Author Archives: M@

Dear MongoDB

Posted on June 16, 2011 by M@

Dear MongoDB, I would like to use the positional operators you have for updates, ala ‘user.$.name’, in the field selectors for queries, ala find({“user.name”: “Matt”},{“user.$.address”}) such that I can see only the fields of that sub-document/sub-object in my return data … Continue reading →

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Congratulations Xen

Posted on June 2, 2011 by M@

Xen is now in the mainline kernel, where KVM has been since Feburary 2007. Xen is still a completely separate kernel, with completely separate interfaces. Xen may now be in Linux, but still is not Linux.

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SmartMenu

Posted on May 10, 2011 by M@

Case: Large menu system where different users use different items more often than others. Some spend 80% of their time in <5% of the options, some spend 60% of their time in the least used 10% of the options. Problem: … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Coding, Work | 1 Comment

GPS Jamming: For Fun Or Profit

Posted on March 8, 2011 by M@

From this /. article. I’ve written about the dangers of relying on GPS previously. “A simple $30 GPS jammer made in China can ruin your day. It doesn’t just affect your car’s navigation — ATM machines, cell phone towers, plane, … Continue reading →

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A Perl Thread-Pool

Posted on February 24, 2011 by M@

UPDATED: 9/5/2013 to use better Thread::Queue::dequeue_timed in lieu of sleep. I’ve been doing a lot of large-system coding with Perl ithreads lately.  This thread model has been scaling very well on very high-throughput operations in conjunction with well-placed yield() calls … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Coding, Linuxy | Tagged | 3 Comments

Installing OpenQRM 4.7 on Fedora 14

Posted on December 23, 2010 by M@

OpenQRM 4.7 doesn’t compile cleanly on Fedora 14 (x64, but I don’t think that matters for this bug), and coercing it to do so isn’t the cleanest trick. The problem is actually with Busybox 1.14.2 that is automatically downloaded and … Continue reading →

Posted in Linuxy, Products, Work | Tagged , , | 4 Comments

Droid 2 First Look

Posted on December 14, 2010 by M@

I’ve had a Droid 2 Global for a bit now, but hadn’t switched my active number over from my original Droid, until yesterday… After a solid day with it, I generally mostly like it. Pros: Much MUCH faster. Keyboard is … Continue reading →

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The Next Five Years of IT Personnel

Posted on April 28, 2010 by M@

[NOTE: This essay was commissioned by a client in December 2006. It’s the fifth in a series of old-yet-relevant position-papers whose exclusivity has expired, that I’m editing and posting. Things for the next five look “similar”. There is no formal … Continue reading →

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Programming Philosophy

Posted on April 14, 2010 by M@

Ask three Computer Science geeks their “programming philosophy” and you’ll get four different answers. I don’t have a direct answer, as I borrow from different schools of thought, and simply have a handful of Canon. Canon of Simplicity Following the … Continue reading →

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The Risk of Aircraft Navigation Modernization

Posted on March 23, 2010 by M@

We love technology. If you’re reading this, you at least can use a computer, possibly have an RSS reader, probably have an interest in geeky things, so I don’t need to go into proving that statement, methinks. One problem with … Continue reading →

Posted in Architecture, Life, Opinions | 2 Comments