A community that becomes your cohort of mentors
While traditional mentorship has its value, sometimes a group of helpful peers can be a great way to grow. The Server Room is such a community.
Self-Hosting Web Applications Using Podman
Container-based deployment is a neat way to self-host an application. However, I always try not to go overboard with complexity. That’s why I won’t immediately join the chorus of Kubernetes disciples when members of my DevOps community ask me how to deploy container workloads. Searching for viable alternatives, I recently explored the much simpler alternative…
If you’re a bad at management, don’t blame remote work
This article is a rant triggered by an inane argument made by Eric Schmidt, who blamed remote work for what’s clearly management failure.
When is it recommended to adopt a new DevOps tool?
In this article, I discuss the pros and cons of checking out and maybe adopting new DevOps tools, even though the ones we have are still doing their job.
Always update the BIOS first
Today, I spent hours trying to install Bluefin on an older laptop. The process always failed with Failed to write boot loader configuration. I tried vanilla Fedora Silverblue and ended up with the same disappointing result. Following a tip I found on the Bluefin Discord, I finally tried installing Fedora Workstation, and was able to…
A rocky but encouraging start with Rails credentials
For the biggest part of this week, I’ve been working on upgrading the Rails versions of our managed hosting dashboard application. I started with Rails 6.0, and now I’m at Rails 7.1. Today, I struggled for a long time with deploying to the staging instance on Heroku. At the centre of my issues was that…
Taking time off is part of the job
Are you getting PTO (Paid Time Off)? If you’re employed, you probably do. It means that even when you’re taking time off work (within limits), you won’t forgo any of your salary. Thanks to the people who fought this right out for us over the last century or so, it’s part of any proper employment…
I was on the Beyond Blocks podcast
Oliver Davies, a Drupal expert whom I’ve known for years, graciously invited me to join him on his podcast. “Beyond Blocks” is a weekly podcast about Drupal, PHP, open-source, and related software development topics. I enjoyed every minute of our chat, which covered all kinds of topics such as infrastructure automation, Drupal, WordPress, DevOps, Linux…
The secret to Linux workstation peace of mind
In our inaugural Deep Dive session in The Server Room, I gave a demo of my Linux workstation setup. (Deep Dive sessions are part of the recurring events program in my DevOps membership community.) In my demonstration, the operating system did, of course, take centre stage. After my community members, it now your turn to…
