Notes and articles on business operations, systems integration, agentic AI, and where they meet. https://jamesgalley.com/ 2026-08-05T15:20:15.000Z James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/a-runaway-train-and-the-anatomy-of-a-bad-alert 2026-08-02T21:37:01+01:00 2026-08-02T00:00:00.000Z

The 1988 Gare de Lyon rail accident, and what its instruments, alerts and emergency mechanisms have to say about how we monitor and run software systems.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/using-ai-to-help-write-articles 2026-08-02T23:04:18+01:00 2026-07-28T00:00:00.000Z

How I use AI in the loop when writing articles for this site: scaffold first, rewrite everything, bank the corrections, and never publish what you don't know.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/serverless-search-a-lambda-fan-out-over-s3 2026-08-05T16:20:15+01:00 2026-07-23T00:00:00.000Z

Full-text search with no index at all: raw text in S3, a fleet of parallel Lambda functions scanning byte ranges, and benchmarks of what that buys - plus the Bloom filters that let the brute force skip most of the corpus. Part three of the serverless search series.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/novel-strategies-for-serverless-search 2026-07-20T08:54:32+01:00 2026-07-16T00:00:00.000Z

Searching a million records without running a search cluster. The first in a series on serverless search in AWS, looking at why Athena and OpenSearch Serverless don't quite fit the problem, and previewing five alternative strategies.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/serverless-search-an-inverted-index-in-dynamodb 2026-08-05T16:20:15+01:00 2026-07-16T00:00:00.000Z

DynamoDB has no full-text search of its own, but its talent for key lookups is enough to build one: tokenising documents into an inverted index, searching it with single queries, and keeping it fresh with Streams. Part two of the serverless search series.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/digital-transformation-in-the-ai-era 2026-07-13T23:14:55+01:00 2026-07-13T00:00:00.000Z

Agentic AI is the next chapter of digital transformation, and the businesses that already digitised and connected their operations are the ones positioned to benefit. A worked example from Si Novi's own books.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/ai-automation-for-business 2026-07-13T23:14:55+01:00 2026-06-26T00:00:00.000Z

AI can automate the judgement-heavy middle of your operations - reading messy inputs, routine decisions, exceptions - but only once your systems are connected. A practical guide to what works, what doesn't, and how to start.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/what-happens-when-the-phone-locks 2026-07-13T21:56:51+01:00 2026-03-24T00:00:00.000Z

A support chat that asks you to keep your phone awake is a sign the architecture has pushed its problem onto the customer. On designing mobile web sessions that survive interruption.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/permissions-policy-http-header 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2025-03-11T00:00:00.000Z

How the Permissions-Policy header controls access to browser features like camera, microphone and geolocation, its syntax, and how to set it in Apache and PHP.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/referrer-policy-http-header 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2024-10-08T00:00:00.000Z

How the Referrer-Policy header controls what URL information is shared with other sites, the values available, and how to set a sensible default in Apache and PHP.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/common-aws-s3-cp-examples 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2024-06-18T00:00:00.000Z

Handy aws s3 cp command examples for copying single files and directories to and from Amazon S3, including recursive copies, content type and cache headers, and streaming with stdin and stdout.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/common-aws-s3-sync-examples 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2024-06-18T00:00:00.000Z

Handy aws s3 sync command examples for uploading, downloading, mirroring with --delete, filtering, cache headers and dry runs, from deploying static sites to S3.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/x-content-type-options-http-header 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2024-04-16T00:00:00.000Z

What the X-Content-Type-Options nosniff header does, why MIME-type sniffing is a risk, and how to set it in Apache, PHP and on AWS CloudFront.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/content-security-policy-http-header 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2023-11-14T00:00:00.000Z

How the Content-Security-Policy header controls which resources a page can load, its key directives, report-only mode, and how to set it in Apache, PHP and AWS CloudFront.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/common-rsync-examples 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2023-07-31T00:00:00.000Z

Practical rsync command examples for file synchronisation, backup, and deployment workflows.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/strict-transport-security 2026-08-05T16:20:15+01:00 2023-03-26T00:00:00.000Z

How to set the Strict-Transport-Security (HSTS) header to enforce HTTPS, with examples for Apache, PHP, Yii 2, Lambda@Edge and CloudFront functions, and the max-age, includeSubDomains and preload directives explained.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/x-frame-options 2026-08-05T16:20:15+01:00 2023-01-08T00:00:00.000Z

How to set the X-Frame-Options header to prevent clickjacking, with examples for Apache, PHP, Yii 2, Node.js and Remix - and what the "refused to display in a frame" browser error means.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/how-to-use-s3-getobject-as-a-promise-in-node-js 2026-08-04T23:05:45+01:00 2022-07-13T00:00:00.000Z

Using S3 GetObject with promises and async/await in Node.js, updated for AWS SDK v3 - including how to read the streaming Body it returns.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/cron-jobs-on-elastic-beanstalk 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2022-03-10T00:00:00.000Z

How to add a cron job to an Elastic Beanstalk PHP app, and how to make your environment variables available to the cron.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/cloudfront-ssl-single-instance-elastic-beanstalk 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2020-04-16T00:00:00.000Z

Adding HTTPS to a single-instance Elastic Beanstalk PHP application by putting CloudFront in front of it, including the Apache and Yii2 configuration needed.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/using-captcha-to-prevent-bots-and-spam 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2020-04-14T00:00:00.000Z

How adding a Captcha widget like Google's reCaptcha to your website's public forms helps keep out automated bots.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/aws-sub-accounts-and-cross-account-roles 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2019-12-30T00:00:00.000Z

How to set up AWS sub-accounts and cross-account IAM roles for secure, isolated access across multiple AWS environments.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/converting-yii-1-models-to-yii-2 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2019-12-01T00:00:00.000Z

A technical guide to migrating Yii 1 models to Yii 2, covering namespaces, validation rules, relations, and search methods.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/digital-transformation 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2019-08-19T00:00:00.000Z

Digitising business processes with web applications, integrations and the cloud to save money, reduce duplication and improve efficiency.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/when-the-interface-is-the-hazard 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2019-08-13T00:00:00.000Z

The US Navy tore the touchscreen controls out of its destroyers and went back to physical throttles after the USS John S McCain collision. What that says about complexity, human error and designing software people can actually use.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/migrating-web-applications-to-the-cloud 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2018-12-03T00:00:00.000Z

How to migrate legacy PHP applications to AWS cloud hosting with no disruption to your business, for scalability and reliability.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/integrating-web-applications-with-xero 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2018-08-12T00:00:00.000Z

Using the Xero API to integrate your back-office and operations software, generating invoices and bills automatically.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/upgrading-yii-1-applications-to-yii-2 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2018-08-12T00:00:00.000Z

A guide to migrating PHP web applications from Yii 1 to Yii 2, covering the differences between versions and upgrade strategies.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/php-web-application-security 2026-07-13T20:27:34+01:00 2018-04-23T00:00:00.000Z

Essential security practices for PHP web applications, including OWASP guidelines, DevOps security, and regular maintenance.

James Galley https://jamesgalley.com/writing/replacing-excel-spreadsheets-with-web-applications 2026-08-04T22:58:03+01:00 2018-01-13T00:00:00.000Z

Why businesses replace spreadsheet processes with web applications, updated for the AI era - and what the data those spreadsheets hold is now worth.

James Galley