When working with the graphics pipeline, the perspective projection is commonly used to give a realistic depiction of a scene, where objects close to the camera appear larger than objects far away. The perspective transformation has the important feature of mapping 3D lines to 3D lines. In this post we will go into why thisContinue reading “The perspective transformation and collinearity”
Author Archives: Simón González Guerra
The math behind the lookAt() transform
In computer graphics, one of the key elements of the graphics pipeline is the View transformation, which is used in the vertex shading stage to convert coordinates from World space to View space. The View transform is usually constructed using a utility function like glm::lookAt() from the GLM library, or D3DXMatrixLookAtLH() in DirectX. But whatContinue reading “The math behind the lookAt() transform”
The PCI DSS Standard
On this post we will present an introduction to the PCI DSS Standard, what it is, what constraints it imposes for organizations, and why it matters. What is the PCI DSS? The acronym stands for Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard. It is a set of rules for organizations involved in processing of online paymentsContinue reading “The PCI DSS Standard”
Notes on using UUIDs as primary keys on databases
Problem Given a table in a relational database, we want a way to generate the values we are going to use as primary keys on it. Using a sequential integer is a common solution for this. In this post we want to consider an alternative approach: random UUIDs as primary keys. Deciding between these twoContinue reading “Notes on using UUIDs as primary keys on databases”
How to secure the graceful shutdown of a Spring Boot application running on AWS EC2 instance
Problem We want to have a way to automatically instruct a Spring Boot application to do a graceful shutdown. This is useful for example when we use CodeDeploy to deploy the application to an EC2 instance, because it allows us to let the application shutdown gracefully when we are deploying a new version. Assumptions ForContinue reading “How to secure the graceful shutdown of a Spring Boot application running on AWS EC2 instance”
How to secure an API endpoint with HTTP basic authentication in Spring Boot
Problem Given a Spring Boot application that exposes a REST API, we want to control access to one of its API endpoints using HTTP basic authentication. HTTP basic authentication HTTP basic authentication is an extension to the HTTP protocol meant to protect access to a web resource. It works defining a username and password forContinue reading “How to secure an API endpoint with HTTP basic authentication in Spring Boot”
Setting up HTTPS / SSL in a Spring Boot Web application
Problem We want to be able to exchange HTTP requests and responses with our application over an encrypted connection. HTTPS and SSL SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) is a standard for secure communication over the transport layer. It defines a set of protocols and algorithms via which a client can establish an encrypted communication channel toContinue reading “Setting up HTTPS / SSL in a Spring Boot Web application”
Logging configuration in Spring Boot
Problem Spring Boot creates a default logging infrastructure with SLFJ as an abstraction layer over Logback. This works, but the default configuration logs with debug level and is overly verbose when using other libraries like JDBC and WebClient. We want to configure the log level with a configuration file to show the logs of ourContinue reading “Logging configuration in Spring Boot”
Working with AWS Secrets Manager
Problem We want to be able to use secret credentials in our application without leaving them hard-coded or in a configuration file. AWS Secrets Manager is an AWS service that provides us with an encrypted database were we can store our secrets securely in the cloud. Our application will connect to Secrets Manager at startupContinue reading “Working with AWS Secrets Manager”
How to configure the AWS CLI
Problem We want to be able to use AWS services with a command-line interface. The AWS CLI The AWS CLI is a tool that allows us to control our AWS resources from the command line. To install the AWS CLI locally (this is only necessary for running the CLI locally, the EC2 instances already haveContinue reading “How to configure the AWS CLI”
Morning Flow 