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"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

And I am always on the quest to find more. Most of the times, I end up getting lost in the maze. This blog is an attempt to share my experiences and also to retrace the steps back, in the future.

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Sandeep Meher's avatar

Books read in 2020

In 2020, I could not keep my resolution of reading 26 books in a year. Managed to read just 22, well short of the goal. But then, this was not a normal year. The first and the last were the most impactful. Hoping that I do better in 2021.

Here is the list in the oder that I read in 2020.

1. Lord of the Flies by William Golding | Highly Recommended - Fiction : A classic tale about a group of children stranded on an island. This book shows us why society or corporate life or politics is as it is - basic human nature developed right from infancy. It is highly recommended for every type of reader.

2. The Screwtape Letters by C.S.Lewis | Fiction : A classic satire that not all readers can appreciate. It is a correspondence between the Devil and his accomplice Wormwood on Earth. I have seen this form used in Sunday editions of Marathi newspaper.

3. Barking Up The Wrong Tree by Eric Barker | Recommended - Non-fiction : A self-help and motivational book; more like 'The Outliers' by Malcolm Gladwell or 'Grit' by Angela Duckworth but with more humour. Recommended for everyone.

4. Timefulness by Marcia Bjornerud | Highly Recommended - Non-Fiction : On the surface it is a book about geology, but when you think deeply, it reveals the unnecessary importance that we give to our ordinary lives and less attention to the things that matter for humanity. I consider it as a philosophical book in addition to one about a geology. It is not for everybody and I had to skim over the detailed technical concepts. But recommended to broaden one's horizon. One can never go wrong with that.

5. The Content Trap by Bharat Anand | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : I read this again after initially reading a couple of years back. It is about the digital age, products or consumer based designing and marketing and various strategies. It is highly recommended.

6. The 1982-83 Bombay Textile Strike And the Unmaking of a Labourers' City by Hub van Wersch | Non-fiction : A detailed academic study of a subject that I am immensely interested in - because Mumbai and its chawls. It took a Dutch national to write this unbiased, apolitical and almost unemotional book. Not for everyone, though.

7. The New World Disorder and The Indian Imperative by Shashi Tharoor & Samir Saran | Recommended - Non-fiction : A fine primer on international relations in 4 sections - International organisations (UN, GXX, BRICS etc.), Climate Change, Internet and India's role. Very good read.

8. Men without women by Haruki Murakami | Recommended - Fiction : The title says it all. A collection of short stories.

9. Then the Fish Swallowed Him by Amir Ahmadi Arian | Highly Recommended - Fiction : An amazing novel based in Tehran, Iran, centered around a bus driver who is imprisoned after getting entangled in union and politics.

10. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel García Márquez | Recommended - Fiction : English translation of a Spanish novel by a Columbian writer. I thought it will be apt for pandemic reading, but the novel is more about love than cholera. It exposes human nature.

11. Trumpocalypse by David Frum | Recommended - Non-fiction : Read whatever is wrong with the current world.

12. Poor Economics by Abhijit Banerjee & Esther Duflo | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : A must read to understand the poor and poverty. The book has a marvellous collection of research snippets based on various studies and experiments.

13. Choices by Shivshankar Menon | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : An informative book about the thinking and process behind our country's foreign policy and beautifully grouped by important milestones - Nuclear deal, Sri Lanka, Mumbai attacks etc. Highly recommended, but not everyone's cup of tea.

14. Bad Money by Vivek Kaul | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : A lucid tale of the NPA problems of Indian banks. What happens with our deposits in our bank accounts - find it out here.

15. Sputnik Sweetheart by Haruki Murakami | Recommended - Non-fiction : A small novel by the Japanese master of surrealism. One can call it a love triangle but there can be a number of interpretations of this. Recommended for a lazy weekend.

16. Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : An insightful book about how data and algorithms have started affecting human beings; and for many, negatively. I read the book for the second time. Recommending this book is easy - the title itself does half the job. But let me assure you, the content, too, is as powerful.

17. Go set a Watchman by Harper Lee | Highly Recommended - Fiction : Extremely thought provoking sequel to one of the finest novels of all time 'To Kill a Mockingbird'. Challenges our prejudices and biases - individual and society.

18. Cornered - Barry Lynn | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : A criticism of capitalism and related monopoly. Not for everyone. But must read if you are interested in the state of economy created and ruled by financiers and bankers.

19. Big Mistakes: The Best Investors and Their Worst Investments by Michael Batnick | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : It is a compelling read for those interested in financial markets. Is there a method in successful investing? Nobody knows. But there are multiple ways to fail in investing.

20. 35 Days: How Politics In Maharashtra Changed Forever In 2019 by Jitendra Dixit | Recommended - Non-fiction : One of the most dramatic events in Indian politics. This book does have not too many off-the-record revelations, but it is an interesting record of the post-election manoeuvring by all the political parties involved.

21. Since Yesterday: The 1930s in America by Frederick Lewis Allen | Recommended - Non-fiction : Account of the Great Depression. A very different way of writing - a chronicle. Published in 1940, so doesn't have a context of the current affairs which is actually positive.

22. Shakespeare: The World as a Stage by Bill Bryson | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : Interesting topic in a typical Bryson style - explores the so many different theories of who Shakespeare was. One of the most prolific writer had written nothing about himself and has led to many theories.

23. Annihilation of Caste by Dr. B. R. Ambedkar | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : A powerful speech that was never delivered as a speech but published as a book. Every Indian should read this and only then form opinions about reservation.

Sandeep Meher's avatar

Book Review - Weapons of Math Destruction by Cathy O'Neil

An insightful book about how data and algorithms have started affecting human beings; and for many, negatively. I read the book for the second time. Recommending this book is easy - the title itself does half the job. But let me assure you, the content, too, is as powerful.

The author, a Ph.D. in Mathematics from Harvard, got a revelation during the 2008 financial crisis, while working as a quant for a hedge fund. She realised that data and mathematics were being used in the financial business in nefarious ways and this finally impacted the common man, who never understands what caused him losing his home or job.

Initially Cathy explains the basic models - (a) baseball model from Moneyball (that is another of my recommended book and movie), (b) a mother's planning of meals for the family and (c) a risk model for prisoners used for sentencing. The fairness of any model is dependent on the transparency of data, scale and impact.

What follows are example of various real life implementation of data and algorithms that cause unintended (and sometimes, intended) consequences of unjust biases.

US college education has two contrasting examples - first starts with the model used for ranking colleges and the ensuing feedback loop this creates after few years (all of us can relate this by the way we purchase any item on Amazon - we go for the item with more rankings and higher rankings), the side industry which such a ranking program creates - both for the colleges (how to improve your rank) and the students (how to get into a highly ranked college) and hence, advantages for a few privileged and disadvantages for the rest. The second is about the menace of targeted advertising that has been used by for-profit universities to rip off the financially vulnerable who don't have detailed knowledge of the education system but have been told often that education will help them to improve their life. Digital tools have helped the scamsters to identify specific targets, from whom there is a maximum chance of monetisation. The money spent on marketing may be 2.5 times than the money spent on the core product - in this case, education. And since the student is eligible for a 90% federal loan, they may actually make 10 times or more profit.

Another unjust practice stems from the usage of predictive software used in policing. While marking certain pockets of a city due to their high crime rates has been a norm for years, there are software systems being used right now to narrow down the area and in some cases, even to target individuals - not as suspects, but as future offenders. And the data that is fed in and output that is generated is more related to petty crimes than serious offences. Again, a feedback loop keeps on accentuating the type of data and output. Some types of offences such as financial scams or frauds won't fall under such policing. And hence, a bias sets in.

Further comes the subject of bias in filtering candidates for jobs. An important aspect of rejections is that even if the candidate improves on the parameter of rejection in a later job, this data is never captured in the previous system and so, the machine never learns that, that (improvement) is a possibility. Also, the machine may learn something - e.g. candidates from a certain locality - that may make it impossible for individuals in certain areas to get selected even if they have the necessary skills for the job. Also, since many of the jobs for which such kind of filtering is used, have too many applications - the employer doesn't have anything to lose and hence, no incentive to change the process.

And if one does get selected, the rostering software that plans the skills utilisation to extract work out of every penny that is being paid, creates another set of problems for the human beings. Cathy dedicates another chapter for employees with examples from café or fast food chains to tech industry to education - with even well known absurdities like idea generation.

Credit scores used for loan approvals used to have limited parameters and the usage is regulated. But, there are a number of tech startups who have devised e-scores utilising a lot more parameters including those used for web personalisation and those available from social networks. These are mostly unregulated and leads to feedback loops which can result in unjust categorisation similar to that mentioned in the job filtering.

Insurance could be considered to be a product which is supposed to be offered at an average cost for everyone to tide over their own risks, has been turned into one which penalises those who carry the highest risk (mostly poor) and thereby subsidising those who have the lowest risk (mostly rich).

Finally, these two questions from the book sum up why I took an effort to write this long post and why I love this book - "How have people like you behaved in the past?" OR "How have you behaved in the past?" What do you think the systems influencing your education, career and financials should be based on? The answer could be different for your health diagnosis, but should not be different for your health insurance, isn't it?

Sandeep Meher's avatar

Lockdown Diaries - Socialism v/s Capitalism

Humanity is brought to its knees by the virus. It might be a leveler when you actually get the virus - rich or poor. But until then the level of suffering is inversely proportional to your wealth. Access to essentials depends not just on your means (money, private vehicle etc.) but also your knowledge and information. And our society has made sure that there is always an imbalance in the distribution of all this.

Just like wealth and land, there is huge inequality in access to educational, medical, financial and essential resources. There is a difference in how authorities treat people. The different classes of people are not even capable to empathise with each other.

The poor are considered essential for the labour that they provide and it is just one of the inputs required for production and the related costs have to be kept down. Educating the poor would result in increased awareness and hence, cost escalation. So, they have been pegged at just the optimum level.

Capitalism's benefits were supposed to be innovations for human progress - food/water, healthcare, education, accommodation, transportation and communication. But there is tremendous inequality in how different classes can access each of this (quantity and quality).

Because we have private hospitals, there is very less noise for increasing the quality of public hospitals. Because we have private schools, there is very less noise for increasing the quality of government and municipal schools.

The poor have suffered and they have suffered silently. Politicians have got a knack of extracting this suffering during elections and that also depends on the communication skills rather than actual facts.

There does not seem to be an easy way out of this mess. We all wait for a messiah to come and solve this problem, but the odds are stacked against that possibility. Is a people's revolution the only way? And history has shown that that is always bloody

Has the virus forced the revolution upon us - no need of a bloody one as the virus is already taking care of the blood part. Humanity will now be forced to evaluate it's earlier choices and make new ones.

Am I thinking like a socialist, now?

Sandeep Meher's avatar

Books read in 2019

This is one resolution that I have kept and proud about it - read 26 books in a year. Actually, ending the year having read 27. I have read physical books, ebooks and audiobooks - I like all the formats as they all have advantages and there are no disadvantages with any of these formats.

Here is the list in no particular order and my simple recommendation. But some will entice you from the title or the description itself (example, the first one). I have not limited myself to any particular genre or author, but I confess I am more biased towards non-fiction.

1. Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury | Highly Recommended - Fiction : The title refers to the temperature at which paper catches fire. Set in a 1984, Orwellian kind of dystopia where the government wants to burn all the books. How can one resist this in the current political scenario.

2. Open - An Autobiography by Andre Agassi | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : An engrossing bio of one of the most successful sportsperson and his turbulent life from childhood.

3. Inquilab - Bhagat Singh on Religion and Revolution by Irfan Habib | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : This book should be a compulsory reading for every Indian. An extremely intelligent young leader who has had immense influence on the youth of his time - not because of being militant but an intellectual. We have never been taught about it.

4. The Upside of Irrationality by Dr. Dan Ariely | Recommended - Non-Fiction : A book for self-help, motivation or behavioral analysis.

5. Papillon by Henri Charriere | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : A non-fiction about a long time prisoner, which is sometimes criticised for being fictional. A classic and good read, nonetheless. This is one of the books which I had heard spoken about highly (Marathi translation) during my teenage.

6. The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley | Average - Non-fiction : This is about a conservative view of the world including denial of climate change. I do not subscribe to this, but it always enriches oneself to understand the other side.

7. The Launch Pad by Randall Stross | Recommended - Non-fiction : For the technology folks, this has stories from the startup world, specifically from Y Combinator. I am a regular follower of Hacker News.

8. Bird Box by Josh Malerman | Recommended - Fiction : This is a Netflix movie, which is rather underwhelming. I listened to the audiobook and will strongly recommend listening to it rather than reading. Gripping.

9. Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass by Isak Dinesen | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : A mesmerising autobiography of an European in colonial Africa. There are a lot of learnings from this book.

10. Predictably Irrational by Dr. Dan Ariely | Recommended - Non-Fiction : Also, a book on behavioral analysis like #3 above.

11. Shoe Dog by Phil Knight | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : One of the best autobiographies by a businessmen/ entrepreneur. I was skeptical to read about Nike. But, it was mentioned on some honorable reading lists viz. Bill Gates'. And, it was not a mistake.

12. The Inevitable - Understanding the 12 technological forces by Kevin Kelly | Recommended - Non-fiction : An interesting book about future trends. I got interested because I was hungry for more after reading Harari's Sapiens and Homo Deus last year and found this one. But then Harari also came out with '21 Lessons for the 21st Century'.

13. The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F*ck by Mark Manson | Recommended - Non-fiction : Another provocative self-help book which has become very popular. Though one may not agree with everything, it is surely enjoyable and may help in reinforcing beliefs that generally self-help and motivating books full of positivity do not work for self.

14. Hillbilly Elegy by J. D. Vance | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : Amazing autobiography to help understand the American white working class.

15. Hit Refresh by Satya Nadella | Average - Non-fiction : I like Microsoft, Bill Gates and Satya Nadella. But, of course I compared this book with Shoe Dog and found it very underwhelming. As is expected from active people in corporate world, they would not want to antagonise anyone with negative opinions. So, it ends up being selective about the life events.

16. Algorithms to Live By by Brian Christian | Recommended - Non-fiction : This is a subject on which I wish to builda new career (Algorithm Auditing viz. AI/ ML). So, I always look out for something to read about it. Though not as provoking as 'Weapons of Math Destruction' by Cathy O'Neil, it is a good read (maybe even more practical).

17. The Soul of America by John Meacham | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : Another book to understand America. This one is with focus on history through various presidents. A compelling read.

18. Birthday Stories by Haruki Murakami | Recommended - Fiction : It is fashionable to read Murakami. So, I decided to pick the easy one instead of 'Norwegian Wood' or 'Kafka on the Shore'. And it turned out to be a Murakami which is not a Murakami - it is an anthology of interesting short stories by various writers around the world.

19. Permanent Record by Edward Snowden | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : A complex tale of a technologist told in simple words. Snowden tells us about technologies and practices that the governments are using to snoop on us and it is scary - almost '1984' or 'Fahrenheit 451' dystopia.

20. Maximum City by Suketu Mehta | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : It is a must read for Mumbai fans such as me. A non-fiction which is stranger than fiction and almost a thriller.

21. 21 Lessons for the 21st Century by Yual Noah Harari | Highly Recommended - Non-fiction : A very interesting book about gazing into the near future and what we may need to do as individuals and society to be prepared for the continuing disruptions.

22. The Young and the Restless by Gurmehar Kaur | Recommended - Non-fiction : If you are an Indian who wants to understand what the youth of this country might be thinking about, this could be a good start. The author interviews a few young leaders of this country and gives an account along with her expectations and opinions.

23. Democracy on the Road by Ruchir Sharma | Recommended - Non-fiction : It was a very interesting book to read during the Indian Elections 2019. I recommend picking this up during the build up of next elections.

24. The Oxygen Advantage by Patrick McKeown | Not Recommended - Non-fiction : A fitness book with a simple message repeated at least one thousand times.

25. Capital Gaines by Chip Gaines | Not Recommended - Non-fiction : Sugary self-praise under the garb of being self-critical. Best to avoid.

26. The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson | Recommended - Non-fiction : Not in the league of 'A Short History of Nearly Everything', but interesting personal account of growing up in a small town. I can relate to this e.g. my father used to send me to the shops to get cigarettes, which was not wrong in those days. Now, the parents will be ostracized for doing anything similar. It is absolutely funny to think about it now and Bryson gives many such examples.

27. 21 Short Tales by Franz Kafka | Not Recommended - Fiction : It is extremely audacious for me not to recommend Kafka. I am a big fan of Kafka (and suggest everybody to read Metamorphosis). But, I can't recommend this as it is extremely abstract and difficult to interpret. Those who thrive on such books won't need my recommendation anyway.

Sandeep Meher's avatar

Apache Camel: Middleware/ Integration Solution

It is always interesting to bump into a technology that you did not deliberately try to study or research on and reluctantly pick up due to work imperatives, but after some time you start liking it, see a lot of merit and finally it finds a place in your recommended stack of solutions.

My day job is to provide solutions to customers for developing mobile apps and portals interfacing with a number of enterprise back-end systems. There are a number of ways in which these front end channels can integrate with the back-end but until now my preferred proposition has been a Java or .Net based server component that provides RESTful web-services/ APIs to the front-end and consumes, creates or updates the back-end data through existing or new service calls which could be RESTful APIs (if lucky), SOAP services (XML payload), MQ services, JDBC connections or file based (e.g.CSV) communications, depending on the integration capabilities of the back-end systems.

Many of the customers already have implemented an Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) for integrating the applications, but even these solutions have a legacy baggage of their own.

And here comes Apache Camel. But if you visit Camel's project page, you are sure to get confused. To be fair, there could be many different use cases for Apache Camel and hence there is no simple answer. I am trying to describe a specific use case which is relevant to the development of Digital Channels. Apache Camel can be considered as a modern ESB solution (Apache Camel 1.0 was released on 2/July/2007). It can also be considered as an API Gateway (but should not be, as expectations from an API Gateway could include a lot of development and monitoring features which Camel won't provide out of the box.) So, I will stick to Middleware or Integration.

Let us start with the problem statement - we want to build a mobile app and a portal (there are very few instances when organisations want just one of these). The user needs to register and create a login (or needs to use the organisation's Identity and Access Management (IAM) solutions viz. LDAP, Active Directory), authenticate regularly using this login and depending on the user type, should be able to see n number of screens/pages which allow to create, read, update and delete (CRUD) records of information (data) from multiple back-end systems.

Camel specialises in the integration development instead of a complete E2E solution. And this is an advantage as one is free to choose the front-end of choice, which can be upgraded or replaced later depending on the flavour of the year. With its API capabilities, this also allows you to change the integration logic without impacting the front-end (i.e. need for code change and redeployment on app stores) as far as the API input and output formats remain unchanged.

Before I dwell in the technical details, here is the list of skills that the developer will need to have - Apache Maven (this is a dependency management - pointing the components/libraries that a project uses, and a build tool), Apache Karaf (a lightweight runtime - where the Camel routes will be deployed), Apache Camel (using Blueprint or Spring DSL i.e. XML or Java DSL) and Java Beans.

The tools required for development and deployment are just Apache Maven and Apache Karaf, assuming that one already has a JDK installed.

The following are basic steps for a developer to create the first Hello Camel program:

  1. Using Maven, there are hundreds of boilerplates available for creating projects. These are called archetypes and for Camel, I suggest the following:
    mvn archetype:generate \
    -DgroupId=com.yourdomain.camelapp \
    -DartifactId=first-camelapp \
    -DarchetypeGroupId=org.apache.camel.archetypes \
    -DarchetypeArtifactId=camel-archetype-blueprint \
    -DarchetypeVersion=2.23.1 \
    -DinteractiveMode=false
  2. The following files will be created (this is your Camel boilerplate):
    pom.xml
    src/main/resources/OSGI-INF/blueprint/blueprint-bean.xml
    src/main/java/com/yourdomain/camelapp/Hello.java
    src/main/java/com/yourdomain/camelapp/HelloBean.java
    src/test/resources/etc/HelloBean.cfg
    src/test/java/com/yourdomain/camelapp/BlueprintBeanRouteTest.java
    src/test/java/com/yourdomain/camelapp/BlueprintBeanPropertiesOverrideFromFileRouteTest.java
    src/test/java/com/yourdomain/camelapp/BlueprintBeanPropertiesOverrideFromTestRouteTest.java
    For now, just ignore the files other than the first two.
  3. The blueprint-bean.xml is the main routing file. Routing can be exlained as processing a request received from a source system by transforming it through multiple ways and finally sending the transformed data to a destination system. The routing and transformation logic can be writtern in XML or Java, depending on your comfort levels. For a beginner, I feel XML is easier to understand.
  4. The pom.xml is a Maven file to include the dependencies e.g. camel-salesforce component, if you need to integrate with Salesforce. You might want to change the Name of our program as "Hello Camel" or something you like in the <name> tag in this file.
  5. The "Hello Camel" module that I demonstrate here has one important aspect that are mandatory in any middleware that has to be deployed today. That is to provide RESTful web services APIs. There are various camel components to provide this capability. I have selected netty4 for no particular reason. We need to tell maven to include this component by including the following in pom.xml.
    <dependency>
      <groupId>org.apache.camel</groupId>
      <artifactId>camel-netty4</artifactId>
    </dependency>
  6. Let us provide two RESTful services
    http://localhost:2020/app/hello/whatever and
    http://localhost:2020/app/bye/whatever
    The following is the code in blueprint-bean.xml which enables this:
    <restConfiguration bindingMode="auto" component="netty4-http" host="localhost" port="2020" />
    <rest path="/app">
      <get uri="/hello/{name_id}">
        <to uri="direct:sayHello" />
      </get>
      <get uri="/bye/{name_id}">
        <to uri="direct:sayBye" />
      </get>
    </rest>
  7. Now, define the routes that need to be taken for the respective RESTful service calls in the blueprint-bean.xml. Each call will result in a message logged to the console and a file created in the out-folder.
    <route>
      <from uri="direct:sayHello"/>
        <log message="will say hello to ${header.name_id}"/>
        <setBody><simple>Hello ${header.name_id}</simple></setBody>
      <to uri="file:/full-path/out-folder"/>
    </route>
    <route>
      <from uri="direct:sayBye"/>
        <log message="will say bye to ${header.name_id}"/>
        <setBody><simple>Bye ${header.name_id}</simple></setBody>
      <to uri="file:/full-path/out-folder"/>
    </route>
  8. Compile the code using the following:
    mvn package -DskipTests
    and deploy it by copying the generated file
    hello-camel/target/hello-camel-1.0-SNAPSHOT.jar
    to Karaf's deploy folder e.g.
    apache-karaf-4.2.2/deploy/
  9. If Karaf is running, or whenever it starts, the RESTful services will be ready to do their job viz. Say hello or bye! It can be tested through your browser and don't forget to check the files created.

I will try to create a follow-up post to use JSON (for inputs and outputs - a must for RESTful services), consuming other RESTful services and writing to a database. This is just the beginning as there are a lot of aspects yet to be explored esp. the performance in a high volume production system. Nonetheless, it is a good start.

Sandeep Meher's avatar

Hosting website on AWS (contd.)

I started with the AWS Free Tier available for one year. Steps followed for the hosting are as follows:

  1. Unlock the domain from existing service provider, so that it is available to register from AWS (Route 53).
  2. Register or transfer domain to AWS (Route 53).
  3. Create a Hosted Zone on AWS (Route 53) that matches the domain that you want to use.
  4. If you want to continue the hosting on the previous service provider till the content is ready on AWS, you may need to create the DNS entries for the Hosted Zone to point at the appropriate servers.
  5. Till now, this was AWS' Route 53. I had decided for the static site hosting (no server processes), hence I created AWS' S3 buckets for all the content (HTML, CSS, Images).
  6. One bucket was for sandeepmeher.org and content. Another bucket was for www.sandeepmeher.org which did nothing but pointing to sandeepmeher.org.
  7. Setting change for S3 buckets to be publicly readable (that is obviously necessary for the static website hosting) includes (a) marking the bucket's Properties for Static website hosting, (b) changing Permissions -> Public access settings and (c) updating the Bucket Policy.
  8. Finally, in Route 53, two new Record Sets need to be created in the Hosted Zone which are Alias' pointing to the two buckets created in S3.
Sandeep Meher's avatar

Hosting website on AWS

After deliberating or rather procrastinating for a couple of years, I finally took the plunge and transferred my website hosting from Netfirms to AWS. I also wish to try Azure and Google Cloud for this.

The first step was to decide whether to go for a Drupal or Wordpress solution for a one person blog or try the static hosting through AWS' S3 storage solution. I decided for the later as recently, I have also been bit by the performance bug. Try to avoid compute even if it means additional complexity in manually maintaining the blogs through HTML.

Even for the boilerplate, I picked up Yahoo's Pure CSS framework which may be the most lightweight UI librarires. Restarting with minimalism and if required, scale up.

Netfirms offers an easy option to transfer out the domain, but AWS' instructions included some hairy stuff related to DNS entries. But in less than 24 hours, I got the message about the transfer being successful.