Weekly newsletter 10 4 2021

Hello everyone!

You just never know the direction a day will head when you wake up. Sure, you can make plans and hope for the best. But I think we all know what reality thinks of our finely laid plans (cue condescending laughter.) For instance, this Sunday I had planned to go out for a 15 mile trail run, followed by standard Sunday activities – read cleaning, and making fresh pasta for the family.

The reality is that I bashed my foot on a rock while running and ended up going to urgent care only to discover that I had fractured my pinky toe. Needless to say, this changed our Sunday plans a bit. While I was disappointed and more than a little frustrated, I had to accept the change. To go with the flow as it were.

If nothing else, the last 18 months have shown how unpredictable and chaotic the future can be. The answer is not to give up or stop making plans. The answer is to be fluid and adaptable with those plans, seeking out opportunities and coming up with clever solutions. I’ve learned to take my lumps, lick my wounds, and come back for more. I hope you have too.

Here’s what going on with Ned in the Cloud this week.

YouTube Channel - https://www.youtube.com/c/NedintheCloud/

There’s a fair amount of confusion when new users of Terraform encounter input variables and local values. When do you use each, and what is the difference? That is the topic of last week’s video, another installment of my Terraform Basics series where we take a close look at one specific aspect of Terraform.

This week is an off week for Terraform Tuesday. I am working on a demonstration deploying an application to GCP using GitHub Actions and Terraform. I wrote the application myself using Python and Flask, and I’m feeling a bit proud. Not that it’s a particularly interesting application (it’s not), but I’ve never written a web application in Flask from scratch and I was excited to get it working.

Day Two Cloud - https://daytwocloud.io

Last week was a sponsored show from Akamai focusing on how they helped IBM Cloud transform their cloud portal application. The portal application originally started out as a monolithic app running on CloudFoundry with a single instance per region. Working with Akamai, IBM Cloud was able to seamlessly break the monolith up into microservices and create a multi-region version of the portal that was more resilient and performant. We had Tony Erwin from IBM Cloud and Pavel Despot from Akamai on the show to tell the story, and they don’t shy away from getting into the details. I found it a compelling case study into how web applications can evolve from a traditional approach to cloud native.

This week we’re changing it up by talking to a fellow podcaster about building an Open Source Software community. Emily Omier runs a consulting business helping tech startups do exactly that, and during the episode she shares some of her best advice for growing and maintaining a community. While we mostly focus on OSS, I think the information is more broadly applicable to any tech community out there. If you are active in any tech communities, there are some valuable insights from Emily you won’t want to miss.

Daily Check-In

We’ve got four solid episodes from last week (Tuesday was a bit of a wild card.)

1. Community Recognition Programs - When are they worth trying to join?
2. HashiCorp’s State of the Cloud Report - Skills and security are the key takeaways.
3. Part 2 of HashiCorp’s State of the Cloud Report - Methodology matters and here’s why.
4. Making a Plan for Learning - How do you stay up to date, and what should you stay up to date on?

Highlighted episode - Check out both part 1 and part 2 of the HashiCorp State of the Cloud Report.

Other Stuff

This week I am starting to revise my Terraform Getting Started course on Pluralsight. The current course is two years old and was created based on version 0.12 of Terraform. While it isn’t as big of a jump as the move from the first version of the course using 0.9, there’s a decent amount that has changed in the last two years. In addition to updating all the exercises to version 1.x, I am also looking at how I can change the demos to make them as relevant as possible without learners getting frustrated. I have a few ideas already, and I’m sure there’s more to come!

Top Five Cloud Posts:

1. AWS Cloud Control API - One API to rule them all and in the Terraform bind them.
2. Let’s Encrypt CA Cert Expires - A planned retirement still causes pain for those who didn’t heed the advice.
3. OpenVSCode from Gitpod - Now you can run VS Code in the browser without MSFT’s special sauce.
4. CloudFlare vs. AWS round 2 - R2 Storage takes aim at S3 and AWS pricing.
5. AWS IAM docs bad? - Ben Kehoe has FEELS, and I agree.

That’s all for this week. Thanks for reading! If there’s something you’d like to see in my newsletter, please let me know.