Tech on Kyle Anderson

PDF Rendering Service

Thu, 13 Dec 2018 11:13:15 -0500

Technologies Used

MongoDB, Redis, Chromium (via puppeteer), Handlebars.js, npm, socket.io

Goal

Generating and mailing letters is a common task for every business, and my current employer is no exception. Many letters are created using Mail Merge or a third-party application - processes that are inaccessible to the Node.js services we develop.

The first service to require PDF rendering was one that created monthly statements for mortgage borrowers. The original implementation used the now deprecated PhantomJS headless browser and was baked-in to the single-threaded service. Additionally, there was only one template for every statement.

Analysis of Reddit's /r/popular

Thu, 16 Feb 2017 13:10:56 -0500

This post was adapted from the original Reddit post.

In light of Reddit’s release of /r/popular, I wanted to get a sense for exactly which subreddits were being filtered out. The admins apparently decided to not release a list of those filtered subreddits just yet.

Approach

9,000 posts worth of metadata (mainly subreddit, domain, and author) was gathered from both /r/all and /r/popular for every possible time span until Reddit stopped returning fresh results. After that, a straightforward comparison was used to generate the chart above. NSFW posts were excluded for the purpose of generating this chart.

Line Timing Semi-Automation with Microservices

Wed, 05 Oct 2016 21:45:05 -0400

Two microservices for video router and proc amp control, plus a real-time web interface for timing incoming video signals

Aperio

Sat, 27 Aug 2016 20:06:28 -0400

Common API proposal for sharing business application data between applications

Battling WordPress Malware with Git & Logstash

Fri, 20 May 2016 13:20:33 -0400

For years, this site and several others hosted on its server fell victim to a series of malware attacks. This is the post-mortem of how I discovered and recovered from the infections.

Background

KyleAnderson.us started in 2009 as my first WordPress site. It was originally on a shared host, so naturally my only interactions with it were through cPanel and WordPress itself. This was all fine and dandy, so I took on several other WordPress installations for my good friend Troy and we agreed to split the hosting cost.

TX Map

Sat, 05 Sep 2015 19:08:57 -0400

Data from a proprietary billing application is translated into geographic coordinates then plotted on a map to demo all of the feeds CNN Satellites is working on.

User Avatar Lookup

Tue, 01 Sep 2015 21:37:37 -0400

Automates lookup of user profile pictures / avatars using names provided by SharePoint.

Test-Driven, Angular Slot Game for Fish

Thu, 30 Jul 2015 14:28:56 -0400

From concept to production in under a week: a test-driven Angular slot game built for Adult Swim’s FishCenter Live.

CNN ScriptScrape

Thu, 25 Jun 2015 18:33:31 -0400

MongoDB + Node.js project to gather on-air scripts for analysis. One statistic from this project was included with a question to Jeff Zucker.

Multi-Email Post Node

Fri, 10 Apr 2015 19:04:53 -0400

Simplifies posting to WordPress for multiple users and categories. Built with Node.js and PHP

Weeknight Project: Headon Reddit Bot

Mon, 06 Apr 2015 06:21:39 -0400

The Front Page of the Internet has an untold number of bots accessing and posting content every second. Some contribute valuable context, like autowikibot, which replies to WikiPedia links with an article summary and other links.

Then there’s headonbot.

This is exactly what headonbot aspires to do - what it only aspires to do.

Headonbot was written in Node.js using the snoocore Reddit API driver. This was my first go at writing a Reddit bot, and it hasn’t been field tested yet. So, here’s hoping the script stays alive long enough to beat this joke even further into the ground.

BEST Bingo

Thu, 04 Sep 2014 19:14:58 -0400

Interactive, trivia-bingo fusion, employee engagement game built for BEST.

Nonogram Puzzles and Adventures in Programming

Mon, 07 Oct 2013 14:21:52 -0400

I was in a rut, so one slow Saturday I forced myself to learn JavaScript. The result was Nonogram… Free!, a picture-puzzle game with its own puzzle maker.