Trying to be cogent.
I’m a software engineer with a focus on designing for simplicity, reliability and stability in distributed systems.
At SoundCloud I’m building tools to the musicians and artists who host content on the platform, and before that I was the Tech Lead of the Data Platform, working on the architecture of our data infrastructure, and guiding how we work with data across the company.
I cycle a lot, and my big event of the year has been the Haute Route Alps, riding in the mountains for a week.
This year we’ve welcomed a new tiny human into our lives!
Waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaahhhhhhh
The dream feed nappy change challenge: keep baby asleep, while mum breastfeeds and dad simultaneously changes the nappy. Then place baby seamlessly and sleepily back in the cot. Easy?
We did another baby! We have a second girl who sleeps well (so far...), and a big sister who makes sure there's always a teddy nearby.
One incredible year of doing everything and nothing.
The poop kept coming. And coming. And coming. The dam didn't hold. There was poo on the wall.
SoundCloud Premier Distribution allows creators to distribute their music from SoundCloud to other streaming platforms and stores. For many of our users, this will be their first experience with the strict requirements of the music industry supply chain on metadata and media. Here we’ll look at how a system of automatic and manual validations allows users to get fast feedback as they prepare a release.
Google's 2015 paper on the Dataflow model describes general solutions to general data pipeline processing problems. The terms they use have been helpful to me in understanding patterns in these problems.
We have a good solution for ownership of services in a microservices architecture. We can learn from this to define ownership of datasets in a way that reduces the total cost of maintenance and integration across teams.
A blockchain allows independent parties to make verifiable statements. This works with bitcoin, whose value comes from the system itself, but fails in applications where the value is external.
Two-phase commit is a long-established means of keeping two resources strongly synchronised. These days it's not so sexy, but it's an important piece of heritage of distributed computing.
A normal stage. A couple of big climbs, a couple of small ones and some fast riding on the flat.
A mixed day, with a good performance on my part but a heavy crash in the pack.
Right foot pedal down, left foot pedal down.
A huge queen stage. High peaks, long descents, cold and rain.
Similar length and ascent to yesterday but in just three long climbs.