Codepope's Development Hell

So Adafruit’s latest is the PyPortal, an Atmel-SAMD51-powered, Python-running board with a touchable LCD display, an ESP32 for WiFi and BT, and a form factor which makes it easy to mount. I got mine with the Adabox subscription and it came with an acrylic enclosure and a tube you could fill with pennies (UK pennies work) to weight down the enclosure which has a curve in the back where it can sit.

Yes, I know, string doesn’t rattle but if you attach enough tin cans to it, it does. That’s a bit like programming. Anyway, welcome to Codepope’s Development Hell. This is my new, personal site, replacing codescaling.net, and looking to be more about the stuff I do. Part of this is also to get me to look after my own IT again. So this is a self-hosted Ghost site up in the cloud on someone else’s computers1.

Cyntech do a word clock - an 8x8 array of neopixels, a set of acrylics to make a box and stencils for the words and space to fit in a pi zero or pi 2/3 inside. It’s been built here for a while and suffering from random light shows on the display and dropping the WiFi. Well the light shows were down The the fact that the neopixels work at 5v but the Pi data line is a beefy 3.

So in the background, I’ve been playing around with digital fireworks on various LED displays, mostly on the Raspberry Pi Zero with PS3 controllers and well that was going on with various levels of success and then I took a break from that approach. I noticed that I had an ESP32 Feather and a 3.5" Featherwing touch screen. What the heck, I said and a few hours later… So touch and out come the particles….

If you follow me on Twitter, then you’ll know that I’m in the process of leaving IBM who acquired Compose (who were MongoHQ) some years back. It was a super-fun ride, but things change and after a while you need to move on. And the best moving on is the moving on where you get to do something even more interesting… So, my next stop is, in a delightful circular fashion, MongoDB Inc where I’ll be hitting the buttons on keyboards in interesting ways to get them to exude the rich taste and delightful aroma of steeped and chilled content (mmm… brewed overnight, every night).

As is my way, I’ve been writing elsewhere for a living among other things and here’s the latest NewsBits I gathered up…. Java 11 arrives with long term support and warnings. Refactoring .then() added to Microsoft’s TypeScript. Ready for PostgreSQL11, PostGIS 2.5.0 released. Your own database Arnie: pg_terminator kills PostgreSQLconnections. Make SQLprettier with sqlfmt. Read about CrimsonDB’s adaptive key/values. Kubernetes gets a TLS bootstraping update. And Finally … How to scan a Rocket.

I’ve been doing my usual Friday news gathering for the day job and that means here is todays NewsBits…. Here’s what’s in it: Redis 5.0 gets a new release candidate and controversy. Updates for older MongoDB versions. A guide to analyzing slow MongoDB queries. Making MySQL’s shell shine. Google open up Dataset Search. Firefox 62 lands, as does the new ESR release. HTTP2 support no longer experimental in Node 10.10. VS Code gets a new Settings UI.

In the most recent NewsBits (NewsBits at Compose.com’s Articles) there’s some minor DB and driver updating, a DB that branches like git, a fresh Vault, what happens to SSDs when they meet database write loads, the new Go 1.11 (and 2 drafts) and… oh yeah who wants to see round corners? (Apologies for the lateness… I’ve been playing with MicroPython, CircuitPython, ESP32s, ESP8266s and a selection of tiny light emitting things….

As is my Friday wont, I wrote up NewsBits for Compose but then things move fast… since that was published Go 1.11 has landed… Really looking forward to using that in anger (good anger, not “damn computer” anger). (Today’s a HackWimbledon day and I’ll be there possibly assembling a RasPad and Featherwings….) Elasticsearch 6.4 now has an alias (type) and much more. There was a bit of controversy around Redis and licensing.

Here’s my regular Friday database and developer news from Compose: • PostgreSQL stable updates all round. • And there’s a new PostgreSQL 11 beta. • How well does PostgreSQL work with a GPU? • Redis 4.0.11 is all about timing. • While Redis 5.0 RC4 hardens its streams. • JanusGraph 0.3.0 edges the graph database forward. • A first update for MongoDB 4.0. • CouchDB 2.2 makes storage pluggable. • Google’s Dart 2 is stable and released.