Generated by All in One SEO v4.9.10, this is an llms.txt file, used by LLMs to index the site. # Dreaming in DevOps Life, Development, Systems Adminstration, DevOps, Photography, Travel, and more ramblings. ## Sitemaps - [XML Sitemap](https://martinb3.io/sitemap.xml): Contains all public & indexable URLs for this website. ## Posts - [Street art in Uruguay & Argentina](https://martinb3.io/street-art-in-uruguay/) - Street art from the Southernmost capital of the Americas. View this post on Instagram Street art in Uruguay. See http://martinb3.io/street-art-in-uruguay/ for full album. A post shared by Martin B. Smith (@martinbs3) on Feb 3, 2016 at 6:54pm PST View this post on Instagram Oops. Wrong door. A post shared by Martin B. Smith (@martinbs3) on - [The Trouble with Blogs](https://martinb3.io/the-trouble-with-blogs/) - Hi there! You've found my first blog post. I'm Martin. I'm a Husband, DevOps Engineer, Racker, Photographer, and Traveler. I love the idea of making the world a better place while I'm here. And hopefully my journey is interesting enough for you to follow along. My experience of life is that it is not divided - [Montevideo, Uruguay: Two weeks later](https://martinb3.io/montevideo-uruguay-two-weeks-later/) - After writing about our amazing coworking space, Sinergia, during my first week, and publishing some photographs of street art in the city in Uruguay, I haven’t been able to find more time to put my thoughts down, “on paper.” I feel as though time has sped along back in the United States – that I’ve - [My Hack Day experience with API Gateway and Apache Velocity](https://martinb3.io/api-gateway-apache-velocity/) - During my last visit to the Castle, I had the opportunity to join a hack day event with our awesome Solutions Architects at Fanatical Support for AWS at Rackspace. While my team does try to do hack day events every few months, I was excited to join a totally different group with different skillsets and - [3 Thoughts about Santiago, Chile](https://martinb3.io/three-thoughts-santiago-chile/) - A few weeks ago, I went to Santiago de Chile for 2 weeks. I met up with Remote Year friends and worked during the day at Edge Coworking (would recommend!). Overall, it might have been a tactical error to visit such a place in winter; I bet it's got a totally different vibe in the - [The Chef Firewall Cookbook: a Leaky Abstraction](https://martinb3.io/chef-firewall-cookbook/) - Managing a firewall is hard. Designing an abstraction layer on top of a firewall is even harder. Not only do you need to understand networking and your operating system, but you need to figure out a way to map common operations on firewalls to specific implementation rules. And you'll need a way to manage firewalls - [How Slack is bad for an online community](https://martinb3.io/slack-is-bad-community/) - Dave Cheney recently made waves in the tech world by writing that Slack is inappropriate for open source communications. This reminded me about how the Chef community had made the move to Slack last year, and how they'd identified some major gaps between IRC (the previous preferred chat platform) and Slack. Because you can't moderate - [3 Thoughts about Machu Picchu](https://martinb3.io/three-thoughts-macchu-picchu/) - According to Wikipedia, "Machu Picchu is an Incan citadel set high in the Andes Mountains in Peru, above the Urubamba River valley. Built in the 15th century and later abandoned, it’s renowned for its sophisticated dry-stone walls that fuse huge blocks without the use of mortar, intriguing buildings that play on astronomical alignments and panoramic - [Tech lead roles: What makes a technical leader?](https://martinb3.io/tech-lead-role/) - I have a mentee who was recently reading some job postings. He wrote to ask me about postings for tech lead roles: What does it mean to be a technical lead? Is it a behavior/trait or something that has to come from experience? There are some definitions out there already, but I think there's a - [Mentoring & Industry Culture](https://martinb3.io/mentoring-industry-culture/) - Why Mentoring? I strongly believe that mentoring can help a mentee develop into a better technical leader, and it's also an exercise in leadership for a mentor -- you're sharing your vision and engaged in convincing someone else to go down a particular path. I've participated in at least four different mentoring programs during my - [3 Thoughts about Belgrade](https://martinb3.io/three-thoughts-belgrade/) - Upon arriving in Belgrade, we were taken by our landlord (Milan -- it seems to be a very common name here!), to a 4th floor walkup apartment in the heart of Skadarlija. This area seems to be the equivalent to Montmarte in Paris (aside: I looked this area up, and found that I'm not the - [Five things I do when arriving in a new place](https://martinb3.io/new-place-five-things-arrival/) - When arriving in a new place (city or country), or even sometimes before takeoff on a travel day, I have a checklist of things I immediately do. I've developed this list over the course of traveling in South America, Europe, and Asia for the last year with Remote Year. Even when I'm not traveling with - [Public speaking retrospective, 2016 edition](https://martinb3.io/public-speaking-2016/) - With 2016 drawing to a close, as well as my Remote Year adventure ending at the end of this month, I've been thinking a lot about what my 2017 public speaking goals are, as well as what travel in 2017 may bring me. Inspired by Cate's blog post on 2016 speaking and 2017 goals, I - [3 Thoughts about Oslo, Norway](https://martinb3.io/three-thoughts-oslo-norway/) - When I was in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in March this year, I started looking at conferences and other events happening further along our route for the year. I applied to two or three things, including the first DevOpsDays Oslo, in Norway. A few months later, I received an acceptance email, and began planning a trip - [3 Thoughts about Bosnia & Herzegovina](https://martinb3.io/three-thoughts-bosnia/) - Last month in Split, some friends and I decided it would be interesting to rent a car and travel through Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH), staying a night each in Mostar, Konjic (near the Blidinje National Park), and Sarajevo. I remember growing up and seeing TV news programs about the Bosnian war, humanitarian aid in Sarajevo, - [3 Thoughts about Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia](https://martinb3.io/three-thoughts-kualalumpur-malaysia/) - I'm rounding out week three in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia (or just "KL" for short), and I feel like I've barely scratched the surface of what I could do here. We're staying in the Maple Suites, and our workspace is a 15 minute walk to Bukit Bintang, a large retail shopping district. There's even a, "Times - [3 Thoughts about Bali, Indonesia](https://martinb3.io/three-thoughts-bali-indonesia/) - Because I was spending five weeks in Kuala Lumpur, I decided I should do a longer side trip somewhere in Southeast Asia this month, and I chose Bali, Indonesia. There's been a lot of talk of Bali from Remote Year folks. The Remote Nomad has talked about how much she loved Bali, and has even - [3 Thoughts about Split, Croatia](https://martinb3.io/three-thoughts-split-croatia/) - My 4 months in Europe have come to an end after a final month in Split, Croatia. I'm thinking about my time there, fresh on the heels of landing in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Outside of the summer months, Split appears to be a sleepy little beach town with an interesting mix of Eastern European and - [Where Lambda falls short](https://martinb3.io/lambda-falls-short/) - Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve heard about the Cloud Computing movement. I’ve made the case before that functions-as-a-service, and ‘Serverless’ in general, are the next step in that evolution in utility based computing. But are Serverless technologies ready for prime time? Specifically, is AWS Lambda ready for mass deployment? I recently had - [Can DevOps and Remote Work learn from each other?](https://martinb3.io/can-devops-remote-work-learn/) - More people than ever are working from home. Estimates range from 10% (in the least remote-work-friendly countries) to 60% in the United States. Even global data shows that half of all workers may be remote by 2020. DevOps, the cultural movement towards more agile systems administration, has also been gaining traction. Gartner estimates that 25% - [Thinking about Remote Year? My thoughts halfway.](https://martinb3.io/thinking-remote-year-halfway/) - In terms of days, Battuta is now over halfway finished with Remote Year. We've visited at least 6 countries, taken flights and buses and ferries, spent $12,000 Dollars on housing and a workspace, made new friends and had to say goodbye to a few remotes along the way. At this point, what do I say - [My Remote Year Profile: Martin Smith](https://martinb3.io/remote-year-profile/) - Check out my Remote Year profile, featured today on remoteyear.com. WHY DID YOU DECIDE TO COME ON REMOTE YEAR? I have been living in Gainesville, FL, since 2001, and already loved to take longer trips and work abroad, so this program was perfect for me. I truly enjoy meeting new people, and exploring new places, - [First day working in Montevideo](https://martinb3.io/first-day-at-work/) - Today was the first real 'work' day that we've had in Montevideo. If every workspace is like this one, the workspaces alone will be a huge high point of the Remote Year adventure. This month, we're at Sinergia Co-work. This place is truly the whole package when it comes to coworking -- a team of - [New profiling feature in chef-client 12.6.0](https://martinb3.io/profiling-chef-client-12-6/) - I subscribe to the Chef blog in my RSS reader, The Old Reader, so that I can stay up to date with recent releases and changes happening in the community and in the various software projects that make up, "Chef." Recently, I saw the release announcement for chef-client 12.6.0. I scrutinize these especially closely, as - [Chef Provisioning on the Rackspace Public Cloud](https://martinb3.io/chef-provisioning-fog-rackspace/) - Many companies use configuration management tools to manage their cloud servers and other cloud infrastructure. But some configuration management tools are now also enabling users to not just manage cloud servers, but actually create the servers as well. As part of the DevOps Automation Service, I most often work with a popular configuration management tool - [Goodbye Gainesville!](https://martinb3.io/goodbye-gainesville/) - When I was in high school, I used to debate two big major paths -- making a positive impact in the world right now, or going to college and learning a skill that could (after a much longer incubation period) be a multiplier on making the world a better place. At one point, I was - [Test-Kitchen & Serverspec with Windows guests](https://martinb3.io/testkitchen-serverspec-windows/) - Earlier this year, I attended ChefConf 2015 in Santa Clara where I attended the Hack Day at Microsoft on Friday. While I spent most of that day working on various projects like kitchen-rackspace with Jonathan Hartman, I also tested the upcoming test-kitchen 1.4 release upon Fletcher's request. Among the release notes was something I would - [Top DevOps Meetups in the USA](https://martinb3.io/top-devops-meetups-usa/) - Earlier this week, ProfitBricks, a leading cloud-computing company in high-end IaaS, released their list of "Top DevOps Meetups & Their Leaders: 49 Meetups For DevOps Pros," and the Gainesville DevOps Meetup & I have made the list. And, I'm in good company to boot! I have to admit, this surprised me somewhat, as it's only - [Start monitoring your home internet connection](https://martinb3.io/monitoring-internet-connections/) - NewRelic quietly released a new product called Synthetics earlier this year. While services like Pingdom have been around for a while, New Relic's Synthetics has been the first option that made me actually shut down my own personal monitoring systems. For the last five years or so, I've been monitoring everything, from websites I run ## Pages - [Speaking](https://martinb3.io/speaking/) - 2026 SOL328: Architecting Megascale AI: Co-Creating an AI Supercomputer Deployment Featuring A4X (GB200s GPUs). Google Cloud Next '26. with Samara Kasa. April 2026. Operating Tens of Thousands of GPUs on Hyperscalers: Failure, Firmware, and the Illusion of Capacity. SRECon '26 Americas. with Abe Hoffman. March 2026. The Messy 9 and Coding with AI. This is ## Categories - [Uncategorized](https://martinb3.io/category/uncategorized/) - [Travel](https://martinb3.io/category/travel/) - Posts about travel, destinations, or living abroad. - [Technology](https://martinb3.io/category/tech/) - Posts about technical topics. - [Remote Work](https://martinb3.io/category/remote/) - Posts about working remotely. - [Personal](https://martinb3.io/category/personal/) - Posts that are personal thoughts, pictures, or news updates about me. - [Mentoring](https://martinb3.io/category/mentoring/) ## Tags - [General](https://martinb3.io/tag/general/) - [testing](https://martinb3.io/tag/testing/) - [devops](https://martinb3.io/tag/devops/) - [tech](https://martinb3.io/tag/tech/) - [speaking](https://martinb3.io/tag/speaking/) - [github](https://martinb3.io/tag/github/) - [aws](https://martinb3.io/tag/aws/) - [rackspace](https://martinb3.io/tag/rackspace/) - [cloud](https://martinb3.io/tag/cloud/) - [chef](https://martinb3.io/tag/chef/) - [ruby](https://martinb3.io/tag/ruby/) - [configuration management](https://martinb3.io/tag/configuration-management/) - [programming](https://martinb3.io/tag/programming/) - [home](https://martinb3.io/tag/home/) - [internet](https://martinb3.io/tag/internet/) - [monitoring](https://martinb3.io/tag/monitoring/) - [meetups](https://martinb3.io/tag/meetups/) - [top lists](https://martinb3.io/tag/top-lists/) - [gainesville](https://martinb3.io/tag/gainesville/) - [windows](https://martinb3.io/tag/windows/) - [travel](https://martinb3.io/tag/travel/) - [remote work](https://martinb3.io/tag/remote-work/) - [coworking](https://martinb3.io/tag/coworking/) - [photography](https://martinb3.io/tag/photography/) - [belgrade](https://martinb3.io/tag/belgrade/) - [serbia](https://martinb3.io/tag/serbia/) - [cyrillic](https://martinb3.io/tag/cyrillic/) - [remote year](https://martinb3.io/tag/remote-year/) - [statistics](https://martinb3.io/tag/statistics/) - [devopsdays](https://martinb3.io/tag/devopsdays/) - [lambda](https://martinb3.io/tag/lambda/) - [three-thoughts](https://martinb3.io/tag/three-thoughts/) - [conferences](https://martinb3.io/tag/conferences/) - [goals](https://martinb3.io/tag/goals/) - [tech lead](https://martinb3.io/tag/tech-lead/) - [leadership](https://martinb3.io/tag/leadership/) - [mentoring](https://martinb3.io/tag/mentoring/) - [chatops](https://martinb3.io/tag/chatops/) - [slack](https://martinb3.io/tag/slack/) ## Media Categories - [Featured Post Image](https://martinb3.io/media_category/featured-post-image/) - Images used as the primary image featured in a post - [External Logos](https://martinb3.io/media_category/external-logo/) - Images of logos of external entities (e.g. Octocat, Fanatiguy, etc) - [Site Wide Images](https://martinb3.io/media_category/site-image/) - Images used across the entire site, for themes or avatars or major components. - [Technical Graphics](https://martinb3.io/media_category/technical-graphics/) - [Random Clip Art](https://martinb3.io/media_category/random-clip-art/)