Introduction NixOS is an innovative and powerful Linux distribution built on top of the Nix package manager. Its unique approach to package and configuration management sets it apart from traditional Linux distributions, making it an excellent choice for platform engineering tasks. …

Nixpkg is a package manager that uses a purely functional approach to package management, isolating packages and ensuring that there are no conflicts between them. It provides a powerful language for defining packages, which makes it easy to manage dependencies and ensure that software environments are reproducible and reliable. …

Platform engineering encompasses a broad domain with continually evolving frontiers that require overcoming new challenges to level up the solutions offered to engineers. However, this evolution can lead to situations where previously-made assumptions may no longer be applicable to new solutions. Our team recently encountered this scenario when using AWS…

After my last post generated some interesting discussion on Hacker News, I figured it was worth a little guide on how I manage my iPod Classic on a Linux machine. Thankfully, some very clever people put together the drivers and software to make this a breeze, but there are a…

It’s the 2020s, we continue to become more connected that we’ve ever been, and I hate it! I don’t have the self-control needed to handle these always-on devices. It’s awful. They’re all so incredibly powerful and give so much in terms of information. I, however, will be on reddit or…

I’m trying out a month of Digital Minimalism and I wanted some… encouragement to ensure I stick to my rules. One of which is to use my laptop only for specific tasks I know ahead of time, for an hour a day only. I currently already use Activitywatch to track all my activities on my machine, so I wanted a quick script that would(after an hour) nag me constantly if I wanted to continue using my machine. So I made ActivityNag!

What is Nonviolent Communication? Nonviolent Communication(NVC) helps us communicate clearly by breaking down and identifying our needs and communicating them compassionately. Why? NVC can help reduce conflict towards others and ourselves. It can also help us to hear others out and recognise each other's needs and support acting more compassionately day to day. How At a…

Reviewing your PDP can be a somewhat overwhelming process. So many areas of improvement can be highlighted, it can be a real challenge to discover what to focus on. …

I’ve relatively recently moved into a Platform Engineering position after working in very developer oriented teams for many years. What’s interesting is that the engineers you work with have much more diverse and interesting backgrounds in terms of their experience, so there’s a real opportunity to grow and learn a…