This post explores using Vim keybindings as a source of flow.
Vim key-bindings are a set of keyboard shortcuts from the Vi text editor which allow you to navigate and edit text without using a mouse or arrow keys. That may not sound like much, but they can be likened to keyboard super powers.
They can be used either natively in editors like Vim and NeoVim or by configuration/extension in IDEs such as VSCode and the IntelliJ series, Obsidian, and your command-line shell.
You may find yourself… supporting developers working behind a non-transparent forward proxy which is implemented in some environments and not others.
And you may ask yourself, “How do I work this?” - with a nod to the Talking Heads, whose “Once in a Lifetime” seems strangely appropriate when dealing with proxy configurations which work sometimes but not others.
In Windows, a host of CLI tools commonly used in development don’t inherit Windows proxy settings. Tools like curl, wget, npm, pip, go modules, Composer, etc. Similar behaviour can be seen with many of the underlying request libraries (notably excepting .NET’s HttpClient).
Nginx fails to start when upstream services aren’t available at startup time, showing host not found in upstream. This post focuses on fixing this issue in Docker first, then extends the solution to Kubernetes and Azure Container Apps using environment variables to construct dynamic hostnames (like my-rg-${ENVIRONMENT}-api) which adapt to different deployment environments.
The error occurs because Nginx resolves all hostnames at startup, not request time. This fail-fast behaviour is reasonable in many environments, but problematic in container orchestration where services start in unpredictable order or may not always be available by design.
Crafting and optimising Dockerfiles can be a bit tedious with the edit-build-test cycle, especially when optimising layer caching and working with multi-stage builds. Running commands or clicking buttons on every change—where is our hot reloading?
An answer - Tilt. Tilt’s primary purpose is providing local dev environments for microservice development, like a whole Kubernetes stack or Docker Compose stack.
Tilt is an awesome, rewarding tool which I use regularly. Part of its offering is monitoring Dockerfiles for changes with automatic rebuilds and displaying this in a web UI. Hot reloading for the Dockerfile creator.
Azure VPN Gateway’s SSTP Point-to-Site (P2S) connections to private VNETs can cause networking issues in WSL. Symptoms include hanging SSL connections, frozen database clients, and DB clients failing in Docker/Kubernetes networks. I encountered this with a SSL secured MySQL connection which would just hang with nothing informative. Worked fine from the Windows host.
The culprit: MTU mismatches.
MTU (Maximum Transmission Unit) is the largest packet size that can be transmitted over a network connection. Windows adjusts its MTU automatically when connecting via SSTP, but WSL doesn’t reliably inherit this setting. If VPN connects before WSL starts, it might work. If after, problems begin. For Azure SSTP VPNs, the VPN operatues with a 1400 MTU and any NIC using should be set at 1350 to handle the overhead. Docker won’t inherit from WSL.
A short exploration of options for connecting to resources with private VNETs in Azure. Focused on boutique dev work. Think access to state maintaining services like SQL databases, CosmosDB, Redis etc.
Costs are indicative at time of writing. Costs vary between Azure regions. Figures are in AUD, multiply by .6 to get an approximate in USD.
I haven’t considered use of Site to Site (S2S) VPNs to connect to existing Point to Site (P2S) VPNs here, if that connectivity is a requirement then these options are likely not relevant.
This post was written almost entirely by an LLM.
A reflection on building LLM-powered writing assistance while maintaining authentic voice
After well over a year of sporadic posting, I found myself facing a familiar challenge: maintaining consistency in voice and technical depth across content while leveraging the productivity benefits of LLM assistance. The solution emerged through an interesting meta-exercise—using Roo Code (the agentic coding plugin for VSCode/VSCodium) to create its own content creation persona.