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Notes from the practice.

Long-form posts about what I'm building, what's worked, and what broke along the way. Mostly agentic AI on AWS now, with a deep archive on the infrastructure layer underneath. No hot takes, no listicles.

GenAI Agentic AI AI Autonomy Amazon Q CloudFormation Security Networking Cost Bug-Byte
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Everything else, by year.

A working library of posts going back to 2019. The recent ones are about agentic AI; the older ones are about getting AWS foundations right — still useful, mostly evergreen.

2026 3 posts
May 04, 2026 I Built a Kanban to Learn Autonomous Development on AWS Apr 06, 2026 Level 5 Autonomy Needs Level 5 Guardrails
2025 1 post
Oct 03, 2025 Experimenting with Custom Agents in Amazon Q
2024 8 posts
Jun 26, 2024 Building a Custom Knowledge Base with Amazon Bedrock - Part 3 Jun 23, 2024 Master your AWS Certification: Insider Tips from a Veteran Instructor Jun 11, 2024 Securing Your AWS Environment with Virtual Private Clouds (VPC) May 14, 2024 Building a Custom Knowledge Base with Amazon Bedrock - Part 2 Apr 30, 2024 Building a Custom Knowledge Base with Amazon Bedrock - Part 1 Mar 11, 2024 Bug-Byte #5: Unlocking AWS S3: Overcome Access Denied with Insider Tips S3KMSVPC Endpoints Feb 20, 2024 AmazonQ - building a GenAI assistant Feb 07, 2024 Using boto3 to create an Amazon Q AI assistant - OrbitLIVE
2023 10 posts
Sep 07, 2023 OrbitLIVE: Security Checklist Aug 21, 2023 AWS VPC Best Practices | AWS Whiteboard Jul 27, 2023 OrbitLIVE: Essential AWS Security Services Jun 08, 2023 Where does AWS WAF fit in the AWS Security Ecosystem? Apr 12, 2023 Manage AWS EC2 Instances from the Command Line Using Python and Boto3 EC2Boto3 Apr 03, 2023 Set up an on-demand Minecraft Server on AWS Fargate Mar 21, 2023 Improve the security of your AWS account IAMVPCKMS Mar 15, 2023 How to Save Big on Big Data in AWS S3 Jan 10, 2023 Three ways to reduce your AWS bill EC2 Jan 03, 2023 Bug-Byte 4: Systems Manager Node Password Reset Failing Systems Manager
2022 7 posts
Nov 20, 2022 Bug-Byte 3: Intrinsic function import failing on CloudFormation stack deployment CloudFormation Nov 05, 2022 Bug-Byte 2: KMS Key does not exist KMS Oct 26, 2022 Bug-Byte 1: AWS EC2 Auto Scaling Group Instances Fails on Launch AWS EC2 AutoscalingKMS Jun 14, 2022 Becoming Agile - takes time (and buy-in) May 16, 2022 Simplifying CloudFormation deployments using Nested Stacks Feb 13, 2022 Template strategy for AWS CloudFormation Jan 05, 2022 Protecting resources managed by CloudFormation with a Stack Policy
2021 5 posts
Dec 13, 2021 AWS Security services - the 'must-have' list Dec 08, 2021 CloudFormation changesets - review changes before running a stack update Nov 30, 2021 Re:Invent 2021 - Partner Keynote Jul 19, 2021 Using a Deletion Policy to protect resources deployed using AWS CloudFormation Feb 20, 2021 Automation is the public cloud's true superpower
2020 20 posts
Nov 26, 2020 Using Conditions in your CloudFormation templates Nov 19, 2020 Setting Up an SFTP Server on AWS Managed Service Nov 04, 2020 Identity and Access Management (IAM) - Practice Least Privilege IAM Oct 28, 2020 Using Parameters in your CloudFormation templates Oct 12, 2020 Using CloudWatch to Monitor VPN Connections cloudwatchvpc Oct 06, 2020 CloudWatch Logs Retention Periods CloudWatch Logs Sep 30, 2020 Using the Cloudformation attribute DependsOn to control resource creation CloudFormation Sep 28, 2020 Using CloudWatch Log Insights and AWS Athena to troubleshoot Network issues CloudWatchAthenatroubleshooting Sep 25, 2020 Monitoring a Web Server on AWS cloudwatchapache Sep 09, 2020 Monitoring AWS Health Events SNSSlackLambda Aug 23, 2020 AWS Organizations Best Practices AWS OrganizationsGuardDutyCloudTrail Aug 03, 2020 Gitlab and Cloudformation GitLabCloudformation Jul 26, 2020 Deploying VPC Prefix Lists with CloudFormation CloudFormationTwitch Jun 21, 2020 Using the Amazon Workspaces Cost Optimizer WorkspacesCost Optimization May 04, 2020 Using AWS Config to ensure EC2 Cost Optimizer is enabled EC2Cost Optimization Apr 21, 2020 Creating Multiple AWS Backup Vaults to protect resources AWS Backup Apr 17, 2020 Using Lambda to Disable IAM Users IAMLambdaEventBridge Mar 30, 2020 Monitoring Workspaces With Amazon EventBridge Amazon WorkspacesAmazon EventBridgeMonitoring Feb 02, 2020 AWS Config: Deploying across Multiple AWS Accounts, Regions, and Organizations AWS ConfigS3AWS Config Rules Jan 02, 2020 Ensuring Continuous Compliance with AWS Config AWS ConfigS3AWS Config Rules
2019 13 posts
Aug 25, 2019 Public EBS snapshots and other things to worry about EBSSecurity Aug 23, 2019 Running Windows-Based Business Applications on the AWS Platform Jul 27, 2019 Running a Windows-Based SSO Solution on AWS Jun 24, 2019 Leveraging AWS CloudFormation Change Sets to manage change Jun 23, 2019 AWS CloudFormation and GitLab CI Pipeline Jun 21, 2019 AWS Shared Responsibility Jun 15, 2019 Reduce EC2 Spending Jun 02, 2019 Putting the AWS Security Audit program to the test in FinTech May 25, 2019 AWS Well Architected Framework well architected framework May 20, 2019 VPC Flow Logs - an Introduction journeyvpclogging May 05, 2019 Running Minecraft on an EC2 instance Feb 17, 2019 AWS Resolutions for 2019 Feb 07, 2019 How to know if your AWS environment is secure
2018 16 posts
Nov 21, 2018 Surviving Re: Invent 2018 Sep 15, 2018 Simple ways to improve the security of your AWS account Sep 09, 2018 Why AWS DLM is Important Jul 14, 2018 Alexa App Around Oakville Jun 18, 2018 AWS EC2 - Getting Started Jun 05, 2018 Integrating CloudWatch events into Slack via Lambda and SNS Mar 30, 2018 Building a Cloud Center of Excellence Mar 04, 2018 Building an Sentiment Analysis Solution With AWS Comprehend Feb 26, 2018 Building an Effective AWS Team Feb 07, 2018 AWS Global Infrastructure Feb 04, 2018 IAM Access Keys - Do you really need them? Jan 28, 2018 What Is a Lambda Function? Jan 24, 2018 What is a Virtual Private Cloud? Jan 21, 2018 Going Serverless in 2018 Jan 14, 2018 Resizing an EC2 Instance Jan 14, 2018 AWS Account Strategy
2017 21 posts
Nov 18, 2017 Alexa Skill for AWS Cloud Storage Nov 13, 2017 Using EC2 Systems Manager to Maintain your Amazon Machine Images (AMI) Nov 06, 2017 The Why & How of Automated EBS Snapshots Nov 05, 2017 Amazon Elastic File System (EFS) Oct 10, 2017 AWS Journey: The Four Phases Sep 25, 2017 Per Second Billing for EC2 and EBS Sep 08, 2017 Amazon Lex and Slack as your Business' Hub Aug 02, 2017 Monitoring Burstable T2 EC2 Instances Jul 20, 2017 Running Your Website on AWS Jul 06, 2017 A Simple Virtual Private Cloud deployed via a Fugue Composition Jun 23, 2017 Your First Month in AWS Jun 09, 2017 Infrastructure as Code vs Infrastructure as Config Jun 03, 2017 The Future of IaaS May 01, 2017 Focus is Greater Than Automation AND Agility Mar 31, 2017 Integrating BaseCRM with a Static S3 website Mar 26, 2017 AWS Hackathon Mar 11, 2017 The Fallout From the S3 Outage Feb 04, 2017 Serverless Computing - It's more than Lambda Jan 21, 2017 Scaling your Relational Database Service (RDS) Instance Jan 07, 2017 Go Serverless Wherever Possible Jan 02, 2017 Early Impressions of AWS Rekognition
2016 17 posts
Dec 22, 2016 Using AWS Rekognition to Identify People in CCTV footage Dec 15, 2016 Securing your AWS account and its root credentials Dec 15, 2016 AWS Bootcamps and the power of 'Infrastructure as Code' Oct 07, 2016 It's not a Cloud Datacenter Sep 06, 2016 Four Things I've Learned From Running AWS Bootcamps Jul 28, 2016 What Are Reserved Instances and When Should You Use Them Jul 26, 2016 Serverless SES Forwarding for GrooveHQ Jul 22, 2016 What the Heck is 'Right-Sizing' and Why Should I Care Jun 14, 2016 The Importance of Designing for Failures May 31, 2016 Building My First Slack Bot May 04, 2016 Salt Server via CloudFormation Apr 17, 2016 Checking AWS root accounts for MFA Feb 28, 2016 What is 'Infrastructure as Code' Feb 05, 2016 Three Things You Can Do Now To Save Money in AWS Jan 29, 2016 Handling Jobs in the SQS Queues Jan 15, 2016 Moving From Cron to Scheduled Lambda Functions Jan 12, 2016 S3 Event Notifications
2015 1 post
Nov 17, 2015 Building a Hockey Pool on AWS
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