Hi, I’m Tyrel.

A software developer constantly learning new skills and technologies. I work for Giftbit building great web services. You can see some of my work below as well as on my Github.

Articles

Shipping ECS Fargate logs to Datadog with FireLens (and what broke)
October 20, 2025 10 Minute Read
Getting logs out of ECS Fargate and into Datadog with FireLens took about twenty lines of Terraform and worked on the first deploy. Then every log arrived as INFO and I couldn't find our tags anywhere. A week to sort both out. One was a real bug, one was me, and for months I gave the credit to the wrong fix.
#aws#ecs#fargate#datadog#firelens#fluent-bit#logging#observability#platform#infrastructure#terraform
AWS Solutions Architect Associate Certification
June 20, 2025 7 Minute Read
After abandoning an AWS cert prep course in 2020, I came back four years later with five years of hands-on AWS experience and passed the Solutions Architect Associate on the first try. Here's the course, the exam format, and the three technical failures that nearly derailed my remote test.
#aws#certification#solutions-architect#udemy#infrastructure
Markdown based Code Block Syntax Highlighting
Dec 24, 2024 4 Minute Read
I wanted to add syntax highlighting to code blocks on this site. I use a markdown renderer to convert my markdown articles into html, and I wanted a solution that would work with that system and let me use React components. With syntax highlighting code blocks are far more readable now. Read on to see how I built my system using marked-react and react-code-blocks.
#static-site-generators#nextjs#javascript#typescript#markdown#react#code-syntax-highlighting#marked-react#react-code-blocks#marked
Static Site Search Part 3 - Optimizing the Index
April 18, 2024 8 Minute Read
This is the final part (for now) on the search functionality for my site. I implemented some optimizations that I alluded to in part 1 & 2. I was able to get my search index for my 20-ish posts from ~700kb down to ~22kb!
#static-site-generators#nextjs#javascript#typescript#search
Static Site Search Part 2 - Search Component
April 10, 2024 7 Minute Read
This is the followup to Part 1 in this series on building a Static Site Search for my website. In the first part I built a search index of my articles for quick searching. In this part I'll import that search index into my Next project and create a UI to interact with it. The search component described here is live on this site!
#static-site-generators#nextjs#javascript#typescript#search
Static Site Search Part 1 - Preprocessing Articles
April 3, 2024 15 Minute Read
In this series of articles I discuss how I created a client-side search for my static website. After looking at a few options out there for static sites and Next.js projects, I decided the challenge to build my own search from scratch would be more enjoyable. This first article discusses how I preprocess my articles into a search index.
#static-site-generators#nextjs#javascript#typescript#search
Next.js Tag Pages
March 25, 2024 6 Minute Read
My goal with this project was to make the tags I'm already displaying alongside articles to be clickable links that filter my posts by that tag. Try to click one!
#nextjs#javascript#typescript#webdev#static-site-generators
Book Notes: DevOps Handbook, The
August 27, 2023 8 Minute Read
Here are some point-form takeaways from my notes from reading The DevOps Handbook by John Willis, Gene Kim, and Patrick Debois.
#book-notes#devops#automation#testing#continuous-integration#continuous-deployment#cicd#infrastructure#infrastructure-as-code#git#feedback-loops#continuous-learning#platform
How I use my Synology NAS as my personal cloud
August 15, 2023 10 Minute Read
This is a follow-up to my previous post describing what a Synology NAS is. In this post I describe some of the more interesting functionality that I use every day.
#synology#nas#data-ownership#hardware#photos#note-taking#obsidian#plex#lightroom
Deploy a Next.js Static Site to GitHub Pages
July 23, 2023 8 Minute Read
I cover the config and deployment steps necessary to easily deploy a static site built with Next.js to GitHub Pages.
#github-pages#nextjs#react#static-site-generators#typescript#javascript#cicd#platform
What is a Synology NAS?
July 18, 2023 3 Minute Read
I recently got myself a Synology NAS. What does that even mean? In this part one of two, I talk a bit about what a Synology NAS is. In part two, I'll talk about the cool things I do with mine.
#synology#nas#data-ownership#hardware
Resources I Found Valuable in 2022
Jan 20 2023 2 Minute Read
Here are the resouces I got value from in 2023. Topics include kids, devops, web dev, and some hardware stuff.
#devops#nextjs#hardware#raspberry-pi#synology#kids#webdev
What is DevOps?
April 10, 2022 7 Minute Read
In my role as a software developer at my day job, I’ve been getting more interested in DevOps as a career trajectory. But what does that even mean? Do I even know? This is a brief exploration into what DevOps is and how I see it relating to a small development team.
#devops#automation#github-actions#platform
What I'm Learning in 2022
March 23, 2022 5 Minute Read
Here is a rundown of what I'm learning in 2022, what I'd like to learn in 2022, and some things I know I just wont have time for in 2022.
#docker#github-actions#neovim#vpn#synology#ssl#static-site-generators#cicd#aws#infrastructure#platform
AWS Dynamic DNS
March 20, 2022 5 Minute Read
A dynamic DNS is handy if you want to host something or access something on your home network but you don't have a static IP address from your ISP. I built a little dynamic DNS script for AWS Route53 using Node that runs on a Raspberry Pi.
#aws#ddns#node#raspberry-pi#infrastructure
My Introduction to Game Development
Mar 25, 2021 8 Minute Read
In 2020 I began learning game development as a hobby. Now in the beginning of 2021 it is taking up most of my free time. This is a little intro into how I got started and the tools I learned
#game-dev#unity#godot#pixel-art
Small Form Factor PC Part 2 - Water Cooling
Jan 25 2021 29 Minute Read
This second part of my small form factor gaming PC build covers my upgrade to a full custom water cooling system. Both the CPU and GPU are cooled by a 240mm radiator with parts from EKWB and Barrow. I cover all of the components and all the pros and cons I encountered when assembling it.
#pc#gaming#hardware
Small Form Factor PC Build Part 1
Jan 2 2021 5 Minute Read
My first small form factor gaming PC and my second proper gaming PC. This machine uses a Ryzen 7 5800X processor and a EVGA RTX 3080 XC3 Ultra graphics card, all in the 13.5L Metalfish S5 case from AliExpress.
#pc#gaming#hardware
Dark Mode React Toggle
June 28, 2020 6 Minute Read
I developed a dark and light theme for this site and built a toggle to switch between them. Also I used media queries to set the default theme to match the visitors operating system choice.
#react#dark-mode#javascript#webdev
Node CI/CD Pipeline using GitHub Actions & AWS Elastic Beanstalk
May 30, 2020 24 Minute Read
Here is my journey into creating an automated continuous integration and continuous deployment workflow for a project using GitHub Actions.
#github-actions#cicd#typescript#aws#automation#platform
Deno Tests & GitHub Actions CI
May 23, 2020 6 Minute Read
As part of translating my JavaScript and Node Battlesnake to TypeScript and Deno I wanted to setup continuous integration. It was som much easier than I imagined using GitHub Actions.
#javascript#typescript#node#deno#github-actions#cicd#devops#platform
Lightshift Game
Feb 1, 2020 1 Minute Read
I started this project in 2018 to help teach myself better object-oriented programming structure, game update/draw loops, and JavaScript in general. Implemented using the P5.js framework for the draw loop and canvas drawing functionality with nothing else but vanilla JavaScript.
#javascript#game-dev#p5js
Migrating Frontend Assets During Grails 2 → 3 Upgrade
Dec 15, 2019 4 Minute Read
Upgrading our application from Grails 2 to Grails 3 has been a long process. Migrating our static frontend assets is just one piece of that process.
#grails
Battlesnake Programming Competition 2018
June 11, 2018 18 Minute Read
Battlesnake is a programming competition where participants create an AI server that acts as the brain of a snake in the classic game Snake. Participants compete in a round-robin tournament played out live in front of an audience of roughly 1000 people. The winner takes home up to $4,000!
#python#ai#events#battlesnake
Building a Mechanical Keyboard from Scratch
Apr 20, 2017 17 Minute Read
After becoming infatuated with custom mechanical keyboards I decided to build my own. Not from a kit, but like from scratch. This is my journey through designing, aquiring parts, building, and programming my own mechanical keyboard complete with a custom layout I designed.
#mechanical-keyboards#arduino#c++#hardware

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