Frank Contrepois

Category: tech

Why this blog has no stats and why you should think to do the same

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This website has no Analytics enabled. some context (the past) In previous incarnations of this blog I used to enjoy all the funky stats of Google Analytics. I wasted hours looking at my stats, learning SEO, writing in a style that was not fully mine (but more Google compatible). I spent money on Wordpress plugins, software to share my content with the masses and (never fully) mastered pop-ups. All for some sense of achievement looking at a number going up and feeling very depressed when the numbers would go down. Read more...

An example of how IoT will change our lifes for the better

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IoT is talked talked and talked about (aka it is a buzz word), but examples are hard to come by. Some very basic context: IoT stands for Internet of Things, which is about computers, talking to computers and doing stuff without humans. Here is the example: Immagine, you kid had been hit by a car and was just put in an ambulance. You want that ambulance to fly. With IoT the ambulance system could communicate with the traffic system and make sure every red light is actually green, allowing the ambulance to go full speed all the time might be the difference between life and death. Read more...

The mistake every nerd does

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I need to go back to do some real tech work, both for my sanity (fun) and because I need to keep up. Lots of ideas in my heads, lots of exciting experiments to try, new things to do or old things to unearth. All cool tech stuff, but without a meaning! While at AWS re:Invent last year (2019), I noticed how much good tech work was used only to show technical competence, without a thought about possible use. Read more...

Secure and private email

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One of my recent search has been around avoiding giving away my data to the big tech guys, and while I’m still far from a good result, I did find an interesting Mail service, based in Switzerland with a great reputation. It is call Protonmail and you can find more info at https://protonmail.com/ Read more...

APN ambassador

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I’ve been invited to be an AWS APN Ambassador and I’m very honoured and humbled by it. Read more...

Multiple TXT records on AWS Route53

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I am trying Protonmail, a very secure, very privacy focus company. To manage domains other than protonmail.com or pm.com, protonmail requires some changes in DNS, and in particular adding a TXT for domain ownership validation. I did it on Route53, all good. (hurray for the super fast update of AWS). Later for crypto/spam checking needs (you need to stop SPAM right) there is a request to create a second TXT field. Read more...

Some important DNS info

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Google DNS servers: 8.8.8.8 8.8.4.4 OpenDNS 208.67.222.222 208.67.220.220 CloudFlare 1.1.1.1 1.0.0.1 Google MX records to receive email on Gmail or G-suite - https://support.google.com/a/answer/174125?hl=en Name/Host/Alias Time to Live (TTL*) Record Type Priority Value/Answer/Destination Blank or @ 3600 MX 1 ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. Blank or @ 3600 MX 5 ALT1.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. Blank or @ 3600 MX 5 ALT2.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. Blank or @ 3600 MX 10 ALT3.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. Blank or @ 3600 MX 10 ALT4.ASPMX.L.GOOGLE.COM. AWS Route 53 NS servers will look like (with different numbers probably) ns-2048. Read more...

Status PendingUpdate for italian domains

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To avoid having a .it domain blocked for 5 days while changing the ns fields (probably while moving it from 2 registar) make sure to insert all the NS into the NIC (Italian DNS authority) DNS test https://dns-check.nic.it/. When the test is good, do the change. When blocked a WHOIS of the domain will return Status: PendingUpdate Note: the DNS check will try regularly for 5 days, then will revert back to the previous value of the NS field. Read more...

GCP Professional Cloud Architect study

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I am studying to pass the GCP exam and a very confusing part of all Cloud Providers is the amount of products available and how the names are confusing. So here is a list of GCP services and a small summary of what they are. GCP for AWS experts https://cloud.google.com/docs/compare/aws/ This is a WIP and is not planned to be the ultimate guide of anything, that’s what official documentation is for. Read more...

Back to git

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Back to git, again. This time paying more attention and not rushing through the book. The last time I was trying to learn very fast to become a teacher of git, now I only want to master it. This article will probably evolved and will include more and more things for me to remember and if I do it well avoid using duckduckgo for each git command. Why do you need git, You ask? Read more...