Using ubuntu-vm-builder to create KVM guests with Chef pre-installed, going from zero to a fully registered Chef client in under 2 minutes.

Configuring a PPTP VPN on Ubuntu with dnsmasq and pptpd, including workarounds for OS X routing and DNS issues.

Setting up a Hetzner dedicated server with KVM, LVM partitioning, and a NAT network for virtual machines and VPN.

The managed_directory LWRP inspects the Chef resource collection to identify managed files in a directory, then removes any unmanaged files it finds there.

After two years using the Emacs Starter Kit without really understanding it, I rebuilt my Emacs configuration from scratch to gain a deeper understanding of the editor.

A brief account of migrating this site from Posterous to Octopress, including importing content and switching to GitHub Pages hosting.

Version 0.9.0 of the MCollective Chef cookbook addresses the three issues from the original announcement: Ohai fact speed, fact list size, and default recipe name normalisation.

MCollective is a Ruby framework for building server orchestration or parallel job execution systems. Although it often seems to go hand-in-hand with Puppet, it can readily be used with Chef. Here's how.