Wilson Mar

Hello!

Posts listed chronologically

2022

Front-end (UI creation tools)

Here are the various tools developers have to create user-centric front-end UIs (User Interfaces)

HashiCorp Consul

Enterprise-grade secure Zero-Trust routing to replace East-West load-balancing using service names rather than static IP addresses. Enhance Service Mesh with...

Well Architected Cloud

What is your team's maturity at adopting best practices? Here is the comprehensive industry-standard framework from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google

Kubernetes (K8s)

Get certified in how to orchestrate containers, especially in clouds, including OpenShift

prodsys - production systems

Here we maintain assets SREs (System Reliability Engineers) use to fearlessesly and adroitly face production.

HashiCups (demo app and infrastructure code)

My customizations and notes about using the HashiCups sample app and infrastructure code created by HashiCorp to do their demos and training

HashiCorp Vault

How to keep secrets secret, but still shared and refreshed.

Jira

How to use Jira for good, not to create frustration

Generate (Evangelist Job Description) from YAML

Example of automated yaml generation (using Jekyll within GitHub) referencing values defined in markup variables at the top of the YAML file

PowerBI

Study to pass Microsoft's PL-100 (formerly DA-100) Query Editor, DAX, and Models

Get to Production (with less stress)

Specific strategies and procedures to address concerns, on schedules, with metrics,

SOC2 (CPA attestation report on each service organization's information security controls)

So salespeople can close faster with prospective customers by providing a SOC 2 Type II report

Changing Enterprises (and individuals in them)

How to move ahead and seize opportunities by making elephants dance, pigs fly, etc.

AWS CDK (Cloud Development Kit)

Write dynamic Python, Java, .NET, NodeJs, or TypeScript code which are synth'd into Cloud Formation or Terraform static yaml

Mac setup (automation using a bootstrap script and Ansible)

So I don't fear losing my macOS laptop

Browsers (and their Extensions)

Make websites look and do what you want!

Markdown text for GitHub from HTML

Tricks to force Markdown to show things the way you want.

Xcode install (on MacOS)

Xcode IDE contains Command-Line utilities, which can also be installed separately. But separate Command-Line installer cause errors for use by Homebrew, Pyth...

HashiCorp Waypoint

Build, deploy, and release across platforms

IoT Raspberry Install

How to setup a Raspberry Pi on macOS with Raspbian, Python, Node, Ansible, Kubernetes

Design Systems

Specifications for look and feel by various tech companies

Python Tutorials

Who will teach you to code in python

Zsh (Z shell on MacOS)

Apple's heavy hand is forcing adoption of POSIX and even switch to Python, to get away from Bashisms

DNS (Domain Name System)

Translate domain names to IP addresses

Backup options

What will happen when you lose that data?

Beta Activities

7+ strategies to make betas more useful

PowerShell Install Coding

Make PowerShell your superpower on Windows and Macs, for fun and profit

AWS Service Catalog

Select your way to a set of services to assemble your app, with curated (known-safe) settings (in Terraform too)

Python Install (Conda Anaconda Miniconda Pip) on MacOS

Confusion and errors from too many alternatives and options

Terraform

Immutable declarative versioned Infrastructure as Code (IaC) and Policy as Code provisioning into AWS, Azure, GCP, and other clouds using Terragoat, Bridgecr...

Distinguished Engineers (and Fellows)

Distinguished Engineers provide the voice of technical developers and operations among executive managers

Scaled Agile

You're SAFe with Agile!

Apple Mac OSX Keyboard Shortcuts

Stay focused and do things faster with Keyboard Shortcuts, HotKeys, and StreamDeck buttons

Text Editors (on the Mac)

nano, pico, vim, subl, code, atom, Eclipse, IntelliJ, Visual Studio, Cloud9, etc.

RBAC vs ABAC vs PBAC (Access Control)

Role, Attribute, and Policy Based Access Control simplify IAM at scale using the most fine-trained way access in AWS, Azure, Kubernetes, and other systems

AWS Automatic remediations (of Vulnerabilities in AWS)

Dynamically audit AWS resource configrations using using OPA Rego, Lambda alerts using SNS through EventBridge, then automatically remediate (via SSM)

AWS Amplify

Create and host web & mobile apps in a low-code way within AWS

AWS Security

Securing secrets in Bash shell scripts while learning to pass the AWS Certified Security - Specialty (SCS-C01) exam

Elixir-lang

Elixir leverages the Erlang BEAM VM for running low-latency, distributed, and fault-tolerant systems in web development, embedded software, data ingestion, a...

Making videos

Tediously using Camtasia, Audacity, OBS, and automating animated PowerPoint on a Mac

Cyber Security

Enterprise data risks and vulnerabilities and how to mitigate them with controls

Dotfiles (MacOS custom configuration specifications)

Instead of clicking around, edit all configurations in a single file of system commands.

2021

Graph databases

It's more relational than relational databases

Python Samples

Commentary on a practical example of how to code Python securely in a production setting.

Power Automate

Microsoft's RPA (Robotic Process Automation) and DPA (Digital Process Automation) product to create and run low-code flows accessing various connectors, augm...

Python Coding

The rules shown in samples using Keywords, arguments, Exception Handling, OS commands, Strings, Lists, Sets, Tuples, Files, Timers

Python

An index to my tutorials about using Python for programming

Azure DevOps

Pass Microsoft's comprehensive AZ-400 on DevOps for automated CI/CD pipelines in the Azure cloud as well as GitHub Actions

Windows client config (Server 2012+)

How I setup my Windows UI look and feel

OPA - Rego

Open Policy Agent runs queries in the Rego language

Food (online, delivered)

How I feed via deliveries by UPS, FedEx, and USPS, instead of dining in different restaurants during the pandemic.

Cloud Services

Here is a dictionary of the 200+ AWS.

AWS Config (Compliance-as-Code)

Dynamically audit AWS resource configrations using using OPA Rego, Lambda alerts using SNS through EventBridge, then automatically remediate (via SSM)

Load Balancers

Distribute load to scale and upgrade servers with no down time. Also route transactions across clouds using ZeroLB

AWS Certifications

Tips and tricks to get certified: links to tutorials, videos, practice exams.

pytest-bdd

Behavior-driven Development (BDD) by automating Gherkin test specs using Pytest for test coverage analysis, data-driven tests, and localization verification

Cloud services comparisons

Which cloud is best? Azure vs. AWS vs. Google

Internet Computer

A distributed ecosystem for hosting containers (apps) without AWS, Google, Facebook.

AWS DevOps (CodeCommit, CodeBuild, CodePipeline, CodeDeploy)

Get certified in Developer Operations on AWS

Python Certs

The topics for learning the Python language thoroughly, for professional status

Apple Mac versions (plus Installers and Wallpapers)

From Mac OSX to MacOS

Rustlang (Rust language)

Efficient, performant concurrent systems programming that compiles to machine running byte-code

Jupyter

"Notebooks" display HTML markup as comments between executable Python code (for Machine Learning and Data Science), for Style Transfer of images, etc.

Pyenv and Pipenv (on MacOS)

The tools to dynamically install and use different versions of Python, packages, all within Virtualenv

Regex (Regular Expressions)

Don't avoid them. Don't fear them. Make them your friend. Here and now.

ROS (Robotic Operating System)

Learn the operating system for controlling simple robots

Classification

Statistics to evaluate classification: Confusion Matrix, Specificity, ROC, and AUC, etc.

Azure Machine Learning

Notes for before and after getting AI-900, AI-102, and DP-100 certified, as we automate ML workflows in the Azure PaaS cloud

AWS IAM (Identity and Access Management)

Create users in group, then add permissions to secure your accounts

AWS Networking

Setting AWS network VPC (Virtual Private Cloud), Security Groups, WAF, BGP, etc.

Van build (designs for living large in a high-top van/RV)

Getting ready for when cars drive themselves, seats in sedans will be replace by beds in vans

eXplinable AI

Ask your Machine Learning/AI why it made the decisions it did, to satisfy GDPR and other legislation

Docker Registry

Where Docker images are stored for Kubernetes to run

DAST for OWASP using SonarQube, ZAP on the Broken Web App, and other tools

Practice penetration testing identifying security vulnerabilities in sample BWA app

DApps (Distributed Applications) for DAOs (Distributed Autonomous Organizations)

How to use and write code running blockchains (Etherium ECS cluster based on AWS Blockchain Templates)

TFE (Terraform Enterprise)

Use Terraform's sentinel command on Workspaces from a module registry, to automatically identify RBAC-based violations

JMeter install (on a Mac)

to emulate HTTP requests testing load/capacity

Git Signing

Sign git commits and tags (for non-repudiation) in GitHub using GPG, Vault, Yubikey, Keybase

AWS Onboarding

Tips and tricks to get account. Lock down root accounts. Install and use the AWS CLI, securely

Security Certifications

There are several (overlapping) ones. Collect them all!

IoT services on Microsoft Azure

Getting value from IoT means getting wisdom from analytics and notifications

Flood the Internet (control JavaScript)

Use Dave Hoeffner's web app (the-internet) which challenge Selenium coders to compare scripts for performance/capacity testing (JMeter, Flood Element, etc.)

Water Conservation

Ways to minimize use of water

Azure Data (within Microsoft's cloud)

Know SQL to pass DP-900, DP-100, DP-300

Chaos Engineering

Use Gremlin, Chaos Monkey, and monitoring tools (such as Datadog) to measure and improve MTTD and MTTR

Azure Cloud Onramp

Azure URLs, Subscriptions, Support plans, Tenants, Directories, ARM portal Keyboard Shortcuts, CLI Bash & PowerShell scripting

CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery)

The path of maturity in organizations going faster via DevSecOps

lightstep (with OpenTelemetry)

How to get proactive health metrics for managing cloud-native applications quicker, with less toil

Microsoft AI (Azure Cognitive Services)

Notes for before and after getting AI-900, AI-100, AI-102 certified, as we automate AI workflows in the Azure PaaS cloud

Azure networking

vNets, Peering, NSG, CDN, Scaling with Load Balancers, Gateways, Firewall, Front Door, Traffic Manager, DDoS

RDP (Remote Desktop Protocol) into Windows machines

Connect to Windows machine in AWS or any cloud from within MacOS, Linux

Azure (Serverless) Functions

Effortless instant (theoretically) infinite capacity to take several different actions

API Management by Microsoft Azure

SaaS-only, proprietary. Get it for .NET

Git basics (client-based workflow)

Here is a quick way to learn Git version control for contributing to open source

Windows on Apple MacOS laptops

RDP to EC2, Amazon WorkSpaces, Vagrant, BootCamp, VMWare Fusion, Docker

Building a team remotely?

8 questions to ask

Asana (freemium open-source and SaaS product)

Get stuff done, as a team or individually, by integrating tasks, calendar, projects (as boards)

Azure Storage (in Microsoft's Azure cloud)

Files, Disks, Blobs, Tables, Queues, SQL, CosmoDB, Synapse, LRS, ZRS, GRS, RA-GRS

Azure Compute (within Microsoft's cloud)

VMs, Scale Sets, App Services, Websites, Function Apps, Logic Apps, Docker Containers, AKS

KQL (Kusto Query Language)

Adds filters missing in GraphQL. Adds graphs missings in SQL. The one language to rule them all.

What is the big deal about Enterprise software?

How to meet enterprise needs with multi-dimensional offerings with no limits of scale and geography

Apple Macbook Hardware

It's stylish because it's expensive

Okta

Universal Directory IAM via OIDC using JWT over OAuth2 for API and SWA or SAML SSO Authentication with MFA for identity federation using SCIM in cloud or on-...

Build load-balanced servers in AWS EC2 using CloudFormation

Automate High Availability in the cloud

Jenkins Setup

Make your robot butler

Azure Monitoring

How to get logs and metrics ingested and displayed with actionable alerts

Docusaurus (v2)

Build book-like internationalized, indexed, searcheable websites using React made easy

GitHub GraphQL (API)

GitHub's REST API was perfect. Now THIS is more perfect.

PowerShell DSC (Desired State Configuration)

Let PowerShell make it right and keep it right

MacOS Bootup

To diagnose and troubleshoot getting started (vs. Linux)

Ports Open (Networking)

What ports are open for hacking on my Mac and Linux machine?

Azure Cloud PowerShell Scripting

Do anything you want!

SIEM

Security Information and Event Management

Azure (Microsoft's cloud) certifications

Collect them all! Microsoft provides free hands-on (gamified) tutorials and free time

Salesforce DX (Developer eXperience) deep dive

Begin to use Git and GitHub (DevHub) for software-driven (modular) continuous development

GitHub

How we configure each GitHub repo to maximize teamwork

Pen-testing

My learnings from FreeCodeCamp's Information Security certification and other resources on penetration testing

Bash (script) coding

Walk though the tricks (Bashisms) used in a script to install, configure, and run many programs on macOS and Linux

GitHub Data Security

How to keep secrets out of GitHub

AWS Cognito (federation)

Federate authentication of authentication through API Gateway via Python Lambda

Encrypt-all (on AWS)

How to store and send files securely using AWS KMS (Key Management Service)

Git Guardian

Full-featured free secret scanning for open source and small teams on GitHub and GitLab

Service Mesh (Envoy, Istio, Linkerd)

The sidecar proxy separates cross-cutting operational concerns from business logic, handing off to a control pane to do the rest

GoLang (Go Language) ecosystem

This is what the cool kids are using to create fast and portable apps

2020

Prometheus (CNCF with Kubernetes)

Open-source (free) monitoring

GCP (Google Compute Platform/Google Certified Professional)

The cloud that runs on fast Google Fiber and Big AI, from the folks who gave you Kubernetes

Git-LFS (Large File System) and DVC

Git clean and smudge binary files to and from a separate LFS Store, transparently

ServiceNow

ITSM automated in the cloud for Incident Management and other ITSM functionality

Technical (and Business) press mentions

Blogs and publications covering technology

InnerSource

Caring about sharing within commerical enterprises using GitHub

CAD (Computer Assisted Design)

To create stuff using 3D printers

Fonts on macOS

You are what font you use

Bash scripts (coding)

This sample Bash script contains multiple features: install, configure, and run (then remove) a web app within Docker on macOS and Linux, with one copy/paste

Printing

How to get your stuff on paper from macOS and Linux

WebGoat

Run the deliberately insecure Java app within Docker with a Contrast Security agent reporting issues and trends over time.

TensorFlow

TensorFlow Certification

AI Ecosystems

Brand names for how corporate overlords are making humans into robots

Histograms (and Frequency Diagrams in Excel)

Visualize your data by splitting them into several bins

GitHub Actions (for free CI/CD)

Run pipelines from within GitHub, for free (instead of Jenkins, CircleCI, etc.)

Google Cloud Build

Build for Kubernetes within GCP

Make (from) Makefile

How the venerable utility is used in Jenkins and GoCD to invoke shell commands around building Docker images for Kubernetes

Developer Teamwork

Tips for encouraging team Code Reviews, Pair Programming, and other techniques for better quality and productivity

OpenCV Color Python

Use the OpenCV to recognize a portion of your screen and have Selenuium Python click on a portion of it

2019

Streamlit

Create data visualizations declaratively for ML and Data Science on a Mac, powered by Python

Web Scraping

How to use the Scrapy Python crawler framework to fetch HTML which Beautiful Soup parsers, on a Mac for Machine Learning visualizations

ImageMagic

Manage photos and Python Scikit Learn

Tesseract (OCR)

Recognizes text and special characters in image files (after Imagemagic), for 60+ languages (using LTSM machine-learning). Used by Selenium

Maven on MacOS (OSX)

for Java, Jenkins, etc.

OpenCV SikuliX robot

Use the OpenCV to recognize a portion of your screen and have Selenuium Python click on a portion of it

Selenium Setup

How to emulate real users touching your web apps using Python controlling Selenium and Beautiful Soup for reading HTML

Katalon (functional testing studio)

Automates testing on top of Selenium, Cucumber

Airflow (by Apache)

Workflow as Code (WaC)

OPA = Open Policy Agent (Rego policy language)

Web service to make decisions about Kubernetes Admission Control and PaC (Policy as Code)

Virtualbox

Although it doesn't have the path to production like Docker and Kubernetes, it's free (unlike VMware Fusion)

Kedro (Python template for production-quality ML data pipelines)

My Bash script explained by an animated flowchart about installing (from Homebrew) Conda (Anaconda3) and utils to run tests and tasks invoking kedro (from Py...

Artifactory (with X-Ray security scan)

Privately store and retrieve binary artifacts vetted of vulnerabilities, instead of public DockerHub, PiPI, etc.

Helm Charts for Kubernetes

Package manager for Kubernetes

GoCD (Continuous Deployment and Delivery)

Integrated DevSecOps from Thoughtworks

Flood (vs. Selenium automation) coding

Coding Flood Element TypeScript which (like Selenium) emulates manual actions in Google Chrome browsers

Microtrader (sample microservices CI/CD to production Docker within AWS)

How to build, test, and integrate async http/2 app (written in Java with Vert.X) using Shell scripts, Boto3 Python, Ansible, Packer, IAM, KMS, CloudFormation...

Cloud Formation

to animate Templates in StackSets of Stacks in AWS

Flood local setup

Install Flood Element CLI to run TypeScript which (like Selenium) emulates manual actions in Google Chrome browsers

AWS X-Ray

Tracing within the AWS Cloud

Tricentis Tosca

Model-based functional testing through the lifecycle

SAP Fiori

performance engineering SAP UI5 Fiori sample apps using Tricentis Flood.io Elements

DevOps job tasks (the work of DevOps)

Get DevOps done using job tasks and projects based on job tasks defined by professional certification

Git Patch (Bash script)

Create patch messages to apply into other repos, like old-school pros

Git messages (conventions and styling with emojis)

so you can separate one commit from another, succinctly

CICD pipeline (Docker of Python Console program being tested within TravisCI)

Featuring a Bash shell script that does everything, explained

AWS CLI

Tips and tricks to install and use the MacOS Terminal for Programmatic access to AWS.

WordPress

A vibrant ecosystem for quickly building and maintaining dynamic feature-rich websites

AWS Lightsail (and other VPS)

Create and use EC2 instances at fixed prices per month, vs. other Virtual Private Servers

JMeter in the cloud for distributed performance testing

Impose load remotely from Docker instances in the AWS cloud

Grafana (visualization)

Open-source server to display metrics for DevSecOps and others

Protractor (automated functional testing)

Using Jasmine to verify AngularJs web app UI based on Selenium (behavior) driven by Gherkin specs run by Cucumber

Site Reliability and Load Engineering in Cloud Economics

How to achieve work productivity, high availability, scalability, resiliency, low latency, at lowest cost?

Splunk

Logging indexing and visualization

TruWeb (from MicroFocus)

Performance Testing and Engineering on macOS

2018

GatsbyJs (JAM Stack web app generator)

Create and publish fast, secure, feature-rich, mobile-friendly, scalable, low-cost cloud-native websites that rank high in searches

Pulumi

Deploy and control AWS, Azure, GCP, K8S, Serverless by coding JavaScript, TypeScript, Go, Python, etc.

SMACK Mesos stack (based on Mesosphere/Marathon DC/OS)

SMACK = Spark, Mesos, Akka, Cassandra, Kafka, etc.

Salesforce myTrailhead

Create custom content on Salesforce's Trailhead website

How to contribute to a Non-profit using Salesforce

An example of a document for volunteers of technical talent

Salesforce Alexa for Business skills for custom voice UI

Voice commands via shared Echo devices in common rooms

Git configuration

How to setup Git clients like a pro

Salesforce exhibitors (partners)

Answers to the same questions

Salesforce Selenium (Protractor Gerkhin)

Automate not just testing but also explanations about user state

Salesforce Einstein

Artificial Intelligence built into the Saleforce you already have

Salesforce Data (Importing and exporting)

How to get data in and out of Salesforce

Salesforce NPSP performance

How Gatling is used to measure the speed and capacity of microservices for Salesforce add-on NPSP (Non-Profit Success Pack)

Salesforce Non-profit (NPSP)

How the Salesforce Benefit corp benefits non-profits, technically

Salesforce Heroku

Start using Heroku with a Postgres database and integrate it with Salesforce

Salesforce Apps

Apps and Components to add from AppExchange

Salesforce Jobs

Where to look, favored certifications, sample job descriptions, tips

Salesforce Project Plans

Strategies for getting going quickly yet sanely

Salesforce projects, superbadges, and sample apps

Build a portfolio of apps you built yourself

Salesforce certifications (training and exams)

To get recognized for your knowledge, skills, and persistance

Salesforce offerings

Competitors, Languages, Clouds, Industries, Domains, GitHubs, editions, pricing, features, versions

Salesforce onboarding

Get up and running on Trailhead and Developer tools

Salesforce rock stars

Individuals and teams who have published or influenced

Salesforce Users

Roles, Personas

Salesforce Glossary of Acronyms

Know the lingo

Salesforce Events (Meetups, Tours, Conferences)

Visit them all to shake hands and hug everyone!

Salesforce Ohana

Offices, Financials, Social media, Communities, Events, Dreamforce, Dreamoji, Store

Serverless computing

Invisible ubiquitious server clouds across the land

Apigee API Management

Design, Installation, configuration, Usage

Deeplens deep-learning enabled wireless video camera

It comes with a little computer and a big AWS AI cloud

Maximum limits (in macOS file descriptors)

Set this higher to prevent errors during high load

Chatbots

Computers interacting with people by voices, without keyboards

Anomaly Detection

Here's a way to achieve WTF (What the Face) - the unexpected

Machine Learning Algorithms

Tools for data science

Azure Machine Learning certification

Exams 70-773 and 70-774 toward an MCSA

MacOS (Command-Line) Utilities

kill, grep, sed, regex, cron, etc. vs. Linux commands

Manage MacOS Disk Space

Tools and techniques to minimize disk space usage

Home Assistant

Control a wide range of IoT devices using Python on Raspberry Pi, iOS, and Android

Hacker vs Sustainer (Culture)

How to succeed in production by resolving the singular source of conflict teams must resolve for DevOps