Writings on various topics (mostly technical) from Oliver Hookins and Angela Collins. We currently reside in Sydney after almost a decade in Berlin, have three kids, and have far too little time to really justify having a blog.
Picture the scene: you have a new project to start working on and deliver in a relatively short amount of time. You have done lots of research, know the problem to be solved, have worked diligently on whittling down the scope to just the bare elements that will prove or disprove the utility of the idea. You know how long it will take to build a first iteration, have a pretty good idea of how to…
While I was implementing a small, naive log aggregation tool I had a moment to consider the type of compression I wanted to use on the log files at rest. The main implication this has outside of the efficiency of compression and how much space the files will take up is how they can be used once stored. If you are using tools like gzip/gunzip with awk or other simple command-line tools, or even…
In day to day life as a systems engineer there aren't too many opportunities to build solutions based purely on theoretical studies or research papers - generally solutions are built for you and you "just" need to make them work, tie up the spaghetti, shave the yak and so on. Entering the world of programming and software development though, a lot of new problems come up that you can find your own…
It has been a while since my last blog post; certainly not because I wanted to write less but I've just been trying to learn so damn much recently it hasn't left much time for anything else. Whether or not I've actually learned anything is yet to be seen. This leads me to a subject which I am still struggling with - Pair Programming.
Not that I don't "get it", "understand it", or "enjoy it" - I…