Graph queries for a social feed
2015.041Why a graph database was the only sane choice for a social feed where the interesting question isn't what your friends posted, but what your friends' friends are doing this Saturday.
Writing
2015
2014
Two-sided graph
2014.319Adding businesses to a social platform built on Neo4j -- and realizing both sides of the marketplace use the same graph patterns.
The middleware chain
2014.232Two people, one Express app, and eight middleware functions between the request and the response.
Git history with Gource
2014.158Turning months of git commits into an animated video with Gource and ffmpeg -- then opening the weekly sharing session with it.
Plans, not posts
2014.120Leaving the salary to try building something -- a platform where the unit isn't opinion or memory, but a plan.
ACCEPTed. COMMITed. RESOLVEd.
2014.101Adrian Hands contributed a GNOME patch using Morse code typed with his knees. His commit message was three words and an exclamation.
Go Big or Go Home
2014.006A text-poster on a meeting-room wall, doing more work than a poster should.
Node.js on a Raspberry Pi
2014.005Running a custom Node.js blog engine on a Raspberry Pi at home -- from a 45-day wait and a dead board to DuckDNS, ISP port blocking, and the first external request.
2013
11/12/13
2013.345A birthday, a public oath, and one line I want to keep.
Thank You, Sachin
2013.322Two days after the speech. I went looking for the numbers.
Sachin at Wankhede
2013.321He carried a list. That's the part that broke me.
Express middleware chains
2013.288Route handlers don't need to be nested callbacks -- Express middleware chains turn them into a flat, readable sequence.
On Phabricator
2013.244Phabricator changed what code review means to me. A note from a few months in.
Zero-downtime deploys
2013.196A bash deploy script and a Node.js process monitor -- SSH, pull, touch a file, the cluster reloads. No CI, no dashboard. The terminal.
Sorting by multiple fields
2013.179A composable predicate function for sorting arrays of objects by multiple fields -- with reverse, primers, and short-circuit evaluation.
Running Node.js in production
2013.149Upstart, clustering, zero-downtime deploys, heartbeat monitoring, and an embedded REPL -- what it takes to keep Node.js running in production in 2013.
MySQL on XFS
2013.101Using bind mounts to move MySQL data, config, and logs to an XFS volume without changing a single MySQL setting.
Node.js style guide
2013.051Our team's Node.js conventions -- error-first callbacks, early returns, callback alignment, and the formatting rules we drilled into every new developer.
History as communication
2013.049Commit history isn't a log of what happened -- it's a narrative you author. Rebase, atomic commits, and the discipline of writing history for the person reading it six months from now.
Just Another Brick in the Wall
2013.047Some days you build the wall. Some days you notice you're in it.