Elasticsearch…probably a lot better past the learning curve

 Java, Projects, Python, Work  2 Responses »
Nov 072014
 

1 of the last projects I worked on at my previous job involved aggregating, storing, and querying log data into and from Elasticsearch (yes, I know that Logstash does that – and in reality I should have gone that route). That, along with some lookups on the data outside of the code, gave me a chance to start playing with Elasticsearch. After my brief experience with it, I can tell you there’s a lot of power in Elasticsesarch, but it’s going to take you a surprisingly longer to figure out how to tap it than you would expect. Continue reading »

 Posted by at 12:28 PM

Wedding planning tips from a software developer (part III)

 Programming, Python, Shenanigans  No Responses »
Sep 102013
 

Not to be a shill in this series, but there are vendors that will print addresses on the outer set of wedding invitation envelopes when you place an order (the one the post office uses to deliver mail). Well, at least David’s Bridal does, which is who we happened to use. I’m not going to go so far as to say you should spend money on this kind of thing, just that we decided the convenience was worth it for us, and this is how it played out on our end. Continue reading »

 Posted by at 2:16 AM

Sending events to a Zabbix server from Python

 Python, Work  3 Responses »
May 092013
 

Recently, I was looking what it would take to notify a Zabbix server whenever an error is encountered in a Python web server. Ultimately (before I realized that Zabbix has log monitoring and that we weren’t going to be installing a Zabbix agent on the server), we went with Zabbix’s log monitoring, but before that I started looking at sending the notification directly from the Python code itself. The quick and dirty lesson here is to thoroughly research the features of monitoring servers (and discuss them with your system admins) before writing code to solve a problem you don’t actually have. The other lesson is here’s how I learned to send notifications directly to Zabbix servers directly from your Python code. Continue reading »

 Posted by at 1:07 AM

A Christmas script to brighten your holidays

 Programming, Python, Shenanigans  2 Responses »
Dec 252012
 

In honor of Christmas, I wanted to put up a little script I wrote for a family holiday tradition. Every year, we each pick a name at random and fill their Christmas stocking. There’s a few rules to this little game, but the one that applies for the purposes of this script is that you cannot be assigned your own stocking. While this script randomly assigns someone a stocking, you can use the same code to dole out Secret Santa targets if that’s more your thing. Continue reading »

 Posted by at 7:00 AM

A few quick notes on load testing web services

 Programming, Python  1 Response »
Jul 082012
 

After having written the afore-discussed Flask web service, I needed a framework to load test the whole thing. I wound up using multi-mechanize. Overall, it’s a pretty decent framework. It’s pretty easily configurable, the documentation is thorough enough for most needs, and presents the test data in a variety of formats. Projects are quick and easy to set up, leaving you to focus on your test scripts. Continue reading »

 Posted by at 12:00 PM