Nikhil Wanpal

Setting up VPN on ubuntu 19.10 and getting DNS to work correctly

December 28, 2019 Nikhil Wanpal Comments 0 Comment

A bit late to post this? May be. But it is still relevant, so here goes. We shall see how to setup openvpn client on Ubuntu versions greater than 18.10 (or was it 18.04?) It certainly matters for 19.10 though! A few things changed back then that caused issues in openvpn connection and DNS resolution. There was a fix found, and package released bundling the scripts so that normal users like us can install and enable those scripts. This solved…

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[TechNggets] Podcast Is Moving To tnt-podcast.com

September 19, 2019 Nikhil Wanpal Comments 0 Comment

This is not an episode of the Tech Nuggets And Thoughts podcast, this is just an update. The podcast is moving to a new home: https://www.tnt-podcast.com Please follow the new website or various other podcast aggregators for updates on new episodes and topics. You can find all the applicable links in sidebar or on the new website. The blog will continue to be the vessel for my personal ramblings as usual.

[TechNggets] Episode 4: Delivering With Confidence: Unit Testing – Part – I

September 13, 2019 Nikhil Wanpal Comments 0 Comment

This is the forth episode of podcast “Tech Nuggets and Thoughts”. In this episode, we talk about Unit Testing covering points such as: What is testing? What are software requirements? The test pyramid Importance of business in software and what it means for testing. Test principles: F.I.R.S.T Test First approach What is a unit, in unit testing? To get updates, you can subscribe to the podcast on: Apple iTunes, Google Podcasts, player.fm, RSS feed, FeedBurner, Stitcher Radio or TuneIn . If you have any…

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Understanding Microservices: Exploding A Monolith

August 29, 2019 Nikhil Wanpal Comments 0 Comment

This is a myth-buster exercise. When it comes to microservices, the talks and blogs around are riddled with fancy and scary terms. This presentation is takes a different take on it. Instead of learning the terms, we discover the solutions to various problems and then learn what those solutions are popularly referred to as. We go through the history of software architecture to understand how it evolved in the good old days. Based on which we draw some rules of…

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Who do we write code for?

August 8, 2019 Nikhil Wanpal Comments 0 Comment

Recently, while reviewing some code, I came across the snippet below. Now a keen mind can spot many issues with this. The ones I am referring to are something specific and relevant to the business though. The code is supposed to fetch all active clients, loop through, get job specifications from some DataSources defined for those clients, build a config object and return those values to calling function so that those jobs can be fired. Interestingly DataSourceInstance, DataSourceOriginConfig and DataSourceJobConfig…

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[TechNggets] Episode 3: Circular Dependency

August 5, 2019 Nikhil Wanpal Comments 0 Comment

This is the third episode of podcast “Tech Nuggets and Thoughts”. To get updates, you can subscribe to the podcast on: Apple iTunes, Google Podcasts, player.fm, RSS feed, FeedBurner, Stitcher Radio or TuneIn . If you have any suggestions, thoughts or recommendations, please feel free to comment below. You can also reach me on podcast’s twitter handle @TechNggets or my personal account @nikhilwanpal. (If the fancy player above does not work, try the bare bones player below.)

Where Do We Go Wrong With Agile

September 28, 2018 Nikhil Wanpal Comments 1 comment

A few days ago I published this blog mocking the ‘Ceremony Focused Agile’ teams. But it is pointless to state what one thinks is not right, without also commenting on what one thinks is right! So let us do that today. Here is a conversation, which I am sure many of us have witnessed (or been part of): A: “I have assigned a ticket to you, what is the status of it?” B: “”Ticket, what ticket?” A: “It’s in JIRA,…

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Revolutionising Agile With Head-Stand-Ups

September 9, 2018 Nikhil Wanpal Comments 2 comments

So here’s a true story. I work with a normal sized team as per Agile/Scrum guidelines, about 8 people. We have our usual stand-ups every day, at about 10:30 in the morning. As a general rule, people have to join this meeting. Everyone speaks following the Scrum rules, just what is required: What I did, what I am going to do today and if I am blocked. And that’s it. Yet, our discussions diverge, others jump in to help whenever…

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AWS Cloudwatch Log Scroller

September 8, 2018 Nikhil Wanpal Comments 1 comment

This is a quick tip about a quick solution to a regular small problem! AWS CloudWatch logs are great, but the search feature on those logs is not. The search only lists the lines that are exact match to your search term. Usually you would want to see a few lines above or below the match as well! Not all logs are single line, unless you spend efforts in ensuring that there are no newlines in the content being logged…

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Starting Your Own IT Business In India?

June 6, 2018 Nikhil Wanpal Comments 0 Comment

This is the Current State Of Processes Around It! I recently started working on a foreign software development contract. It seems that to ‘earn’ via such a contract, you need to have a business entity of sorts. I had to undergo a long, painful process riddled with unknowns and uncertainties to establish one and raise my invoices. Here is a brief of my understanding of the process and various norms and laws. I do not claim that the material below…

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