Blog

Brett Weir • 6 min read • Part of the YAML survival guide series

All the ways to write a string in YAML

Mar 13, 2023 — There are multiple ways to represent a string in YAML, but it's not easy to know why you'd choose one over another. Here's a primer on YAML string syntax and why and when to use each one.

Brett Weir • 5 min read • Part of the Dockerfile idioms series

The apt sandwich

Mar 2, 2023 — Learn how to make your Debian-based containers dramatically smaller without having to switch to another base image.

Brett Weir • 24 min read

Schedule GitLab CI/CD pipelines with Terraform

Feb 27, 2023 — You run a pipeline on every commit, right? But what if you haven't committed in awhile? In this article, we'll automate a weekly pipeline schedule to exercise all projects, active or not.

Brett Weir • 14 min read

Transfer files with ssh

An exploration of the flexibility of Unix command line tools

Feb 20, 2023 — Unix tools are designed to be useful in new ways that tool authors don't anticipate. In this article, we'll use ssh to re-create the functionality of scp.

Brett Weir • 18 min read

Write great command line utilities with Python

Feb 13, 2023 — Learn how to create simple, standalone, useful Python CLI tools to solve even the most mundane infrastructure problems, so that you can start automating everything.

Brett Weir • 20 min read

Lighthouse testing with CI

Follow along as I automate Lighthouse for the first time

Feb 5, 2023 — If you want to really understand how something works, you gotta spend some time with it. Let's see what it would take to create our own Lighthouse CI/CD, without using the packaged solution.

Brett Weir • 6 min read

Use pyenv for local Python development

Jan 27, 2023 — Learn how to use pyenv to bootstrap isolated Python installations, so that you can have the best of containers and local development.

Brett Weir • 3 min read

So long, Signal

Thanks for making encrypted messaging more popular

Jan 26, 2023 — My reaction to Signal deprecating their SMS support. I liked having one less messaging app to think about.

Brett Weir • 7 min read

Serve static assets with Cloudflare R2

Jan 11, 2023 — Cloudflare's S3 offering turns out to be really easy to set up. I'll show you what R2 can do by building an asset CDN for brettops.io.

Brett Weir • 7 min read

Find missing files in Linux

How to find things you need on a Linux machine

Jan 9, 2023 — Not every missing file requires a trip to StackOverflow. With a little knowledge of your system, you can often troubleshoot problems faster and without leaving the terminal.