AWS

Back in November, I was preparing for the Cracking the Cloud presentation at UNC Charlotte. I needed a way to explain how the cloud fundamentally changed what’s possible on the internet—not through abstract concepts, but through something students could immediately relate to. That’s when I remembered Thomas Game Docs. If you’ve never heard of her: she’s a YouTuber who makes incredibly well-produced video essays about video games. And she sometimes runs surveys asking her audience things like “Who’s the LEAST popular Pokémon?” or “Who’s the LEAST popular Animal Crossing villager?” ...

AWS re:Invent 2025 keynotes felt like AWS repeating the same move they pulled 15 years ago—democratizing something that used to be gated behind massive budgets and specialized teams. This time it’s AI. I published a full write-up on Ippon’s blog breaking down the core thread running through the keynote: scale as the prerequisite for “access,” abundance via custom silicon (Trainium), and the shift from “AI as a feature” to “AI as a production capability.” ...

Recently I came across another engineer’s personal blog — clean layout, good typography, that “I actually finish my side projects” energy — and it pushed me to finally build one of my own. I picked Hugo because I like Go, and because using Jekyll in 2025 feels like opting into pain. I briefly considered Ghost, remembered it either requires paying Ghost or hosting Ghost, and closed the tab. And since I’m “the AWS guy,” it felt morally necessary to deploy the whole thing on AWS. Maybe I’d even use Kiro if I felt extra fancy. ...

I was invited to speak at UNC Charlotte recently to the computer science programs, and I approached the session, Cracking the Cloud, with a very specific goal: to give students a realistic, actionable way to stand out in a job market that’s becoming more competitive every year. Companies are slowing early-career hiring. AI is reshaping workflows. Expectations for junior talent are rising, not shrinking. Students can sense this shift, but many don’t know what to do with that reality. That’s where the conversation begins. ...