Blogs on Will Hall Online

The documentation for Docker Ansible has always had a fairly practical job: explain which image to pull, which tag to choose, what is inside it, and how to run it.

Docker Ansible’s latest releases add health checks, update Python packaging, refresh Alpine support, and align the project’s test image and GitHub Action.

I spent some time testing my home Wi-Fi properly this weekend, mainly because it felt “mostly fine” but not always great when the network was busy.

The Docker Ansible GitHub Action makes it easy to run playbooks in CI using the same images and versions you already use locally, with a test repository checking the supported matrix.

After a few months of running AI-assisted workflows across different VCS platforms, tools, and harnesses, I posted this on LinkedIn and it seemed to resonate - so here it is fleshed out a bit more.

So far in this series I’ve covered the hardware, the network, and the storage that make up my home lab.

We’ve all seen the headlines when the UK gets hot: public transport slows down, everyone hunts for a fan, and the nation collectively melts.

One of the longest-serving pieces of hardware in my home lab is a D-Link NAS box that’s been with me for close to 15 years.

As I was thinking more about my network, I realised that I had left some details out, which I didn’t really like.

Welcome back to my “Things I Have Running in My Home” series!

Welcome to the first post in my new series, “Things I Have Running in My Home.”

One of the things that really makes me smile about the rise of “vide-coding” or AI-assisted coding is that it works best when your projects are already well-built.

A fun one for the afternoon.

Quite excitingly, I have just about gotten around to tagging v6.0.0 of my docker-ansible project (Ansible (of all flavours 🍦) in Docker images (of all flavours 🍦).

Interesting perspective on Should Managers Still Code.

Enjoyed looking through this project this morning, mdq - Markdown Parser basically a parser for markdown to do fun things to select items like it is json from markdown (that is a terrible description).

It’s been fascinating to watch the ongoing debate around “return to office” (RTO) versus “work from home” (WFH) unfold over the past couple of years.

How true is it that “security is everyone’s responsibility”?

There’s a quiet little ritual I find myself doing whenever I’m asked to enter a date of birth into an online form—especially when I don’t want to give away my real one.

It often seems like we’re caught in an endless cycle of redefining roles and disciplines within tech—DevOps, DevSecOps, Platform Engineering, Site Reliability Engineering, Cloud Engineering—each iteration arriving every two or three years to align with the

I still can’t get over how people code with a white background.

Personally and the industry as a wider community have all been working, assessing and reviewing architectures and tools to adopt LLM capabilities.

Interesting post about using S3 storage classes and how it saved Canva a whole bunch of money, but my favourite bit was “There’s very little to write about regarding the migration effort, which was an engineer’s dream!

Here is my hot take that I forgot to write about from hashtag#AWSSummitLondon last week, in emoji, 🖥 🤖: 🛒🏗: 🤑💰: 👪 🤓.

Gartner has published its latest insights on trends shaping the future of infrastructure and while the full piece dives deep into evolving tech and strategy, I’ve boiled it down to four key takeaways: Trend 1: Optimisation and refactoring of existing infr…

How are you looking to augment Generative AI with inner-source and internal AI systems?

A pretty exciting look into the future of CI job scaling at GitLab is taking shape and it’s clear they’re tackling some long-standing infrastructure pain points.

What do you think about COMMIT_GUIDELINES being included in a project?

What would be your perfect base project on GitHub (or GitLab)?

Just released v4.3.2 of Docker Ansible 😆 .

With February rolling in, it finally feels like we’re turning a corner.

I may not have the most advanced artistic skills, but there’s something truly special about the power of visual communication.

As we start off this new year, it’s natural to think about making significant changes or setting big goals for ourselves.

I always love it when I get external validation for things that I “bang on about” inside work.

After quite a long time of languishing, I have decided to let MOTNearMe.co.uk go.

Do you know the concept of “code smell”?

I was thinking of a thought experiment today regarding Cloud Native, or the concept of Cloud Native in comparison to Cloud Traditional (not sure that Cloud Traditional is a term).

An interesting view into how Slack use Terraform, touching on how it manages state files (teams controlling their own state), Terraform versions, managing providers and modules.

For anyone who has worked with me, they know I love a changelog and versioning.

I often hear from some people that there are so many companies that have completed and mature in their Cloud Native architecture, DevOps and Cyber Security, however, we are probably still in the foothills.

Last week, v4.1.1 was released on my Docker Ansible project: New contributors who added Alpine 3.16 and Ubuntu 22.04 bringing OS versions up to 17 (need to drop old Alpine versions soon) Added recent Ansible versions to the immutable tags in Docker Hub +…

A major rewrite of my Docker Ansible project to make it easier to manage Ansible versions inside the projects.

Had a good moment yesterday.

There is so much great documentation within the AWS docs, sometimes it is as much about finding the right article to lead the way.

New sidebar menu inside GitLab.com - I’ve shown the infrastructure parts with Terraform state.

Docker Hub will be [removing Autobuild for free users from June 18th(https://www.docker.com/blog/changes-to-docker-hub-autobuilds/)].

I have had a lot of discussion over the past couple of days over what it means that HashiCorp Terraform is now at a v1.0 release.

It is really great when small things come along that simplify or reduce the amount of code you need and the implementation of Tags as part of the Terraform AWS Provider does exactly that.

Lately, I’ve been thinking a lot about team collaboration and how best to explain the sometimes elusive magic of effective teamwork.

I have discussed this slightly before, however, some background may be necessary.