So, what exactly do we mean by “third party tracking pixel” anyways? Lets try to break it down piece by piece: Tracking Pixel: A pixel referes to a tag that is placed on a site that offers no merit other than calling out to a web page or script that is not the current page you are visiting. These pixels are usually an html script tag that point to a javascript file with no content or an img tag with Continue reading →

Generator pipelines are a great way to break apart complex processing into smaller pieces when processing lists of items (like lines in a file). For those who are not familiar with Python generators or the concept behind generator pipelines, I strongly recommend reading this article first: Generator Tricks for Systems Programmers by David M. Beazley. It will surely take you more in-depth than I am going to go. A brief introduction on generators. There are two types of generators, generator expressions and Continue reading →

So, what do a marching band, kids choir, passports, made up countries (equipped with miniature flags), customized twitter stamps, food carts, pop rocks, and merit badges have in common? RealtimeConf 2012, and this is just day 1. So, for a quick run down. The day began with a trip to the Marriott Courtyard downtown where we are given a number and a small flag that we are both responsible for. After a nice breakfast and talking with the DOD, Puerto Continue reading →

So today was the first ever RedisConf. It was put on by &yet with sponsors like Redis To Go and VMWare. It was held in downtown Portland at The Cleaners at the Ace Hotel.  The talks ranged from, this is how Redis solved our problems, to this is why Redis is a pain in the ass, to this is how we had fun and hacked away at Redis. To start off lets talk about the venue. The venue was great, it Continue reading →

Benchmarking is (or should be) a fairly important part of most developers job or duty. To determine the load that the systems that they build can withstand. We are currently at a point in our development lifecycle at work where load testing is a fairly high priority. We need to be able to answer questions like, what kind of load can our servers currently handle as a whole?, what kind of load can a single server handle?, how much throughput can Continue reading →