Category Archives: craigslist

GNU Parallel and Block Size(s)

Posted on November 17, 2016 by

I’ve been a fan of GNU Parallel for a while but until recently have only used it occasionally. That’s a shame, because it’s often the simplest solution for quickly solving embarrassingly parallel problems. My recent usage of it has centered … Continue reading →

Posted in craigslist, mysql, programming, tech | 7 Comments

Today’s lame sales pitch…

Posted on February 1, 2016 by

I’m going to paste the full text of an email message that recently landed in my inbox and unfortunately wasn’t tagged as spam. But I won’t paste it in one blob, I’ll do it piece by piece so it is … Continue reading →

Posted in craigslist, misc, Uncategorized, wtf | 1 Comment

How to write a good used car ad…

Posted on December 29, 2014 by

For the last few weeks I’ve been shopping on-line for a new (to us) used car. And in the process of doing so, I’ve looked at hundreds of ads for cars within a 2-3 hour driving distance of our home … Continue reading →

Posted in craigslist | 2 Comments

Speaking at OpenWest 2014 Conference: real-time search infrastructure architecture at craigslist

Posted on April 2, 2014 by

Just a quick heads-up that I’ll be giving a 50 minute talk at OpenWest in Utah on Thursday, May 8th. The talk is titled real-time search infrastructure architecture at craigslist and is completely new. We’ve recently completed the 3 major … Continue reading →

Posted in craigslist, sphinx | 1 Comment

Seeking Sucks: Spoiled by SSDs

Posted on April 4, 2013 by

I’m in the process of rebuilding full-text indexes for a good sized document collection that lives in a sharded MongoDB cluster. And the funny thing about this is that I don’t really use MongoDB that much. I mean we put … Continue reading →

Posted in craigslist, mongodb, nosql, sphinx, tech | 10 Comments

Handling Database Failover at Craigslist

Posted on September 18, 2012 by

There has been some interesting discussion on-line recently about how to handle database (meaning MySQL, but really it applies to other systems too) failover. The discussion that I’ve followed so far, in order, is: GitHub’s report on their automated failover … Continue reading →

Posted in craigslist, mysql, tech, yahoo | 12 Comments

magit makes git awesome in emacs

Posted on February 2, 2012 by

I recently came across the Meet Magit video which is an excellent introduction to the magit emacs mode for git. I use both Emacs and Git a lot at work and at home, so having something a bit more comprehensive … Continue reading →

Posted in craigslist, programming | Leave a comment

craigslist Charitable Fund Donates to the Perl Foundation

Posted on January 24, 2012 by

I’m very happy to see the announcement on the Perl Foundations’s home page this morning. According to craigslist CEO and former Perl Hacker Jim Buckmaster, “craigslist has gloried in and relied upon Perl for most of its software development for more than … Continue reading →

Posted in craigslist, perl | 1 Comment

Experimenting with Real-Time Search using Sphinx

Posted on October 27, 2011 by

In the last few weeks I’ve been experimenting with using real-time indexes in Sphinx to allow full-text searching of data recently added to craigslist. While this posting is not intended to be a comprehensive guide to what I’ve implemented (that … Continue reading →

Posted in craigslist, sphinx, tech | 12 Comments

Video from my MongoSF 2011 Talk

Posted on June 2, 2011 by

To go along with the Slides from my MongoSF 2011 Talk, the video is now on-line thanks to 10gen. I had a great time at MongoSF 2011, learned some important new things about MongoDB and got a sense of just how … Continue reading →

Posted in craigslist, mongodb, nosql | 1 Comment