cbaines.net
On the internet, anyone can make a request to your web service. Especially in this time of abusive web crawling linked to AI/LLM companies, it's essential to program in a defensive style and stay in control, even when faced with a volume of requests that can't be handled. If you don't prepare, requests might start backing up, the impact might spread to services your service uses, the process…
Background Over the past week or two I've been working on a new web framework for Guile. This is based on the knowledge I've accumulated over the past 7 years working on things like the Guix Data Service , Guix Build Coordinator and Nar Herder , but also based on their code, as I've used Claude Code running Claude Opus 4.6 to build this (a large language model). I've been hesitant to try coding…
I've got a new homeserver/NAS (Network Attached Storage), previously I was using some Raspberry Pis, but I've wanted for a while a low power board that has SATA ports for attaching hard drives and one that could run GNU Guix, and the ZimaBoard 2 looked like it might be a good option. These were the specific bits that I ordered: $349.00: ZimaBoard 2 $29.90: 2-Bay HDD Rack Tray for ZimaBoard 2…
Guile Knots is a library providing higher-level patterns and building blocks for programming with Guile Fibers . I started developing it back in 2024, extracting code I'd written for the Guix Data Service and Guix Build Coordinator , making it possible to use this code in other services like the Bffe , Nar Herder and QA Frontpage . I started using Guile Fibers first for the Guix Data Service all…
I travelled to Paris over the last week for the Reproducible Builds workshop there, as well as a GNU Guix meetup on the day before. All in all, it's been awesome, if a little tiring. It was reassuring to spend some time with others who care enough about free software and related things to take a number of days out to come together and work on reproducible builds and related topics. Monday, Guix…
Freenode #live happened again, and like last year , it was in Bristol over the weekend. Unlike last year, I'm not doing a talk, but this year I did head out to Bristol on the Thursday to allow some time before the conference begun on Saturday to do some exploring. On the Thursday Walking up to the Clifton Suspension Bridge was great. I crossed to the west of the river, walked up to the bridge and…
I ordered a Librem 13, all the way back at the end of June (2017), and it was shipped at the end of October. Prior to getting my Librem 13, I've been using a Lenovo T431s which is a great little laptop. The hardware worked ok with Debian, although the Intel Wi-Fi card required some non-free software (iwlwifi), and I never tried the fingerprint reader. The hardware is also a little limiting, as…
I've been using Bytemark for a while now, both personally and professionally, and one thing that has got me excited recently is running GuixSD on Bytemark VMs. A while back, I installed GuixSD on a Bytemark VM first by creating a VM on Bytemark using Debian as the operating system, then installing Guix within Debian, then using that installation of Guix to install GuixSD over the top of Debian.…
The first Freenode #live conference happened on the weekend just passed (28th and 29th of October), and it was awesome but exhausting. I met up with many people, some who I'd met at previous events like the recent GNU Hackers Meeting and others who I'd not met before. The speaker events, both the cheese and open bar in a pub on the Friday, and the formal dinner on the Saturday were very enjoyable…
I'm off to Spain next week, for some sun, sightseeing and Debian , but before I left, I decided to attend the NHS Hack Day over this weekend (14th and 15th of May 2016). The day started with presentations, and at first I was interested by many of them. The spreadsheet is still online , but I put the following projects on my shortlist: Better blood results British english medical spelling…