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  1. Looking For a New Agenda

    by Will Larson
    February 7, 2010

    I've been blogging for some time, but recently I begin to wonder why I keep blogging. Is it just a habit? Or am I aiming for something?

    Comment by Harish Mallipeddi on February 8, 2010

    @Will - I love reading your blog largely because I've the same interests as you it seems - Python, Erlang and a bit of curiosity about Clojure. I encountered your blog first via your PyObjC article and have been a regular reader since then. I hope you keep writing.

    Comment by Carl on February 7, 2010

    I have this blog in my feed reader, but I stopped following it very closely when you started talking more about Erlang etc., because I don’t know that language.

    I think a little more splash of the personal might be nice. It doesn’t need to be a live journal, but a few non-technical pieces help keep the blog lively.

  2. Log Collection Server with Node.js

    by Will Larson
    January 31, 2010 javascript Node.js

    A look at using Node.js to write a log collection server and also log submission clients. My first experiment with Node.js, which really impresses me with how easy it is to write flexible, powerful and efficient code in Node.js.

    Comment by Kord on January 31, 2010 Responding to Rob

    Howdy Rob! ;)

    Comment by Kord on January 31, 2010 Responding to Chad Paulson

    Mundane, and one that every single admin/developer has had to deal with in some form or fashion through the years. There's a good post by Jordan Sissel on working toward an OS solution: http://www.semicomplete.com/blog/geekery/log-analytics-with-open-source.html

    At Loggly we're building a solution with off the shelf OS parts (Django, Solr, Syslog-NG) and are definitely planning on using the node.js server to be able to do tailing of log files we are collection.

    Great post Will!

    Comment by Rob on January 31, 2010

    Actually, Splunk has a free download which will allow you to index up to 500M/day. The free download will never expire and is not a trial. You really should check it out especially if you want to do real analytics on the data.

  3. Debugging Crashes With Small Scripts

    by Will Larson
    January 23, 2010 Erlang

    Last week at work we ran into a fairly strange crashing bug. Writing a handful of simple scripts to test language/vm settings made it straightforward to debug a fairly confusing issue without trying to deal with the richness of a real application.

    Comment by Jonathan Chu on February 4, 2010

    This was a really good example of how a simple script can be used to debug an issue. When I read Joe Armstrong's interview, this wasn't something I immediately took away from the chapter, but will keep this approach in mind next time the inevitable happens.. ;) Thanks for this!

    Comment by Matt Todd on January 24, 2010

    Great post. Minor corrections I believe need to be made:

    "so it seemed that the issue could be reproduced by registering the same process more than 32,000 times" should probably read "could not".

    Also, "I added a timeout to the functions so that they only leaved for one second instead of lasting forever" probably should be "lived" instead of "leaved".

    Cheers!

  4. A Python-Markdown Extension for Embedding Graphviz

    by Will Larson
    January 16, 2010 python markdown

    I use Markdown for most of my online writing, and also as the format for most of my personal notes. Since I also use Graphviz quite frequently, adding an extension to handle both seemed like a reasonable next step.

  5. Formatting Multipart Formdata in Erlang

    by Will Larson
    January 10, 2010 Erlang

    I couldn't find a way to format multipart formdata in Erlang while including post fields and file data, so I went about copying a Python example into Erlang. It certainly isn't pretty, but is working well enough for me thus far.