Neil Caldwell Blog

Introduction As the world of tech moves further and further into serverless, including serverless deployments, at least, using computers that are not managed by myself. Vercel Vercel is a cloud platform that provides managed infrastructure for deploying and running the user-facing parts of web applications. It offers serverless functions, whi... Read More

Introduction Leaning towards serverless applications, over VMs, then containers, and now server “less”, mainly in terms of less servers for me to manage, someone manages them of course :) Today I’ll be implementing a simple serverless application using S3, API Gateway, Lambda, Step Functions, SNS & SES. Inspired again by Adrian Cantrill’s... Read More

Introduction With Terraform creating new instances each day, destroying instances, and then troubleshooting aformentioned instances, I often wonder at the end of the day if I shutdown any rogue instances, especially on a Friday. Leaving unnecessary instances on overnight, or, over a weekend, can impact the bill at the end of the month significa... Read More

Introduction After setting up many SAML integrations in my previous role, I thought it’s about time to create my own web identity federation system, with a view to host a few serverless applications behind this login page eventually. Firstly a timesheet logging page, with users/projects/time-codes, then a few lambda functions to start/stop any ... Read More

Introduction As I relaxed on my annual trip to Noosa, QLD, I read a linkedin post, from the state of WA, highlighting the state of web security during our last Australian Federal Election cycle. The Challenge Now I didn’t have a laptop with me, however I thought I’ll seee what I can achieve with an iPhone and a chromebook which I had with me.... Read More

Multi Cloud Training Tips I’ve been on a path to gain the AWS Security Speciality Certification for some months now, it’s always been next on my agenda, however some other items have jumped in with a time sensitive timeframe, such as Google Cloud - Qwiklabs, learn to earn Qwiklabs blog post Qwiklabs Choose your DevOps Adventure Microsoft ... Read More

So, I last attempted to setup a azure dev ops pipeline, to build my jekyll site into a web app, without complete success. I then investigated Azure Static Web Apps, which may well offer a suitable solution to hosting a blog/personal website. As I had my jekyll site running locally, using a local docker image on my MacOS. I followed these steps... Read More

Install gh cli for MacOS: brew install gh gh auth login git config --global user.name neilcaldwell git config --global user.email 12889874+neilcaldwell@user.noreply.github.com The gh cli now features a straight forward weblink, which leverages the web browser, excellent if you have 2FA setup on github, and that’s of course highly recommended. ... Read More

Using a few blog posts for inspiration, especially Davy’s Tech Blog with a few updates to make it work in 2021, and also on my MacBook M1 apple silicon. I first started with github pages, which used Jekyll, markdown, which was awesome, then I added cloudflare in front to leverage their global CDN. However github pages only allow a few themes, u... Read More

In Sydney, we entered our first lockdown earlier this year, around July 2021. I’ve done a few single session yoga classes from DVD or youtube, and I found Yoga with Adriene to be a good, clear, light hearted yoga instructor. After first picking “breath”, mostly as it was the newest, then some research on reddit, around which 30 day challenge wa... Read More

Well, now I have purchased a bike rack that can hold 2 bikes, even though we are restricted to 5km or our own LGA currently due to a NSW public health order. As it turns out, The Hills LGA is one of the larger areas to be restricted within. However the bike paths start to run thin, the further north you travel. Looking into these resources here ... Read More

After a little bit of thought and head scratching, about where would be a good fire trail, I recently decided to attempt the Faulconbridge Bike Trail. Based on the car guidance from here we successfully navigated west of Sydney to Jennings Road, with many other long weekend holiday makers, towards the Blue Mountains. Lookout Point, well worth... Read More