Tech: Blog

In my previous post I covered my creative writing setup and the post proved quite popular, so I thank everyone who read and left comments for that. Next in this series of posts covering my various setups is my setup for technical writing. In this post I use the term “tech writing” to cover my documentation, blog post, and longer form technical writing work.

Or how Google IO made me realise I probably need to find a new job in 2 years

I didn’t attend Detroit last year, but did attend Valencia, and while it was great to be back at a reasonably large in-person event again, the event did feel slightly subdued.

In my last post, I looked at the decision process I went through in deciding what to migrate my long time Jekyll-powered website to. I arrived at Astro and in this post I cover my experiences in migrating to and using Astro.

Last week, I stupidly left the apartment to take a stroll with my office keys. As I shut the front door to double lock it and stared at the wrong set of keys in my hands with disbelief, I realised my mistake. To make things worse, I was sick, the weather was foul, and my wife wasn’t due to return from a work trip until late evening.

The docs as code trend, where technical writers and developers work more closely using similar tools and processes, has grown in the past few years.

I finally finished my first fiction novel after two years of work and have already begun work on my second. I’ve also produced several short stories and have some game supplements in slow progress.

Some time ago, I mentioned a process I triedthat allowed me to partially recreate my Mac setup on

I have stuffed so much into my website over the years it was starting to creak

I have long been concerned about the state of browsers and the dominant

Or, maybe in a more click-generating sub-heading, “how to combine creative writing and programming to create interactive fiction”.

For Windows and macOS users, Docker Desktop has been the main way to use Docker containers for many years. While it remains a viable and usable option for hobbyists and small development teams, recent pricing changes for larger user bases sent people looking for alternatives. I am not looking to replace Docker Desktop myself, but I was interested in trying the alternatives and seeing how they compared.

I have been using Parallels for a couple of years now, primarily for running Windows virtual machines (VMs), but occasionally Linux VMs too. I mostly use it for playing games, testing, and the occasional Windows-only application. There are some other long-standing options such as VirtualBox, QEMU, and VMWare. I am intentionally ignoring anything that also runs containers, such as Docker, as that’s a different use case, and a whole other gamut of options.

Thoughtworks’ Technology Radar is a regular time to take a look at what experienced industry experts think might be the next wave of tools, practices, and technologies to consider or stop using.

I have always loved messing around with operating systems and desktop environments. I believe my first graphical operating system was AmigaOS. In the decades since I have worked through various Windows versions, every version of macOS since 7.0, different Linux flavors and combinations, and many other small niche OSs I have forgotten about in a sea of windows and menus.

It's Cybersecurity awareness month every October and this year I thought I'd share something relevant from my recent trip to cover IT Arena in Lviv, Ukraine.

I have been to many tech conferences over the years. I have sat in so many startup pitches and talks that are barely masked marketing pitches. I have introduced myself and told people what I do and where I am from so many times that it all becomes something of a blur.

The silly season, or the quiet season for news depending on your perspective and country. Still, before we all prepare for packed announcement times in September and October here’s a few observability and cloud native related nuggets from across the interwebs.

Every time Apple announces a new macOS beta, I am tempted to somehow

Well hello there! If you’re reading this monthly round up of Observability (and related) news, then you’re one of the few not on vacation and I thank you 🙇 . That last sentence was basically me making an excuse for not having too much to write about, but there’s just enough

Ian and Chris speak with Cristian Heilmann, Principal Program Manager Developer Tools at Microsoft about his long career through developer relations/evangelism, teaching technical skills, and so much more!

Learn about the unintended environmental impact and cost of the proliferation of cloud services, frameworks, and "throw an other service at it" development.

Phew! A group of Chronospherians attended Monitorama back in person in Portland and we had a whistlestop (partial) week meeting customers and observability enthusiasts. I had a talk which sparked a lot of interesting discussion, we hosted a very successful whisk(e)y tasting, and all in all, had a great time.

What are the hidden impacts of all the infrastructure and dependencies that are used to run a cloud native application?

Navigate what open source monitoring standards are available, where in the ecosystem they fit, and how interoperable they are with each other.

Yes, KubeCon returned with vengeance to Europe, and over 7000 cloud native hungry folks made their way to Valencia to see what was new in the world of Kubernetes and cloud computing. There was a lot that happened, and for more detail, read our wrap up post, the rest of this newsletter summarizes some of the most relevant topics.

This post looks at the first steps for instrumenting a JavaScript application to report OpenTelemetry metrics.

Observability is fast changing from a practice that those close to engineering knew was useful, to a practice that everyone knows is useful for technical and business reasons.

Many years ago, I took over a small publishing company, that's an

The sun is rearing its sleepy head across much of the northern hemisphere, making news a little quiet this month. But we have a few choice items for you, and with the first in-person conference seasons in a while on the horizon, there’s plenty more to come!