Technical Practice

Assuming a Role from the Instance Profile (AWS PowerShell)

IAM Roles are a powerful way to delegate permissions in AWS. But, there is a trick to assuming a role from the EC2 Instance Profile. Here's how to do it!

Learn the AWS PowerShell Tools on Pluralsight

Knowing the AWS PowerShell cmdlets is valuable. You should take my Pluralsight course: Automating Cloud Operations with AWS Tools for Windows PowerShell.

Inspecting Network Traffic on Ubuntu Linux

Inspecting network traffic is a pain. Here are a collection of (built-in) tools and techniques for seeing what's going on under the hood in Ubuntu Linux.

Internationalization with Import-LocalizedData

Recently I was working on a PowerShell project that involved internationalization. When researching the best approach, I learned about the Import-LocalizedData Cmdlet and it made it incredibly easy to support internationalization in my scripts.

Conditional E-mails from SQL Server Reporting Services

SQL Server Reporting Services (SSRS) is a great reporting tool, especially its ability to schedule reports to be sent out via e-mail. But one thing nobody wants is useless e-mails flooding their inbox. Some of the reports I’ve built using SSRS list problem data that needs to be cleaned up. I don’t want those reports getting sent out every day, even when they’re empty. I’m going to show you the method I used to get SSRS to only send a report under the correct circumstances.

A Small but Useful PowerShell Script

I always keep this little script handy for when I need to search my source code for instances of a particular word or phrase. Most modern IDEs have this kind of functionality built in, but you never know when you'll have to work with a language or tool that isn't quite as robust.

Ruby Woes - Can't Modify Self

I’ve always liked to think that anyone can change if they want to badly enough.  After about half an hour of searching, I discovered that Ruby objects, within the context of class methods, cannot.  I was looking to extend the Numeric class (this is something really cool you can do in Ruby) to add a method that would “clamp” the number to be within a certain range, between a minimum and a maximum value.  For example:

Posterous Spaces Acquired by Twitter

Thoughts on the Windows 8 Consumer Preview

The Windows Flavor of the Month - "Professional Plus"

The registry in the Windows 8 Consumer Preview indicates a possible new edition of Windows called Professional Plus.

Site Updates

I’ve got a few new goodies set up on the site including

iOS's App Store Comes to the Mac, More to Follow?

The interface that Apple provides to its users on the iPhone and iPad for downloading third party applications has been wildly successful, and now that same experience is coming to the Mac. The creation of iPhone OS (now iOS) when the first iPhone was released forced Apple to rethink many things about a device’s operating system and the way in which the user interacts with it. No doubt, many valuable lessons were learned and it’s impossible that the iPhone and iPad would be so popular if that weren’t the case. I believe extending the App Store to the Mac is, for Apple, a step towards bringing those lessons to OS X.

Apple Renames iPhone OS to iOS

At his WWDC Keynote speech today, one of the things that Steve Jobs revealed is that version 4 of iPhone OS will be bringing with it an entirely new name: iOS. This seems to be a completely logical change considering how little sense it makes to continue to run the “iPhone” OS on an iPad. At the same time, I think this hints at bigger things to come. I think Jobs may well envision iOS as a full operating system that may one day stand shoulder to shoulder with OS X, at least for casual computer users.

Version Control with Subversion

Authors: Ben Collins-Sussman, Brian W. Fitzpatrick, C. Michael Pilato

Expression Translator

In this context, we’re talking about simple mathematical expressions like 5 + 5.  There are three ways to write these types of expressions:

The New PlattSoft.net

This site has been idle for at least a year, I think.  It’s time to shake things up a bit by moving to a new Content Management System so that I can focus more on creating content and less on writing code to display it.