Times Square in 1978 was the dictionary definition of urban decay. Neon lights that once belonged to posh theaters now advertised peep shows and adult entertainment. Street corners were populated by sleazy motels, adult stores, and dodgy nightclubs and bars. The area was populated only with the lowest of American strata, those who had no other place to go. Below the cacophony of cars on the streets seeking to get the hell out as quickly as possible, the subway whirred, with its signs of neglect perhaps worse than what was present above ground. Outside of Times Square, the city burned. Riots, burglaries, and arson had consumed large blocks of Brooklyn and the Bronx. Nobody wanted to be next.
Well... a lot of big things happened this year. But to understand the context, we also need to understand what went down last year, which was significant in its own way.
I often like to start my day by keeping myself abreast of interesting things in the world of computer programming. Often this means a visit to Hacker News or Lobsters. I somehow managed to come across Richard Startin's article about why he doesn't use Google Protocol Buffers for telemetry. Near the bottom, he has an aside about VarInts and shares a few tricks to produce them more efficiently.
It's been a long time coming, but I have bitten the bullet. My blog, once a fairly stodgy thing I hadn't updated in over 2 years has received a total redesign with a focus on extremely fast load times. My goal is function over form and I think I have delivered that. Of course, I did make some concessions to keep the format largely sane. But while my blog sat empty, many things have changed in my life.
(Historical) Learn how to tune OpenJ9 to run your Minecraft server optimally, with a explanation of each flag and a convenient shell script.