Pokémon Surveys and Cloud Infrastructure

Pokémon Surveys, Serverless Architecture, and Teaching Students to Build on 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?” ...

December 27, 2025 · 12 min · Luke Little
Hugo Blog AWS Architecture Diagram

I Tried to Deploy a Simple Website on AWS. It Became a Full-Blown Side Quest.

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. ...

December 8, 2025 · 8 min · Luke Little