Brent Dean
Build. Launch. Repeat.
I build software, automate infrastructure, investigate security, and experiment with electronics. I've always been drawn to understanding how things work—taking them apart, figuring out how the pieces fit together, and seeing what I can build with what I've learned.
LaunchShell brings together my professional engineering work and the projects I pursue out of curiosity, with the code, technical decisions, and results behind them.
AWS Infrastructure Automation & Kubernetes
Terraform and Ansible deploy segmented AWS infrastructure with optional private k3s, two Flask replicas, dedicated PostgreSQL and automated teardown.
Featured engineering projects
Explore my AWS infrastructure automation, Porter reliability platform, and automated clinical systems validation developed during my Mount Sinai internship. Other projects include T-Pot honeynet research, Flask applications, electronics builds, and TorKit. The About page provides more background.
How the work is documented
Each writeup connects the build to its decisions and evidence: version changes, test results, logs, failures, and the steps needed to reproduce or understand the work.
Start small
Use what you have: a Codespace, VM, Raspberry Pi, old laptop, or small cloud server.
Build something
Make a real thing first: a web app, server, circuit, script, guide, or lab.
Back it up
Use Git, snapshots, exports, copies, and restore points before risky changes.
Break and fix
Use logs, errors, configs, commits, and history to understand what actually happened.
More projects
Additional software and data projects, smaller Python tools, and experiments that build on the same development and troubleshooting practices.
Technical guides
Practical introductions to Linux, GitHub, cloud servers, and the tools used across the projects.
Featured guides
Start with core tools and concepts before moving into larger projects. These guides focus on Linux, cloud servers, networking, electronics, and cybersecurity.
Explore by topic
Follow a topic from a short guide into a related project writeup.
Technical resources
Tools, reading, and low-cost services useful for building and studying technical systems.