2021-Feb-08

Ansible secrets and vaults

One chicken-and-egg-problem with setting up servers is taking care of secrets. Secrets are hard, and they’re especially hard to keep secret. When working with systems management, you really want to keep your secrets secret, but you also want to share them with your peers. In essence, this is a conflict of interests and a hard problem to solve in a truly usable manner. But it’s not impossible. Lately, i’ve been re-introducing myself to Ansible because it’s a way to efficiently communicate intent between peers.

2020-Mar-19

TIL: Recovery Mode From Boot Selector

Today i learned that you can enter the recovery mode through the Boot Volume selector when starting up a Mac. Until today, i’ve booted the computer, hurried up to hold down ⌘ R for an unknown amount of time and hoped i got the timing right. Now, i boot with the Alt (Option) key down, wait for the boot volume selector and then press ⌘ R. Okay, so it’s another unnecessary step, but somehow i feel less stressed.

2020-Mar-12

On Hold

The Macaduk conference has been moved to May, in hopes that the COVID-19 pandemic has passed (into) Stage 3 by then. I’m still planning on giving my Security for humans talk, but in two months, not two weeks. The upshot is that i’ve been given a second chance to actually make this a good talk :) There’s a discussion group on the Macaduk Whova (it’s an app for events) for my session and if you feel like pitching in with your questions and ideas, please join!

2020-Feb-27

Alive in the box

Lo and behold. The cat in Schrödinger’s speaker box is alive! Or in more concrete terms, i will be speaking at Macaduk this year after all! Yes, the Macaduk organisers had dropped my request, but then, another already confirmed speaker had to cancel, so i’m on the stage again. And with a little less time that i’m entirely comfortable with. Like last time, i’m going to talk about security, but this time from a more humane perspective.

2020-Feb-13

Shrödinger's Speaker

Last autumn, i volunteered to speak at the MacAD.uk conference 2020. As i neither got an acceptance, nor a rejection letter, apart from a two word response, “great thanks”, i’m now assuming i won’t be talking there. Therefore, i haven’t prepared a talk. My nightmare scenario is that i’ll show up at the conference and they expect me to present. Update: That’s pretty much what happened! Except that they did give me four weeks of warning :)

2019-Dec-03

When Recording

I have a hobby i haven’t written much about here. I sing. I started to sing by a happy happenstance and a fortunate misunderstanding when i was the Nights Watch at the music camp my kids were at and i thought the commanding “Everyone must come to the singing auditions” really meant everyone and not just the campers. I was scared to bits, but after getting over the terror, i started really liking it!

Learning in public

Curing my incompetence, one step at the time, in front of an audience.