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  1. SimpleAWS Update

    Update August 2022: I have decided to let this project go. I have very little use for it right now, beyond what I've already done. If somehow, that changes, I'll re-alive it, but consider it dead for now.

    A while ago, I introduced a simple Python library called "SimpleAWS". SimpleAWS …

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  2. My Pelican Structure and Workflow

    I've been using Pelican as my static site generator now exclusively for a while. I've migrated everything off of dynamic CMS like WordPress, because, frankly, I don't need the functionality, and I love the ease and inexpensiveness of hosting things on S3.

    I figured I'd outline my Pelican structure and …

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  3. What's Next for Me

    As you may or may not know, I retired from technology as work as of the end of last year. No more technology projects, no more building web applications for pay, no more figuring out other people's DevOps strategies, etc.

    I'm both sad and happy about this. Sad that I'm …

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  4. Ethics in Open Source Licenses

    I wanted to weigh in on the current broiling debate on adding ethics clauses to open source licenses. First, a little background: I've been in nonprofit/activist/human rights technology since 1996, and that parallels my open source use and advocacy. I learned about Linux, and first installed it (using …

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  5. Methods of DNS Encryption

    The "end-to-end" encryption wave is a great thing - securing the data moving between you and the websites you visit is important. However, one of the issues that presents itself, either when companies keeping track of what you are doing in order to more efficiently sell you things (surveillance capitalism), government …

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  6. Tor, Part 4: Varied and Sundry

    In this last part of my series on Tor (earlier posts: Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3) I want to talk about SSL certificates for onion sites, onion hostname versions, and using Tor with Python.

    SSL Certificates

    For the regular web, ssl allows secure connections to websites, and, secondarily …

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  7. Tor, Part 2: EOTK

    OK, so now, after having read Part 1 you know something about how Tor works, and you've downloaded the browser, and looked around. So let's say you've already got a great website going, but you want to mirror it on the Tor network. How might you do that? As I'll …

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  8. Tor, Part 1: The Basics

    I've known about Tor and onions for quite a while now, but haven't really gotten a chance to dive into them until quite recently. Because I've now had a chance to dive in, I figured I should write some blog posts about what it is, what tools are out there …

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  9. Hosting Static Content with SSL in S3

    I have been generally very happy with using AWS S3 in concert with static site generators (I'm currently focused on the Python-powered Pelican). But AWS is a bit arcane, and SSL is pretty arcane, too, so the combination was a little rough, but I've finally figured it out. I got …

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  10. Joplin As Evernote Replacement

    I signed up for Evernote way back when it was a Mac only product and in open beta back in 2008. I've been a paying member pretty much since you could be a paying member. But in April, when my current subscription runs out, I'm letting it lapse, and migrating …

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  11. NetSuite and Python

    Sorry it's been a while since I've posted - but I'm working on a posting calendar, and hope to be much more regular in my posting.

    I spent quite a bit of time recently, working on trying to get data to and from NetSuite using Python. There was so little information …

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  12. Introducing Simple AWS

    I've talked about Boto3 before. Boto3 is the main SDK that most people use to connect with AWS resources with python. Boto3 itself relies on Botocore, the lowest-level interface for AWS.

    What I learned in the process of spending 2 years focused on AWS is that first, Boto3 is not …

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  13. Azure vs. Google Cloud vs. AWS Part 1

    I've been very deeply involved in the AWS cloud landscape for almost two years now, and before that, I had casually used a couple of AWS cloud resources - EC2 and S3 since pretty much the very beginning of their existence. Although I have spent far, far less time with the …

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  14. Open Source Virtual Assistants, Part One

    Many, many years ago, I was reading a science fiction novel (I no longer remember which one,) and there was a scene I still remember. The protagonist walks into her home, sits down, and says to her house, "Any messages?" The house responds with something like "You have 12 new …

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  15. Boto3 for Simple Queue Service

    There are a variety of ways python applications can talk to each other. APIs might be the most common way, but APIs have a fair bit of overhead - there has to be something there listening all the time. One other way is asychronous communication via a message broker.

    I'd not …

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  16. Boto3 for DynamoDB

    As I described in my last post, Boto3 is the higher level SDK for AWS services. One of the services I've used quite a lot is DynamoDB. DynamoDB is a NoSQL key-value store. It's a little out of the scope of this blog entry to dive into details of DynamoDB …

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  17. Drupal 8 First Impressions

    I took a break from Drupal development for about 2 years, and decided recently (largely for practical purposes) to dive back in. I had spent many years developing websites in Drupal - I started back in 2005 using Drupal 4.7, and I have developed websites on every version since, except …

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  18. gspread vs. pygsheets

    I'm doing a very cool project for OpenIssue, LLC, a company I have been connected to for a number of years. This project involves a lot of API work, including Salesforce, varied database systems, and lots of AWS resources. I expect during the course of this project to get to …

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  19. What is This Blog?

    I've been a blogger for a long time. My first blog, called "Pearlbear's blog" was started in 2002. I've had a lot of different blogs, and I currently have 3, this being the one focused on tech. I can't seem to help it.

    A long time ago I had a …

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  20. Deployment of Static Sites on S3

    Amazon Web Services "Simple Storage Service" or S3 is probably the cheapest and easiest way to serve static web content. There are 3 requirements:

    1. Your S3 bucket is set to host html content.
    2. Route 53 is configured to route traffic to your domain. (Although you could use a domain redirect …
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