Infrastructure Engineering: Systems, Networking, Databases & the Internet
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Network architecture, internet protocols, database and systems design, and the infrastructure engineering decisions that determine whether real production systems hold up under load.
Bulk Domain Availability Check via CLI (Bash + Python Only)
You have a list of 50 domain name ideas. Maybe you are launching a product, picking a brand, or trying to find something halfway decent that has not already been squatted. Whatever the reason, typing them one at a time into a registrar search box is not a workflow, it is punishment. This post shows […]
Read more →Fix SSH WARNING: REMOTE HOST IDENTIFICATION HAS CHANGED
If the fingerprint of your remote host changes you will see the following error message appear: There are many ways to fix this. The easiest of which is simply to delete your “known_hosts” file. This will mean you just need to accept new finger prints on all your SSH hosts. Yes, this is very lazy…
Read more →HTTP/2 Rapid Reset CVE-2023-44487: Test Your Server on macOS
Introduction In August 2023, a critical zero day vulnerability in the HTTP/2 protocol was disclosed that affected virtually every HTTP/2 capable web server and proxy. Known as HTTP/2 Rapid Reset (CVE 2023 44487), this vulnerability enabled attackers to launch devastating Distributed Denial of Service (DDoS) attacks with minimal resources. Google reported mitigating the largest DDoS […]
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The Legacy Choice: Why x86 in the Data Centre Is Now an Expensive Decision, Not a Default
The economics crossed the tipping point quietly. Most enterprises missed it. The ones who noticed are not going back. 1. How Defaults Become Legacy Every technology that eventually becomes legacy spent years being the obvious choice. Nobody chose x86 over anything. It was simply there, it worked, the tooling was built around it, the hiring […]
Read more →What Is Minification and How to Test If It Works
1. What is Minification Minification is the process of removing everything from source code that a browser does not need to execute it. This includes whitespace, line breaks, comments, and long variable names. The resulting file is functionally identical to the original but significantly smaller. A CSS file written for human readability might look like […]
Read more →Check SPF, DKIM and DMARC Email Security DNS Records
There are three basic ways to secure email, these are: Sender Policy Framework (SPF), Domain Keys Identified Mail (DKIM), Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting & Conformance (DMARC) definitions. Lets quickly discuss these before we talk about how to check if they have been setup: SPF helps prevent spoofing by verifying the sender’s IP address SPF (Sender […]
Read more →qwinsta & rwinsta: Manage Remote Terminal Sessions
I regularly administer Windows 2000 Server and Windows Server 2003 machine using Terminal Services. In W2K I use Terminal Services in Administration mode and in W2K3 I use Remote Desktop. Basically this is the same thing but it’s packaged a bit differently on the two OSes. In both situations there are only 2 users allowed […]
Read more →K8GB: Cloud Native GSLB for Kubernetes Explained
Today I am a happy bunny!!!! Yury Tsarev (a very clever dude) did a presentation to one of the Kubernetes co-founders Tim Hockin. The demo was one of absa banks opensource projects called K8GB (a cloud native GSLB for K8s): https://www.k8gb.io/ Why do I like K8GB? Because it uses a single CRD that integrates to […]
Read more →How to Poll a URL with Watch and Curl in Linux
If you want to quickly test a URL for changes, then the linux Watch command couple with Curl is a really simple way to hit a URL every n seconds (I use this for blue/green deployment testing to make sure there is no downtime when cutting over):
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Why Visible Technology Leaders Build More Trust Than Silent Ones
1. The Corporate Voice Is Losing Credibility A strange thing is happening in executive communication. The more polished it becomes, the less believable it feels. For years, large organizations trained executives to communicate through multiple layers of lawyers, communications teams, governance forums, media handlers, and reputation specialists. Every statement became progressively safer, flatter, and more […]
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What Is My IP Address? IPv4 Explained for Beginners
Firstly, let me acknowledge that there are lots of these kinds of posts on the internet. But the reason why i wrote this blog is that I wanted to force myself to consolidate the various articles I have read and my learnt knowledge in this space. I will probably update this article several times and […]
Read more →Technology Leadership Competence: Self-Assessment Guide
A Self Assessment for Technology Leaders This questionnaire explores how you think about technology leadership, systems, teams, and delivery. There are no right or wrong answers. Each question presents four options that reflect different leadership styles and priorities. Simply select the option that best reflects your natural instinct in each situation. Select one answer per […]
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