Our attention spans are finite and our motivation limited. That’s why, to be effective at your desk job, you should avoid being a dopamine junkie (social media). For this reason my phone is normally behind me while working or a different room, with only phone calls/sms being forwarded to my smartwatch. To not see my phone or think about it. Making it easier to get into a flow state for work. Read more

In case you need to use AzureAD groups inside if AzureDevops, consider this an example of how you could do this using OpenTofu (Terraform). This will add AzureAD groups to your Azure DevOps Organization, which can be found under Settings/Permissions. data "azuredevops_group" "target" { name = "Project Collection Administrators" } data "azuread_group" "main" { for_each = toset(["user-group-x", "admin-group-y"]) display_name = each.key } resource "azuredevops_group" "main" { for_each = data.azuread_group.main origin_id = each. Read more

N26 is one of the awesome free banking options in Europe. Have been using it for years and sometimes had that my books didn’t line up. Never thought much of it. Now I found out that if you export a CSV per quarter, it might not include records of the last day of your selected timespan. It took me years to find out the CSV function left out records. To work around this error, just select with a few days margin and then manually remove the rows not belonging in the quarter. Read more

Fernet keys can be generated using Python or OpenSSL, but what if you want to manage the key as part of your infra in Terraform/OpenTofu? resource "random_password" "fernet" { length = 32 } resource "azurerm_key_vault_secret" "fernet" { value = base64encode(random_password.fernet.result) name = "fernet-key" key_vault_id = azurerm_key_vault.key_vault.id }

OnePlus uses OxygenOS, which has an annoying feature called Pocket Mode. This feature could be disabled in old versions of the OS, but in OxygenOS 12 and 13 it’s not there anymore. Random activation of Pocket Mode Pocket Mode gets enabled by random when the phone is exposed to sunlight, to me this happened while doing video calls outside or when using the phone for navigation in a mount on my (motor)cycle. Read more

For historical reasons, we inherited a terraform setup and state file with some custom provider. This made the code very unintuitive, since there were two providers doing the same thing mixed together. Approach Backup original statefile Change code to new provider (this is manual and tedious) Get list of items of statefile # this requires the state to be in a clean folder, so it's not affected by the tf code terraform state list|grep -v ^data|sort > resources-tfstate. Read more

Timezones are an approximation of the time in a place, which can be off by more than two hours. Remote workers and digital nomads work for companies outside of the city they stay in, thus not the prescribed local time is relevant, but actual local time. Solar noon Instead of focusing on timezones, let’s see when the sun is on it’s middle point during the day. Use this solar noon (ideally at 12:00) to compare time differences (or use the timezone of the place you work for and locally the actual time). Read more

Terraform allows conditional statements like if else for variables, but not for configuration blocks. After searching for a long time, I came up with a way and decided to share it. resource "confluent_kafka_cluster" "cluster" { ... # For DEV and ACCept we want basic dynamic "basic" { for_each = var.env != "prd" ? ["not_empty_array"] : [] content {} } # but for PRD we want standard dynamic "standard" { for_each = var. Read more

There are lots of electronics for smart homes on the markt nowadays. But I did not want to hand out the keys to my home and private network to a third party. I’ve done that before, using a Sonoff device, which resulted in me not being able to turn my heater on or off when their server was down. Why consumer smart home product are bad Configuration is manual, no IaC Usually Wifi, which makes password rotation manual, thus hard External third party has an entry onto your network Often only works when connected to internet, not just local Wifi network IT/Network security? Read more

First let’s clarify, this guide is NOT meant for junior/starting/trainee developers. The intented reader is an IT professional wanting to transition into being a freelancer. Which will provide more freedom (to move abroad) and ability to buy tax deductable (e.g. development toys/gear). 01 Registering company Company name & domain name Decide if you want eenmanszaak or your financial records public List of activities, denoted in SBI codes KVK Read more