brandur.org

Fragments

Stream of consciousness notes that don't merit a more dedicated write-up. Also available as an Atom feed.

2023
2022
2021
2020
2019
2018
2017
2016
2015
2014

2023

The peanut gallery Oct 14, 2023
Optimizing row storage in 8-byte chunks Oct 12, 2023
Being a good web denizen: Don't strip EXIF metadata from photos Oct 4, 2023
A Postgres-friendly time comparison assertion for Go Oct 4, 2023
Getting Postgres logs in a GitHub Action Sep 26, 2023
Why to prefer `t.Cleanup` to `defer` in tests with subtests using `t.Parallel` Sep 5, 2023
An email redaction function for Postgres Aug 16, 2023
Rate limiting, DDOS, and hyperbole Jul 6, 2023
A `TestTx` helper in Go using `t.Cleanup` Jul 5, 2023
100% test coverage Jul 2, 2023
PGX + sqlc v4 to v5 upgrade notes May 20, 2023
PG advisory locks in Go with built-in hashes Apr 22, 2023
Lean = fast Apr 9, 2023
Stay mainline Apr 7, 2023
Meta layoffs Mar 19, 2023
Policy on util packages Mar 12, 2023
`CL.THROTTLE` implemented in DragonflyDB Mar 12, 2023
RFCs and review councils Mar 11, 2023
Findings from six months of running `govulncheck` in CI Feb 20, 2023
Honest health checks that hit the database Feb 19, 2023
Migrating weaker password hashes by nesting them in an outer hash Feb 13, 2023
Adventures in password hashing + migrating to Argon2id Feb 12, 2023
PartialEqual Feb 4, 2023
Revisiting my two-year SF predictions Jan 28, 2023
Content authored by ChatGPT front pages Jan 7, 2023
The static rip cord Jan 1, 2023

2022

Notes on iOS live photos with ffmpeg and <video> Dec 31, 2022
Short, friendly base32 slugs from timestamps Dec 29, 2022
Easy, alternative soft deletion: `deleted_record_insert` Dec 28, 2022
The unpursuit of clout Dec 27, 2022
The Way of Water Dec 26, 2022
Habitually testing for goroutine leaks Dec 18, 2022
Sequences, rebooted Nov 7, 2022
Ephemeral DB, a sacrificial database line for high-throughput data Nov 2, 2022
Postgres: Safely renaming a table with no downtime using updatable views Oct 27, 2022
Partitioning in Postgres, 2022 edition Oct 5, 2022
Go wishlist (2022) Aug 11, 2022
READMEs are a great idea, still Aug 7, 2022
Operational convergence, for REPL-less languages like Go Jul 25, 2022
The disproportionate influence of early tech decisions Jul 23, 2022
Idempotency: The `is_transient` property Jul 18, 2022
Code in database vs. code in application Jul 10, 2022
Spring '83 Jun 20, 2022
Mostly automatic Go dependency updates with GitHub Actions Jun 7, 2022
Generating a random `float64` with `crypto/rand` Jun 2, 2022
There's always an events table May 2, 2022
Sorbet + 100% cov makes Ruby refactoring possible Apr 25, 2022
UUID code stanzas in Ruby Apr 14, 2022
Reservation-style rate limiting APIs Mar 27, 2022
iOS Shortcuts: Appending dictated memos to Notes Mar 20, 2022
Does laptop weight matter? Mar 19, 2022
Filtering Sentry spans no one looks at Feb 17, 2022
Single dependency stacks Feb 8, 2022
A retina asset shortcode for Hugo Feb 4, 2022

2021

The Wheel of Time S1 Dec 24, 2021
Can Slack-mania be cured with systemized discipline? Dec 20, 2021
WaniKani midway check in Dec 18, 2021
The Bay Area as a declining tech company Dec 17, 2021
On the unreasonable effectiveness of streak tracking Dec 5, 2021
Idempotency keys @ Crunchy Nov 25, 2021
Implementing a random by ID flag type Nov 22, 2021
Netflix's Cowboy Bebop Nov 20, 2021
Flags v. gates Nov 18, 2021
The 16" MacBook Pro (late 2021) Nov 17, 2021
Dropbox alternatives Nov 7, 2021
Calgary in the spotlight Oct 17, 2021
Simple internal idempotency by ID Oct 1, 2021
Program start check Sep 30, 2021
AirPods Max Sep 30, 2021
Tightening the bolts with golangci-lint Sep 26, 2021
go:embed in prod, serve-from-disk in development Sep 24, 2021
No Medium Sep 11, 2021
Important (but not required) parameters to include when connecting to Postgres Sep 9, 2021
Write -> publish pipeline Sep 9, 2021
It's time to stop truncating RSS content Sep 8, 2021
Haruki Murakami interviewed by Paris Review Sep 7, 2021
HTTP API design: 204 "No content" mildly harmful Sep 7, 2021
K-sorted ID algorithms Sep 7, 2021
Accidentally walkable Sep 4, 2021
Go: Number of days in month Aug 27, 2021
Error stack traces in Go with x/xerrors Aug 22, 2021
Why form encoding in web APIs is an anti-pattern Jul 30, 2021
API design showcase: OpenAI Jul 29, 2021
Considerations for event APIs (versus webhooks) Jul 21, 2021
Retry-friendly idempotent delete in web APIs Jul 17, 2021
`Idempotency-Key` IETF standards draft Jul 5, 2021
The Heroku HTTP API Design Guide, revisited Jun 5, 2021
The state of Stripe API library codegen Apr 25, 2021
Joining Crunchy Data Apr 9, 2021
The Leica Q2 Monochrom, or why not to get into Leica Feb 20, 2021
The girl next door Feb 20, 2021
Predictions for San Francisco over two years Feb 15, 2021
Engineering blog posts: Apply healthy skepticism Feb 12, 2021
Blog with Markdown + Git, and degrade gracefully through time Feb 8, 2021
Large asset management in a Git-based static site Jan 25, 2021
RSS, why didth I abandon ye? Jan 24, 2021
The great Signal migration Jan 24, 2021
Roderick, canceled Jan 23, 2021
A WaniKani API Go package Jan 23, 2021
Cross-posting to Mastodon Jan 12, 2021
The Engelmann Spruce plaque, Sulphur Mountain Jan 12, 2021
Homebrew on M1 is a go Jan 9, 2021
Building Ruby 3 on Mac M1 ARM Jan 9, 2021
Development log: Rescuing history Jan 8, 2021
What to do in 2021 Jan 3, 2021
What's good about offset pagination; designing parallel cursor-based web APIs Jan 2, 2021
Development log: Moving to flat files Jan 1, 2021

2020

The Sopranos Dec 29, 2020
Tenet Dec 27, 2020
The .org armageddon staved off, for now Dec 24, 2020
Japanese: Why does the は particle sound like "wa"? Dec 19, 2020
350 MB Dec 16, 2020
WaniKani level 10 Dec 12, 2020
Cookies vs. local storage Dec 5, 2020
Apple M1: First impressions Dec 5, 2020
GitHub Actions: Setting env vars with other env vars Dec 3, 2020
Aurora Babelfish Dec 1, 2020
On the cruelty of kanji Sep 16, 2020
Meditations on the impermanence of wireless earphones Sep 15, 2020
SF go/no-go decision framework Sep 8, 2020
Building a self-updating GitHub README Aug 29, 2020
A simple HTTP retry and backoff loop in Go Aug 29, 2020
TTL indexes in Mongo Aug 26, 2020
Beginner Japanese Aug 25, 2020
Development log: Turning on DMARC for sending email Aug 19, 2020
Development log: libjpeg / MozJPEG optimization shootout Apr 15, 2020
Development log: Minimizing S3 transfer during sync Apr 8, 2020
Development log: Deploying Google Cloud Run from GitHub Actions Apr 6, 2020

2019

Slack, and the case for bar-raising (instead of lowering) Nov 22, 2019
AirPods Pro Nov 3, 2019
The steady march of complexity Oct 3, 2019
Encoding H.265/HEVC for QuickTime with FFmpeg May 28, 2019
False positives in UI design: when small buttons are better than big ones Apr 27, 2019
1,000 days of counting Calories Mar 18, 2019
Karl Lagerfeld (and dieting) Feb 20, 2019

2018

Simple and stateless CSRF protection with the `Origin` header Nov 4, 2018
OLAP, OLTP, Zheap, and tradeoffs in Postgres MVCC Oct 28, 2018
The subtleties of API contracts, or how enabling HTTP/2 broke Go clients Aug 10, 2018
Caffeine Jul 7, 2018
Reflections on Rust, and the sand castle metaphor Apr 27, 2018
The 500 test Apr 13, 2018
100 days with Rust, or, a series of brick walls Mar 20, 2018

2017

Mindfulness Nov 24, 2017
Changing a universal constant: How 280-character tweets break an API Oct 17, 2017
The city that tried to buy itself Sep 11, 2017
Depickling, gadgets, and chains: The class of exploit that unraveled Equifax Sep 10, 2017
Unsubscribe: The noisy death of email marketing Aug 27, 2017
Patronage in the age of free Aug 23, 2017
A year of counting Calories Jul 19, 2017
Headspace May 27, 2017
The long road to Mongo's durability May 7, 2017
All wires May 3, 2017
Partitioning in MongoDB (or lack thereof) Apr 28, 2017
GraphQL APIs and performance Apr 25, 2017
Your Name Apr 11, 2017
Shopify scripts, MRuby, and the $500,000 release Apr 7, 2017
Sharing with iCloud Drive and iBooks Apr 1, 2017
The rise of the smartphone's eye Mar 31, 2017
AirPods Mar 29, 2017
GitLab, and centrally hosted platforms Mar 26, 2017
Learning about language safety from Zcoin Mar 7, 2017
Alan Kay on Apple and iOS Jan 31, 2017
Chrome Jan 27, 2017
Marginal security Jan 27, 2017
Understand deeply Jan 18, 2017
The state of messaging Jan 17, 2017
Journaling (revisited) Jan 10, 2017
Amazon Prime Jan 3, 2017

2016

Zombified Dec 29, 2016
Exporting Flickr Dec 28, 2016
The last AirBnB Dec 13, 2016
Apple 2016 Dec 6, 2016
Turn off your cellphone Dec 6, 2016
No escape Nov 19, 2016
Fixing a slow git $PS1 prompt Nov 17, 2016
Apple Bedtime Oct 19, 2016
Deep work & concentration Oct 19, 2016
OpenAPI 2.0 Oct 16, 2016
Postgres 9.5 on Travis CI Oct 1, 2016
PAX 2016 Sep 13, 2016
Courage Sep 9, 2016
Splunk Aug 28, 2016
Podcasts 2016 Aug 28, 2016
4 A.M. Aug 24, 2016
Ivy Aug 24, 2016
Retina check Aug 22, 2016
The cost of manga Aug 8, 2016
The steel man Aug 6, 2016
Journaling Aug 4, 2016
Gh-ost Aug 3, 2016
Perpetual cookies Jul 31, 2016
OSX and entropy Jul 31, 2016
Verified env vars Jul 29, 2016
Where are all the new great companies? Jul 29, 2016
Asturias check-in Jul 25, 2016
Hype trains Jul 20, 2016
us-east-1 Jul 20, 2016
CloudFront indexes Jul 18, 2016
Six weeks Jul 18, 2016
Testing Go packages from project root Jul 15, 2016
Going static Jul 14, 2016
H&M sportswear Jun 28, 2016
Week three Jun 27, 2016
_Do_ debug Jun 23, 2016
Week two Jun 20, 2016
The zero-sum treadmill Jun 15, 2016
One week of nutritional rigor Jun 13, 2016
The iPad Mini Jun 12, 2016
PAX 2016 ticket royale Jun 8, 2016
Calorie counting Jun 7, 2016
On brevity Apr 28, 2016
Life without mediators Apr 27, 2016
Not hosted here Apr 27, 2016
Traffic Apr 19, 2016
A glance at Kubernetes Apr 12, 2016
Codeword Apr 7, 2016
Timing the guitar Apr 5, 2016
Avast Mar 31, 2016
Digital natives Feb 23, 2016
Accumulation Feb 23, 2016
Testing a Kafka connection Feb 10, 2016
Google engineering principles Feb 3, 2016
Naked DNS Jan 31, 2016
The bear Jan 30, 2016
Burn parties Jan 30, 2016
Heavy complexity Jan 25, 2016
MonkeyBrains Jan 23, 2016
Fast OSX screen lock Jan 22, 2016
AWS Certificate Manager Jan 21, 2016
Turning points Jan 20, 2016
Safety razors Jan 10, 2016
Notification hell Jan 10, 2016
An AWS static hosting workaround Jan 5, 2016
AWS static hosting Jan 4, 2016
Do one thing and do it well? Jan 4, 2016
The sprawl blues Jan 3, 2016
Game of Thrones pessimism Jan 3, 2016

2015

SF housing and activism Dec 30, 2015
Insecurity by instinct Dec 25, 2015
Cineplex Odeon Dec 24, 2015
Star Wars VII: The Force Awakens Dec 21, 2015
Plex for PS4 Dec 7, 2015
Starbucks growth Dec 7, 2015
Spectre Nov 9, 2015
Showing Redshift distkey & sortkey Oct 26, 2015
GPG at Stripe Oct 18, 2015
Safeway justice Oct 18, 2015
2015 resolutions (update) Oct 18, 2015
Entropy Sep 17, 2015
The End of the Tour Aug 17, 2015
Legacy projects & the maintainer Aug 14, 2015
Whiplash Aug 14, 2015
The Everything Store Aug 9, 2015
The 12" MacBook revisited Jun 14, 2015
The guitar Jun 14, 2015
WGT 2015 abstract May 29, 2015
WGT 2015 brain dump May 26, 2015
Notes on the new 12" MacBook May 19, 2015
Google Domains May 17, 2015
Paper books Feb 15, 2015
Infinite Jest Feb 5, 2015
2015 resolutions Jan 3, 2015
Inventory ephemeralization Jan 3, 2015

2014

GPG + the Heroku CLI Dec 11, 2014
GPG + HTTP git Dec 11, 2014
The Cubano Nov 27, 2014
CloudFlare Universal SSL Nov 12, 2014
GPG + s3cmd Nov 10, 2014
GPG + cURL Nov 10, 2014
Yosemite & progress bars Nov 10, 2014
Anki's .apkg Oct 26, 2014
Global recovery in Go with defer Sep 21, 2014
iBooks & Dropbox Sep 21, 2014
PAX Sep 4, 2014
Major buys Jul 19, 2014
New York Jul 16, 2014
WGT Jun 29, 2014
Yosemite & Linux Jun 28, 2014
Go relax Jun 28, 2014
Two stars Jun 11, 2014
Bicycles Jun 6, 2014
Swift: day one Jun 3, 2014
json_ schema May 24, 2014
Gossip from across the world May 16, 2014
X-Forwarded-Proto May 15, 2014
Square cash & e-mail as a platform May 10, 2014