options for logging your Ruby (and Rails applications).
The Human Side of Digital Operations

The Human Side of Digital Operations

23/10/2017
It’s the morning of February 28, 2017, and vast swathes of the internet are unavailable. From individual sites to services that thousands of others rely on — such as Slack, Quora, GitHub and Trello — many are unavailable. You probably remember the day that ‘human error‘ took down so much of the internet, with broad components of AWS that no longer worked. This isn’t the first time an outage has brought the internet to its knees — but the sheer scale of AWS always means that the impact is felt.
An Overview of the Kontena Platform

An Overview of the Kontena Platform

19/10/2017
Back in my Docker hosting post, I noted that deploying and orchestrating containers live was still a missing step in the Docker workflow for many developers. A handful of complex orchestration tools entered to fill the void, with large cloud companies offering to host your setup for you. In that post, I intentionally avoided tools that sat in the middle of this process by helping you to deploy containers to cloud services, but there are plenty of them, including Docker’s own official cloud service. There is still plenty of opportunity for similar services and less than a month ago, I heard of a new option, Kontena.
Node logging best practices and tips

Node logging best practices and tips

28/09/2017
As is traditional with the JavaScript world, there are a dizzying amount of options for node logging. In this article, I will dig into some of the better and lesser known options to see what’s on offer and help you log better in your Node applications.
Tools and Practices for Documenting Microservices

Tools and Practices for Documenting Microservices

23/08/2017
I will assume you are at least familiar with the concept of microservices — loosely coupled services that provide discrete solutions to business use cases that you can combine to solve current needs and demand. The architectural pattern has gained popularity over the past years, and although not everyone is completely sure what “doing it right” looks like, it’s a concept that suits modern needs and is here to stay for the foreseeable future.