Jan 22 2018 — Why would you want to install NGINX from source code rather than a pre-built package? The most important reason is that the libraries which NGINX depends on (PCRE, zlib, OpenSSL) are part of the pre-built package, and building from source allows you to use the latest versions which may contain vital security patches. This post explains in detail how to install NGINX from source on Ubuntu, producing a .deb package which also allows you to easily uninstall the same instance of NGINX.

Jan 19 2018 — Type casting or type converting is a common occurrance in C#, and as the language has evolved new methods and operators have been introduced that handle type conversion in varying ways. Over the years, I have built up my own set of best practices and decided to get them out of my head with the goal of soliciting feedback and hopefully refining them further.

Jan 18 2018 — In this post, I explore the different pricing models that Amazon offers for EC2 and RDS instances and estimate the cost to host four different website configurations for one year. What amount should I expect to pay to host my website with the same AWS instances when I’m no longer eligible for the free usage tier? I answer this and many other questions that you know you wonder about but are just too damn embarrassed to admit in public.

Jan 15 2018 — With Amazon's Free Usage Tier, it's very easy to generate overage charges even with the best intentions of operating entirely within the offer’s limits (this is why Amazon requires a credit card when you create your account). For each individual service (EC2, RDS, S2, etc.), your usage for the month is tabulated in extremely fine detail. At first, the sheer number of items on your invoice can be intimidating. In this post, I will show what a typical bill contains for running a small Wordpress site and how to avoid overage charges and other unnecesary costs.