frost on red acer leaves with the sun shining behind them

Just what i find

  • How to automate backups of a PostgreSQL server using Barman/barman-cloud-backup to S3

    I was surprised not to find many up to date instructions on this. I have a few basic requirements: After a bit of playing around, I decided to use Barman for the backups – it’s significantly easier to configure and use than pgBackRest and has native support for backing up to S3, point-in-time restore, and more. The major downside compared to, say, running pg_dump every night, is that it requires an identical setup to restore to – identical hardware and PostgreSQL version. Least privileges in the database is tricky – to be able to back up things like roles, the… Continue reading →

  • Migrate your TimescaleDB from timescale.com to self hosted

    I’ve been using timescale.com for about a year, but it’s quite expensive for a hobbyist (their cheapest plan in the UK is about $50/month), so I thought i’d try and implement something cheaper. I know i won’t get the cool automatic DR failover or the sexy continuous backups – but it’s not really mission critical if i lose a small amount of the history of my home energy consumption. Timescale publish some instructions, but they weren’t complete, and didnt work for me. Step 1 – install base OS I use linode. I chose a Linode 2GB which comes in at… Continue reading →

  • The Multiplier Effect: How The Aggregation of Marginal Delays Derails Projects

    The Aggregation of Marginal Gains is an improvement model attributed to Dave Brailsford. When he took over as the head of British Cycling in 2002, the team was near the bottom of the rankings. Brailsford’s approach was to look at their processes in tiny detail, and improve each part by 1%, the logic being that these would all add up to a significant improvement. He talks about shipping mattresses between hotels so that athletes get a better nights’ sleep, or fastidiously cleaning the team truck to prevent dust and debris undermining the fine tuning of the bikes. And it was… Continue reading →

  • FIX: The key(s) in the keyring /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/???.gpg are ignored as the file is not readable by user ‘_apt’ executing apt-key

    When running apt-get update i was seeing these errors: I was getting this error after migrating keys from the old, legacy store to a the shiny new one. A quick inspection shows that the new keys have different permissions to the existing ones The fix is pretty simple. Pick one of the pre-existing GPG keys, and copy the permissions to all the other keys in the folder. In my case, i chose the ubuntu-pro-cis.gpg key, but you can pick any that doesnt report the permissions error. Pass it as a –reference argument to the chmod command: Problem solved! Continue reading →

  • FIX: Key is stored in legacy trusted.gpg keyring

    While running apt-get update I was seeing errors: Although the warning is annoying, it doesn’t stop things updating. I understand the reasons why the legacy keyring is being removed. Migrate existing keys to the new keyring First, list the keys: In my case, i’ve got two – one for PostgreSQL and one for timescaledb. You will probably see a bunch of extra keys here too. Export the key by copying the last 8 characters of the identifier. Because I have two keys to export, i did this twice, giving each key a unique filename under /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/: Bingo – package updates… Continue reading →

  • Using an ephemeral MongoDB single node replicaset in a devcontainer or codespace

    I love using devcontainers to manage my development environment. They make it super easy to ensure a consistent development stack is in place. Recently i started developing against a MongoDB instance. For node.js, i use mongodb-unit to spin up a standalone server on the local client. But there’s no equivalent package for Python. Although there are lots of posts on stackoverflow about configuring a single node replicaset using a healthcheck, and there’s even an example given by a MongoDB employee, they didnt work for me. When setting up the server to use authentication, it also needs a keyfile, which has… Continue reading →

  • From RICE to ICE: which framework for your project?

    I’ve previously explained the RICE and ICE techniques for prioritisation. Both techniques are frameworks used to evaluate and rank projects or tasks based on their potential impact, feasibility, and difficulty. However, I wanted to highlight the two key differences between them to help you chose the right tool for your project. The ICE technique (Impact, Confidence, Ease) assigns scores to each project based on the potential impact of the project, the level of confidence in its success, and the ease of implementing it. The scores for each factor are multiplied to get a final score, which is used to rank… Continue reading →

  • Ice, Ice Baby: Chill Out and Prioritise with the ICE Technique

    Yesterday, i talked about the RICE technique for prioritisation. Today, i want to introduce ICE technique, another prioritisation framework used to evaluate and prioritise tasks or projects based on three factors: Impact, Confidence, and Ease. Tomorrow, i’ll compare them both. To use the ICE technique, each item is assigned a score out of 10 for each factor, and the scores are then multiplied together to calculate a final score for each task or project. The higher the final score, the higher we should prioritise completing that item. This creates a simple yet effective framework which allows us to compare the… Continue reading →

  • You want RICE with that?

    Imagine that you are a product manager at a software company, and you have three potential features to prioritise for the next development cycle. How do you pick between them? There are many ways, but one i recently learned about is the RICE model – a prioritisation framework used by product managers, teams, and organisations to prioritise projects, features, or tasks based on their potential impact, effort, and other factors. RICE stands for Reach, Impact, Confidence, and Effort, and it provides a quantitative approach to decision-making. To use the RICE model, you assign values to each of the four factors… Continue reading →

  • Are you A senior developer, or THE lead developer

    In our world, we organise in Pods – an autonomous group of 6-9 people with all the skills needed to solve a problem. Multiple Pods form a Team. Within a Pod, there can be multiple Senior Developers, but only a single Lead Developer. They have different and overlapping responsibilities and accountabilities. Every project must have exactly one Lead Developer, and has one or more Senior Developers. It is the accountability of the project or product manager to ensure that these roles exist in a team, and that the roles are filled with skilled team members able and willing to fulfil the role. A Senior Developer Every… Continue reading →

About me

I’m rob. I spend my time exploring the world, playing board games with my family, solving complex technical problems, and learning new things. At work, I lead a team of solution architects designing and building complex realtime trading systems. Sometimes i write about things here, or code them on GitHub. I believe a few things that guide what I do and how I do it:

  • Hard things are hard. It takes time, effort and practice to be good at them.
  • Everybody can learn something new every day. When we’re born we know how to eat and cry and that’s about it. Everything else we’ve learnt, and we can keep doing that all our lives.
  • Great teams are fun to work in, and great teams achieve great outcomes. The wider the range of people and perspectives in the room, the better the work.

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