2024-12-31 08:00:00
I started the NYC Systems Coffee Club in December of 2023. It's gone pretty well! I regularly get around 20 people each month. You bring a drink if you feel like it and you hang out with people for an hour or two.
There is no agenda, there is no speaker, there is no structure. The only "structure" is that when the circle of people talking to each other seems gets too big, I break the circle up into two smaller circles so we can get more conversations going.
People tend to talk in a little circle and then move around over time. It's basically no different than a happy hour except it is over a non-alcoholic drink and it's in the morning.
All I have to do as the organizer is periodically tell people about the Google Form to fill out. I got people to sign up to the list by posting about this on Twitter and LinkedIn. And then once a month I send an email bcc-ing everyone on the list and ask them to respond for an invite.
The first 20 people to respond get a calendar invite.
I mention all of this because people ask how they can start a coffee club in their city. They ask how it works. But it's very simple! One of the least-effortful ways to bring together people in your city.
If your city does not have indoor public spaces, you could use a food court, or a cafe, or a park during months where it is warm.
For example, the Cobble Hill Computer Coffee Club is one that meets outdoors at a park.
Good luck! :)
How I run a coffee club, a short guide for others who might be interested in running one. It's very simple!https://t.co/UgRWDQOA3v pic.twitter.com/5wYrLW7u6D
— Phil Eaton (@eatonphil) December 31, 2024
2024-12-26 08:00:00
I was so intimidated to go at first, but it is in fact easy and fun to start playing beginner volleyball in New York. The people are so friendly and welcoming that it has been easy to keep playing consistently every week since I started for the first time this August. It's been a great workout and a great way to make friends!
The two platforms I've used to find volleyball games are Goodrec and New York Urban. While these platforms may also offer classes and leagues, I mostly use them to play "pickup" games. Pickup games are where you show up and join (or get assigned to) a team to play for an hour or two. Easy to go on your own or with friends.
I'm not an expert! My only hope with this post is that maybe it makes trying out volleyball in New York feel a little less intimidating for you!
With Goodrec you have to use their mobile app. Beginner tier is called "social" on Goodrec. So browse available games until you find one at the level you want to play. You enroll in (buy a place in) sessions individually.
Sessions are between 90-120 minutes long.
They ask you not to arrive more than 10 minutes early at the gym. When you arrive you tell the gym managers (usually in a desk up front somewhere) you're there for Goodrec and the tier (in case the gym has multiple level games going on at the same time). Then you wait until the Goodrec "host" arrives and they will organize everyone into teams.
Goodrec hosts are players who volunteer to organize the games. They'll explain the rules of the game (makes Goodrec very good for beginners) and otherwise help you out.
Always say thank you to your host!
With New York Urban, pickup sessions are called "open play".
There is no mobile app, you just use the website to purchase a spot in a session. The sessions are longer and cheaper than Goodrec. But there is no host; players self-organize.
The options are more limited too. You play at one of four high schools on either a Friday night or on Sunday. And session slots tend to sell out much more quickly than with Goodrec.
You can also check out Big City Volleyball but I haven't used it yet.
I haven't ever done Volo but I think I've heard it described as "beer league". That even some of the beginner tier sessions with Goodrec and New York Urban are more competitive.
But also, Volo is built around leagues so you have to get the timing right. Goodrec's and New York Urban's pickup games make it easy to get started playing any time of year.
It was super awkward to go at first! I went by myself. I didn't know what I was doing. I couldn't remember, and didn't know, many rules. I didn't have court shoes or knee pads.
But the Goodrec host system is particularly great for bringing beginners in and making them feel welcome. You have a great time even if you're terrible.
The first game I went to, I tried to hang out afterward to meet people. But people either came with their SO or with their friends or by themselves so they all just left immediately or hung out in their group.
So you can't just go once and expect to make friends immediately. But if you keep going at the same place and time regularly week over week, you'll see familiar faces. Maybe half the people I play with each week are regulars. If you're friendly you'll start making friends with these people and eventually start going out to bars with them after the games.
Even if you find yourself embarrassingly bad at first, just keep going! I'm 29, 6'1, 190lbs and from observation the past 5 months, age, height, and weight have a very indirect relation to playing ability.
Most of the people who play are self-taught, especially at the lower tiers I've played at. But some people played for the school team in high school or college. These people are fun to play with and you can learn a lot from them.
Most people who are self-taught seem to watch YouTube videos like Coach Donny, helpful for learning how to serve, set, block, etc. Or they take "clinics" (classes) with Goodrec or other platforms. (I have no idea about these, I've never done them before.)
At first I played 2 hours a week and I was completely exhausted after the session. Over time it got easier so I started playing 2-3 sessions a week (6-9-ish hours). With practice and consistency (after about 3-4 months), I started playing Intermediate tier with Goodrec and New York Urban. And I don't think I'll play Beginner/Social at all anymore.
I still primarily play for fun and for the workout and to meet people. But it's also fun to get better!
I played with one person much better than myself in an Intermediate session one time and he mentioned he will probably stop playing Intermediate and only play High Intermediate. He mentioned you get better when you keep pushing yourself to play with better and better players. Good advice!
I wrote a little post on picking up volleyball in new york.
— Phil Eaton (@eatonphil) December 26, 2024
It's fun, and a great workout, and you meet interesting people!https://t.co/jEWHbRWF6C pic.twitter.com/ipuIUB1ZnM
2024-11-28 08:00:00
I was delighted to notice this morning that this site has recently passed 1M page views. And since Murat wrote about his 1M page view accomplishment at the time, I felt compelled to now too.
I started regularly blogging in 2018. For some reason I decided to write a blog post every month. And while I have definitely skipped a month or two here or there, on average I've written 2 posts per month.
Since at least 2018 this site has been built with a static site generator. I might have used a 3rd-party generator at one point, but for as long as I can remember most of this site has been built with a little Python script I wrote.
I used to get so pissed when static site generators would pointlessly change their APIs and I'd have to make pointless changes. I have not had to make any significant changes to my build code in many years.
I hosted the site itself on GitHub Pages for many years. But I wanted more flexibility with subdomains (ultimately not something I liked) and the ability to view server-side logs (ultimately not something I ever do).
I think this site is hosted on an OVH machine now. But at this point it is inertia keeping me there. If you have no strong feelings otherwise, GitHub Pages is perfect.
I used to use Google Analytics but then they shut down the old version. The new version was incredibly confusing to use. I could not find some very basic information. So I moved to Fathom which has been great.
I used to track all subscribers in a Google Form and bcc them but this became untenable eventually after 1000 subscribers due to GMail rate limits. I currently use MailerLite for subscriptions and sending email about new posts. But this is an absolutely terrible service. They proxy all links behind a domain that adblockers hate and they also visually shorten the URL so you can't copy the text of the URL.
I just want a service that has a hosted form for collecting
subscribers and a <textarea> that lets me dump raw HTML and send
that as an email to my subscribers. No branding, no watermarks, no
link proxying. This apparently doesn't exist. I am too lazy to
figure out Amazon SES so I stick with MailerLite for now.
In the beginning I talked about little interpreters in JavaScript, about programming languages, about Scheme. I was into functional programming. Over time I moved into little emulators and bytecode VMs. And for the last four years I became obsessed with databases and distributed systems.
I have almost always written about little projects to teach myself a concept. Writing a bytecode VM in Rust, emulating a subset of x86 in Go, implementing Raft in Go, implementing MVCC isolation levels in Go, and so on.
So many times when I tried to learn a concept I would find blog posts with only partial code. The post would link to a GitHub repo that, by the time I got to the post, had evolved significantly beyond what was described in the post. The repo code had by then become too complex for me to follow. So I was motivated to write minimal implementations and walk through the code in its entirety.
I have also had a blast writing survey posts such as how various databases execute expressions, analyzing non-V8 JavaScript implementations, how various programming language implementations parse code, and how various database systems build on top of key-value databases.
The last two posts have even each been cited in a research paper (here and here).
In terms of quality, my single greatest trick is to read the post out loud. Multiple times. Notice parts that are awkward or unclear and rewrite them.
My second greatest trick is to ask friends for review. Some posts like an intuition for distributed consensus and a write-ahead log is not a universal part of durability would simply not have been correct or credible without my fantastic reviewers. And I'm proud to have played that part a few times in turn.
We also have a fantastic #writing-and-drafts channel on the Software Internals Discord where folks (myself occasionally included) come for post review.
I've lost count of the total number of times that these posts have been on the front page of Hacker News or that a tweet announcing a post has reached triple digits likes. I think I've had 9 posts on the front of HN this year. I do know that my single best year for HN was 12 months between 2022-2023 where 20 of my posts or projects were on the front page.
Every time a post does well there's a part of me that worries that I've peaked. But the way to deal with this has been to ignore that little voice and to just keep learning new things. I haven't stopped finding things confusing yet, and confusion is a phenomenal muse.
And also to, like, go out and meet friends for dinner, run meetups, run book clubs, chat with you fascinating internet strangers, play volleyball, and so on.
It's always been about cultivating healthy obsessions.
In parting, I'll remind you:
I wrote a little reflection on writing after noticing I passed 1M page views this morning.https://t.co/eIlMDVHNht pic.twitter.com/EKSiiDUz5G
— Phil Eaton (@eatonphil) November 28, 2024
2024-11-15 08:00:00
These are some of the most influential (mostly due to experience or expertise) and active folks (I actually see them attend events) in the NYC infrastructure scene (that I have a personal connection to).
If you're running a dinner or are just looking to meet interesting people in NYC in software infrastructure, consider this list and feel free to mention "Phil said you are awesome".
I've normalized titles a little bit but I say every title in the most generous way. These folks are brilliant.
This list is intentionally randomized. Also not a complete list. I've surely forgotten (let alone not yet met) great folk.
2024-11-06 08:00:00
This is an external post of mine. Click here if you are not redirected.
2024-11-05 08:00:00
Being unemployed can be incredibly depressing. So much rejection. Everything seems to be out of your control. Everything except for one thing: what you produce.
You might know that repeatedly posting on social media that you are looking for work is ineffective. That it looks (or at least feels) worse each time you say so. But there is at least one major caveat to this.
Every single time you create something and share it publicly is a chance to also reiterate that you are looking for work. And people actually appreciate and value this!
Whether you write a blog post or build some project, you are seen as working on yourself and contributing to the community. Positive things! And it is no problem at all to learn with each new post you write and each new project you publish that you are also looking for work.
Moreover, dynamics of the internet and social media basically require that you be regularly producing something new. Either regularly producing a new version of some existing project or regularly producing new projects (or blog posts) entirely.
What you did a week ago is old news on social media. What will you do next week?
This could itself feel depressing except for that it's probably actually a fairly healthy thing for yourself anyway! It is a motivation to keep your skills sharp as time goes on.
So while you're unemployed and able to muster the motivation, write about things that are interesting to you! Build projects that intrigue you. Leave a little note on every post and project that you are looking for work. And share every post and project on social media.
You'll expose yourself to opportunities and referrals. And even if no post or project "takes off" you will still be working on yourself and contributing back knowledge to the community.
I wrote a short post on some ideas for effective unemployment and social media.https://t.co/jmiJCOe2Nk pic.twitter.com/pK9AySNdHR
— Phil Eaton (@eatonphil) November 5, 2024
