father, Flink / Kafka code monkey for IBM, youth charity trustee, gamer...
Looking at the server request logs for Machine Learning for Kids is a depressing reminder of what it means to run something on the Internet nowadays. I was skimming through the request logs for the Machine Learning for Kids servers yesterday [1], and what jumped out at me was the constant rate of requests to [ ]
I ve added new features to Machine Learning for Kids to give students more options about where they store their projects. Limits In Machine Learning for Kids, students create projects where they collect training examples to train their own custom machine learning models. I don t limit the number of projects students can create. I want students [ ]
I ve submitted a Flink Improvement Proposal (FLIP) about adding support for the Flink Kubernetes Operator to run Flink s MiniCluster in a single pod for low-throughput jobs that require isolation. In the last few weeks, I ve been working on a proof-of-concept to demonstrate the feasibility of this idea. I ve done enough to convince myself that this [ ]
In this post, I want to share a new feature in the generative AI support in Machine Learning for Kids: tool calling. I wrote last year about how I introduced Generative AI in Machine Learning for Kids by adding support for projects using small language models. And earlier this year, I walked through my six [ ]
My commute to work is one of the favourite parts of my day. I ve mentioned it before, more often than I probably should, but in this post I try and explain why I enjoy it so much. The journey Otterbourne village and crossing the motorway I start off walking through Otterbourne: past the pub, across [ ]
In April, I wrote an outline of my career. That post is already out of date, because I have a new job to add to the list. I m joining Confluent as a Principal Software Engineer working on Confluent Platform for Apache Flink. I won t try and describe what Confluent Platform for Flink is here. Partly [ ]
In this post, I want to share a new Scratch extension I made today. It uses the iTunes Search API to let you search for songs, and play 30 second previews of them, in your Scratch projects. The blocks are simple, and hopefully self-explanatory, but here is a short demo of them in action if [ ]
A few of us at Current this week were talking about how Current (formerly Kafka Summit ) has changed over the years, and it got me remembering the bits I ve contributed. I dug through some old posts to find seven Current / Kafka Summit talks I ve done it makes for an eclectic set when I see [ ]
I gave a talk at Current yesterday about how to embed a tiny language model inside your Flink SQL pipeline. I used a fun mix of demos to show what I think are the main approaches available for using generative AI with Kafka events from a Flink SQL job. Some demos were definitely more sensible [ ]
Metrics can help provide operational insight over Kafka Connect connectors, informing users of how to better configure them. With simple updates, a Kafka Connect connector can be instrumented to make this possible by emitting useful metrics. A couple years ago, I created a simple skeleton Connect connector project to help developers at a hackathon create [ ]
A few years ago, I ran a workshop about how to create custom Scratch blocks. I made a template repository, based on the Scratch Team repos, but with a skeleton extension and some extra scripts and automation to handle building and publishing it. I included step-by-step instructions for building different types of Scratch extensions, including [ ]
Looking back at my career so far, and what this could mean for what comes next when: August 2003 June 2007 title: Associate Software Engineer roles: Development, System Test, Level 3 Service product: IBM MQ then WebSphere MQ I learned software engineering at scale I did a few different jobs across a few years [ ]