🎧Technology

Musings on Technology. Mostly tutorials and rants, some lunacy.
Card image for Using Pre-commit framework with Terraform
Using Pre-commit framework with Terraform
Or: Etiquette and table manners for pinging other people's servers.
Dec 2022
Card image for Getting started with Pre-commit framework
Getting started with Pre-commit framework
Or: Etiquette and table manners for pinging other people's servers.
Dec 2022
Card image for Consuming APIs responsibly
Consuming APIs responsibly
Or: Etiquette and table manners for pinging other people's servers.
Nov 2022
Card image for Create a series of posts with navigation in Jekyll
Create a series of posts with navigation in Jekyll
Add Jekyll posts into a series with series navigation.
Feb 2022
Card image for A practical guide to light and dark mode in Bootstrap 5 and Jekyll
A practical guide to light and dark mode in Bootstrap 5 and Jekyll
Implementing light and dark mode on your Bootstrap 5 + Jekyll website.
Jan 2022
Card image for Nemo - The Ubuntu file manager you didn’t know you needed
Nemo - The Ubuntu file manager you didn’t know you needed
Celebrate 2022 with a shiny new file manager for Ubuntu!
Jan 2022
Card image for Announcing Fediverse.to!
Announcing Fediverse.to!
I've been working on a search engine for Fediverse instances!
Jan 2022
Card image for Easy pretty URL redirects with Jekyll and Netlify
Easy pretty URL redirects with Jekyll and Netlify
Combine Jekyll and Netlify to create pretty URL redirects as easy as 1-2-3.
Nov 2021
Card image for Linking Jekyll pages back to their Git source code
Linking Jekyll pages back to their Git source code
Add a link back to the public Git hosting link for any static Jekyll blog.
Nov 2021
Card image for Optimising JPG and PNG images for a Jekyll website
Optimising JPG and PNG images for a Jekyll website
Use CLI tools to generate resized and optimised thumbnails for articles header images.
Nov 2021
Card image for Quick and easy client-side JavaScript search with Lunr.js
Quick and easy client-side JavaScript search with Lunr.js
Display search results from any JSON data object in the browser using Lunr.js.
Nov 2021
Card image for Creating light and dark themes for websites the right way using prefers-color-scheme
Creating light and dark themes for websites the right way using prefers-color-scheme
Blur the line between desktop and web by letting the OS style your website or webapp.
Oct 2021
Card image for Make Linux apps for Notion, Mastodon, or any web app using Nativefier
Make Linux apps for Notion, Mastodon, or any web app using Nativefier
Notion is an awesome life manager. And Mastodon is great for decentralised internet shenanigans. With Nativefier, I can now enjoy them as apps on Ubuntu 20.04.
Oct 2021
Inserting dynamic data into Jekyll static sites using Python or Bash
Auto-generate Jekyll configuration files with content and avoid creating an API backend.
Oct 2021
Introduction to Ansible
Ansible is the answer to custom scripts and tooling that eventually snowball into a kludge which breaks more things than it fixes.
Aug 2021
Introduction to YAML
What is YAML and why is it about time we started using it?
Aug 2021
Card image for Introduction to Jekyll
Introduction to Jekyll
Jekyll is a framework for building websites - write your content in Markdown, use HTML/CSS for structure and presentation, and Jekyll compiles it all into static HTML. No servers. No backends. No fuss.
Aug 2021
Multi-machine Setup and Configuration with Vagrant
If you ever need to test an app and a database, did you know you can use Vagrant to bring up multiple testing machines at once? Here's how.
Aug 2021
Provisioning with Vagrant
Ansible works well to provision a Vagrant box with everything installed from the get-go.
Aug 2021
Introduction to Vagrant
Vagrant helps you run other operating systems on your computer, meaning you can build things, test things, and do crazy shit without blowing up your own system.
Aug 2021
A Guide to Web Scraping in Python using BeautifulSoup
Web-scraping is a useful but often neglected technical skill. The BeautifulSoup library in Python makes extracting HTML from web pages easy. Do with that what you will ;)
Aug 2021
Using variables in Jekyll to define custom content
I recently discovered that Jekyll's config.yml can be used to define custom variables for reusing content. I feel like I've been living under a rock all this time. But to err over and over again is human.
Aug 2021
Card image for The evolution of ayushsharma.in: Jekyll, Bootstrap, Netlify, static websites, and responsive design.
The evolution of ayushsharma.in: Jekyll, Bootstrap, Netlify, static websites, and responsive design.
In this article, I'll highlight some ideas for Jekyll collections, blog category pages, responsive web-design, and netlify.toml to make static website maintenance a breeze.
Jul 2021
5 key best practices for sane and usable Terraform setups
These are the top 5 lessons I've learned after 5 years of Terraform-ing.
Jul 2021
Card image for Cloud Infrastructure SAST: Scanning Terraform for security vulnerabilities and non-compliance using Checkov
Cloud Infrastructure SAST: Scanning Terraform for security vulnerabilities and non-compliance using Checkov
In this article I explore Checkov, a static code analysis tool for Terraform.
Jul 2021
Card image for Terraform + Helm: A match made in heaven/hell?
Terraform + Helm: A match made in heaven/hell?
I've just discovered that Terraform can deploy Helm Charts as well. But I'm not sure if I like it.
Jul 2021
Card image for Automating ArgoCD using ArgoCD!
Automating ArgoCD using ArgoCD!
In this tutorial, I will show you how to automatically create multiple Applications in ArgoCD using ArgoCD!
Jul 2021
Card image for Getting started with ArgoCD
Getting started with ArgoCD
In this post we meet ArgoCD: a simple pull-based GitOps deployment tool which syncs K8s manifest files with a cluster for easy and no-nonsense deployments.
Jul 2021
Card image for Creating ready-to-use AWS Security Groups using Terraform Registry, Named Groups, and Named Rules
Creating ready-to-use AWS Security Groups using Terraform Registry, Named Groups, and Named Rules
Create parameterized AWS security groups quickly and consistently with Terraform Registry.
Sep 2020
Creating AWS VPCs in 2 minutes with Terraform Registry
Create parameterized AWS VPCs quickly and consistently with Terraform Registry.
Sep 2020
Continuous delivery on GitLab: Pushing Docker images to DockerHub using GitLab Pipelines
Build and push Docker images to DockerHub using GitLab's Pipelines feature.
Jun 2020
Configuring Elasticsearch snapshots using SLM on Google Compute Engine
A tutorial on how to configure automatic snapshots of Elasticsearch using the in-built Snapshot Lifecycle Manager on Google Compute Engine.
Jun 2020
​​Working From Home and Software Engineering
Your time and attention is your primary resource, so deploy it wisely.
Jun 2020
​​The Virus ​😷​ and the Cloud ​⛅​: Tips on AWS cost-saving in these weird ​🤯​ times
2020 is the year startups are trying to save aggresively on cloud spend. I list down some key learnings based on my experience.
Apr 2020
Replicating Bitbucket Pipelines on your laptop for local debugging
I love Bitbucket Pipelines, and debugging them on your laptop is even easier thanks to Docker containers. I'll show you how to debug Serverless deployments and diagnose broken builds.
Mar 2020
Cloning another Bitbucket repository in Bitbucket Pipelines
I'll show you how to allow one Bitbucket repo to clone another during a Pipeline build.
Feb 2020
Deploying git submodules in Bitbucket Pipelines
Git submodules makes it easy have repos for common dependencies, but how to actually clone them in your Bitbucket Pipeline?
Feb 2020
Card image for Automating Amazon Elastic Container (ECR) container builds using Bitbucket Pipelines
Automating Amazon Elastic Container (ECR) container builds using Bitbucket Pipelines
I'll show you how to build a Docker image in a Pipeline and push it to a container registry, in this case Amazon ECR.
Aug 2019
Taming AWS costs with Cost and Usage Reports + AWS Athena
AWS Cost & Usage Reports with AWS Athena are vital for understanding cloud spend. I'll show you some handy Athena queries to break things down.
Aug 2019
Exporting Bitucket repositories and Pipelines with Python
Bitbucket doesn't offer a dashboard yet, or an easy way to fetch information for all your repos and Pipelines. So I wrote a handy Python script for the job. It's great for configuring alerts or building near-real-time dashboards!
Jun 2019
Card image for Rediscovering Logo with Bob the turtle
Rediscovering Logo with Bob the turtle
My very first programming language was Logo! I can still remember guiding that fuzzy little on-screen turtle to draw simple and complex shapes. So I found the Logo Python module and took a walk down memory lane.
Jun 2019
Card image for Automating Serverless framework deployments using Bitbucket Pipelines
Automating Serverless framework deployments using Bitbucket Pipelines
The open-source Serverless framework makes it easy to build and deploy Lambda stacks. I'll walk you through deploying Serverless apps automatically using Pipelines.
May 2019
Automating AWS Lambda deployments using Bitbucket Pipelines and Bitbucket Pipes
Pipes is another great Continuous Delivery feature in Bitbucket: pre-built, ready-to-use, and parameterized deployment jobs.
May 2019
Algorithms in Python: Exchange Sorts
Notes on implementing the basic Exchange sort algorithms in Python.
Mar 2019
The Three Ways of DevOps: Notes on The Phoenix Project
The Phoenix Project is one of the most approachable books for DevOps available today. Highly recommended, especially if you don't already know Conway's Law.
Jan 2019
Working with NumPy in Python
My Udacity Python Nanodegree introduced using NumPy to handle large arrays and datasets in Python. I put some notes togther for referencing later.
Oct 2018
Data Types in Python
Some quick notes describing the basic data types in Python3 and their features.
Sep 2018
Dockerizing Tweet-Toot: A practical guide to deploying your app using Docker
Tweet-Toot is my personal project, a Twitter relay for the Mastodon social network. I recently dockerized the setup and put these notes together to explain the process.
Sep 2018
SublimeText 3 setup for Jekyll development
SublimeText has some cool plugins for setting up a basic Jekyll development environment. Take a look.
Sep 2018
Card image for Gartner's Magic Quadrants: A summary of cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers over the last 5 years
Gartner's Magic Quadrants: A summary of cloud Infrastructure-as-a-Service providers over the last 5 years
Gartner's Magic Quadrants was one of the the first industry reports I read which covered where the cloud vendor's were headed and what their strengths and weaknesses were. I took some time to consolidate the Gartner findings over the last 5 years for comparison.
Sep 2018
Tweet-Toot: Building a bot for Mastodon using Python
I joined the Mastodon social network in 2016 and felt a need for building a Twitter relay. We all left the birdsite for many reasons but not the people we met. So this project is a way to bring some of them over to Mastodon, in practice if not in spirit.
Sep 2018
Card image for Moving from CloudFlare to StackPath
Moving from CloudFlare to StackPath
I love Cloudflare, but after facing some issues with TTFB I decided to move to StackPath, which proved to be a lot faster and feature-rich.
Jul 2018
Understanding vendor lock-in and breaking the cycle
I went through one of Gartner's reports, and it says the key to breaking vendor lock-in is to commit fully to a single technology vendor, be it a cloud software provider, a social network, or our favorite sharing app. It seems controversial on the surface, but I wanted to jot down some quick notes. Maybe the approach is worth experimenting with?
Jul 2018
Rolling clusters for deployment with Terraform
Terraform enables more than infrastructure provisioning, you can even use it for deployments. Combine it with Packer, and you can have a very powerful immutable rolling deployment pipeline.
Jul 2018
Working with Terraform Modules
Terraform's Modules feature allows quickly building re-usable infrastructure templates to provision cloud environments repeatably. These notes will help set up a basic application for high-availability.
Jul 2018
Getting started with Terraform
A basic walkthrough of Terraform, the open-source, cloud-agnostic IaC tool by HashiCorp, the makers of Vagrant.
Oct 2017
Upgrading to HTTP/2
It's about time we all move our web properties to HTTP/2. I list down some gotchas for those looking to migrate.
Sep 2017
HTTP security headers: Referrer-Policy
The web is a collection of inter-connected pages. This means chances are good that someone landing on your website is coming from another one, and when they leave your website, they take a lot of identifiable information with them. HTTP/2 allows you to control what happens to the referrer information when users leave your website.
Sep 2017
HTTP security headers: X-Content-Type-Options
HTTP/2 introduced a new feature which basically just turns off an old default feature: the browser's hankering for figuring out the content type of a resource. Why and how should we turn it off?
Sep 2017
HTTP security headers: X-Frame-Options
Inline-frames enable very basic phishing attacks. You can just include a bank's main website within your own website and lure the user to handover their passwords. HTTP2/ comes with built-in protection against this kind of threat.
Sep 2017
HTTP security headers: HTTP-Strict-Transport-Security
HSTS is a security feature which prevents users from accessing your website over non-secure HTTP. It comes with HTTP/2, is easy to turn on, but very hard to turn off. Here's the why and how.
Sep 2017
HTTP security headers: X-XSS-Protection
HTTP/2 comes with built-in protection for XSS. Here's what it does and how to turn it on.
Sep 2017
HTTP security headers: Content-Security-Policy
HTTP/2's CSP let's you define a white-list of what's allowed and what's blocked on your website. This lets browsers block third-party trackers which try to annoy/harm your users. Here's the why and how.
Sep 2017
Card image for I'm killing Disqus comments on my blog. Here's why.
I'm killing Disqus comments on my blog. Here's why.
I added the Disqus commenting platform to my blog some time ago. And then I found out that it was loading WAY TOO MANY tracking cookies inline and profiling my website users. This is how you build Orwellian software. And shitty software.
Sep 2017
Posting messages to Slack using incoming webhooks and Python3 Requests API
Slack has become a favorite of DevOps/SRE teams across the globe. It's a very easy-to-use and programmatic messaging platform. Here's the quick and easy process to posting messages to your Slack group from Python.
Sep 2017
Using Packer and Ansible to create immutable servers, deploying code, and recycling instances
Packer is an amazing golden image builder. Ansible is a great deployment tool. So let's use them together!
Sep 2017
Getting started with Packer
Packer. Basically Docker for whole VMs. Another great tool by HashiCorp, this one modernises an old formula but retains the simplicity. Building immutable servers was never this easy.
Sep 2017
The different ways I've deployed code over the years: the road to Immutable Servers
I took a walk down memory lane to try and figure out how much my daily work has changed. The concepts are still the same, but the tools have become bigger, because our needs have shifted dramatically over the years.
Sep 2017
Testing AWS Elastic Load Balancer health check endpoints with Python
A quick script for ad-hoc health-checking of load balancer instances.
Sep 2017
Complete Nginx Monitoring with Collectd and InfluxDB
I recently discovered InfluxDB as a great write-heavy database for storing metrics. These are my notes on monitoring the golden signals in Nginx using Collectd and InfluxDB.
Aug 2017
Card image for Deploying Jekyll blog automatically using Bitbucket Pipelines
Deploying Jekyll blog automatically using Bitbucket Pipelines
Because why not? Here's how to build your Jekyll website and deploy it to a VM of your choice.
Aug 2017
Migrating MySQL database tables to InfluxDB
If you ever need to migrate a MySQL database to InfluxDB, say if you were using MySQL as a metrics database because you were too busy not knowing Influx even existed, then this handy Python script can do the job and take care of schema migrations too.
Aug 2017
Backing up InfluxDB databases to S3
A handy bash script to backup your InfluxDB database to AWS S3; great for cron jobs.
Aug 2017
Card image for Setting Up Grafana to use Collectd and InfluxDB
Setting Up Grafana to use Collectd and InfluxDB
Grafana provides out-of-the-box support for InfluxDB, so visualising the metrics you're collecting using Collectd, etc., is straightforward. Here's how to do it.
Aug 2017
Setting up Collectd and InfluxDB on Mac OS X
A quick copy-paste-able process for installing Collectd and InfluxDB on your Mac for some local testing.
Aug 2017
Getting Started with time-series data using InfluxDB
A quick comparison of relational vs time-series databases, followed by a brief hands-on tutorial for InfluxDB on a local Mac OS.
Aug 2017
Getting started with server metrics collection with Collectd
Collectd, a C-based daemon, is a fast and lightweight metrics shipper.
Aug 2017
Retry Strategies for Transient Failures
A very basic reality of computer networking is that... it fails. And when it does, there are ways to retry your connections to make life easier for you and other clients as well.
Aug 2017
Using Route 53 as a Load Balancer
AWS Elastic load balancers do their job well, but they can get pricey. So naturally I tried using Route53 for load balancing traffic. It was a lot harder than I thought, and while this experiment didn't succeed, I'm noting my approach here for better luck next time.
Aug 2017
MySQL Database backups to S3
A handy bash script to backup all MySQL databases to AWS S3.
Aug 2017
Mastodon Users and Instances in Sqlite3 Using Python
The title really says it all: exporting data from JSON and ingesting into Sqlite3.
Apr 2017
The Ultimate Guide to Using Mail in Linux
I installed mutt to send email from the command-line. It's fast and the CLI switches are memorable. Worth a look if you use the CLI for sending emails a lot.
Apr 2017
Fixing ValueError('unknown locale: %s' % localename) in Python
You get 3 guesses for what the solution could be...
Mar 2017
Getting Started with Xinetd
Xinetd is a light-weight and straightfoward HTTP server. Not as powerful as Nginx, but it's great for simple things like configuring health checks.
Mar 2017
Getting City, Country and ISP of an IP address using Maxmind GeoIP
The Maxmind GeoIP database is useful for looking up the country and ISP information for an IP address.
Mar 2017
AWS, GCS, Azure and Digital Ocean incidents by service in 2016
I pulled the data for technology incidents for the major cloud services. The findings were pretty interesting.
Mar 2017
I Have Something to Say II
These have been the confessions of a firefighter who ignored the smoke.
Mar 2017
Card image for Using Weighted, Geo and Fail-over Routeing in Route 53
Using Weighted, Geo and Fail-over Routeing in Route 53
At work, one of my recent projects involved setting up a multi-region failover with weighted-routing support. Thankfully, Route53 has all of these built-in. Here's how to do it.
Mar 2017
You still might need a staging server in 2017
It's 2017 and the cloud has matured by leaps and bounds. So do we still need staging servers?
Mar 2017
AWS, GCS, Azure and Digital Ocean incidents in 2016
I pulled the data for technology incidents on the major cloud platforms. The findings were pretty interesting.
Mar 2017
I Have Something to Say
Ten years from now, if or when I am in another job, no one is going to care whether I ran my production servers with my heart and soul. They will care if I saved money, they will care if I ran it efficiently, but you can do those things while still compromising your values.
Mar 2017
Connecting VPCs in 2 AWS Regions (Site-to-site VPN)
A step-by-step guide for connecting 2 AWS VPSs using self-hosted StrongSwan VPNs.
Feb 2017
Installing PHP 7 FPM + MySQL 5.7 + Nginx 1.10 on Ubuntu 16.04
These are instructions for installing PHP7, MySQL 5.7 and Nginx 1.10 on Ubuntu 16.04. Very copy-paste-able.
Feb 2017
Working with Logical Volume Manager (LVM)
Some notes on Logical Volume Manager. What it is, why it is, and how to use it.
Feb 2017
Fiddling with Logrotate
Logrotate is one of those built-in Linux things that we don't use often enough. Rotating logs, archiving them to S3, pushing them to some remote server/endpoint, etc. It's all doable with Logrotate.
Jan 2017
AWS Route 53 Notes
Route53: what, why, how, why not.
Jan 2017
AWS EBS Types Read/Write Benchmarks
I ran hdparm and dd on GP2, PIOPS, SC1, ST1, and Magnetic EBS volumes. Check out the results.
Jan 2017
Logging AWS spot instance termination
AWS spot instances provide 90% savings over on-demand servers. The downside? AWS can yank them whenever they want and you have 2 minutes to back things up. How do you know when the starting pistol fires?
Oct 2016
Decompressing request using GZIP with Nginx
If you're using a Lua module with Nginx, then decompressing GZIPped data requires some extra handling.
Oct 2016
Compressing output using GZIP with PHP 5.3
It's pretty hard to compress output with GZIP in PHP 5.3, but in case you ever need to, here's how.
Oct 2016
Card image for Introduction to Load-balancing with Nginx
Introduction to Load-balancing with Nginx
I'll explore the basics of self-hosted load-balancing with Nginx using a convenient testing setup using Vagrant.
Aug 2016
Reading JWT token in Phalcon
Here's how to read a response JSON web token in PHP Phalcon.
Aug 2016
Setting Custom 404 Controller in Phalcon
After CodeIgniter, Phalcon was the second PHP framework that I used. Blazingly fast and easy-to-use, one of the first things I did was create a custom 404 response controller.
Aug 2016
DNS Record Types
A quick guide to the different DNS record types.
Aug 2016
Securing Nginx with Let's Encrypt Free SSL Certificate
Let's Encrypt is the self-hosted, industry-standard method of generating SSL certificates for your applications. If you're still paying for SSL certificates you're doing it wrong.
Aug 2016
Vertical Scaling vs Horizontal Scaling
The differences between vertical and horizontal scaling may be simple, but they're critical to using cloud technologies effectively.
Aug 2016
Essential VIM Keyboard Shortcuts
A quick guide of essential VIM shortcuts.
Aug 2016
Notes on AWS SQS
AWS SQS: what, why, how, why not.
Aug 2016
MySQL Physical Backup with Innobackupex
Innobackupex, part of Percona Xtrabackup, can perform physical backups of your MySQL databases.
Aug 2016
Introduction to MySQL Partitioning
MySQL partitioning basics: what, why, and how.
Aug 2016
Card image for Introduction to Fluentd
Introduction to Fluentd
The legacy logging infrastructure we have to deal with today was designed for humans and not machines, so a lot of effort is wasted trying to make backend systems understand log data.
Aug 2016
NANO Keyboard Shortcuts
A quick reference of NANO shortcuts.
Aug 2016
JSON Web Tokens
The following document assesses the possibility of using JWT (pronounced "jot") as a token exchange mechanism for APIs.
Aug 2016
Hello @World
Hello, World, you little blue thing...
Aug 2016