So often I see people giving talks about how the microservice architecture is a failure. You end up losing transactional protections, you’ll have to “join” data across a network boundary, and that network boundary is “always” flaky. Wouldn’t it be much better if everything was in one process, where you could enjoy the benefits of transactions, neighboring data is just a method call away and the only network you have to worry about is the database connection?
Podman containers can’t talk to each other
The other day I decided to update my server-side rendering example, and I ran into a strange problem. While my compose.yaml hasn’t changed, my containers could not talk to each other. This was most apparent with the nginx container, which immediately crashed out with [emerg] 1#1: host not found in upstream. What gives?
After a quick debugging including on a different computer, it became clear that my compose.yaml should be fine: it worked without issues on the computer that used Docker, but didn’t work with Podman. The issue with Podman was soon clear too: looking at podman network inspect the "dns_enabled": false was an obvious culprit. That’s where things got interesting.
Tricking the JVM JIT into speed
On the Clojurians Slack, PEZ brought some delicious Fibonacci performance tuning from the “languages” repo. While I don’t think that benchmark is as useful as mesmerizing the moving circles are in the animated graphs, I had a few very confusing and interesting discoveries.
Step 1: watch Alex Miller’s talk about Clojure’s interop performance. Step 2: learn how to actually do all that stuff. Step 3: notice that recursion does things. Step 4: magic.
Untyped JS objects in ClojureScript
Working on a Chrome plugin I got to use ClojureScript in yet another new environment. After the usual browser setup, Node, Deno and Github Actions, this time it was the Chrome plugin system. While it was mostly a very smooth ride, I had a little trouble figuring out how to deal with a “Cannot infer target type in expression” warning.
It showed up while dealing with a HAR entry object passed in to my callback from devtools.network.onRequestFinished. The HAR object, while its shape is well defined, is not typed in a strict sense (though I guess there may be some type definition for it somewhere out there if I looked hard enough). That’s why when I tried to access its fields like (-> entry .-request .-url) the ClojureScript compiler (through Shadow CLJS) would complain about inferring the “target type” as above.
HTTP Signatures are RFC
If you’ve worked with Mastodon (or possibly other ActivityPub implementations too) HTTP Signatures might sound familiar. When notifying another server of an event, the request can be signed thus proving its authenticity, meaning that the receiving server doesn’t need to go and fetch the authoritative version from the origin. This reduces load on both the receiver of the event (less requests to send) and the origin (less requests to serve).
Why isn’t my HTTP/3 working?
On a sudden impulse, today I updated the Traefik in my cluster to v3. Unlike the transition from v1 to v2, v2 to v3 was very smooth. I only needed a few tiny tweaks to the configuration. One of those was that HTTP/3 support is no longer “experimental” and so it shouldn’t be configured as such. This started me on a weird quest on getting my sites to use H3.
Anime weekend
Friday I was just spacing out looking at some AMV on Youtube when I noticed a shot from Dragon Maid. It’s been a while since I last (re-)watched that, so I decided to enjoy some delicious slice-of-life sakuga.
By the time I realized what’s happening I’d speedrun both seasons of Dragon Maid and it was time for more. Mahoushoujo ni Akogarete has been on my to-watch list for a while, and I took this opportunity to actually watch it end to end. It was… well, a not exactly safe-for-work experience, but especially the close-ups of Baiser’s face are absolute cinema.
Magic
A while back I picked up my fretless Ibanez to practice some old-school songs. Think Elvis, Cream, Stray Cats or Blue Cheer. I use the fretless even if the original wasn’t played on one, because otherwise I’d pretty much never pick it up. I still do so sadly infrequently…
So it was quite a shock that the bass’s neck was so bowed that it was unplayable (strings touching the fretboard all along). At that point I didn’t have time to learn how to fix it (by adjusting the rod inside) so I put it back into its case and kinda forgot about it.
Then today after cleaning my room I gathered the tools I needed and took it out of the case to fix it—except it was back to normal. I can only assume that the bending was caused by the ridiculous humidity and summer heat, especially during the weeks in June while I was on Denali (and so the AC in the room was off), and then it gradually returned to normal.
To celebrate I played until my fingers started to ache (which isn’t a lot of time considering how out of routine I am).
Remote work
Recently I’ve been seeing lots of articles about companies enforcing RTO (return to office), putting an end to the remote work “paradise” that’s been around since the ‘rona lockdowns. Luckily my company isn’t doing that for devs (though sales folk are hybrid), and it would be tough too considering how many of us moved even further away from the office in downtown Tokyo.
I personally don’t really feel a difference in productivity whether I’m in the office or not. Even if I’m in the office, I’ll just put on my headphones and do my stuff. Team meetings? I really don’t feel there’s a difference between sitting around a table (or standing in front of a whiteboard) and an online video meeting.
On the other hand, losing two hours of my life every working day to a soul-numbing crowded commute? Or paying 3-4x as much just so I can live near the office and drown in the concrete jungle smog every time I want to go for a jog? How about no?
Thunderstorms
I love thunderstorms. Looking at them. Observing them from safety. I’ve had an unfortunate encounter with one on Tsurugi a few years back so I’d prefer not to run into one again exposed on a ridgeline, but looking at one from somewhere the lightning and the rain aren’t threats is fantastic.
Personally I also like the sound of it. I used to have a few hours long “soundscape” of a thunderstorm too that I’d listen to when I couldn’t fall asleep. It’s the same kind of majestic, raw power of nature I admire when I look at the overwhelming scale of mountains.
This was inspired by that today we’re getting round two of huge (and quick) thunderstorms. I don’t think I’ve ever seen two completely separate storms in a day…
