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24
content/rnd/a_serialized_mystery/index.md
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@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
title = "A One-Part Serialized Mystery"
slug = "one-part-serialized-mystery"
date = "2023-06-29"
updated = "2023-07-29"
updated = "2025-07-21"
[taxonomies]
tags = ["software", "rnd", "proclamation", "upscm", "rust", "ulid", "sqlite"]
+++
@ -12,8 +12,8 @@ tags = ["software", "rnd", "proclamation", "upscm", "rust", "ulid", "sqlite"]
I recently spent a couple days moving from [one type of universally unique
identifier](https://commons.apache.org/sandbox/commons-id/uuid.html) to a [different
one](https://github.com/ulid/spec), for an in-progress [database-backed
web-app](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww). The [initial
work](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/commit/be96100237da56313a583be6da3dc27a4371e29d#f69082f7433f159d627269b207abdaf2ad52b24c)
web-app](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch). The [initial
work](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/src/commit/be96100237da56313a583be6da3dc27a4371e29d/src/ids.rs)
didn't take very long, but debugging the [serialization and
deserialization](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serialization) of the new IDs took another day and a
half, and in the end, the alleged mystery of why it wasn't working was a red herring due to my own
@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ representation and efficiency!
And at first, that's what I did. The [external library](https://docs.rs/sqlx/latest/sqlx/) I'm using
to interface with my database automatically writes UUIDs as a sequence of sixteen bytes, if you
specified the type in the database[^sqlite-dataclasses] as "[blob](https://www.sqlite.org/datatype3.html)", which [I
did](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/commit/65a32f1f20df6c572580d796e1044bce807fd3b6#f1043d50a0244c34e4d056fe96659145d03b549b_0_5).
did](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/src/commit/65a32f1f20df6c572580d796e1044bce807fd3b6/migrations/20230426221940_init.up.sql).
But then I saw a [blog post](https://shopify.engineering/building-resilient-payment-systems) where
the following tidbit was mentioned:
@ -403,7 +403,7 @@ method in my deserialization code.
<div class = "caption">fine, fine, i see the light</div>
You can see that
[here](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/blob/656e6dceedf0d86e2805e000c9821e931958a920/src/db_id.rs#L194-216)
[here](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/src/commit/656e6dceedf0d86e2805e000c9821e931958a920/src/db_id.rs#L194-L215)
if you'd like, but I'll actually come back to it in a second. The important part was that my logins
were working again; time to party!
@ -415,13 +415,13 @@ day, I dove back into it.
All my serialization code was calling a method called
[`bytes()`](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/blob/656e6dceedf0d86e2805e000c9821e931958a920/src/db_id.rs#L18),
[`bytes()`](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/src/commit/656e6dceedf0d86e2805e000c9821e931958a920/src/db_id.rs#L18),
which simply called another method that would return an array of 16 bytes, in big-endian order, so
it could go into the database and be sortable, as discussed.
But all[^actually_not_all] my *deserialization* code was constructing the IDs as [though the bytes
were
*little*-endian](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/blob/656e6dceedf0d86e2805e000c9821e931958a920/src/db_id.rs#L212). Which
*little*-endian](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/src/commit/656e6dceedf0d86e2805e000c9821e931958a920/src/db_id.rs#L212). Which
lead me to ask:
what the fuck?
@ -437,9 +437,9 @@ then were "backwards" coming out and "had to be" cast using little-endian constr
What had actually happened is that as long as there was agreement about what order to use for reconstructing the
ID from the bytes, it didn't matter if it was big or little-endian, it just had to be the same on
both the
[SQLx](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/commit/84d70336d39293294fd47b4cf115c70091552c11#ce34dd57be10530addc52a3273548f2b8d3b8a9b_106_105)
[SQLx](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/src/commit/4211ead59edc008e65aca2ed69e9f87de26e37b2/src/db_id.rs#L101-L107)
side and on the
[Serde](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/commit/84d70336d39293294fd47b4cf115c70091552c11#ce34dd57be10530addc52a3273548f2b8d3b8a9b_210_209)
[Serde](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/src/commit/4211ead59edc008e65aca2ed69e9f87de26e37b2/src/db_id.rs#L209)
side. This is also irrespective of the order they were written out in, but again, the two sides must
agree on the convention used. Inside the Serde method, I had added some debug printing of the bytes
it was getting, and they were in little-endian order. What I had not realized is that that was
@ -472,7 +472,7 @@ issues. Collaboration is a great technique for navigating these situations, and
focus a bit more on enabling that[^solo-yolo-dev].
In the course of debugging this issue, I tried to get more insight via
[testing](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/commit/656e6dceedf0d86e2805e000c9821e931958a920#ce34dd57be10530addc52a3273548f2b8d3b8a9b_143_251),
[testing](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/src/commit/656e6dceedf0d86e2805e000c9821e931958a920/src/db_id.rs#L231-L251)
and though that helped a little, it was not nearly enough; the problem was that I misunderstood how
something worked, not that I had mistakenly implemented something I was comfortable with. Tests
aren't a substitute for understanding!
@ -521,10 +521,10 @@ is no longer an exercise in eye-glaze-control. Maybe this has helped you with th
[^actually_not_all]: Upon further review, I discovered that the only methods that were constructing
with little-endian order were the SQLx `decode()` method, and the Serde `visit_seq()` method,
which were also the only ones that were being called at all. The
[`visit_bytes()`](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/blob/656e6dceedf0d86e2805e000c9821e931958a920/src/db_id.rs#L152)
[`visit_bytes()`](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/src/commit/656e6dceedf0d86e2805e000c9821e931958a920/src/db_id.rs#L152)
and `visit_byte_buf()` methods, that I had thought were so important, were correctly treating
the bytes as big-endian, but were simply never actually used. I fixed [in the next
commit](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/commit/84d70336d39293294fd47b4cf115c70091552c11#ce34dd57be10530addc52a3273548f2b8d3b8a9b)
commit](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/commit/84d70336d39293294fd47b4cf115c70091552c11#diff-ce34dd57be10530addc52a3273548f2b8d3b8a9b)
[^solo-yolo-dev]: I've described my current practices as "solo-yolo", which has its plusses and
minuses, as you may imagine.

18
content/rnd/ulid_benchmarks/index.md
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@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
title = "A One-Part Serialized Mystery, Part 2: The Benchmarks"
slug = "one-part-serialized-mystery-part-2"
date = "2023-07-15"
updated = "2023-07-29"
updated = "2025-07-21"
[taxonomies]
tags = ["software", "rnd", "proclamation", "upscm", "rust", "sqlite", "ulid"]
+++
@ -10,7 +10,7 @@ tags = ["software", "rnd", "proclamation", "upscm", "rust", "sqlite", "ulid"]
# A one-part serial mystery post-hoc prequel
I [wrote recently](/rnd/one-part-serialized-mystery) about switching the types of the primary keys in
the database for an [in-progress web app](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww) I'm building. At that time,
the database for an [in-progress web app](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch) I'm building. At that time,
I'd not yet done any benchmarking, but had reason to believe that using [sortable primary
keys](https://github.com/ulid/spec) would yield some possibly-significant gains in performance, in
both time and space. I'd also read accounts of regret that databases had not used ULIDs (instead of
@ -47,9 +47,7 @@ My benchmark is pretty simple: starting from an empty database, do the following
1. for each user, randomly select around 100 movies from the 10,000 available and put them on their list of
things to watch
Only that last part is significant, and is where I got my [timing
information](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/blob/897fd993ceaf9c77433d44f8d68009eb466ac3aa/src/bin/import_users.rs#L47-58)
from.
Only that last part is significant; the first two steps are basically instantaneous.
The table that keeps track of what users want to watch was defined[^not-final-form] like this:
@ -92,7 +90,7 @@ and the [recommended durability setting](https://www.sqlite.org/pragma.html#prag
WAL mode, along with all other production-appropriate settings, I got almost 20,000 *writes* per
second[^nothing is that slow]. There were multiple concurrent writers, and each write was a
transaction that inserted about 100 rows at a time. I had [retry
logic](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/blob/4c44aa12b081c777c82192755ac85d1fe0f5bdca/src/bin/import_users.rs#L143-145)
logic](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/src/commit/4c44aa12b081c777c82192755ac85d1fe0f5bdca/src/bin/import_users.rs#L134-L148)
in case a transaction failed due to the DB being locked by another writer, but that never happened:
each write was just too fast.
@ -183,7 +181,7 @@ capabilities resulted in better resource use. Every table in my original, UUID-b
a `created_at` column, stored as a 64-bit signed offset from the [UNIX
epoch](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_time). Because ULIDs encode their creation time, I could
remove that column from every table that used ULIDs as their primary key. [Doing
so](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/commit/5782651aa691125f11a80e241f14c681dda7a7c1) dropped the
so](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/commit/5782651aa691125f11a80e241f14c681dda7a7c1) dropped the
overall DB size by 5-10% compared to UUID-based tables with a `created_at` column. This advantage
was unique to ULIDs as opposed to UUIDv4s, and so using the latter with a schema that excludude a
"created at" column was giving an unrealistic edge to UUIDs, but for my benchmarks, I was interested
@ -209,7 +207,7 @@ create table if not exists witch_watch (
And, it did, a little. I also took a more critical eye to that table as a whole, and realized I
could [tidy up the
DB](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/commit/0e016552ab6c66d5fdd82704b6277bd857c94188?view=parallel#f1043d50a0244c34e4d056fe96659145d03b549b_34_34)
DB](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/commit/0e016552ab6c66d5fdd82704b6277bd857c94188?view=parallel#diff-f1043d50a0244c34e4d056fe96659145d03b549b)
a little more, and remove one more redundant field; this helped a little bit, too.
But overall, things were still looking like ULIDs had no real inherent advantage over UUIDs in the
@ -262,7 +260,7 @@ about the primary key for that table. It would also eliminate an entire index (a
automatically-generated "primary key to rowid" index), resulting in the ultimate space savings.
So, [that's what I
did](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/commit/2c7990ff09106fa2a9ec30974bbc377b44082082):
did](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/commit/2c7990ff09106fa2a9ec30974bbc377b44082082):
``` sql
-- table of what people want to watch
@ -320,7 +318,7 @@ was a `created_at` column for it. Still a win, though!
Something I realized with the "final" schema is that you could have duplicate rows, since the only
unique field was the `rowid`. I didn't want this. So, rather than create a `unique index on
watch_quests (user, watch)`, I [just
added](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/commit/c685dc1a6b08d9ff6bafc72582acb539651a350c) a `primary
added](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/commit/c685dc1a6b08d9ff6bafc72582acb539651a350c) a `primary
key (user, watch)`.
If that looks familiar, good eye! Doing this brings the disk usage back up to 17MB in the baseline

20
content/sundries/presenting-julids/index.md
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@ -2,6 +2,7 @@
title = "Presenting Julids, another fine sundry from Nebcorp Heavy Industries and Sundries"
slug = "presenting-julids"
date = "2023-07-31"
updated = "2025-07-21"
[taxonomies]
tags = ["software", "sundry", "proclamation", "sqlite", "rust", "ulid", "julid"]
+++
@ -9,7 +10,7 @@ tags = ["software", "sundry", "proclamation", "sqlite", "rust", "ulid", "julid"]
# Presenting Julids
Nebcorp Heavy Industries and Sundries, long the world leader in sundries, is proud to announce the
public launch of the official identifier type for all Nebcorp companies' assets and database
entries, [Julids](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/julid). Julids are globally unique sortable identifiers,
entries, [Julids](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/julid-rs). Julids are globally unique sortable identifiers,
backwards-compatible with [ULIDs](https://github.com/ulid/spec), *but better*.
Inside your Rust program, simply add `julid-rs`[^julid-package] to your project's `Cargo.toml` file, and use it
@ -100,7 +101,7 @@ you already have one.
The Julid crate can be used in two different ways: as a regular Rust library, declared in your Rust
project's `Cargo.toml` file (say, by running `cargo add julid-rs`), and used as shown above. There's
a rudimentary [benchmark](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/julid/-/blob/main/examples/benchmark.rs) example
a rudimentary [benchmark](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/julid-rs/src/branch/main/benches/simple.rs) example
in the repo, which I'll talk more about below. But the primary use case for me was as a loadable
SQLite extension, as I [previously
wrote](/rnd/one-part-serialized-mystery-part-2/#next-steps-with-ids). Both are covered in the
@ -125,7 +126,7 @@ The extension, when loaded into SQLite, provides the following functions:
If you want to use it as a SQLite extension:
* clone the [repo](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/julid)
* clone the [repo](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/julid-rs)
* build it with `cargo build --features plugin` (this builds the SQLite extension)
* copy the resulting `libjulid.[so|dylib|whatevs]` to some place where you can...
* load it into SQLite with `.load /path/to/libjulid` as shown at the top
@ -159,7 +160,7 @@ create table if not exists watches (
```
and then [some
code](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww/-/blob/cc14c30fcfbd6cdaecd85d0ba629154d098b4be9/src/import_utils.rs#L92-126)
code](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch/src/commit/72ca947cf6092e7d9719e0780ab37e3f498b99b0/src/import_utils.rs#L15-L27)
that inserted rows into that table like
``` sql
@ -237,7 +238,8 @@ Like Marge, I just think they're neat! We're not the only ones; here are just so
* [UUIDv7](https://www.ietf.org/archive/id/draft-peabody-dispatch-new-uuid-format-01.html#name-uuidv7-layout-and-bit-order);
these are *very* similar to Julids; the primary difference is that the lower 62 bits are left up
to the implementation, rather than always containing pseudorandom bits as in Julids (which use
the lower 64 bits for that, instead of UUIDv7's 62)
the lower 64 bits for that, instead of UUIDv7's 62) -- UPDATE! Julids are now able to
[interconvert with UUIDv7s](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/julid-rs/src/commit/e333ea52637c9fe4db60cfec3603c7d60e70ecab/src/uuid.rs).
* [Snowflake ID](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snowflake_ID), developed by Twitter in 2010; these
are 63-bit identifiers (so they fit in a signed 64-bit number), where the top 41 bits are a
millisecond timestamp, the next 10 bits are a machine identifier[^twitter machine count], and the
@ -246,7 +248,7 @@ Like Marge, I just think they're neat! We're not the only ones; here are just so
and I'm sure the list can go on.
I wanted to use them in my SQLite-backed [web app](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/ww), in order to fix
I wanted to use them in my SQLite-backed [web app](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/what2watch), in order to fix
some deficiencies in ULIDs and the way I was using them, as [I said
before](/rnd/one-part-serialized-mystery-part-2/#next-steps-with-ids):
@ -272,10 +274,10 @@ those crates! Feel free to steal code from me any time!
----
[^julid-package]: The Rust crate *package's*
[name](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/julid/-/blob/2484d5156bde82a91dcc106410ed56ee0a5c1e07/Cargo.toml#L2)
[name](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/julid-rs/src/commit/e333ea52637c9fe4db60cfec3603c7d60e70ecab/Cargo.toml#L2)
is "julid-rs"; that's the name you add to your `Cargo.toml` file, that's how it's listed on
[crates.io](https://crates.io/crates/julid-rs), etc. The crate's *library*
[name](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/julid/-/blob/2484d5156bde82a91dcc106410ed56ee0a5c1e07/Cargo.toml#L24)
[name](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/julid-rs/src/commit/e333ea52637c9fe4db60cfec3603c7d60e70ecab/Cargo.toml#L32)
is just "julid"; that's how you refer to it in a `use` statement in your Rust program.
[^httm]: Remember in *Hot Tub Time Machine*, where Rob Cordry's character, "Lew", decides to stay in
@ -291,7 +293,7 @@ those crates! Feel free to steal code from me any time!
[^monotonic]: At least, they will still have a total order if they're all generated within the same
process in the same way; the code uses a [64-bit atomic
integer](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/julid/-/blob/2484d5156bde82a91dcc106410ed56ee0a5c1e07/src/julid.rs#L11-12)
integer](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/julid-rs/src/commit/2484d5156bde82a91dcc106410ed56ee0a5c1e07/src/julid.rs#L11-12)
to ensure that IDs generated within the same millisecond have incremented counters, but that
atomic counter is not global; calling `Julid::new()` in Rust and `select julid_new()` in SQLite
would be as though they were generated on different machines. I just make sure to only generate

8
content/sundries/shit-code/index.md
View file

@ -2,7 +2,7 @@
title = "Shit-code and Other Performance Arts"
slug = "shit-code-and-performance-art"
date = "2023-02-08"
updated = "2023-02-09"
updated = "2025-07-21"
[taxonomies]
tags = ["software", "art", "sundry", "proclamation", "chaos"]
[extra]
@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ and using the font used by the alien in *Predator*
![get to the choppah][katabastird_predator]
But by far its greatest feature is an undocumented option, `-A`, that will play an [airhorn
salvo](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/katabastird/-/blob/4ccc2e4738df3f9d3af520e2d3875200534f4f6f/resources/airhorn_alarm.mp3)
salvo](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/katabastird/src/commit/4ccc2e4738df3f9d3af520e2d3875200534f4f6f/resources/airhorn_alarm.mp3)
when it's done. This option is visible in the program's help text, but it's not described.
Truly honestly, this is not a great program. Once it's launched, it only understands two keyboard
@ -103,7 +103,7 @@ OPTIONS:
with millisecond precision.
```
The [README](https://github.com/nebkor/randical/blob/main/README.md) contains some examples of using
The [README](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/randical#readme) contains some examples of using
it to do various things, like simulate a fair coin toss, or an *unfair* coin toss, or "a *Sliding
Doors*-style garden of forking paths alternate timeline for Ferris Bueller's presence or absence on
that fateful day."
@ -241,7 +241,7 @@ requirements about semver[^smegver].
## goldver
When I version software for public consumption, I tend to use a scheme I call
"[goldver](https://gitlab.com/nebkor/katabastird/-/blob/main/VERSIONING.md)", short for "Golden
"[goldver](https://git.kittencollective.com/nebkor/katabastird/src/branch/main/VERSIONING.md)", short for "Golden
Versioning". It works like this:
> When projects are versioned with goldver, the first version is "1". Note that it is not "1.0", or,