Code Trips & Tips

Gossip-based Failure Detectors – 0.8.0 released

September 8, 2017

We have just released version 0.8.0 of our distlib C++ library that implements a number of popular distributed systems algorithms. This concludes a first iteration of the “SWIM Gossip Protocol” for failure detection: the implementation is now fully thread-safe and can scale up to many servers with minimal process overhead. The gossip_example.cpp toy server shows how a client … More Gossip-based Failure Detectors – 0.8.0 released

filecrypt — OpenSSL-based file encryption, release 0.7.2

May 1, 2020

Almost four years after its initial inception and release, I have entirely rewritten the CLI invocation, streamlined the encryption secrets management, and created a self-contained executable. Once you have a private/public key pair, a file can be simply encrypted using: ./filecrypt.pyz -o my_file.enc /path/to/plain.txt and decrypted using: ./filecrypt.pyz -o /path/to/plain.txt -d my_file.enc The –send option … More filecrypt — OpenSSL-based file encryption, release 0.7.2

How to emit battery data in a one-liner on MacOS

April 5, 2020

In MacOS the command to emit data about battery status is: pmset -g batt If you want to record the battery percentage level in a file at regular intervals, here is how to record the data in a one-liner: while true; do \ echo “$(date “+%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S”) ” \ “$(pmset -g batt | grep “%” … More How to emit battery data in a one-liner on MacOS

Converting a C++ project to CMake & Conan

March 20, 2020

This post describes how to fully automate the build/install of a C++ Project, with several dependencies, using CMake and Conan, a package manager. A couple of years back, I needed a simple HTTP client to run some integration tests against a Gossip Server I was developing; it turns out that, something we take for granted … More Converting a C++ project to CMake & Conan

Ubuntu: Disable mouse wake from suspend

March 18, 2020

One of the most annoying “features” of Ubuntu is that it will wake from suspend on mouse move, even if waking up your system was the last thing you wanted; in fact, it will wake from suspend, a second after you put it to sleep, if your touch is less than feather-like in releasing the … More Ubuntu: Disable mouse wake from suspend

Running a Bash script forever

April 19, 2019

It is somewhat desirable to have a Bash script run forever; typical use case is for a long-running Docker container that backgrounds the service, and the startup script (e.g., invoked via the ENTRYPOINT command) needs to be kept alive (terminating the script would result in the process known-as “the container” to terminate too). I have … More Running a Bash script forever

Uncompromising Python Formatting

December 24, 2018

I wanted to give a shout out to Black, “the uncompromising Python code formatter.” It really is liberating not to have to worry about code formatting, not having to have unproductive, sterile discussions over PRs about code minutiae and yet being reassured that all your code is nicely formatted; most importantly, the quality of the … More Uncompromising Python Formatting

HOW-TO Install Minikube on MacOS

September 29, 2018

Minikube is an extremely useful tool to run a development Kubernetes single-node cluster locally, on a development machine. I use it regularly on my Linux box and, as I want to do development on my MacBook Pro too, I thought I’d use it there to. In order to do so, I have created a simple … More HOW-TO Install Minikube on MacOS

Adventures in developing distributed systems in Java and Python