This weekend was the closest to the feast day of St. Christopher (July 25), the patron saint of travelers. It is a tradition at St. Anthony of Padua parish to pray the following Pledge for Safe Driving and to bless people’s cars with holy water after Mass. Pledge for Safe Driving Lord Jesus, You teach us to love others as you love. Help me to drive safely and responsibly: avoiding dangerous acts while driving such as texting, making phone calls, speeding excessively and driving impaired. Please give me the grace to be courteous and kind, and to use my car Continue Reading
Dennis
I am currently a software developer at A Thinking Ape Entertainment Ltd. I graduated from the University of British Columbia with a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science with the Software Engineering Option. I primarily speak Python and C# these days, but in the past I've also done Objective-C, Java and PHP.
Outside of work, I'm a volunteer on the youth ministry team at St. Francis Xavier Catholic Church, and also on the Canadian Ski Patrol team at Mount Seymour. I'm also an avid transit enthusiast/photographer.
Reducing Database Load using Redis and Batched Insert/Update SQL Queries
I’ve been running my “T-Comm” Bus Locator website for over seven years now. As a quick recap, on the backend, it’s a procedural PHP/MySQL website, kind of a typical thing one would see of PHP development circa 2000s. The high level overview is that every minute or two, the system polls TransLink’s real time information APIs for the locations of the all the buses in the system. The system then calculates some information based on TransLink’s GTFS data, which has the schedule information for the entire system. Then it saves the data into a MySQL database, and some other outputs Continue Reading
Vancouver Cyclist Running a Red Light
Cyclists are subject to the same rules of the road as defined in the Motor Vehicle Act. That means not crossing an intersection against a red light, as this cyclist did. Luckily I was not going faster, or else I might have collided with them.
Dual Left Turn Lanes
If you need to make a right turn immediately after a left turn with multiple turning lanes, you should plan ahead and queue from the right-most left-turn lane.
First 3D Print – Projector screen replacement part
3D printing has gaining popularity in the recent years, and since a few years ago, Richmond Public Library has had ‘MakerBot Replicator 2’ stations available for patrons to use to create their own objects. This week, I had the opportunity to use the 3D printers for the first time to print a replacement part for a projector screen. Backstory Some time in March, one of these plastic caps popped off the projector screen we use for youth ministry at St. Francis Xavier Parish, and disappeared. It turns out that this small part (about 1cm in diameter), is a critical component Continue Reading