April 17, 2026 [Programming, Rust, Tech, Videos] I was scared to do it, but it’s actually fine! This time we look at the fastest way to split a large text file into separate lines, first by implementing our own zero-copy version. BufReader::lines and then using SIMD, which allows us to process 64 bytes simultaneously, using […]
I discovered something difficult in Python, which was a first, so I wrote a whole blog series about it, and now a whole video: Slide: Async Python Basics Slide Blog posts: asyncio basics, large numbers in parallel, parallel HTTP requests, additions to stdlib PakarPBN A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that […]
February 27, 2019 [Gradle, Groovy, Java] In this crazy world, Gradle sometimes seems like the most sensible choice for building Java or Kotlin projects. But what does everything inside build.gradle actually mean? And when does my code run? And how to create tasks? And how do you convince a task to depend on another task? […]
March 05, 2019 [bash, Programming, Tech] Here’s a little script I wrote to avoid copy-pasting ffmpeg commands from superuser every time I need them. It converts videos into GIF files by first calculating a good palette, then using that palette. Use: ./to_gif input.mp4 output.gif to_gif file (which should be executable): #!/bin/bash set -e set -u […]
Checking if memmap can help us read very large files as fast as possible, and wondering how wc managed to be so fast. This is the next part of the Billion Row Challenge, and perhaps the part closest to black magic. Follow me on mastodon: @andybalaam@mastodon.social PakarPBN A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection […]
March 05, 2019 [Android, Games, Rabbit Escape, Tech] Rabbit Escape’s newest feature, water, has been in the making for a long time, but now we think it’s ready: Water can flow, can put out fire, and can drown rabbits. Rabbits seem to be immune… Check out the 20 new levels we’ve released! (This makes a […]
April 05, 2019 [Java, Programming] When we want to do something later in our Java code, we often turn to ScheduledExecutorService. This class has a method called schedule(), and we can pass it some code to run later like this: ScheduledExecutorService executor = Executors.newScheduledThreadPool(4); executor.schedule( () -> {System.out.println(“..later”);}, 1, TimeUnit.SECONDS ); System.out.println(“do…”); // (Don’t forget […]
April 13, 2019 [Games, Rabbit Escape, Tech] If you want to help promote Rabbit Escape, my free software Android/PC game, how about a t-shirt? Use the links below to design your t-shirt: Rabbit Escape T-shirt Note: there is no profit for us – this is just for promotion. If you would like to contribute financially, […]
Interestingly, our temperature parser can be easily extended to find the start of the temperature, so we can use it to parse the entire row! Follow me on mastodon: @andybalaam@mastodon.social PakarPBN A Private Blog Network (PBN) is a collection of websites that are controlled by a single individual or organization and used primarily to build […]
April 23, 2019 [Docker, Java] To run a temporary environment with a different version of Java without touching your real environment, try this Docker command: docker run -i -t –mount “type=bind,src=$PWD,dst=/code” openjdk:11-jdk bash (Change “11-jdk” to the version you want as listed in the README.) Then you can code inside the current directory like this: […]
