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Risk, Process, and Balance

The operations of a company will have intrinsic risk. Risk occurs each time we decide to take an action or an inaction. This means that anything we choose to do, or not do, has associated risk.

An organization which has an unhealthy aversion to risk has a much higher chance …

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Configuration Management and the Golden Image

When operations first became a thing, system administrators stood up servers using a base image from their favourite distribution. Things were done manually. Some administrators created their own distros, some wrote customised shell scripts to be run once-and-only-once to provision software and settings. This method worked, but it was slow …

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The Three Deployment Management Strategies

There are three deployment management strategies that could be used to maintain a system. Each has pros and cons which I outline in this document.

run once

A proceedure that is run once and only once to setup a system's configuration values and settings. A semaphore or flag generally blocks …

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Tips for getting pull requests approved

Pull rejection sucks!

You have just coded, implemented, and submitted a pull request. A short while later the request is declined by an upstream maintainer and you feel crushed. We have all been there. Today I'm going to show you a better way. This article will teach you how to …

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nosslsearch cname is a bad idea and solution


Google SafeSearch and SSL Search for Schools suggests implementing the following changes to the network:
To utilize the no SSL option for your network, configure the DNS entry for www.google.com to be a CNAME for nosslsearch.google.com.

Here are the reasons why this is a bad idea …
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What do you name your python virtualenv?


What do you name your python virtualenv?

I name my virtualenv 'virtpy'. Is there a standard name being used out there?

Maybe we can come to a consensus as a standard name? Please feel free to post your virtualenv names here as a sort of poll.

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Today I lost a customer

Today I lost a customer.

I added some new code to LinkPeek to accept coupons and I didn't think of an edge case. This ended up creating an uncaught exception in my server side code which ultimatly served the newly subscribing customer an HTTP 500 error page.

The damage was …

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LinkPeek.com, webpage to image, was a by-product

tldr; When faced with pivoting or killing a project, take a good look at all possible by-products. Don't miss the hidden gem in a project's slag!

Last year I built yoursitemakesmebarf.com, a novelty web application which allowed anonymous link submission. The software would automatically take screenshots of submitted links …

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I'm petrified of launching my web application


I'm petrified of launching my web application because I'm fearful that I won't ...
  • acquire users
  • support my users well
  • scale in a timely manner
  • react quickly to feedback
  • monetize the application

But most of all I'm scared that nobody will like me. I'm scared of failure.

Now that I got …

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Occupy Wall Street Stack vs Queue

Occupy Wall Street contributors claim to use a "stack" to determine speaking arrangements.

I plan to explain how the term "stack" used in this scenario does not align itself with the mathematical or computer science definition.

The term stack means First In Last Out or "FILO". For example: a person …

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How did Stack Overflow get initial traction?

Stack Overflow was a progressive and natural evolution of the standard clunky forum.

Using ajax it created a more fun and clean user experience.

Using badges and karma to gain responsibility allow forums post to become a game. People naturally like to see progression and growth, being able to watch …

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© Russell Ballestrini.