John Timmer
Integrating Google Nest Hubs with AI for Smart Home Control
As technology evolves, integrating AI into everyday devices becomes more accessible and practical. In this blog, we’ll explore how to set up a network of Google Nest Hubs in multiple rooms and connect them to an AI model for advanced smart home control and knowledge retrieval. This setup leverages Google Assistant’s capabilities, Home Assistant for…
Exploring the Power of the Jetson AGX Orin Development Kit: A Step-by-Step Journey
This week, I had the pleasure of diving into the capabilities of the NVIDIA Jetson AGX Orin 64GB development kit, and the journey has been nothing short of fascinating. With its powerful processing capabilities and extensive customization options, the AGX Orin promises to be a cornerstone for advanced AI and robotics projects. Here’s a detailed…
Reflecting on 2024: A Year of Growth, Challenges, and Vision
As 2024 draws to a close, it’s the perfect time to pause and reflect on a year filled with exploration, growth, and the moments that truly mattered. This year has been as much about the tools and techniques as it has been about the people who shaped the journey. Let’s take a look back at…
Finding Balance: From Relationships to Projects – Lessons from Binky and Jax
Two Cats, Two Worlds In life, we often face a dilemma between striving for perfection and simply accepting what is good enough. This internal tug-of-war can be surprisingly well-illustrated by two very different personalities in my household: my fostercats, Binky and Jax. Binky is the epitome of determination. When I toss him three treats, he…
HA Galera Cluster with HAProxy and Keepalived: Simplifying the Setup
When managing a database cluster in production, ensuring high availability and load balancing is critical. Initially, we used GLB (Global Load Balancer) on each webserver to balance connections to our four Galera MySQL servers. GLB worked fine, but maintaining it across multiple webservers quickly became cumbersome. So we decided to simplify and centralize our setup…
Effortless Backups for Galera Cluster with XtraBackup
Maintaining high availability in a Galera Cluster environment requires a robust and reliable backup solution. XtraBackup is a popular choice, offering non-blocking backups that preserve data consistency across all nodes. Whether you need a full backup for disaster recovery or incremental backups for efficient storage use, XtraBackup integrates seamlessly with Galera. This guide walks you…
Why My Rock Career Ended at 4:30 AM
The day started with a bold attempt at something new. At 4:00 AM, I decided to pick up an electric guitar, fully expecting to awaken my inner rock star. Spoiler alert: that didn’t happen. By 4:30 AM, it was painfully clear that my talents lay elsewhere. Instead of pursuing stardom, I gave the guitar to…
The Interplay of Ethics, Technology, and Human Nature: A Reflection on AI and Personal Growth
In a world increasingly driven by technology, where artificial intelligence takes center stage, it’s easy to marvel at the possibilities while overlooking the deeper questions. As someone deeply embedded in the technical realm, I often find myself reflecting on the balance between creating impactful systems and the ethical implications they carry. Today’s musings brought forward…
Evolving Our Database Class – Introducing Exponential Backoff and Enhanced Performance
In a previous blog, we showcased a robust database class designed to streamline database interactions and handle common issues like deadlocks gracefully. While the original version was reliable, we’ve since implemented significant improvements to address real-world challenges, particularly in high-concurrency scenarios. Today, we’re excited to introduce exponential backoff in our retry mechanism, enhanced logging, and…
How AI Becomes a Partner in a Competitive Niche
A Unique Collaboration Working in a highly competitive niche means always staying ahead, constantly innovating, and ensuring that the solutions I create are not only effective but also cutting-edge. This kind of environment doesn’t allow for stagnation; it demands continuous progress. However, balancing technical depth with a clear vision of what works can be challenging.…
Behind the Scenes: Delivering Real-Time News to Apps
In today’s fast-paced digital world, delivering news in real-time has become a fundamental expectation for users. This is especially true in the context of sports apps, where up-to-the-minute updates can make or break the user experience. But what does it take to build and maintain a system capable of delivering seamless news updates, push notifications,…
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Efficient Database Operations in a Galera Cluster with PHP
Working with distributed systems like a Galera cluster introduces unique challenges when managing database operations. Deadlocks, serialization issues, and transaction conflicts can easily disrupt your application’s performance if not handled properly. Recently, I implemented a robust PHP class to handle CRUD (Create, Read, Update, Delete) operations efficiently in such an environment. Here’s how it was…
