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Running Go Programs on AWS App Runner

AWS App Runner was launched in 2021, and offers developers an incredibly easy way to deploy web applications.

Go Packages, Go Docs, and the Distance Image

I think Go has taken a really smart approach to package and dependency management by simplifying things, removing the need for a complex package manager, and creating a global namespace.

Getting going with Go

I've been getting going with Go for about a week now and I've already learned so much! I realized last weekend that I had two primary interests I want to focus on throughout my journey. The first is that I really want to learn the language itself, and get to

I'm gonna learn Go!

Even though I've got some experience with Go, I'm gonna set out on this journey as if I'd just learned of Go today.

Notes on backing up my Mastodon server to S3

So, now that the dust has settled, and I have some time to set up a more efficient method for backing up my Mastodon server, I figured I'd try simply dumping my PostgresSQL database and saving it to S3.

How much I’ve spent so far running my own Mastodon server on AWS

Yesterday I took a poll to find out what would be most interesting to write about. I will abide by this poll.

Auto-Incrementing DynamoDB with Lambda and a Function URL

I worked this out a while back using TypeScript, but for some reason I decided I needed to redo this in Python. So, here it is. This is simply a CDK application that deploys an Amazon DynamoDB table called “Tickets” as well as a single AWS Lambda function with a

Notes on serving images and a brief Mastodon server outage

Mastodon appears to be a really good copy machine, and makes cache copies of all kinds of image files, videos, and avatars based on the accounts you follow.

Notes on configuring Amazon CloudWatch to monitor my Mastodon server

In the end, I wound up with this nice looking custom dashboard in CloudWatch and a few alarms set up to monitor the metrics I decided were critical.

Notes on running a Mastodon server on AWS

I’ve been pretty Mastodon-curious for a couple weeks now, and after spending some time tinkering with an account I set up back in 2018 on mastodon.social, I decided to explore setting up my own instance. These are my notes.

AssumeRole Compatible S3 Clients for MacOS

There are many, many excellent client applications available for connecting to an Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3) Bucket from macOS. Over the years, I’ve used plenty of them. But, I haven’t been able to find a good one that is also compatible with connecting via temporary credentials issued

Calculating Server Capacity for High Availability

Today I was studying for an upcoming AWS Certification and I had a chance to learn a handy method for calculating server capacity for high availability. It’s easy! First, you need to know how many Availability Zones are available in the region you are working in. And, within that

Transferring Amazon Glacier Deep Archives from one account to another

I recently decided to re-do my personal AWS accounts using AWS IAM Identity Center (SSO) and AWS Control Tower. For reasons mostly having to do with house keeping, I decided to start from scratch with a new parent account and migrate things in while cleaning up others. It’s pretty

Today I Learned

I’m starting a new mini-series on here. It’s called “Today I Learned.” I was recently reading “What to blog about” by Simon Willison, where he talks about writing his own TIL posts, and it occurred to me that this is what I should also be doing. Like Simon,