hacker / welder / mechanic / carpenter / photographer / musician / writer / teacher / student

Musings of an Earth-bound carbon-based life form.

Welcome to my small corner of the universe! I'm John and over the years I have been a software engineer, solutions architect, Ph.D student, book author, consultant and I even spent several years teaching university courses. This is a place where I write down some of the things I think about or share information I have learned -- hopefully you find something of interest here. If you do, feel free to reach out!

There's no place like ~ ... if only I had just one #technology #tools Mar 25, 2022
Observations on the complexity of software ...how does it not break? #technology #randomthoughts #software Jun 29, 2021
Systems programming is hard there are dragons everywhere #linux #systems #programming #technology #ebpf Jun 10, 2021
Sorry your tests are so slow... who knew it could be so painful? #technology #startup #engineering Jun 8, 2021
So... emacs? Can we hang out? words I never thought I'd say #computing #editors #emacs Jun 4, 2021
Things that I'm grateful for this year has been weird and yet awesome Dec 30, 2020
eBPF map lookup it's a party in user-space #linux #kernel #c May 29, 2019
An introduction to ptrace #linux #software #computing #engineering May 1, 2019
Constants of Software Development things I learned along the way #software #engineering Apr 1, 2019
AWS Glue Python Script Dependencies #aws #python Jul 1, 2018
AWS Batch with Spot Block #aws #gpu #science #batch May 24, 2018
AWS Batch and GPU-based Workloads #aws #gpu #science #batch Apr 30, 2018
Lambda routing #aws #cloud #photography #tech Oct 16, 2017
AWS How To Deploy static files to S3 and code to Lambda with Pipelines #aws #ops #devops #tech Sep 6, 2017
High Throughput SNS with C# #aws #development #c# #tech Jul 31, 2017
VMWare AHCI Driver Woes #vmware #sysadmin #tech Jun 21, 2017
A personal photo gallery V1: S3, Lambda and Rekognition #aws #cloud #photography #tech Jun 16, 2017
Growing your FreeNAS USB root partition #freebsd #zfs #tech Jun 12, 2017
How to scope Filters for JAX-RS services #java Oct 15, 2015
How to replace Faraday middleware #ruby Oct 12, 2015
The value of boring #engineering #software-architecture Oct 9, 2015
SOA for Humans #engineering #soa Oct 5, 2015
The birth of the monolith services have their place #engineering #software #architecture Sep 21, 2015
Setting Boundaries in Your Code #engineering #soa Aug 22, 2015
Carving up the Monorail #engineering #software Jul 20, 2015
Guiding Principles for Building Services #engineering #software #soa #architecture Jul 12, 2015
Thoughts on Dependencies #engineering #software Apr 9, 2015
Moving fast (into sharp corners) #engineering Mar 9, 2015
Kenshō, a PostgreSQL dashboard for ops folks #java #cloud #ops #postgresql #metrics Nov 3, 2014
Orchestration of Chef Resources with ZooKeeper #ruby #cloud #ops #zookeeper #chef Oct 25, 2014
Book: Chef Essentials #chef #writing #books Sep 25, 2014
Interfaces in Ruby #ruby #development Sep 25, 2014
Thoughts about Fog.io #ruby #cloud #ops Sep 24, 2014
Webinar: Automating your infrastructure with Chef #chef Aug 9, 2014
Compiling psycopg2 under Mavericks #computing #python #postgresql Apr 23, 2014
Capping Riak Memory Consumption #computing #riak #performance May 10, 2013
Mounting LVM partitions from Xen Server #computing #xen #virtualization #linux May 10, 2013
Rackspace Cloud load balancers and WebSockets #computing #networking #web #cloud #rackspace Apr 22, 2013
Sphinx, MacTeX and Macports #computing #python #documentation Mar 4, 2013
Java's date formatter is not thread safe #computing #java Jan 23, 2013
Converting between Proj4 and WKT with Python #computing #python #gis Jan 20, 2013
Creating a custom CRS with GeoTools #computing #java #gis Jan 20, 2013
USGS Elevation Data with Java #computing #java #gis Dec 30, 2012
Migrating your Chef Server #computing #ruby #chef #devops Dec 21, 2012
DAO Testing with Hibernate #java #dropwizard #testing Nov 20, 2012
Python has a simple HTTP server #python Nov 12, 2012
Xen DomU clock issues #computing #xen #virtualization Nov 12, 2012
Custom Serialization of Models with Jackson #java #gis Nov 11, 2012
PostGIS with Hibernate Spatial and Dropwizard #computing #java #hibernate #postgis #gis #soa Nov 10, 2012
Using Sphinx for RESTful API docs #computing #python #writing #docs Nov 9, 2012
Riak MapReduce with Ruby #computing #ruby #riak Oct 29, 2012
Ruby Enterprise Edition and Ubuntu 12.04 #computing #ruby #ubuntu #linux Oct 1, 2012
GeoTools, Maven and JAI, Oh My! #computing #java #gis #maven #geotools #jai Aug 18, 2012
Unsetting ZFS share settings on Solaris 11 May 1, 2012
Using PGOPTIONS to stop statement timeouts Aug 24, 2011
VRDP and VirtualBox May 30, 2011
MySQL, Sub-selects and IN() #database #mysql #programming Mar 25, 2011
Testing asynchronous workers #gearman #ruby #programming #testing Mar 11, 2011
Using Rails controller actions from IRB Mar 9, 2011
Managing background processes #gearman #ruby #programming Mar 8, 2011
Raw disks in VMWare ESXi Mar 1, 2011
Rid yourself of NWAM Mar 1, 2011
bash pipes, sub-processes and variables Jul 29, 2010
Capistrano doesn't play well with background jobs Jul 29, 2010
Using OpenDNS as a site filter Apr 6, 2010
About Me Jan 1, 0001
Connect Jan 1, 0001
Untitled Jan 1, 0001