TL Tales: Being Bold (and the GGN)

         tech      Tech · TL · GGN · Network · OpenConfig

How do TLs know what to do – and what have I been working on at Google?

The Right-Sized Tool: Building Software with 100% AI

         tech      Tech · AI · LLM

An experiment in building a highly specific cycling data analysis tool without writing a single line of code myself.

Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free, Low FODMAP Biryiani

         personal      food

A recipe for biriyani, modified for those with dietary restrictions.

v3 Gallery

         personal      Photography

Updating the gallery on this site has been an on-again off-again project for a long time. Mainly because I was running in to some issues with Expose. This version is built as a project from the ground up: exercising my rusty front-end “skills” and seeing how some of the Gemini tooling can help with such projects.

The new gallery is at p.rob.sh/v3.

NANOG 90: Pondering Abstractions

         tech      Tech · OpenConfig · YANG

I had the pleasure of giving the keynote presentation at NANOG90 - sharing some thoughts and lessons that we have learnt in the 10 years since we started the OpenConfig project.

This was a really enjoyable presentation to put together and give. It balanced being able to look back at what we’ve learnt, and also think about some important lessons that I wanted to share with the networking community.

Lessons from Career Coaching

         personal      work

In the autumn of 2022, I got an opportunity to attend an external leadership course. One of the things that it involved was some coaching sessions. I didn’t really think that talking to someone about work was something that I needed (and honestly probably didn’t understand what a coach did…), but engaged with it anyway.

Cue the start of 2023 — Google went through some big changes, and unfortunately, my health took another downturn. At the same time, I was personally struggling with balancing the work that I was doing leading a wider technical team (especially with layoffs impacting their direct management), driving an innovation project (which I was mostly doing out of hours), and keeping myself healthy.

Published IETF RFCs

         tech      Tech · IETF

Over the years I have published a number of RFCs in the IETF. They are listed below.

As primary author:

As contributor:

SailGP San Francisco

         personal      Photography


SailGP's event on the San Francisco Bay, May 2023

Reimagining Network Devices

         tech      OpenConfig · Tech · YANG

Some reflections on the development of Software-Defined Networking, and how it has impacted the ongoing re-imagining of network devices that OpenConfig, and associated projects has driven.

Almost 10 years ago, there was a shift in the IP networking industry. The move towards SDN, and its adoption by hyperscalers as a means to break apart traditional network architectures had set the scene for disruption. The question of “how are we using SDN?” was on the lips of vendor and telco executives — and lead to many initiatives in the industry - both those that can be thought of “SDN” and those that were more incremental.

Big Pine Lakes

         personal      Photography

We spent a few days in the High Sierra, off the grid, hiking the Big Pine Lakes trails. Highly recommended.

I uploaded a gallery of some photography from that trip, including a few taken as we passed through Yosemite.

The gallery can be found here.

Lake 1: Big Pine Lakes Trail, High Sierra, CA.