Simon Emms
Software Engineer, Technical Leader, Solutions Designer
When "The Best" isn't good enough
We often frame questions by asking "what the best X?". Maybe we need to learn to ask better questions.
Published: June 14, 2024
Self-Hosted is dead - long live Self-Hosted
Gitpod may have deprecated support for self-hosted, but that's no reason to let it die
Published: February 5, 2023
I am an ex-Podder
On Tuesday, my adventure at Gitpod came to an end. What next?
Published: January 28, 2023
Using a non-Ubuntu base image in Gitpod
The Gitpod-built images are all derived from Ubuntu. But that doesn't meant that's all you can use.
Published: April 30, 2022
Building a RESTful API With Functions
Serverless functions are a great way of building a scalable application, but often a RESTful API is easier when building a complex application. Let's combine the two.
Published: April 24, 2022
Setting Terraform Service Principal Permissions to Work With Azure Active Directory
Terraform is a great way of configuring your cloud infrastructure, but adding the permissions to work with Azure Active Directory is always difficult to remember
Published: January 10, 2021
Using GitLab Pages to Host a Helm Registry
Hosting your own Helm Registry is helpful for making Kubernetes deployments reusable. GitLab Pages is a great way of hosting your own Helm Registry without any hosting charges and by setting up a few triggers, is easy to incorporate it into your automated workflow.
Published: December 27, 2020
An introduction to Git Rebase
Git rebase is one of the most complex things to get your head around. But, by following a few simple steps, you can master it.
Published: November 16, 2020
Dockerising an R App
R is great for statistical analysis, but hard to Dockerise. This is how I get round the problems.
Published: August 27, 2020
Live Reload for OpenFaas
OpenFaas is a great tool and a great way of getting started with serverless functions. But it can be tricky for team development
Published: August 12, 2020
Setting Up A DevOps Workflow
"Do DevOps", calls the crowd. "Automate all the things", says the world. But how best to set up your workflow so it actually improves your process without becoming a headache?
Published: May 14, 2020
Compiling SQLite for Multi-Arch Docker
Multi-arch containers are great, except when you have C/C++ bindings to deal with. SQLite is one of the more common packages so I'll show you how to massively speed up your build process.
Published: February 25, 2020
In Defence of Remote Working
Remote working isn't simply shirkers being lazy, it's a modern sustainable way of building a technical team
Published: January 23, 2020
Multi-Arch Docker Containers
Creating containers for different architectures isn't as hard as you think by following these simple steps
Published: January 21, 2020