Posts on Software (14)

Charting Range Vectors in Prometheus

In the previous blog post, we mentioned that Range Vectors cannot be charted. This blog post illustrates how we can work around the limitations and use Range Vectors in charts. We will also take a look at the actual Prometheus API and how it affects the visualization of these queries. read more ▷

Jun 9, 2021 ∙ 9 min read ∙ prometheus, observability

A Better Way to Inline Sass in Jekyll

If you want to inline Sass/CSS in Jekyll you usually have two options: either inline it yourself or use a gem like jekyll-assets. This blog has two Sass files which aren’t that big, so I prefer inlining them myself to keep the dependencies slim. There is a filter called scssify, but if you have more than a trivial number of posts, your build times will spike like crazy. read more ▷

May 29, 2021 ∙ 3 min read ∙ ruby, sass, jekyll

Understanding Prometheus Range Vectors

Range Vectors in Prometheus are a bit non-intuitive, unless you’ve thoroughly read and understood the documentation. Who does that? One is supposed to spend time doing it incorrectly, then look for random blog posts like this one to understand how open source software works, right? read more ▷

Jan 4, 2021 ∙ 6 min read

Invoking a gem With a Specific Version

Say, like a good citizen of the Ruby world, you’re using rbenv or the like to manage your application’s ruby version. You also write down your deps in a nice Gemfile, locked down in a Gemfile.lock. Then one day, you clone an old ruby repo and proceed to run bundle install only to find this message: Bundler::LockfileError: You must use Bundler 2 or greater with this lockfile.. read more ▷

Dec 10, 2020 ∙ 3 min read ∙ ruby, gem, bundler

Configuring Consul Leave Behaviour

Consul has a couple configuration options that allow operators to configure the behaviour when the agent is asked to shut down. Understanding these is important for predictable cluster operation. read more ▷

Nov 27, 2020 ∙ 4 min read

Locale issues when SSHing into a VM

I recently had an issue with the LC_CTYPE locale variable being set to an invalid value. I searched the complete machine for where it could be set, but was unable to find the configuration location. Further investigation led to the revelation that my local OSX machine config was causing the error on the remote host. read more ▷

May 29, 2020 ∙ 5 min read ∙ linux, osx

[Event] PyCon India 2017 - New Delhi

This was my third PyCon India, the first two being PyCon India 2015 and 2016. Unlike the last two times, I had planned better and had a full day before and after the conference to spend in New Delhi and check things out. read more ▷

Nov 21, 2017 ∙ 19 min read

Thunderbird Mail Merge addon Quirks

Just decided to put this out there and save an hour for anybody trying to figure out why the Mail Merge addon won’t work for them. read more ▷

Jan 18, 2017 ∙ 2 min read ∙ software

A Note on Web Middlewares

The word Middleware is an ambiguous term that means different things to different people. We’ll try to find out what ‘Middleware’ means in commonly used frameworks and platforms for web development and how they are implemented. read more ▷

Mar 1, 2016 ∙ 5 min read

Dhanalakshmi Port? Bug or Easter Egg?

Recently when I was writing a PostgreSQL app, I took a look at lsof‘s output to look at the number of active database connections and I saw something weird: read more ▷

Nov 29, 2013 ∙ 1 min read

Fvwm Explained

The earlier post about my Fvwm Desktop was a fairly short one. In this second part I try to explain some parts of that configuration file. I have also made some changes to my desktop to make it more usable. read more ▷

Dec 4, 2012 ∙ 9 min read

Designing a UI for the Elderly

My grandfather is an 83 year old fellow. He has no computer experience whatsoever, but wanted to learn computers for day to day tasks such as Email and Facebook. I decided that I wanted to keep the interface simple and hassle free. Fvwm seemed to be the best option to design a UI that would be easy to learn and use and without any clutter. All of the UI contains operations that can be carried out with a single mouse button to reduce complexity. read more ▷

Dec 4, 2012 ∙ 4 min read

5 Minute WordPress Migration

I wanted to migrate this very blog to my other server. A 15 Minute job that I had been delaying for the past 3 Months. I finally decided to do it today. The migration is as quick and simple as WordPress’s popular 5 minute installation. read more ▷

Mar 30, 2012 ∙ 2 min read

My FVWM2 Desktop!

After getting tired of Unity and the extra Compiz Effects fighting with each other, I decided to try some other desktop environments. I had used fvwm2 earlier but never realized its power until now. read more ▷

Dec 25, 2011 ∙ 6 min read