There’s a lot of magic in mead making — the transformation of honey, water, and yeast into something golden, aromatic, and completely enchanting. But somewhere along the journey from bubbly fermentation to crystal-clear bottles, we meadmakers face a choice: to intervene, or not to intervene? Specifically, should you use stabilizers and finings? Let’s walk through this crossroads together — not just the technical “what and how,” but the why behind each choice.

AI is reshaping the landscape of software delivery, and nowhere is its impact more profound than in DevOps. Tools like GitHub Copilot and ChatGPT are no longer novelties—they have become trusted companions in the engineer’s toolkit. From generating boilerplate code to diagnosing production outages and even autonomously remediating issues, AI is accelerating the pace of innovation. Yet, as teams lean ever more heavily on algorithms, they must also guard against unintended consequences: the gradual atrophy of traditional skills, the risk of automation blind spots, and the ethical dilemmas of machine-driven decisions.

I remember my first batch of mead like it was yesterday—three pounds of raw clover honey, spring water, and a pack of champagne yeast I grabbed on impulse. What I expected to be a floral, honey-forward dessert drink ended up closer to a dry white wine, with just a whisper of honey left behind. Not bad, but not what I imagined. That’s when I realized: sweetness isn’t guaranteed. If you don’t control it, your yeast will happily chew through every last sugar molecule and leave you with something drier than a bone in the Mojave.

In the world of modern software development, DevOps and Platform Engineering are at the heart of delivering consistent, reliable, and secure services to end users. An Internal Developer Platform (IDP) plays a crucial role in uniting these practices by providing developers with a self-service, standardized infrastructure and toolset for building, testing, and deploying applications. In this post, we will explore what an IDP is, why you should invest in one, the essential components that make up an IDP, and best practices for implementation.

A funny thing happens in DevOps and platform engineering: we spend our days building out automation pipelines, tuning Kubernetes clusters, and provisioning infrastructure at the push of a button—yet many of us still treat networking like some obscure art that belongs to another team. It’s understandable. Networking can feel low-level and intimidating, a realm filled with acronyms like ARP, BGP, and CIDR blocks, IP addressing schemas, and the dreaded firewall misconfiguration.

When I first got my hands on Ansible, I felt an electrifying sense of potential. With just a few lines of YAML, I could configure, deploy, and manage servers in ways that used to require significant manual effort—or lengthy scripts that were a headache to maintain. Over time, I learned that harnessing Ansible’s true power means going beyond simple playbooks and investing in best practices that maximize security, reusability, and overall project maintainability.

I still remember the first time I built a Docker image for a fairly small API I’d written in Node.js. I thought the Dockerfile was straightforward: pull a base image, copy in my source code, install dependencies, expose a port, and boom—done. Then I realized that every time I pushed changes to the repository, the build took way too long and resulted in a bulky image. Though Docker was supposed to make our CI/CD pipeline leaner, it felt like a black box constantly churning.

I’ve always considered my home lab an experimental playground, a place to test out new technology in the quiet comfort of my spare room. While it might not be traditional “DevOps,” re-engineering a home lab has a lot in common with the automation and orchestration principles we use daily in the DevOps world. In fact, it’s those same principles—Ansible for config management, containerization for agile deployments, and carefully planned network segmentation—that motivated me to tear down my old setup and start anew.

I’ve always been captivated by ancient traditions and the idea of tapping into nature’s raw power. Recently, I’ve been planning a mead-making adventure that harks back to the very origins of this enchanting elixir. Mead—the honey wine beloved by warriors, poets, and dreamers—was originally created using nothing more than the natural fermentation powers of wild yeast. In a world dominated by controlled, commercial yeasts, the allure of wild fermentation calls to me like a siren song, promising both mystery and mastery.

In the ever-evolving landscape of DevOps, speed, security, and efficiency aren’t just buzzwords—they’re the fundamental principles of how we build, manage, and deliver software. At the intersection of these principles lies a humble yet indispensable tool: Secure Shell (SSH). Let’s dive deep into why SSH has become such a cornerstone technology and explore how mastering it can enhance your DevOps workflows. A Brief Journey Through SSH History SSH emerged from necessity.