Gene Reader

Part 1 - Building a CI/CD Pipeline with GitHub Actions and Container Registries

eugene.reader@gmail.com (Gene Reader) — Mon, 18 Aug 2025 15:10:14 -0700

Building a CI/CD Pipeline with GitHub Actions and Container Registries

I recently built a complete CI/CD pipeline for my Flask job application tracking app. Like my Hugo blog setup, I struggled to find a single source covering everything I needed. I found myself cobbling together multiple YouTube videos, tutorials, and AWS and GitHub Actions documentation just to get a working pipeline. There’s a lot of moving parts here, so I decided to split this into a two-part series.

Part 2 - Deploying to AWS ECS: From Container Registry to Production

eugene.reader@gmail.com (Gene Reader) — Fri, 22 Aug 2025 15:10:14 -0700

Deploying to AWS ECS: From Container Registry to Production

In Part 1, I built a pipeline that automatically tests my Flask app and pushes containers to both GHCR and ECR. I’m going to deploy those containers somewhere that people can use them. I’m going to use AWS ECS to make my app publicly accessible. (This won’t be accessible to the public, I’ll be spinning this down after the demo to avoid burning through my AWS credits and racking up costs.)

Nautocon and AutoCon4 Session Notes (Unofficial)

eugene.reader@gmail.com (Gene Reader) — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 16:52:05 -0800

These are my personal reflection notes from the AutoCon4 and Nautocon sessions I attended. I took notes during the sessions and expanded them the same day while everything was still fresh, trying to pull out the high-level concepts I wanted to remember.

I wrote most of this in fast shorthand during the talks, then turned those notes into fuller summaries later. That means there is always a chance I captured something imperfectly or interpreted a point differently than the speaker intended. Any mistakes are mine.

What AutoCon4 Taught Me

eugene.reader@gmail.com (Gene Reader) — Sat, 22 Nov 2025 14:17:51 -0800

I went into AutoCon4 expecting to hear new tooling ideas, clever automation tricks, and maybe a few case studies to bring home. I walked out with something very different.

Instead of focusing on the latest frameworks or features, almost every speaker pushed a much deeper point.

If you want to go deeper in what I learned at Nautocon and AutoCon4, I have also published my expanded session notes: Nautocon & AutoCon4 Session Notes (Unofficial)

How I Connected My Transcend Micro CPAP to an M-Series Mac

eugene.reader@gmail.com (Gene Reader) — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 10:45:17 -0800

Overview

Running the Transcend MiniCPAP software on an M-series Mac (in my case an M4 Pro) inside Parallels Desktop was not plug-and-play.
Windows 11 ARM detected the Transcend Micro as an FT230X Basic UART, but no suitable driver was available.

The trick was understanding that the Transcend Micro uses an FTDI FT230X USB-to-serial bridge.
The solution required using the correct ARM64 VCP driver, editing its .inf file so Windows would accept it, and working around a Parallels path issue.

Building a RSS News Aggregator with GitHub Pages

eugene.reader@gmail.com (Gene Reader) — Sat, 11 Oct 2025 09:05:21 -0700

I find myself doom scrolling through content that an algorithm somewhere has decided I want to read. My browser’s “new tab” page often shows articles I don’t care about or don’t want to see. I realized I could take control by setting my own homepage. A page that shows the news I actually want to read, because I curated the list myself. I understand I could likely find an RSS reader website and build a feed that way, but this seemed like a simple enough problem that I should be able to do it myself without worrying about ads or algorithms.

Building a Network Automation Lab: Containerlab + NetBox on macOS

eugene.reader@gmail.com (Gene Reader) — Sun, 28 Sep 2025 14:00:00 -0700

Building a Network Automation Lab: Containerlab + NetBox on macOS

Building a foundation for network automation testing and development on a Mac from 2018

The Challenge

I needed a reliable local lab environment for testing network automation scripts and prototyping configurations. My 2018 MacBook Pro with 16GB RAM isn’t exactly cutting-edge anymore, so I had to be smart about how I used my resources.

My goal was to build something that could handle real routing protocols and integrate with modern automation tools, but wouldn’t require enterprise hardware or cloud resources.

Set Up Hugo Blog

eugene.reader@gmail.com (Gene Reader) — Sun, 17 Aug 2025 16:30:05 -0700

Setting Up a Hugo-based Blog on GitHub Pages

I will be showing you how I set up a Hugo blog, being published to GitHub Pages using GitHub Actions for free.

I chose GitHub Pages because it offers the ability to host static websites for free with minimal configuration, and I have a new interest in GitHub Actions. I noted that the “modern” method to deploy a website on GitHub is with Actions and I couldn’t pass up the opportunity. While going through the process of deploying this blog, I found that no single resource had all the information I needed to get everything stood up. I figured, “hey I’m making a blog why not write what I wish I had” and that’s how this post came to be. The process is fairly simple from start to finish once you know where all the moving parts are located.