Large, Static Website hosting with AWS and Let's Encrypt managed with Terraform

Thursday, Sep 29, 2022

I had a need to host image galleries online. I researched the cost structures of a few providers, then settled on AWS S3 storage and AWS Cloudfront CDN. The twist is I have all the cloud configuration managed in Terraform, so it’s easy to recreate the same sort of setup for various projects. Hosting provider cost structure After reviewing the bandwidth limits for a static website with a lot of large images, I came up with the following datapoints.

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When NAT Bites — Use a Reverse VPN

Monday, Aug 31, 2020

Sometimes I find myself setting up servers on networks with less than ideal network configuration. Most home internets use dynamic IP addresses, which requires extra work to ensure I know the IP address to use when logging into the network from the internet. Another concern is how unreliable home networking gear can be, especially with users tweaking settings without fully appreciating what they’re doing. As a result, I’ve devised an alternate solution to ensure I can always log into boxes hosted on home internet connections.

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Extending a wireless LAN with a bridged Ethernet LAN using Mikrotik RouterOS

Sunday, Mar 29, 2020

I recently moved, and my new abode has an Ubiquiti Amplifi LAN. The rationale is this mesh-based WiFi network eliminates the need to install Ethernet between Wireless Access Points (APs). It works surprisingly well. In this post I document how I extended this network so I could place my networked devices all on the same Ethernet segment, without needing to wire it to the Amplifi base station. The idea is the network should look like this:

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Won MSOE x Google Cloud Hackathon

Monday, Nov 18, 2019

About a fortnight ago (Nov 9th) I went to the MSOE x Google Cloud hackathon.1 There was pizza, soda, and Google Cloud gear. Each group was given a Google AIY Computer Vision kit to assemble, and build a proof of concept around. The kit contained a Raspberry Pi Zero W, the Raspberry Pi Camera Add-on, a breakout board to provide simplified pin-outs for a button with an integrated light, an additional LED that mounted next to the camera to indicate if the camera was active, and a piezo buzzer.

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