Faith & Code | Reflections by Errong

  How to Give a Private Oracle Cloud VM Internet Access Using a NAT Gateway In my previous post, How to SSH into an Oracle Cloud VM Without a Public IP , I explained how to connect to a private Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) VM using Cloud Shell without assigning a public IP address. That setup works well for securely managing a VM. However, there is one problem: the VM cannot access the public internet by default. For example, running the following command from the VM may result in a connection timeout: curl -I --connect-timeout 5 https://www.cloudflare.com This becomes a problem when you need to: Install packages using dnf . Download software from GitHub. Pull Docker or container images. Access third-party APIs. Connect to external services such as Cloudflare. Fortunately, OCI provides a managed networking service called NAT Gateway . It allows private instances to initiate connections to the internet without assigning them public IP addresses. In this tutorial, I will sho...

  How to SSH into an Oracle Cloud VM Without a Public IP Using Cloud Shell One of the advantages of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) is that you don't necessarily need to assign a public IP address to every VM instance. For servers that only need to be accessed for administration, development, or internal services, keeping them on a private network is often a better approach. But this raises a question: How do you SSH into a VM that has only a private IP address and is not directly accessible from the public internet? You can use Oracle Cloud Shell. In this tutorial, I'll walk through how to connect to an Oracle Cloud VM through its private VCN using Cloud Shell, without assigning a public IP address to the VM. 1. The architecture The idea is straightforward: Create a VM instance inside an OCI Virtual Cloud Network (VCN). Do not assign a public IP address to the VM. Configure Oracle Cloud Shell to connect to the same VCN. Upload the SSH private key used when creating the VM in...

  My Blogging Monetization Experiment: Can I Make My First $5? Today, I'm starting a small experiment to see whether my websites can make money through online advertising. I have two websites, and I've decided to try two different advertising networks. Website No. 1 – Adsterra Website: https://lengerrong.blogspot.com/ I've added Adsterra to this Blogger website. Now I'll wait and see how the ads perform and whether the website can generate some income. Website No. 2 – Monetag Website: https://qz-l.com/ For my second website, I've decided to try Monetag. I'll monitor its advertising performance and compare the results with Adsterra. My First Goal: Earn $5! I'm not expecting to become rich overnight. In fact, my first target is very simple: Can these two websites earn at least $5 in one month? I'll be checking: Website traffic and visitors. Number of advertisements displayed. Advertising revenue. Which advertising network performs better. Whether the earni...

  When Faith Has No Words: Finding God's Mercy in the Language of Lament Lament is the language of people who believe in God's sovereignty but live in a world with tragedy. There is something deeply comforting about this sentence. As Christians, we believe that God is sovereign. Nothing happens outside His knowledge or control. He governs all things according to His wisdom and providence. We confess that even the most difficult circumstances of our lives do not happen by chance. But what happens when the things we believe become difficult to reconcile with the things we experience? What happens when we lose someone we love? When illness enters our home? When suffering continues for months or years, and our prayers seem to receive no answer? Can we still come before God with our questions, our sorrow, and even our complaints? The third chapter of Job gives us a surprising answer. It shows us that lament is not the opposite of faith. In fact, lament can be an expression of faith....

  Who Really Runs Your Life? Living Under the Authority of Jesus Who runs your life? Your work? Your children? Your parents? Your bank account? Or perhaps you would simply say, "Myself." We often think of ourselves as being in control of our lives. We make plans, pursue careers, raise families, manage finances, and decide what we want our future to look like. Even as Christians, it is easy to fit Jesus into the life we have already built, rather than allow Him to define what our lives are meant to be. But the opening chapter of Mark's Gospel presents a very different picture. As Jesus begins His public ministry, He steps directly into the ordinary lives of people. He meets fishermen at their workplace, teaches in a synagogue, and enters a friend's home where a woman is suffering from a fever. These are three ordinary settings: work, worship, and home. Yet in each place, something extraordinary becomes clear: Jesus has authority over everything. Mark wants us to under...