One nice benefit of doing the number first in the url is that the second time you set a timer you can just type a single number and url autocomplete will fill in the rest for you.
Back when I was running a disposable email service called dodgeit.com I settled on a similar approach. I would just have postfix drop the mail in Maildir style files, then had a perl script parse the messages one by one. I didn't even call it from cron--it would just finish traversing then start over again after sleeping for a second. This effectively scaled to thousands of messages an hour on a single dedicated host.
I played around with a number of approaches, like the author here. But the one that just trusted the mail daemon to do its thing and the Linux filesystem to do its thing worked best for me.
Given that it ultimately pokes around with Amazon's route53 infrastructure I'm not too sure that there'd be a gain if the site/processor were available in-house.
Even if the manipulation were local, the Amazon API would be remote, and not within a company's control.
Interesting idea though. Most of the backend is portable perl and easy to pull out..
Lots of companies already trust AWS and host various services there. Many of those companies might not trust your git servers to be up and running 24/7 with Amazon-like SLAs.
Thanks for the interesting perspective. I guess when I strip it down I've written a tiny layer of magic to convert a (bastardized)TinyDNS zone-file, or Bind zonefile, into Amazon Route53 update commands.
Selling that as a one-off utility would be hard, but it does currently work well as a hosted service via the webhook integration-layer, and a small amount of git-magic.
I will have a think to see if people would prefer it self-hosted, though nobody has expressed any interest in that previously.
"When the Drink button was pressed it made an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sent tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject's brain to see what was likely to go down well. However, no one knew quite why it did this because it invariably delivered a cupful of liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea."
A Guide to the Good Life: The Ancient Art of Stoic Joy by Irvine. Pay attention and you will see this book come up time and time again on HN. I have reread multiple times.
One nice benefit of doing the number first in the url is that the second time you set a timer you can just type a single number and url autocomplete will fill in the rest for you.