Resolving elasticsearch exception for Parse Failure [No mapping found for [@timestamp] in order to sort on]

26. April 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Sysadmin

elastichsearch logo

We use Kibana at work (which is a nice UI to sit on top of logstash - I think logstash has adopted Kibana now that I check up on it – which also makes use of elasticsearch) as our visual tool to dig into our system logs from instances we host on AWS. To my dismay I received the alert this morning that we were running out of disk space on our dedicated logging box (it aggregates rsyslog data, with our other production boxes pumping information through to logstash). Mind you, it has been running for close to a year without missing a beat so it was time for some maintenance.

Unfortunately I hadn’t setup a trimming cron job to deal with the eventuality of the logs blowing out on disk space so there was very little disk space left when I finally decided to go take a look. More »

Dipping my toes into Lisp – Getting Common Lisp with FastCGI support working with Apache

12. January 2013 · Write a comment · Categories: Projects
CLISP

CLISP (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I haven’t to date posted anything tech related to the blog, not because I haven’t wanted to but because mainly there are people out there better than I who have already written a great deal about the topics I’m interested in. So here’s my first post, and I’m going to write a little about my latest venture doing some exploration with Lisp.

Lisp is a language that has intrigued me for a while. How did I come across it you might ask? Mainly through the influence of two individuals who have had a fairly large impact in my profession.

I’m an avid reader and long time lurker of Hacker News (HN – for short), it’s definitely my number one go to source for current tech industry information. I know I’m sure to find some interesting tidbits here and there and spend at least a few hours per week reading articles I find linked. More »

Taking the P90X Challenge

09. December 2012 · 4 comments · Categories: Opinion

P90X Extreme Home FitnessI did intend to start a P90X diary at the beginning of the challenge, but I decided I’d try see if I’d make it through the first 30 days first before putting myself out there.

The P90X challenge, well what can I say, it’s been tough… bloody tough. So why am I doing it, well let me fill you in on some history.

In my younger years, late teens and early twenties I was always reasonably fit. I dare say I was probably at an amateur athlete level as I was doing a lot of training in Martial Arts from the age of 16 through to 22 (having obtained a black belt in that time and also helping to instruct) sitting around 76 kg – very lean, trim and toned. Then roughly from the age of 22 to 26 I became a  member of Towradgi Surf Life Saving Club, so I was doing a fair bit of swimming, running on the sand etc to keep in shape. Heck, I was even part of the TSLSC boat crew that participated in the 2006 George Bass Marathon (a gruelling 156km / 96.9 mile ocean start surf boat race), we didn’t win, but for a crew made up of a mix of Juniors, Seniors, Men and Woman (yes just 1 – and Philippa carried as much as the guys did) we did our best, at this point I was around 85 kg – quite a bit of solid muscle, I think I was healthiest at this time. More »

A change of scenery

15. May 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Opinion

For those that didn’t know, I left my old job at OnTechnology as a Senior Software Engineer just before the birth of my son Dashel in July of 2009.

It was an extremely difficult decision, but I had to make a choice between living in a place I love and being able to watch my family grow up here, or continuing to make the sacrifice of commuting and working long hours in Sydney.  Something had to give and I decided that it was more important to focus on my families future in Wollongong rather than continue working in Sydney.

I took a risk and decided to keep an eye out for suitable work in the ‘gong, not just any work mind you, but with a company that has similar ideals and a vision that I agreed with strongly. Luckily for me, iQmultimedia, a Wollongong company with a strong and growing presence were looking to hire! More »

Start at the beginning!

13. April 2010 · Write a comment · Categories: Opinion

I’ve been encouraged by some friends of mine to actually get my act together and setup an online presence. Why you ask? It’s mainly to do with self-promotion, a topic I’m not really all that comfortable with. However, in order to attract some attention and bring in some cash to put food on the table, it’s necessary.

What do I aim to achieve?

Hopefully this little corner of the web I have decided to claim as my own will become a repository where I can show off some of my work, detail my interests, perform experiments and perhaps also use as a memory dump.

I will be aiming to at least post something every week, whether it’s related to work, software development in general or the latest thing that has taken my fancy.

We all have to start somewhere right? So I’m going to start at the beginning.