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My views Log Episode 8 - 2026-Feb-26 Episode 7 - 2026-Mar-18 Episode 6 - 2025-Mar-17 Episode 5 - 2025-Mar-08 Episode 4 - 2025-Feb-25 Episode 3 - 2025-Feb-25 Episode 2 - 2025-Feb-16 Episode 1 - 2025-Feb-16 Episode 0 - 2025-Feb-14 Plot

  Log Episode 1 - 2026-Feb-03 Episode 2 - 2026-Feb-03 Episode 3 - 2026-Feb-04 Episode 4 - 2026-Feb-09 Episode 5 - 2026-Feb-16 Episode 6 - 2026-Feb-25

Based on a LinkedIn post originally published on 16 January 2026 A few years ago, I joined a large start-up to manage a DevOps team. One of the first areas I examined was the observability environment: metrics, probes, collectors, dashboards, alerts and data-retention practices. The scale was impressive. There were probes throughout the environment and large quantities of telemetry were being produced. At first glance, this appeared to indicate a mature operational capability. A closer examination produced a different picture. A substantial proportion of the telemetry appeared to fall into one or more of these categories: data was collected but never analysed; signals were measured without supporting a decision; dashboards existed but were rarely consulted; some data was not retained long enough to support meaningful analysis; alerts were not connected to an operational response; and nobody could clearly explain the purpose of particular probes. The environment was highly instrumented,...

 

Today I noticed one of those changes that is probably much more obvious when you have been away for a while. After a long period outside Moldova, I was back in Chișinău looking at the traffic and suddenly realised that something familiar was missing. The old trolleybuses had disappeared. I remembered the ageing vehicles that still carried something of the visual character of the Soviet period: functional, unmistakably old and very difficult to confuse with twenty-first-century public transport. Now I was looking around and seeing modern trolleybuses instead. I kept watching them as we drove through the city, half expecting one of the old ones to appear eventually. It did not. Modern vehicle after modern vehicle passed us, and the contrast with what I remembered was remarkable. It felt as though somebody had quietly replaced an entire generation of public transport while I was away. As first impressions go, it was a very good one. First, what exactly is a trolleybus?...

 

Based on a LinkedIn post originally published on 14 January 2026 Within my home lab platform, HG000009 serves as the front-end data store node. Its purpose is deliberately narrow but critical: it provides the controlled point at which storage, networking, operating-system behaviour, security and observability come together. The design reflects principles I have applied in production environments. Responsibilities should be explicit, trust boundaries should be visible and failure behaviour should be understandable. The objective is not to eliminate complexity by pretending it does not exist. It is to place complexity where it can be inspected, controlled and justified. The role of a front-end data store The physical storage devices do not all need to be attached directly to the system consuming or presenting the data. In this architecture, the back-end storage layer provides block-storage capacity. HG000009 sits in front of that capacity and turns it into controlled, usable storage serv...

 

 

  My views Plot Codename 13, a 17-year-old trained assassin known as a Shadow, is part of an international organization of assassins. On a mission in Japan, she assassinates her primary target, the leader of a criminal clan. However, 13 is dazed after accidentally killing a bystander and is incapacitated. Umbra, 13's mentor, eliminates the rest of the clan and rescues her. Umbra reprimands 13 for her lapse in focus and puts 13 under suspension, for a psych retraining, in Jakarta. Umbra herself is tasked to undertake a mission in Cambodia by the Handler. During suspension, 13 has recurring nightmares of her mother's death and routinely contacts her handler who instructs her to consume her medication and wait. 13 encounters 11-year-old Monji and his mother, Asti, who live next to 13's safehouse. Asti works as an escort for Haga, a human trafficker and owner of the club Moonrose. One night, 13 witnesses Haga and his men assaulting Monji and his mother but does not intervene. T...

12 February 2026 Yesterday, something happened that I have been waiting for since November. The financial side of the theft of my car is finally coming to an end. The insurance payment has been made, the finance company has received the insurance money, and the process has finally reached the point where the money is effectively settled and available. It should feel like a victory. Instead, it mostly feels like relief. And exhaustion. From 13 November to 11 February My Peugeot 5008 was stolen in Berlin during the night of 12 to 13 November 2025 . Today is 12 February 2026 . That means almost exactly three months have passed. Three months between waking up and discovering that my car had disappeared and finally reaching the financial conclusion of something that I never asked to happen in the first place. When I wrote about the theft one week after it happened, I was still processing the emotional side of it. The disbelief. The anger. The disappointment. The strange feeling of looking ...

Based on a LinkedIn post originally published on 12 January 2026 I once went through a multi-stage interview process that became an interesting lesson in organisational alignment—or, more precisely, the absence of it. The first conversations positioned the opportunity as a leadership role. The organisation appeared to need someone who could build a function, establish direction and eventually scale a team. The discussion focused on leadership, operating under ambiguity and working across platform and engineering groups. A subsequent interview with a company director reinforced that understanding. We discussed decision-making, organisational challenges and the responsibilities involved in creating a new capability. Everything suggested that the organisation was recruiting a leader. A later interview took an entirely different direction. It focused on detailed, low-level technical questions more commonly associated with a senior individual-contributor position. The technical conversation...

 

Log Episode 1 - 2025-Dec-20 Episode 2 - 2025-Dec-27 Episode 3 - 2026-Jan-01 Episode 4 - 2026-Jan-12 Episode 5 - 2026-Jan-17 Episode 6 - 2026-Jan-22 Episode 7 - 2026-Jan-28 Episode 8 - 2026-Feb-06

Based on a LinkedIn post originally published on 9 January 2026 One of the most valuable aspects of configuring Doxygen for a C++ project is its ability to turn a complex codebase into something that can be explored visually. With an appropriate configuration—and Graphviz available as the graph-rendering engine—Doxygen can generate interactive diagrams covering: class inheritance; class collaboration; function-call relationships; caller relationships; include dependencies; directory structures; and other connections within the codebase. When these diagrams are produced as scalable SVG graphics, engineers can zoom into large structures, follow edges between components and move between the visual model and the corresponding documentation. For medium-sized and large C++ systems, this is much more than a cosmetic feature. It can significantly reduce the time required to understand how the software is organised. The challenge of understanding an unfamiliar codebase Reading a new codebase is...