# Matthew Helmke

> The personal site of Matthew Helmke, a technical writer and author. It holds the books he has written and edited, a curated set of writing samples with context, and a blog he has kept since 2007. Topics center on Linux, technical writing, software documentation, security, and observability.

Matthew Helmke writes documentation and books, plays guitar and bass, reads widely, and speaks several languages. He spent several years running a small business in North Africa and has consulted on culture, language, religion, and computing. The site is a Hugo static site; every page has a stable URL, and the blog offers an RSS feed.

## Main pages

- [Home](https://matthewhelmke.com/): who he is and what the site collects.
- [Books](https://matthewhelmke.com/books/): the technical and non-technical books he wrote or edited — Linux titles for O'Reilly and Pearson (Ubuntu Linux Unleashed 2021, A Practical Guide to Linux Commands 4th ed., The Official Ubuntu Book 9th ed., VMware Cookbook 2nd ed.) plus two books from his years in North Africa (Nowhere Else to Turn; Humor and Moroccan Culture).
- [Writing samples](https://matthewhelmke.com/writing-samples/): an annotated index of work from across his career, each with context and a longer excerpt.
- [Blog](https://matthewhelmke.com/blog/): 259 posts from 2007 to 2022 on Linux, open source, programming, book reviews, and personal writing.

## Writing samples

- [Directing AI coding agents](https://matthewhelmke.com/writing-samples/ai-agent-instructions/): instructions written for AI coding agents.
- [Chainguard Custom Assembly: overview](https://matthewhelmke.com/writing-samples/custom-assembly/): product documentation for a Chainguard feature.
- [Get notified when a metric crosses a threshold](https://matthewhelmke.com/writing-samples/grafana-metric-alert/): a Grafana how-to on metric alerts.
- [The Grateful Dead as a precursor to Creative Commons licensing](https://matthewhelmke.com/writing-samples/grateful-dead/): a thought-leadership essay.
- [Humor and Moroccan Culture](https://matthewhelmke.com/writing-samples/humor-and-moroccan-culture/): an excerpt from his book, including an Arabic/darija passage.
- [Contributing to Keycloak](https://matthewhelmke.com/writing-samples/keycloak-contributing/): open-source contributor documentation.
- [How I monitor my OpenWrt router with Grafana Cloud](https://matthewhelmke.com/writing-samples/openwrt-monitoring/): an observability walkthrough.
- [StarTree release notes](https://matthewhelmke.com/writing-samples/startree-release/): release notes for a data platform.
- [VMware Cookbook, Chapter 1](https://matthewhelmke.com/writing-samples/vmware-cookbook/): an excerpt from the book, in DocBook XML source.

## Optional

- [Blog RSS feed](https://matthewhelmke.com/blog/index.xml): the full blog feed. The 259 posts are not listed individually here; browse or search them from the blog index.
- [Site RSS feed](https://matthewhelmke.com/index.xml): the site-wide feed.
- [Amazon author page](https://www.amazon.com/Matthew-Helmke/e/B003W60CN4/): his books on Amazon.
- [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthewhelmke): current work and contact.