Redis demystified
Disclaimer: this is a summary for my records after a deep dive into current state of Redis. I tried to be as precise as possible (after all, I am writing […]
Hacker’s diary
Redis: hset with ‘items’ parameter
In Python, Redis.hset function has ‘items’ that, per documentation “accepts a list of key/value pairs that will be added to hash “name“.”. You would think that it’s something like [(“key1”, […]
Writing unit tests with Cursor IDE
I created a “view model” like hook in React, and asked Cursor to write unit tests for it. The hook does not have any HTML code, but it uses a […]
Lenovo windows “recovery” media and other animals
TL;DR: Lenovo recovery media is NOT like regular Windows recovery drive. It can only factory-reset your system. No command line, no recovery from image, nothing else. Hulk smash. Don’t count […]
Apache mod_wsgi: demystifying WSGIApplicationGroup
Summary WSGIApplicationGroup is a name of the Python sub-interpreter. You don’t need sub-interpreters if you run mod_wsgi in daemon mode (i.e. with dedicated processes). Always set WSGIApplicationGroup to %{GLOBAL}. If […]
Chrome: thisisunsafe!
TL;DR Under certain circumstances you won’t be able to access an HTTPS site with invalid certificate from Chrome, unless you type a magic cheat code “thisisunsave“. I was debugging a […]
C++ random number generation: mt19937 to ranlux24
It’s pretty old stuff, but still… Here’s how you typically generate a random number in C++: Let’s dissect it a little. On the one hand, “random_device” is a rather nebulous […]
Python: the land of abstract static methods
Summary Unlike many other languages, Python allows abstract static methods (see the reference). A class directly or indirectly deriving from abc.ABC cannot be instantiated, unless all its abstract methods are […]
Are Python strings UTF-8? What is the complexity of s[n]?
![Are Python strings UTF-8? What is the complexity of s[n]?](https://ikriv.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2025/03/string_encoding_comparison.png)
TL;DR Internally CPython stores strings with fixed character size of 1, 2, or 4 bytes, depending on the string [PEP-393]. The indexing operator s[n] takes constant time. UTF-8 representation can […]
Online SQL Formatter
https://codebeautify.org/sqlformatter all the way. It is a 3rd of a 4th link on Google, but it provides the best formatting and the best experience. You paste your ugly formatted SQL […]