Go to my new blog: http://rusty.io.
Now Blogging at http://rusty.io // 2011.06.21
I've moved to a new blog: rusty.io
MinuteWith.com Podcast - Riak MapReduce vs. Hadoop MapReduce // 2011.03.07
On the latest Riak podcast at MinuteWith.com, I describe the core difference between Riak MapReduce and Hadoop MapReduce.
MinuteWith.com Podcast - Riak in a Virtual Environment // 2011.02.09
On the latest Riak podcast at MinuteWith.com, I describe some reasons why running Riak in a VM is a bad idea.
Erlang - Leex and Yecc // 2011.02.08
An informative blog post on Leex and Yecc rescued from Google cache, originally posted here.
Beautiful Erlang - Timing // 2011.02.08
Some simple macros for measuring the execution time of Erlang code.
MinuteWith.com Podcast - Replicas and Read Repair // 2011.02.04
On the latest Riak podcast at MinuteWith.com, I describe data replicas and read-repair.
Beautiful Erlang - Validating Function Arguments // 2011.02.01
Validate Erlang function arguments more cleanly by using a throw statement.
MinuteWith.com Podcast - Property Based Testing // 2011.01.28
On the latest Riak podcast at MinuteWith.com, I describe the power of property based testing.
Beautiful Erlang - The Print Macro // 2011.01.13
A simple macro to make debugging Erlang much, much easier.
Looking Back on 2010 // 2011.01.08
Me giving myself a congratulatory high-five for 2010.
Erlang User Conference 2010 - Recap // 2010.11.21
The Erlang User Conference is the oldest and most well-attended Erlang conference in the world. Held annually in Stockholm in mid-November, it pulls together an eclectic mix of software developers interested in building extremely reliable, large-scale, distributed computing systems with Erlang. This post is a talk-by-talk recap of the conference.
Video of Riak KV/Riak Search Tech Talk at Pivotal Labs // 2010.11.18
The fine folks over at Pivotal Labs just released the video of my tech talk.
How to Practice a Technology Talk // 2010.06.27
The standard advice on giving a good presentation is "Practice, Practice, Practice." But nobody says how to practice. This is what works for me.
GNU Screen / Pecho // 2010.06.18
GNU Screen is like Emacs for your console: Lots of power at the top of a steep learning curve. Read on to see my screen configuration file and a simple utility called "pecho" that allows you to send keystrokes to multiple screens at the same time.
Erlang Factory London - Recap // 2010.06.12
Erlang Factory London gathers Erlang pioneers from across the world—Berlin to Boston, Krakow to Cordoba, and San Francisco to Shanghai— for a two-day conference of innovative Erlang development.
Berlin Buzzwords Recap, Day 2 // 2010.06.08
BerlinBuzzwords has a stellar venue and talks describing cutting edge developments on all things search, scalability, and storage.
Berlin Buzzwords Recap, Day 1 // 2010.06.07
BerlinBuzzwords has a stellar venue and talks describing cutting edge developments on all things search, scalability, and storage.
Submodules and Subrepos Done Right // 2010.01.24
An approach to managing Git or Mercurial sub-repos easily, safely, and simply, while allowing you to embed Git projects in a Mercurial repo and vice-versa.
Nitrogen/Riak Video from EUC 2009 Stockholm // 2009.12.09
The fine folks over at Erlang Solutions, Ltd. just released the video of my talk "Nitrogen and Riak by Example" from Erlang User Conference 2009 in Stockholm.
Nitrogen, Riak, and 1,000 Lines of Erlang // 2009.12.05
Check out SlideBlast.com, a tool I created that lets you share and control a slide presentation on the web. SlideBlast was built using Nitrogen and Riak, and is an example of exactly how much you can do with the right tools and 1,000 lines of code. (Ok, it's more like 1,130 lines, but who's counting?)
The Bilski Case and Software Patents // 2009.12.01
On November 9th, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments _in re Bilski_. The outcome of this case determines the future of software patents.
GProc - Erlang Global Process Registry // 2009.09.16
Very often in Erlang, you want to create a process and give it a name. Erlang supports named processes using erlang:register(Name, Pid), but there are limitations. GProc was created by Ulf Wiger to break through those limitations.
Nitrogen at the Erlang Factory Across the Pond // 2009.06.01
Thoughts leading up to my trip to Erlang Factory 2009, London.
Nitrogen at the Erlang Factory // 2009.03.29
My first Erlang conference!
Mindsets and How to Predict the Future // 2008.02.06
Some things are hard to learn, until you find the right mindset.
Planning Poker: Software estimation for fun and profit // 2008.01.31
A personal account of planning poker in action.
A 10 Second Guide to Smoother Projects: Urgent vs. Important // 2008.01.29
Urgent items are those things that need to get done today or else the system will die. Important items are the longer term projects necessary for the sustained life of your business. For optimal efficiency, a team should handle one or the other, but not both.
Manager Points // 2007.08.12
Things to keep in mind when running a team.
The Klophaus Equation of Bug Difficulty // 2007.08.11
The difficulty of a bug is the distance from the cause of the bug to the visible symptoms of the bug.
Resumes: Don't Move Bricks, Build a Cathedral // 2007.02.27
To craft a better resume, speak to a bigger goal.
Three Common Flaws of Good Software Developers // 2007.02.25
When expertise in one area causes a deficiency in another.
Career Fair Advice // 2007.02.20
Notes from three years of recruiting at college career fairs.
Pushing is Better Than Pulling: A Discusson of Status Reports // 2007.02.14
Don't require stakeholders to pull information from you. Change Modes. Push it to them instead.
Post-Its and a Folder // 2006.04.30
A strategy for organization in a rapidly changing environment.
Flavors of Software Development // 2006.04.26
Every project goes through phases, each phase requires a different approach to organization.
Open Source Projects
Nitrogen // Create interactive web applications in Erlang
Riak // Dynamo-inspired, distributed key/value datastore
SlideBlast.com // Share and control a slide presentation on the web. (code)
BERT-JS // A Javascript (de)serializer for the BERT-RPC protocol.
BinaryVice // Serialize schema'd Erlang terms more compactly than term-to-binary
SimpleBridge // A standardized interface to Erlang HTTP Servers
Bio

Rusty Klophaus has a passion for creating simple and elegant solutions to complicated problems with technology. Rusty grew up on a farm, earned a degree in Computer Science from Princeton University, spent a summer in Philadelphia as a professional musician, co-founded a technology consulting company, and has managed multi-million dollar technology projects.

At Basho Technologies, Rusty works on the engineering team building Riak, a distributed, scalable datastore built for easy operations, and Riak Search, a distributed indexing and full-text search engine. Rusty also enjoys talking about technology; he has given presentations on Riak, Nitrogen, and other software projects at conferences internationally.

Rusty blogs at http://rustyklophaus.com, and is on Twitter as @rklophaus.