Waikaremoana and COVID-19 Lockdown In mid-March, Mum and I took a trip to Waikaremoana. She'd wanted to go for a while - bit of a "last hurrah" maybe, bit of a birthday present from
Rotorua Feb 2020 - Mountain Biking Around this time of year, when schools are back but it's very much still summer, I try to get away for a couple of days of mountain biking. It’s
Serverless Terraform Repository Up until recently, we have been using Terraform modules in a fairly “normal”, basic way. We either use direct references, or we use git references, depending on if the module
Anniversary Holiday 2020 - Kapiti Island and South Coast of Wellington Our wedding anniversary usually coincides with Auckland anniversary weekend, give or take a few days. When we were in the UK, it was in the middle of winter, so we
Shut the back door - Locking an AWS ALB to CloudFront A common way to use AWS CloudFront is to use it as the front end for an Application Load Balancer. You would normally set it up as so: Person talks
Using AWS WAF for IP restricting a CloudFront distribution AWS CloudFront is an extremely powerful service, which gives you a global Content Delivery Network (CDN) with over 100 points of presence, as well as robust DDOS protection and mitigation,
Cross-Account CodePipeline Deployments It’s becoming more common to split build and deployment infrastructure into distinct entities, and the account boundary in AWS is a good line to split things. Some of the
Posting from the iPad - using Bear (well, maybe) I've been using Bear for writing and note taking for a while. It's a Markdown editor, but it also syncs nicely (iCloud) between my Macs, iPhone and iPad. It works
West Coast Wandering. (2019) Getting there As is often the case, getting there is half the fun. Or half the un-fun in this case. Before we even left - about 4 weeks before -
Blogging on the iPad The previous blog post, about the West Coast, was done end-to-end on my iPad with an external keyboard. This is something I’ve been trying to work out - how
See a pontoon. Swim to a pontoon. Jump from a pontoon A wise couple, Alice and Ross, once told me: If there is a river, or even the sea, go jump in itWe don't have rivers on Waiheke. But we do
Getting started with Github Actions A while back, Github announced Github Actions, which is a containerised platform for running things when you do something in Github, like make a PR, comment, etc. On the surface,
Upgrading Sonoff Switches with Tasmota As I've written before, I have a few of the 16A Sonoff TH16 switches around the place, running the pump, some lights in the bedroom, and as an over-engineered temperature sensor for the spa. Sadly, the current default firmware that comes with the Sonoff
John William Wise - 1936-2018 John William Wise was born the middle child of 3, in a small village called Nunthorpe, North Yorkshire, in July 1936, 3 years before the end of World War II.
Running Docker on the home server - giving life to old hardware Sometimes, old hardware lasts a very very long time. Until recently, I had an iPhone 7, which was mostly perfect running iOS 12 - the battery could be better, but in general it was good. I upgraded to an 8 recently, but mostly for
More IoT switch fun with Sonoff and Tasmota I was looking at Tomas Blog a while ago, when he mentioned that he had bought a couple of the Sonoff WIFI switches to do some outdoor LED lighting. Sadly,
Wellington to Auckland by Train For my sister-in-laws birthday, we all flew down to Wellington, then caught the train up to Auckland on the Northern Explorer.
Waikaremoana, 2017 We go year-about, having one year on the island, and one year doing something else. Last time, we walked the Routeburn Track. This time it was a return to Lake
Apple Watch 2 - 12 months later So last year, when Apple re-released the Apple Watch as Apple Watch Series 2, I decided to get one again. Yes, again. I got the developer-release Series 0 special version thing they did the year before, because why not, they discounted it pretty heavily[
More Homebridge: AWS IoT, Dash Button, SQS, and Broadlink RM3 Mini I wrote about my use of Homebridge a while back (a long while, it appears), and since then, Homebridge has been there, just a swipe up on the iPhone, but it hasn't had a lot of use until iOS 10 came out last year.
Nic's Guide to Surviving Conferences Unlike some people I know (and work with), I'm not big on conferences. I find them equal parts interesting and incredibly tiring, like I've had the world turned up to 11 all day. So far this year, I've been to 3, which is 3
Pay launches in NZ - but only on ANZ I've written about Apple Pay a few times before, it's a technology I like a lot. Retailers blocking Apple Pay - this will not end well Pay: The most secure form of payment Apple Pay in New Zealand: what would that mean? So I
WWDC roundup - How iOS security really works How iOS Security Really Works https://developer.apple.com/videos/play/wwdc2016/705/ Excellent overview of iOS security. Covers off ATS, the secure enclave, the true value of untethered jailbreaks ($1m!). Not super technical, but detailed and accessible. [this has been sitting in my
On building a platform The realisation came to be over a glass of wine (or 2) and a cup of ginger tea on a quiet Sunday night. The realisation that we are not building something for someone else, or something for us that is outside of our control,
End of month 2 at Pushpay - the difference is ? and ☀️ It's been a very quick 2 months since I left ANZ goMoney and started at Pushpay. The time has gone by in a bit of a blur, but a good blur. I was talking to one of the mobile developers over a Friday beer,
