Joe Marshall proposes the idea of a “log-gap chart” for visualising time-series data:

Sometimes you want to visualize your time-series data in a chart. Traditionally, this is done by slicing your time-scale into equal-sized bins and counting the events that fall into each one. […] But binning the data destroys resolution.

Instead, Joe suggests plotting each event on a horizontal time axis, with the vertical axis recording the (logarithm of the) time since the previous event. This way, you see heavy bands around the modal interval between events, but outliers and bursts are also clearly visible.

Because we take the logarithm of the gap, the data become insensitive to scale. We can plot small intervals of a single second right next to large intervals of hours on the same axis without losing the shape of either. The steady state appears as a cloud of points high up in the chart, while burst traffic shows as vertical lines.

Corollary: logarithms being what they are, if you flip the plot upside down, you get a visualisation of the arrival rate.

This post is a short guide to disaster planning and recovery for organizations whose “IT department” fits around a single table […] The goal is a plan that works well enough for you to survive the worst day of your team’s existence, written by people who have a dozen other things to do. Keep it short, keep it tested, and keep it alive.

Originally formatted as terse but usable bullet points, later expanded to a longer-form essay.

Part of the S6 cinematic universe: a set of simple, powerful system scripting tools that offer alternatives to traditional shell scripting and init systems. The execline language is a chain-loading command execution tool with careful semantics around variable expansion and block management. Interesting as a kind of embedded DSL in the Unix scripting tradition.

Classes teach you all about advanced topics within CS, from operating systems to machine learning, but there’s one critical subject that’s rarely covered, and is instead left to students to figure out on their own: proficiency with their tools. We’ll teach you how to master the command-line, use a powerful text editor, use fancy features of version control systems, and much more!