According To Ali

"So, you have hacked it" -- Few days ago one of the guys at work passed me this comment on a random discussion about something I built. I paused for a moment and pondered: Do I reply defending how that's not a hack. OR Do I just not bother I picked the second option for 2 reasons: It was late. It probably isn't worth defending the "hack vs" topic as the comment passed was out of context. So I chose the next best action and replied "Yep, sure did and it is working great.". I felt like Batman in the moment. In this post I will rant about the knowledge gap around hacking and then describe about one of the components of my home automation project (really, this is the main reason for this post) and use that as an example how hacking is cool and does not always mean bad. But first lets align on my definition of hacking: People use this term in good and bad, both ways. For example: "He/she did a hack job" -- Yeah, that probably

Microservice Architecture is the new trend in the industry. When I thought of building a decisioning engine to work as my personal assistant I decided to design it as a swarm of Microservices. The most compelling selling point about Microservice Architecture which resonated well for me was its ease of maintainability and that's a big factor for a hobby project like this which has a lot of custom logic programmed into it and requires a lot of frequent changes. In theory, Microservice should fit right in. I tried doing it in the Monolithic way and I failed !!. So, will Microservices solve it for me? Let's find out. In this post I will do it in the "Software Engineering" way. Background: Few weeks ago I created a wifi controlled water system that I can control via my Home Assistant (using my phone even if I am on the other side of the planet, like Batman). And this is working great for me. Read about that here: Smart wifi controlled irrigation system . Bu

If you have a backyard just for the sake of having one or it came with the house and you hate watering your garden or lawn/backyard then you have come to the right place. I genuinely believe that it is a waste of my valuable time. I would rather watch bachelorette on TV than go outside, turn on tap, hold garden hose in hand to water. Too much work!! Luckily, we have things like sprinkler system, soaker etc which makes things a bit easy. But you still have to get off that comfy couch and turn on tap (then turn off if there's no tap timer in place). ** Skip to the youtube video part if reading is not your thing   When I first moved into my house at first it was exciting to get a backyard (decent size), but soon that turned on annoyance when it came down maintaining it, specially the watering part. I laid bunch sprinklers and soaker through out the yard and bought tap timer but I still needed to routinely turn on the tap timer. Eventually few days ago I had enough of this rub

As a consultant (I in particular) we love throwing the term best practice whenever and wherever it is convenient. And TBH I am not the only one. Many, if not all, of us (consultants) do this on a perhaps hourly basis. Some possibly enjoy this more than others. There has been times when this has worked for me and times when it worked against me. Really I have mix feeling about it. So, this fine morning I woke up feeling about ranting/venting about it. Caution: This post is a rant and biased based on my opinions (hint hint: This blog site is called "According To Ali"). So let's begin. Let's get our definition part sorted. So here's According to Wiki Wiki says:  " A  best practice  is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to any alternatives because it produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing things, e.g., a standard way of complying with legal or