In this post, I will create a NER service endpoint by leveraging AWS API gateway, lambda and Amazon Comprehend. The post covers the followings:

• What is NER?
• Amazon Comprehend
• Create a Lambda function to handle a comprehend request and create a response with comprehend entities result
• Create an API endpoint that leverage your lambda function
• Almost done. Fix the possible permission issue!
• Test your NER endpoint call vis postman

For your information, this post does NOT cover API documentation and any topic regarding authorizing an API service endpoint.

What is NER?

NER stands for Named Entity Recognition. It is a Natural Language  Processing (NLP) method to identify entities in a text. Entities can be varied such as person, organization, location, etc.

For example of the following text,

Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple. With Steve Wonzniak, he founded Apple Inc. in 1976. He was also the chairman of Pixar. 

With NER process, these entities below can be found.

Person: Steven Jobs, Steve Wonzniak

Organization: Apple Inc, Pixar

Location: San Francisco, California

Amazon Comprehend

Amazon Comprehend is a NLP service that leverages Machine Learning to process a text and extract valuable insights such as key phrases, entities, language detection, etc. Among these features, entity recognition provide us what we need to achieve from our NER service endpoint.

So the process of our NER service endpoint will follow the steps below.

• The end user makes our NER post call
• API Gateway triggers Lamda function
• Lambda function initiates the Amazon comprehend request and massage the response data from Amazon comprehend in the format of what we need (In this post, we will return the lists of Person, Location and Organization and each item in the list contains text and probability)
• Response data is passed back to API Gateway
• Return the response to the end user

Create a Lambda function to handle a comprehend request and create a response with comprehend entities result

To create a lambda function, first go to AWS Lambda dashboard by searching lambda in the AWS console. In the dashboard, click Create Function button on the right top corner of the screen.

Provide a function name. In this post, I used getNERFromContent as a function name. Next, choose the Runtime as Python version 3.x. I chose the latest support version of Python at the time of writing this post which was 3.9. You can leave other options as they are. Click Create Function button again.

In the getNERFromContent detail page, the code source page will be automatically selected and the following source code should be there.

Remove the source code and paste the source code below.

Be careful! Indentation is very important in Python. When you paste the code, indentation might be misplaced. Please double-check.

import json
import boto3

#NER TAG Class
class NerTag:
    def __init__(self, text, prob):
        self.text = text
        self.prob = prob

#NER Response Class
class NERResponse:
    
    def __init__(self, error, success):
        self.error = error
        self.success = success
        self.people = []
        self.organization =[]
        self.location = []
        
    def add_people(self, nerTag):
        self.people.append(nerTag)
        
    def add_organization(self, nerTag):
        self.organization.append(nerTag)
        
    def add_location(self, nerTag):
        self.location.append(nerTag)
    
    def toJSON(self):
        return json.dumps(self, default=lambda o: o.__dict__, 
            sort_keys=True, indent=4)


def lambda_handler(event, context):
    '''
    This handler will be triggered by API Gateway and create Amazon Comprehend request by
    using detect_entites function. The function will return a NERResponse that contains either lists of Person, Location and Organization NER tag
    or error message if there is an exception.
    '''
    try:
        #Get Content from Request body
        data = event["body"]
        body = json.loads(data)
        content = body["content"]
        #Get Language code that is passed as a path parameter
        params = event["pathParameters"]
        lang = params["lang"]
        
        #TODO:Language validation
        #Valid value should be en | es | fr | de | it | pt | ar | hi | ja | ko | zh | zh-TW
        
        #Get Comprehend client
        comprehend = boto3.client("comprehend")
        #Use detect entities function to get a list of entities
        entities = comprehend.detect_entities(Text = content, LanguageCode = lang)
        resp = NERResponse("", "true")
        #Loop throuh entities and filter them by PERSON, ORGANIZATION and LOCATION type
        #Put them in their onw list respectively
        #Only Grab those entities whose score is greater than 9.0
        for entity in entities["Entities"]:
            nt = NerTag(entity["Text"], entity["Score"])
            threshold = 0.9
            prob = float( entity["Score"])
            if (entity["Type"] == 'PERSON' and prob >= threshold):
                resp.add_people(nt)
            
            if (entity["Type"] == 'ORGANIZATION' and prob >= threshold):
                resp.add_organization(nt)
            
            if (entity["Type"] == 'LOCATION' and prob >= threshold):
                resp.add_location(nt)
        #Return the response. Make sure path statusCode and put the result in the body
        #Otherwise, it will throw 502 error when this api is being called.
        return {
            "statusCode": "200",
            "body": resp.toJSON()
        }
    except Exception as e:
        print(e.__class__, " occurred.")
        resp = NERResponse(str(e), "false")
        return {
            "statusCode": "500",
            "body": resp.toJSON()
        }

In this source code example, I grab those entities whose score is greater than 0.9. You can change this by updating threshold variable. There are also Date, Quantity ,Other  and more. You can check all list of types here. You can save the source code by using the short key command+s or control+s depends on your OS or you can go to File and choose Save.

Once all source code looks ok, then click Deploy button.

Create an API endpoint that leverage your lambda function

Ok. It's time to set up an API endpoint. First, go to API Gateway. Again, you can type "API Gateway" in search bar and click the service.

In APIs page, click Create API button. There should be 4 options.

Click Build button in the REST API (This is not private one). The initial setting like the below screenshot will be appeared.

Provide the input as follows:

• Choose the protocol: REST
• Create new API: New API
• API name: TestNER
• Description: Test NER Service endpoint
• Endpoint Type: Regional

Click Create API button.

Once you can see the Resources page, there should be only one under Resources section which is /. In this post, I will construct the endpoint as follows.

/ner/{lang}

where lang should be one of en | es | fr | de | it | pt | ar | hi | ja | ko | zh | zh-TW.

Click Actions -> Create Resource.

Type ner in the Resource Name. Resource Path will be automatically cloned.

You can leave proxy resource and Enable API Gateway CORS as unchecked. Click Create Resource button. This will create /ner path under /. Select /ner and create resource one more time (Actions -> Create Resource).  However, in this time, enter {lang} first in the Resource Path and enter lang param as a resource name as shown below.

Now you should be able to see /{lang} under /ner. Click /{lang} and create method (Action -> Create Method). The dropdown will be appeared.

Select POST in the dropdown and click check icon. The page will be redirected to the new page where you can choose integration type.

Select Lambda Function as Integration Type and make sure to check Use Lambda Proxy integration so that Lambda function is able to receive path parameters such as {lang} in our case.

For Lambda Function text box, once you start typing the lambda function name that you used, the full name should be visible as an option underneath the dropdown. You can simply select it. Once click Save button, then there should be popup window to ask adding a permission to lambda function.

Click OK button. If there is no issue, then there should be a method execution diagram that is similar to the screenshot below.

Great. We successfully create the endpoint with the lambda function. Let's deploy this API. From Actions button, choose Deploy API. In the modal, select [New Stage] as Deployment stage.

And provide Stage name, description and Deployment description. I used "test", "test ner endpoint" and "test deployment" respectively. Click Deploy button.

That's it. Your API Url will be displayed in Invoke URL.

Ok. Your NER service endpoint is now set as

https://YourInvokeURL.com/test/ner/{lang}

In my case, the NER endpoint should be

https://e2zdt59opf.execute-api.us-east-1.amazonaws.com/test/ner/en

Almost done. Fix the possible permission issue!

Ok. We're almost done. However, if you test this endpoint via your postman, you should run into the permission issue. This is because the user role that is being used for executing lambda does not have the permission for using Amazon Comprehend yet. In order to fix this issue, go to IAM (search IAM) and select Roles under Access management. Search the role by using your lambda function name which is getNERFromContent.  You can find the similar role below.

Click the link (getNERFromContent-role-xxxxxx) and click Add permissions -> Attach policies menu in the detail page.

In the new page, there should be a bunch of list of policies. To search comprehend related policies, let's type comprehend in the filter text field and hit enter key.

Select the checkbox for ComprehendFullAccess and click Attach policies button.

I chose ComprehendFullRequest as an example. Depends on a situation, creating custom policy might be inevitable, or a different role might be used instead. Consider discussing with your IT/DevOp team if needed.

Ok. All set. Let's test it.

Test your NER endpoint call vis postman

In your postman, enter your NER service endpoint with adding the following content (in Json) in the body.

{
    "content": "Steve Jobs was born in San Francisco, California. He was the co-founder, chairman, and CEO of Apple. With Steve Wonzniak, he founded Apple Inc. in 1976. He was also the chairman of Pixar."
}

You should be able to see the result like below.

{
    "error": "",
    "location": [
        {
            "prob": 0.9968991875648499,
            "text": "San Francisco, California"
        }
    ],
    "organization": [
        {
            "prob": 0.9990672469139099,
            "text": "Apple"
        },
        {
            "prob": 0.9954066276550293,
            "text": "Apple Inc."
        },
        {
            "prob": 0.9990543723106384,
            "text": "Pixar"
        }
    ],
    "people": [
        {
            "prob": 0.9995225071907043,
            "text": "Steve Jobs"
        },
        {
            "prob": 0.9993040561676025,
            "text": "Steve Wonzniak"
        }
    ],
    "success": "true"
}

If the endpoint does not work for some reason, check the indentation in the source code of the lambda function and double check the permission. You can also check the logs for lambda function from the CloudWatch as well.

For your information, this test endpoint will not be available for the security reason.

Hopefully this post will be helpful to you and thanks for your time to read this post. Happy coding!

In this post, I would like to share small tips that I learned from my first Mont Tremblant trip. These tips are purely from my personal thoughts, so some people might think these are too obvious or disagree some of them. Please take them selectively if needed and hopefully you get some useful information in this post.

Ok. Enough intro. Let's get to the points.

Ski Lift Ticket

If you are like me who bought or plan to buy the tickets partially from the promotions (some afternoon tickets + full day promotion adult tickets + a regular child ticket), I would recommend not to use the ticket kiosk. Even though you scan the right QR code from your email for a given date into the ticket kiosk, you probably receive the promotion tickets instead of regular afternoon ticket for the given date you initially intend to use. This happened to both me and my friend's family. In order to solve this, you need to visit the ticket office.

Therefore, instead of using ticket kiosk, go to the ticket office directly. All you need to provide is your order number (Like 60501553 from the above image) and they will print all your purchased tickets.

One benefit from getting all tickets for me was that you don't need to verify the proof of vaccination every day during your trip. They will punch a hole on your entire lift tickets as a proof that vaccination checking is completed.

The proof of vaccination is no longer required now. Hopefully, we don't do this in the future.

Trails

If you are at beginner level and don't feel comfortable using blue trails, the following trails might be a good routine to start with. Obviously, if there is strong wind on south side, then try using trails on north side and vice versa.

For South Side

• 2 LA CRETE -> 4 NANSEN HAUT -> 6 NANSEN BAS (Longest trails - 6 kim)
• 40 FRNC SUD->95 L'ALGONQUIN (Green) -> Taking LE SOLEIL lift

For North Side

• 72 P'TIT BONHEUR -> Taking LOWELLTHOMAS lift
• 72 P'TIT BONHEUR -> 77 BEAUCHEMIN BAS -> Taking DUNCAN EXPRESS lift

Lift Closing Time

If you have been skiing from various ski resorts such as Blue mountain, Moonstone, Horseshoe, Snow Valley, etc in Ontario, you might get used to doing a night ski. Unfortunately,  there is no night ski at Mont Tremblant. When I visited, lifts stopped running at 4 pm. Lift closing time may varied during a season, so please check the closing time from this page ahead of time.

Moreover, if you're like me who wants to enjoy skiing even a few minutes more, then try the following trails before almost closing time.

• 2 LA CRETE -> 7 ALPINE -> Taking TGV lift -> 8 BEAUVALLON HAUT -> 20 DESSERRES -> 29 JOHANNSEN

This routine will lead you to the lift in the middle, take you to the top again and make you choose your true final trails for the day.

Ski Valet

This is a must service you need. Before I visited Mont Tremblant, I was not aware of this ski valet service at all. Luckily, the hotel I stayed let me know and I truly felt grateful whenever I used the ski valet service on both a lunch break and the closing time. Bring you and your family's ski equipments back to your hotel wouldn't be easy since you probably feel exhausted already. Most importantly, this service is totally free.

So, before you book your hotel, make sure you ask whether your hotel provides ski valet service.  Your life will be much easier during the trip.

Hot Tub After Ski

Unless you hate using a hot tub, I strongly recommend using it after you enjoy your ski. Putting your tired body into the hot water for some time not only gets rid of fatigue but also make you feel refresh just as you get the massage from a famous massage therapist.

On a Way Back Home

One big mistake I made was driving home directly from Mont Tremblant. Especially, I also had afternoon ski and there was a snow storm on my last day. Luckily, I got home safely, but driving itself was not fun at all. If you require a long driving distance to get home and plan to do afternoon ski as well, I strongly recommend staying some place in the middle. In my case, Ottawa was the good place to stop by and take a rest. If I have a chance to do this Mont Tremblant trip again, I will definitely stay at Ottawa one night.

This is it. Hope you don't feel disappointed about these tips and again I am able to give you at least one or two useful information via this post.

Thanks for your time as always!

In this post, I will share what happened during 3-days trip to Mont Tremblant. For this trip, there were my two friends' families joined the trip as well.

D-1 day

The day before I travelled, I called the hotel (Ermitage Du Lac) and asked if early check-in was available. I was told that the early check-in could not be confirmed over the phone call during this time and was able to check upon arrival. After that, I finished packing and put all luggages in the car trunk. Since I planned to leave home around 4 am, I needed to be ready by everything before I went to bed.

Why did I leave at 4 am? Well, there were several reasons.

First of all, I like driving in early morning because it is very quiet and there are no traffics on the road all the time. Plus, with a help of good weather, you can have a chance to check the beautiful sunrise while driving.  

Secondly, and most importantly, I can drive as far as possible while my daughter is still sleeping in the car (Of course,  there is 50% success rate). The kids usually do not like sitting in the car for long time.  They can easily get bored and start complaining. That's when you need to stop every service station, take a rest and eventually cause the delay on your plan.

Thirdly, I purchased the afternoon lift tickets. I did not want to be late since we had only 4 hours (between 12 pm and 4 pm) to enjoy skiing.

To make my first day run smoothly, almost everything should be ready on the day before.

1st Day

I woke up at 3:30 am with my alarm sound. I quickly brewed my coffee and took some frozen food from my freezer and put them in my small cool box along with water bottles and a couple of red bull drinks.

The next thing I did was to wake up my wife. Once we were ready to leave,  we still had the most important and difficult task to proceed: Putting my daughter in the car without waking up. You can guess probably what happened. Thanks to my unstable movements during caring her to the car, my daughter woke up and she walked to the car by herself.  This was obviously not a good start...

Despite my worry about my daughter not sleeping enough, she actually went back to sleep after I drove for a half hour . I guess her neck pillow, warm blanket and no too much noise on the road helped her back to sleep faster.  She was able to sleep until we stopped by one of McDonald branches in Ottawa for the breakfast.

Note: I highly recommend brining cups of coffee and any type of sports drinks to prevent you from falling a sleep. However, whenever you feel sleepy, make sure you DO NOT DRIVE. Life is much more important than getting your destination on time. If your partner can drive, taking a turn would be very beneficial, especially for this early morning driving.    

Around 11:30 am, we arrived our hotel Ermitage Du Lac.

Once I got into the hotel, the woman asked me if I was the one who called for the early check-in and told me the room was ready.  Thanks to early checkin, I did not need to spend time and money to find the parking spot and my family was able to have a lunch and prepare for ski in the hotel room comfortably.

1. Getting lift tickets

I purchased the following lift tickets.

• March 9 - Only Afternoon Ski
• March 10 - Full Day
• March 11 - Only Afternoon Ski

When I went to the ticket office, I found two ticket kiosks right next to the ticket office. I used one of kiosks and put the QR code from one of emails, but I wasn't able to get all tickets.

I think it was because my full day tickets were purchased with promotion. I had to go to the ticket office and let them know. They printed all tickets again, but my daughter's last ticket did not print out. I checked again with the ticket office and finally got all tickets.  To be honest, I did not like this whole ticket printing process, but people at the ticket office were super friendly and tried their best to fix the issue. I didn't have time for complains. My attention was all about trying skiing as quickly as possible.

2. Checking the Proof of vaccination

The next thing to do was to show my vaccine proof. There was a small section right next to the ticket kiosk. We showed our IDs (Driver license) and proof of vaccination. After that, they made a hole on your lift card as a poof.

It was very quick and straight forward process.

3. First Ski Experience

My family have tried the following ski resorts before we hit Mont Tremblant.

• Uplands
• Lakeridge
• Dagmar
• Horseshoe
• Snow Valley
• MSLM (Mout St. Louis Moonstone)

Especially, we have purchased the silver pass on MSLM for 2 years and tried to maximize our ski experiences in there during winter time. I can not say our family are very good at skiing, but we feel comfortable by trying green & blue trails and can manage black trails without having a big concern.

So, we took the express gondola and head to the top of mountain. It was not too cold and a perfect weather for skiing.  Luckily, there were not many people too.

For our first try, we decided to take the longest trail which was a combination of green trails. The following map was partially captured from the official website and the entire map of ski trails can be found here.

We took 2 LA CRETE -> 4 NANSEN HAUT -> 6 NANSEN BAS which was around 6 km. It was the longest trail I have never tried before.  It took us around 12 mins to get to the end of the trail where we took the gondola. Even after my first try, my legs seemed to be tired already.  My first impression on the trail was that it was pretty dynamic in terms of  a level of difficulty. Even though it was the green trail, any newbie might feel challenge because there were couple of areas to be considered as blue trail in my opinion. Similarly, some blue trails seemed to be a black trails in other ski resorts I have been tried. For our family, trying this longest trail made feel so happy. It was another level of our ski experience.

After that, we slightly changed our trails like the following:

• 2 LA CRETE -> 4 NANSEN HAUT -> 96 TAM-TAM -> 6 NANSEN BAS
• 2 LA CRETE -> 4 NANSEN HAUT -> 96 TAM-TAM -> 38 PANACHE -> 6 NANSEN BAS (Not recommended. 38 PANACHE requires long walks)
• 2 LA CRETE -> 3 NANSEN (Blue) -> 4 NANSEN HAUT -> 6 NANSEN BAS
• 2 LA CRETE -> 3 NANSEN (Blue) -> 9 MI-CHEMIN -> 20 DESSERRES -> 29 JOHANNSEN (Not recommended. 9 MI-CHEMIN was so long flat trail that requires long walks)

We thought the gondola was running til 4:30 pm, but I was wrong. They stopped running at 4 pm. However, this was sufficient enough to know the taste of skiing in Mont Tremblant.

4.  Ski Valet Service

I did not know there was such thing like Ski Valet Service, but the hotel receptionist let me know about this ski valet when I checked in. I am not sure who introduced the wonderful service at first time, but I want to give him or her the Nobel prize if I can. Using this service was apparently the best thing I had done in Mont Tremblant and I got lots of kudos from my family.

How can you use this? It is easy.  There is a small cabin right next to the gondola express entrance. You just need to tell where you stay and give them your ski and poles. It's completely free.

5.   Rest of a day

As soon as I came back to the hotel, my daughter and I wanted to use the hot tub really bad. There wasn't not many reservation, so we were able to the book quickly. Putting your body into the hot water after ski was the second best thing I had done. I felt so relaxed and all the body pains seemed to go away.

After using this fantastic hot tub experience, we had the dinner and walked around the villages where all stores, hotels and restaurants are gathered.  Simply walking around the village was surprisingly fun. We also bought beavertails as a dessert.

I knew I was supposed to watch a movie with my daughter, but I only remembered the intro of Disney castle and my daughter yelling me "Stop snoring. I can't sleep!" a couple of times...

It was very tired day, but also perfect day.

2nd Day

I woke up at 8:30 am. I didn't know it was because of my snoring, my wife and daughter were still sleeping peacefully. Since the hotel provided the complimentary breakfast, I went to the dining place, ordered some breads, cereal, coffee and juice for my family and brought them back to my room.

Rest of schedules followed similar to the first day except for trying early ski.

We gained some confidence from the first day ski, we decided trying various blue trails. Here is the list of trails we tried. Especially, the first two trails were my favourite routines.

• 2 LA CRETE -> 7 ALPINE -> 8 BEAUVALLON HAUT -> 20 DESSERRES -> 29 JOHANNSEN
• 2 LA CRETE -> 8 BEAUVALLON HAUT -> 20 DESSERRES -> 29 JOHANNSEN
• 40 FRNC SUD->95 L'ALGONQUIN (Green) -> Taking LE SOLEIL lift (recommended for beginners)
• 40 FRNC SUD-> 41 TOBOGGAN -> 42 TAPECUL -> Taking LE SOLEIL lift
• Taking FLYING MILE lift -> 30 LIGNE DE PENTE (Black) -> 29 JOHANNSEN
• 2 LA CRETE -> 7 ALPINE -> Taking TGV lift -> 8 BEAUVALLON HAUT -> 20 DESSERRES -> 29 JOHANNSEN (Before closing routine)

I really liked the first two routines, so I had tried several times before I changed the trails on the other side.

After we finished skiing, my daughter and I headed to the hot tub (I felt like the first use of the hot tub addicted me to it).  Once we had plenty of time to relax, we went to my friends' accommodation for dinner and had delicious meals and drinks.

Another beautiful day was gone.

3rd Day

It was my last day already. Time flied, so we did not want to waste a minute.

In the morning, we had the breakfast and started packing. I moved all luggages to my car trunk and did checkout. My car still stayed safely in the parking lot in the hotel.

Of course, we were all ready for enjoying our last day ski.

At this time, we decided to try some trails on north side (The first 2 days, we were on only south side).

Here is the list of trails that we tried on north side.

• 72 P'TIT BONHEUR -> 77 BEAUCHEMIN BAS -> Taking DUNCAN EXPRESS lift (recommended for beginners)
• 72 P'TIT BONHEUR -> 77 BEAUCHEMIN BAS  -> Taking EXPO EXPRESS lift -> 70 GAGNON -> Taking LOWELLTHOMAS lift
• 71 BEAUCHEMIN HAUT -> 77 BEAUCHEMIN BAS  -> Taking EXPO EXPRESS lift -> 70 GAGNON -> Taking LOWELLTHOMAS lift
• 67 LOWELL THOMAS -> Taking LOWELLTHOMAS lift

We also tried some trails on south side too.

• 18 MCCULLOCH (Black) -> Taking TGV lift
• 2 LA CRETE -> 7 ALPINE -> 8 BEAUVALLON HAUT -> 20 DESSERRES -> 29 JOHANNSEN
• 2 LA CRETE -> 4 NANSEN HAUT -> 6 NANSEN BAS (The longest trail. recommended for beginners)
• Taking FLYING MILE lift -> 30 LIGNE DE PENTE (Black) -> 29 JOHANNSEN

With Taking these last trails, 29 JOHANNSEN -> 37 VOYAGEUR, we were able to come back to the hotel with short walks and head back to my home.

On a way back, we stopped by a take-out restaurant in Ottawa for our dinner. I also went to a beer brewery called spark beer and bought some beers too.  Actually, my must go beer brewery in Ottawa was Small Pony brewery, but they closed early on that day. Well..at least I was able to find other good brewery. :)

From Ottawa to my home, the road condition was extremely bad because snow storm started hitting us. We were supposed to get home before 12 am, but we actually arrived at 2:30 am.

So this was it. It was very tight schedules, but we really enjoyed our trip to Mont Tremblant. I strongly recommend if you haven't been there yet.

I will create one more post regarding a few tips that I learned from the trip.

Thanks for your time to read this post!

Planning for a family trip always fun and exciting. A process of planning and researching about a trip brings me to the destination ahead of time in my imagination and show me how a trip would look like. Of course, sometimes, the reality of the actual trip betrays my "supposed-to-be-well-plan" and the entire trip goes to the totally different direction with various unexpected events.

But, I know all these will become eventually the part of our valuable memories...

Why Mont Tremblant?

With the invasion of Covid virus to our life, my family trip had become a series of staycations for almost 2 years. Staying home sounded easy at first time, but we realized it actually gave my family very hard times both mentally and physically. As my daughter’s march break for 2022 was coming up, I wanted to do a family trip that can fulfill the followings:

• Outside activity that whole family can enjoy
• Less safety concern
• Somewhere that requires a bit of driving distance
• Being beneficial for my daughter’s education

So...the only place I can think of is...Mont Tremblant!

Our whole family loves skiing, so it can definitely be the best option where my whole family can enjoy for sure. Moreover, we can still wear a mask while we enjoy skiing. Moreover, checking vaccine proof is mandatory for those who stay at a hotel or use a ski lift in Mont Tremblant. This activity would give us relatively less concern in terms of safety measure.

Mon Tremblant is 6.5 hours driving distance from my home, so this wouldn’t be bad to get some fresh airs outside of my current region. Lastly, Mon Tremblant is in Quebec, so this can be a perfect chance for my daughter to practice her french language.

So..Why not Mont Tremblant?

Planning - Dates

My daughter's march break is from March 14 to March 18. However, I know during this time, the price usually goes up. So I decided to stay in Mont Tremblant a week before the march break which was from March 9, 10 and 11.

Actually, this was a good decision. The accommodation price was relatively cheaper,  there were less people in ski hills and most importantly weather was also perfect (Except for the evening on the last day when snow storms hit me on my way back home).

Planning - Accommodation

Once the dates were set, I started looking for a place to stay.  Even though, I picked the dates a week before the actual march break, the hotel prices in Mont Tremblant were still expensive. However, I had TD reward points that I collected during promotion last year and was able to redeem $590 by leveraging Expedia for TD.

With benefit of using the reward points, I would like to stay a hotel where the Express Gondola are easily accessible and also can cook inside the room. Of course, the price should not be too high. After spending quite some research time, I chose the hotel called Ermitage Du Lac.

To be honest, this hotel is not directly closed to the Express gondola. However, it is closed enough to the lift located inside of the village, so accessing to the gondola wouldn't be an issue.

So, our place to stay was finally set!

Planning - Lift Ticket

I never thought the lift ticket can be the highest potion of the entire travel expense, but this was the actual case.

Here is the regular lift price that can be found from the official website.

According to this chart, the lift price of full day regular for a family of 2 adults and 1 child per day is $306 (before tax).  However, if you actually visit the page where you purchase the ticket, you can find that the price can be varied based on date.

For example of March 2022,

Moreover, there is lift ticket promotion in Mont Tremblant and check the official site frequently if you plan to purchase the ticket.

For your information, Mont Tremblant does not have a night ski. All lifts stop working at 4 pm when I visited. Afternoon lift ticket is valid between 12 pm and 4 pm.

In my case,  I know I can't use three full day passes, so I planned to purchase the lift tickets as follows:

• March 9 - First day. Only Afternoon Ski
• March 10 - Full Day
• March 11 - Last day (Check out). Only Afternoon Ski

Moreover, there was a promotion that I was able to purchase 1 day adult ticket for $95. I used the promotion to cover me and my wife on our second day. So the final price that I ended up paying was $838.46 (after tax).

After purchasing the lift ticket, only thing our family needed to do was to pack the luggages properly and enjoy the trip!

I'll continue posting about how my Mont Tremblant trip went and share some tips that I learned.

Thanks for reading this post!

"Anyone can be my teacher if I can learn something from him or her"

I am a huge believer of what is written above. When I was young, my dad always called my name and showed me how to fix stuffs such as broken appliances or house-related issues. When I was as tall as him , he started letting me to fix them on behalf of him and gave me advices if needed.  

This was how I naturally learned several repair skills and am now able to fix most of (not-too-complicated) issues (Unfortunately, I couldn't be MacGyver and acknowledge when to call a professional)

The point is that my both parents have been great teachers in my life...

I have 8-years old daughter. I have been thinking what I can do for her since she was born. I have come up a couple of ideas and finally decided to teach her something. Something I am doing every day and something I have better knowledge with. Yes. teaching coding was my answer.

However, I have often heard the followings from other people:

• Teaching someone is hard.
• Teaching kids is even harder.
• Teaching your own kids is totally different level of challenge...

And I agree. I finished a couple of coding classes with my daughter and I can not say that each class was a piece of cake. However, what I can tell for sure is that I enjoyed every single moment because...

• I got to know my daughter better in terms of finding her study habit, what makes her interested, etc.
• I started looking at this coding lesson by a totally different perspective from simple knowledge transfer to something fun and enjoyable for both of us.
• Finally, I am learning and reviewing my knowledge as well by preparing each class and thinking hard about how I can explain each lesson as easy as possible so that my daughter can understand.  

So, how can you start?  The below steps are what I proceeded.

Please keep in mind that this is just my personal opinions and what I tried. Every person has their own way of preparation and teaching styles, so there might be different effective approaches.

1. Choose a programming language

I worked at the agency for very long time. One of advantages of working at the agency is that the programming language you need to use can be changed based on your project or client's needs.  In other words, you have more chances to deal with different programming languages. In my case, I started with C#, but laster had chances to use other languages such as Java, Coldfusion, php and Python.

In my opinion, there is no right or wrong about picking a programming language. At the end, they all have similar concepts (variable, datatype, data structures, function, class, etc) and use different syntaxes and operators. Therefore, once you get familiar with one programming language, you should be able to learn your second or third languages without having any huge issue.  

Therefore, I suggest two options:

• Choose the language that you are familiar most now
• Choose the language that you want to learn. (I believe the best way to learn something new is to teach!)

I chose Python for coding lesson because I would like to understand more deeply and also it helps my ML & TensorFlow study that I started recently. Moreover, its syntax is not that complicated compared to the other language so it can be plus point for the lesson.

So, think about carefully and choose the language you like!

2. Create Your Lesson plans

I am not a good speaker. That's why I make the note (usually use point form) even though it is short period of presentation or meeting. Similarly, this coding lesson might take up to 50 ~ 60 minutes. So I decided using one hour of my Saturday morning time for planning a lesson. I am using the Notion to store my lesson plans (Strongly recommend if you haven't used it!)

When you plan your lesson, please make sure to keep your kids not to loose a focus on coding. Coding can be very difficult and boring for kids, so explain with examples your kids can be familiar with and also add some coding-related game playing times so that your kids can be entertained.

In my case, I found my daughter felt bored (she looked even sleepy) from the first lesson, so I implemented a simple number guessing game and hangman games in python and let her play those games with the reminder that she can make them eventually. I also created a simple quiz by using Kahoot! to review a previous lesson.

Also, try to research any online learning site to see if there is a kids programming course and what agenda each course made. I am pretty sure it will give you the new insights in term of how your lesson might look like. I used Udemy as my research source.

3. Do your first class with your kids

Like Nike's slogan, Just Do It

You don't need to be perfect for teaching your kids.

Make mistakes, fix them and explain to your kids how you fix. That's how I am doing it now and believe how my daughter learn naturally how to fix the mistakes as I learned how to fix the stuffs from my dad.

I know this is very early stage to share what I learned and highly likely to change my proof of concept on teaching my kids constantly during the course of future lessons. But I strongly recommend trying a coding lesson with your kids. It will be definitely worth to trying and you may find yourself making great memory with your kids.

Cheers!

It's been almost 3 weeks since I launched this blog site. I have noticed a couple of missing pieces while I am using this AWS ec2-instance and blogging site.

Firstly, the public IP address of your ec2-instance will be changed when the instance stops or restarts. so I updated the post so that your ec2-instance has a static public IP address by leveraging elastic IP to avoid this issue.

Secondly, I found that email does not generate from Ghost CMS by using "forgot password" function and realized I haven't had a chance to set up any smtp configuration for the site. That's why I make this post now. In this post, I'll use Gmail as an example.

1. Generating App password

First, go to your gmail and click your profile at top right corner. This should be either your image or initial first letter if you don't have image set up yet. You should be able to see the following button.

Once you click this button, new tab will be appeared. Go to security.

Check "Signing in to Google" section and turn on 2-Step Verification (This should involve checking code from your phone). Once you finish turning on 2-step verification, then click App passwords

You might need to enter the password again to proceed.

In your app passwords screen, you need to click the app dropdown list.

Choose Other (custom name) option and enter your site name.

Click Generate button. You should be able to see the password in yellow box.

Don't forget to copy this password. This password is going to be your SMTP password. After you click DONE button, there is no way to check this password again. So, Don't lose it!

2.  Configure SMTP for your site

Configuring SMTP in Ghost CMS is pretty straightforward.

• SSH into your ec2-instance that hosts your site
• Go to the source directory of your site (In my case, the source directory is located at /var/www/)
• Edit config.production.json file (Use your favourite editor such as nano, vi(m))
• Update mail configuration

For Gmail,

"mail": {
    "from": "yourgmailaddress@gmail.com",
    "transport": "SMTP",
    "options": {
      "host": "smtp.gmail.com",
      "service": "Gmail",
      "port": "465",
      "secure": true,
      "auth": {
        "user": "yourgmailaddress@gmail.com",
        "pass": "YOUR-APP-PASSWORD"
      }
    }
  },

• Restart your site

ghost restart

Now your email in your Ghost CMS should be working fine (Test your forgot password!). For other email service alternatives such as Mailgun or Amazon SES, you should apply the similar approach which involves the followings:

• Getting SMTP endpoint
• Authentication of SMTP (username & password)
• Update the mail section in config.production.json
• Restart your site

Hope this post can be helpful. Happy coding!

Maybe this issue is "NOT" always happening to all Java spring boot application running on Kubernetes.

However, if YAML file is being used to create Kubernetes pods and for some reason, java arguments' values in deployment yaml file can not be retrieved from the application during/after deployment. This post might help you.

Here is the example of deployment.yaml

aviVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
...
...
template:
	spec:
    ...
    containers:
    - name: my-app
      image: docker.image.io/projects/my-app:12d4x3490df329dkkk5bb2v6e9e
      workingDir: /projects/my-app
      command:
      - java
      args:
      	- -jar
        - /projects/my-app/app.jar
        - -Dlogging.config="/projects/my-app/log4j2.xml"
        - -DdbHost="$(DB_HOST)"
        - -DdbUsername="$(DB_USERNAME)"
        - -DdbPassword="$(DB_PASSWORD)"
        ...
        ...

Let's assume the following arguments are originally retrieved from either application.properties or application.yaml file.

• dbHost
• dbUsername
• dbPassword

From most of cases, these properties values will be different based on your environment such as Test, UAT or Prod.  In your Kubernetes setup, they are highly likely to be encoded and placed in each env's secret file.

If you can see that

• property values are not getting picked up according to your value in the secret.
• property values are identical through all environment (They are supposed to be different)

, then check if your arguments' names are matching with the corresponding the key name in its secrets files. In other words, make sure your corresponding key name in the secret.yaml file was being set correctly.

For example of these arguments, they can change as follows:

• dbHost -> db.host since DB_USERNAME is the key name
• dbUsername -> db.username since DB_USERNAME is the key name
• dbPassword -> db.password since DB_PASSWORD is the key name

Basically,  when you create the corresponding key-value pair data in the secret files, do

• Change the value name to Upper Case (E.g., db.host -> DB.HOST)
• Replace "." to "_" if needed (E.g. DB.HOST -> DB_HOST)

This should be able to resolve the issue.

Hope this is helpful. Happy Coding!

In this post, I assume your ssh key was already registered in your git hosting service such as Github, bitbucket, etc. If you don't know how to generate a new ssh key, you can search from your favourite search engine by typing  a search keyword like github(or other alternative) generate ssh key

Just in case, I leave a page link for Github and Bitbucket in regards to this ssh key

• Github
• BitBucket

Ok. Let's start!

Here are some useful commands that I am personally using often on my day-to-day works. First, to avoid any authentication issue with your git hosting service, start with ssh agent.

• Start ssh agent

eval $(ssh-agent -s)

• Add your private key

Please make sure to use the private key (file without having file extension such as ".pem" or ".ppk")

ssh-add yourpathtoprivatekey

For example, if your key is located under .ssh folder, then the command can be

ssh-add ~/.ssh/iamprivatekey

• Check list of keys

ssh-add -l

If your key is successfully added, then you should not see the "The agent has no identities." message

• Check your current branch

git branch

This will show the list of branch you have checked out. The current working branch will have the asterisk(*) in front of a branch name (e.g. * develop)

• Create new branch

If you need to make a code update on brand new branch, the use

git checkout -b new-branch-name

This will create the new branch and switch your current branch to the new branch.

• Switch your branch

If you or your team member already create a new branch from your git hosting service and you need to switch your branch, then use this command.

git fetch && git checkout new-branch

• Display the state of your working project directory

git status

This command will show you the list of files that have been modified, but show them into three different groups: staged, non-staged, untracked. Staged files are one will be committed.  Non-staged files are simply files that are not staged for commit yet. Untracked files are the one not being tracked by Git.

• Add a file for commit

# Add your file to be staged
# Use git add yourfilepath
git add /src/main/java/com/test1/filetocommit.java

# If you want to add every file under test1 folder
git add /src/main/java/com/test1

Git status command after this will allow you to see the list of staged files in green text.

• Unstage a file

If you add a file by mistake and want to unstage, you can run

git restore --staged woops-not-this-file.java

• Discard your change of one file

git checkout yourfilepath/to/restore/back/to/original.java

• Commit your changes

Once you finish adding all files that you want to commit, run the following command.

git commit -m "Describe your changes in this double quotes, do not forget"

• Push your commit to your git repository

git push

• Merge one branch to the other branch

#Assume your working branch is called "feature-test"
git merge branch-name-that-you-want-to-merge

#For example, you want to merge to develop branch
git merge develop

However, merging branches wouldn't happen that often if you are working with other team members. In this case, a typical process would be as follows.

1. Create a PR (Pull Request) from your Git hosting service
2. Add your team member as a reviewer
3. Team member review your PR and leave a feedback if needed
4. Team member approve your PR
5. Merge branch from your PR

So, in this post, I covered

• how to start ssh-agent and add the key to get proper authentication from your Git hosting service.
• how to use common git commands.

Hope this can be useful for someone. Happy coding!

Once I deployed this blog site, I realized that all Preview from Ghost page, post and design section displayed only blank page.

The reason was because my ghost config url was set to https://jinhyoungkim.com. However, my Nginx configuration has 301 redirect to https://www.jinhyoungkim.com on this url. Therefore, this redirection causes this preview issue.

1. SSH into your host server
2. Go to your ghost blog source code directory
3. Run the following commands  

# Change your ghost config url to right one
ghost config url https://yourcorrectghostdomain.com

# Restart ghost
ghost restart

In my case,  I ran this command:

ghost config url https://www.jinhyoungkim.com

Hope this fix can be useful and resolve your issue! :)

Previously, I covered how you can create the new ec2-instance by leveraging AWS free-tier option. In this post, we will focus on the following steps.

• SSH into ec2-instance from your local
• Install nginx, node and mysql
• Install & configure Ghost CMS
• Set up the Domain for the site
• Secure your site & Update nginx configurations

Before you ssh into our newly created instance, there should be a pem file in your Downloads folder that was downloaded before AWS launched the new instance.

Let's assume the key pair name was test-key-pair-example and open your terminal. (I'm using iTerm)

# Go to Downloads folder
cd ~/Downloads

# Move the pem file to .ssh folder
mv test-key-pair-example.pem ~/.ssh

# Change the permission of the pem file
chmod 400 ~/.ssh/test-key-pair-example.pem

1. SSH into EC2-instance from your local

Now, go to your AWS console -> EC2 -> Instances and select the ec2-instance you created. It will show the detail information of your instance. Copy the value under Public IPv4 DNS by clicking the icon in the red circle below.

(You can also click "Connect" button and go to "SSH client" tab to get this public DNS information.)

Once you finish copying your public DNS value, go back to your terminal and run the following command.

# Let's ssh into the ec2-instance!
ssh -i ~/.ssh/test-key-pair-example.pem ubuntu@YourPublicDNS.com

#Example
ssh -i ~/.ssh/test-key-pair-example.pem ubuntu@ec2-22-11-43-31.compute-1.amazonaws.com

If you see "Are you sure you want to continue connecting (yes/no...)" message, type "yes". Now you should be able to ssh into the instance successfully.

2. Install NGINX, NODE and MYSQL

You can keep using ubuntu as a user, but don't forget to use sudo in front of following command.

Let's start with upgrading packages. Type "y" if  system asks a permission to proceed after you execute each command.

# Update packages
sudo apt-get update

# Update installed packages
sudo apt-get upgrade

It's time to install Nginx. Nginx is a server to serve your ghost CMS via port 80 (HTTP) and 442 (HTTPS).

# Install Nginx
sudo apt-get install nginx

# Make firewall allow HTTP and HTTPS connection
sudo ufw allow 'Nginx Full'

For node installation, ghost supports the following versions.

• 12.x
• 14.x
• 16.x

Since 14.x is the recommended version, we will use version 14 as our node version.

# Add NodeSource APT repository for Node 14
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_14.x | sudo -E bash

# Install Node
sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Ghost CMS needs the database to store the data.  Let's install MySQL server.

# Install MySQL
sudo apt-get install mysql-server

After installing MySQL server, you need to set a password of root db user.

# Access MySQL
sudo mysql

# Update the password of 
ALTER USER 'root'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED WITH mysql_native_password BY 'yourpasswordhere';

# Exit MySQL
quit

*Note:  This root password will be used during ghost installation.

3. Install & configure Ghost CMS

In order to create the new Ghost CMS, Ghost-CLI (commandline tool) is mandatory.

# Install Ghost-CLI
sudo npm install ghost-cli@latest -g

# Create a directory where the source code of Ghost CMS will be located at. I put "ghostblog" as my site name, but you can put any name instead of "ghostblog" here.

sudo mkdir -p /var/www/ghostblog

# Set ubuntu as user and group permission on this direcotry
sudo chown ubuntu:ubuntu /var/www/ghostblog

# Set correct directory permission 
sudo chmod 775 /var/www/ghostblog

# Go to the directory
cd /var/www/ghostblog

Ok.  Now it's finally time to install GhostCMS.  Run the following command.

ghost install

This might take some time and start asking several questions.  Before answering them, let's set up our domain.

4.  Set up the Domain for the site

As I mentioned in part1, I'll use "Godaddy"  as a domain service provider where I purchase a domain. However, you should be able to follow the similar steps described below to your domain service provider.  

First, from your AWS console, search "route 53"  and click the link from the search result.

Go to "Hosted zones" from left menu and click "Create hosted zone" button.

Double check your domain name and enter the name in Domain name text field. You can leave the Type as "Public hosted zone"

Click "Create hosted zone" button. Once your domain hosted zone is created, you can see the NS record in the list.

There should be 4 values for your NS record. We need to access the domain service provider and replace NS record values.

From Godaddy, follow the steps below.

• Log in
• Click your user name on top right corner
• Go to "My Products"
• Find the domain name under "All Product and Services" section.
• Click DNS button.
• In Nameservers section, click "Change" button.
• Select "Enter my own nameservers (advanced)" link.

• Please make sure each NS record value does not end with a dot (When you copy the value, do not include the dot at the end)
• Copy all 4 NS values in each name server from Route 53 to text fields in Godaddy's "Edit Nameservers" popup modal. (You might need to use "Add Nameserver" to have more text fields)
• Click "Save" button.

Ok. Now we need to create a couple of A records in the route 53.  Before we go back to route 53,  we need to grab a public IP address of the ec2-instance.

However, there is one additional step to do before we just copy the public IP address. Since we're using the free-tier instance, this public IP address will be changed every time this ec2-instance stops or restarts. To prevent this IP address from changing, you need to use the static IP address and associate to the ec2-instance.

In order to create this static IP address, go to EC2 -> Elastic IPs under Network & Security from left menu.

In Elastic IPs page, click Allocate Elastic IP address button located at the top right corner of the screen.

Leave the default options and click Allocate button. There should be new IP record available on your Elastic IP address list.

Click the checkbox of the record -> Actions -> Associate Elastic IP address.

In "Associate Elastic IP address" page, choose your ec2-instance in instance textbox. Once you choose it and click Private IP address textbox, then private IP address of the selected ec2-instance will be automatically shown up. Make sure you choose the IP address.

Tick the Reassociation checkbox if you want your Elastic IP address to be able to reassociated with other resource.

Click Associate button.

That's it. Now your ec2-instance has static public IP address!

Go to EC2 -> Instances. You can notice your public IP address has been changed to the elastic IP address you had above. Copy Public IP address under "Public IPv4 address"

Go back to Route 53 -> hosted zones -> Click your domain name.

Click "Create Record" button (Make sure you create two records) and following values.

For first record,

• Record name: leave as it is (empty)
• Record type: A - Routes traffic...
• Value: Public IP address you just copied from your ec2 instance detail page

For second record,

• Record name: www
• Record type: A - Routes traffic...
• Value: Public IP address

Now your domain is all set for your ec2-instance.

5. Ghost Installation (Continue...)

Once you go back to your terminal where you executed ghost install command, the installation is on hold and asking the following questions.

• Enter your blog URL: http://yourghostdomain.com
• Enter your MySQL hostname: localhost
• Enter your MySQL username: root
• Enter your MySQL password: Your root user password (Please refer to mysql server installation in Section 2)
• Enter your Ghost database name:  Any name should be fine. The default name is your site folder name + "_prod". So in our case, "ghostblog_prod" is the default name.
• Do you wish to set up "ghost" mysql user? : Y
• Do you wish to set up Nginx?: Y
• Do you wish to set up SSL? Y
• Enter your email (For SSL Certificate): Your email address
• Do you wish to set up Systemd?: Y
• Do you want to start Ghost? Y

Once you input all answers, the following message will be displayed.

Ghost was installed successfully! To complete setup of your publication, visit:

http://yourghostdomain.com/ghost/

Copy the url and paste it in your browser.

Click "Create your account" button. Enter the following information and click "Last step: Invite staff users >" button.

• Site title
• Full name
• Email address
• Password

You can invite person who can help manage your site by providing an email address. Otherwise, click "I'll do this later..." link.

Well done. Your ghost site should be up and running properly. There is only one more step to go: Securing your website.

6. Secure your site & Update nginx configurations

Go back to your terminal and make sure you're on the site root directory.

# Check your current path
pwd

# If you are not on the site root directory
cd /var/www/ghostblog

# add www domain with https
ghost config url https://www.yourghostdomain.com

# Create additional Nginx config files for www
ghost setup nginx ssl

After the last command is run, system will ask your email address again. Enter your email address and restart the ghost

# Restart Ghost CMS
ghost restart

Next, we will update our nginx configuration files to make 301 redirection to cover the following cases:

• http://yourghostdomain.com -> https://www.yourghostdomain.com
• http://www.yourghostdomain.com -> https://www.yourghostdomain.com
• https://yourghostdomain.com -> https://www.yourghostdomain.com

# Go to Nginx conf folder
cd /etc/nginx/sites-enabled

There should be 5 conf files.

• default
• yourghostdomain.com.conf
• yourghostdomain.com-ssl.conf
• www.yourghostdomain.com.conf
• www.yourghostdomain.com-ssl.conf

However, we're going to add 301 redirection rule to the following conf files only:

# Copy this 301 redirection command

return 301 https://www.yourghostdomain.com$request_uri;

• yourghostdomain.com.conf
• yourghostdomain.com-ssl.conf
• www.yourghostdomain.com.conf

# Copy the following 
# Edit yourghostdomain.com.conf

sudo vi yourghostdomain.com.conf

# Move the cursor to right next "proxy_pass"
# type i <- This will change vi editor to be insert mode
paste your 301 redirection rule here

# Hit ESC
:wq

Repeat this process to yourghostdomain.com-ssl.conf and www.yourghostdomain.com.conf as well.

*Note: DO NOT ADD this to www.yourghostdomain.com-ssl.conf file.

For your information,  the part of your nginx configuration looks similar to this.

location / {
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto $scheme;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header Host $http_host;
        proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:2368;

        return 301 https://www.yourghostdomain.com$request_uri;
    }

Last but not least restart the nginx!

sudo systemctl nginx restart

Well done! Your Ghost blogging site should be up and running with HTTPS. Happy Blogging!

This is a step-by-step guideline that I followed when I deployed my blogging site. For your information, I am using macOS.

There are many options where you can start your blogging site with Ghost CMS. Initially, I looked into the following options:

• Ghost Pro
• Digital Ocean + Ghost CMS Installation
• GCP (Google Cloud Platform)  + Ghost CMS Installation
• AWS  + Ghost CMS Installation

Obviously, starting with Ghost Pro is easiest and quickest way to launch your site. However, I decided going with AWS option. The main reason is simply because I am more familiar with AWS platform. Moreover, leveraging free-tier gives me flexibilities of experimenting this platform and a chance to save money initially. (Just FYI, GCP also provide $300 in free credit for new customer and free-tier as well).

Before you proceed, please make sure that

• Domain is purchased and ready to use (I will use Godaddy for this guildeline)
• AWS account creation is already completed

1. Finding EC2

Once you log into AWS console successfully, type ec2 in the search bar and click the "EC2" in the Services section of result panel.

In either Instances page or Dashboard page, find the orange button called "Launch Instance" and click it.

2. Choose an AMI (Amazon Machine Image)

Find Ubuntu Server 20.04 LTS (You can choose 18.04 LTS if you want) and click "Select" button. If you are having a trouble with finding it, you can click the checkbox "Free tier only" to filter the AMI list to show only eligible free tier.

3. Choose an Instance Type

t2.micro should already be pre-selected. Please make sure you can see "Free tier eligible" with green highlighted box. Click "Next:Configure Instance Details" button.

4. Configure Instance Details.

Nothing needs to change in this page. Click "Next: Add Storage" button.

5. Add Storage

Free tier can cover up to 30 GB, so you can leave the size as default (8 GB) or upgrade the size up to 30. In my case, I didn't change the size. Click "Next: Add Tags" button.

6. Add Tags

No need to add Tag. Click "Next: Configure Security Group"

7. Configure Security Group

SSH rule should exist in the list. Check "Source" column and change the dropdown list from "Custom" to "My IP". AWS automatically detects your IP address and fills out the textbox with your IP.  This basically whitelist your IP address so that you can ssh into this ec2-instance with your pem key file later.

Click "Add Rule" button to add HTTP and HTTPS.

For HTTP,

• Type: HTTP
• Port: 80
• Source: Anywhere

For HTTPS,

• Type:HTTPS
• Port: 443
• Source: Anywhere

This eventually makes HTTP and HTTPS publicly accessible.

Click "Review and Launch" button.

8. Review Instance Launch

Review the detail information of your instance once more time and click "Launch" button.

Note: Under security group, there should be total 5 protocols which are 1 ssh, 2 HTTP and 2 HTTPS.

9. Key Pair setup

There are two options:

• Using an existing key pair: Choose this option if you already created the key pair before and want to use it to ssh into this newly created ec2-instance.
• Creating a new key pair: Choose this option to create brand new key pair. Select "RSA" and provide key pair name and click download.

Once you download the key, the "Launch Instance" button should be enabled. Click the button.  Launch Status screen will be appeared. Click view instances button.

10. Verify and confirm the instance

The new instance should be on the instance list without having any name. You can add the name by moving your mouse over on the empty name column and click the edit icon. Provide the name and save it.

Next, check Instance state column and Status check column. They should have "Running" and "2/2 checks passed" values respectively.

Awesome! Now your ec2-instance is ready to install Ghost CMS.

In Part2, I will cover the following topics:

• SSH into ec2-instance from your local
• Install nginx, node and mysql
• Install & configure Ghost CMS
• Set up the Domain for the site
• Update nginx configurations

Thanks for reading this post!