Category: Programming

  • Small revisit of C++ message passing (in a threaded program)

    The post C/C++ Message Passing from June ’08 is one or the more popular ones, if Google Analytics is to be believed. Not only that, but every one who arrived there by Google search was looking for C++, not C. Upon re-reading it, it occurs to me that it would be a good candidate for…

  • Circular buffers as C Macros

    I was recently reviewing some FIFO based serial TX/RX circular buffer code that I thought was buggy in the FIFO part.  Since the FIFO was entwined with the ISRs, it was hard to test in isolation.  I looked around at some other FIFO implementations for PIC and AVR, and all of them did the same thing, including…

  • toStr revisited

    After my initial toStr C++ exploration, I recent found myself reading about Boost’s lexical_cast, which is does something similar, albeit more general and with more verbosity. lexical_cast will not only convert nearly anything to a string, it will also do its best to convert anything to anything, via a string in the middle. Upon finding…

  • PostgreSQL connection pooling for mod_php

    In a quest for better performance with postgres, I’ve been looking for connection pooling tools. There are a few quirks that I tend to require be met. First, it must run on Solaris. This isn’t so much a quirk, since the server runs Solaris and is SPARC hardware, and I’m not going to install a…

  • Databases for simple web development

    I have log been a fan of PostgreSQL over MySQL, believe that PostgreSQL is more feature complete and generally as fast or faster, with obvious caveats about being used appropriately, of course, and not to mention no real comparative testing. Every body gets to have an untested opinion, right? I did end up doing some…

  • toStr – A small C++ utility function.

    This can be used as string(“bob”) + toStr(5) without declaring the type, presuming that the type can correctly be inferred by the compiler. Obviously, T must support operator

  • RESTful message queuing in Python

    Alright.  Pass 1 is done.  Here is a link to it.  The server is in Python.  Clients in PHP and Python are provided.  It follows this design document.  On a quad Opteron, it gets about 600 short messages a second.  It isn’t threaded.  Next step on this project is to redo this in Erlang.  And…

  • A new message queuing system

    First, why a new one?  Because I haven’t found any that do what I need and look simple and well supported.  Besides, it seems like a reasonable learning experience. The initial summary of what I need is a light weight method for PHP (in the form of scripts running in mod_php) to send messages to…

  • Thread Worker Pooling in Python

    The worker pool pattern is a fairly common tool for writing multi-threaded programs.  You divide your work up into chunks of some size and you submit the to a work queue.  Then there is a pool of threads that watch that queue for tasks to execute, and when complete, they add the jobs into the finished queue.…

  • Seeking

    I am now looking for a new job and am no longer with Sigma Electronics. My first preference would be a position writing software for post production or visual effects at either a software company or a post production or visual effects company. Other than that, I am also interested in positions or contract work…