Writing

PUBLIC INDEX Essays, notes, and archive ZCOURTS - VOL. 02

LONDON - 2026

Writing.

Real posts imported from the current zcourts.com Blogger site and the older legacy zcourts.com archive.

Current site

Legacy archive

Engineering

Research

Featured article

Writing archive

FIG. 02

notes

surface

research

surface

Article

app model

publish

surface

A writing index backed by imported static posts until the content backend is live.

SECTION

Featured.

The latest imported post leads the writing archive.

zcourts.com

Should you write your own database?

We run a data pipeline that ingests very large product snapshots, turns them into downstream feed artifacts, and then keeps those feeds fresh with smaller incremental updates. The pipeline has a weekly "start from a new baseline" phase a...

2026-04-09

zcourts.com

local archive

SECTION

Current zcourts.com.

Recent essays imported from the live Blogger site.

2026-04-09

Should you write your own database?

16 min

2026-02-13

AI, Energy, and the Infrastructure Cycle: What Rising Power Bills Tell Us About the Next Economic Phase

For many households in the UK, the story begins not with artificial intelligence, but with a monthly or quarterly energy bill.

8 min

2026-01-28

Safety Without Friction: Why “Responsible AI” Fails Under Commercial Incentives

Over the past several years, a new genre of writing has emerged alongside the rapid development of large-scale AI systems: the AI safety essay. These essays are typically long-form, reflective, and morally serious. They acknowledge uncer...

38 min

2026-01-28

The Importance of Security in the Age of AI

AI agents are no longer novelty chatbots. They are operational systems with access to calendars, files, messaging, and infrastructure. That shift changes everything: the threat model is no longer “LLM hallucination,” it’s LLM‑driven comp...

8 min

2025-08-19

Building Composable AI: A Developer's Guide to the Model Context Protocol (MCP)

If you've ever built an application that integrates with AI, you've likely run into the integration problem. Connecting your app to a language model is one thing, but how do you give that model access to your app's data, tools, and funct...

5 min

SECTION

Legacy archive.

Older posts from the original zcourts.com site, preserved as local static pages with route aliases and archive notes.

2015-01-12

Unifying my web presence

_sigh_, this started out so well. I organized everything into "logical" sites... Turns out it's a major pain to maintain! So from today, I'll be bring all my blogs/sites/whatever, under one roof/domain!

1 min

2013-07-19

Android debugging over bluetooth (without root)

So I'm on a train to Reading and wanted to continue working on an app I've been hacking at but my USB cable is annoyingly inconvenient and Ubuntu keeps throwing a fit because I haven't been able to configure it to proper...

2 min

2013-06-28

My PhD's a go! - Graph database with the distributed nature of Cassandra and the Graph properties of Neo4J

I've been thinking about this for a while now and I've made a solid decision finally. At some point later this year I'll be starting a PhD (Probably October).

3 min

2013-06-24

Finding that blogging balance!

I work hard. Least that's what I get told :P - I've found it hard to find the time to blog as I much as I'd like to but after a recent conversation I had an epiphany. While I'm working on [Fillta ](http://fillta.com)I've...

3 min

2013-06-02

Configuring Ubuntu for VirtualBox to detect USB devices

I've been developing Android Apps are more often recently but I've found the Linux support for some android tools less than appealing. In particular, I've been using [MOSYNC](http://www.mosync.com/) and they don't provid...

4 min

2013-05-31

AngularJS: If you don't have a dot, you're doing it wrong!

This has bitten me twice in the last 3 days so I'm doing a quick post to remind myself.

2 min

2013-05-27

Securing a Linux (Centos) VPS in 10 minutes

So, first thing's first. You've got your shiny new VPS like I have. The fact you're reading this means like me you won't allow root to ssh into it. This is good! I'm writing this because I seem to be repeating these step...

4 min

2013-05-23

Install/Configure NVideo (with optimus) on Ubuntu

So you got your shiny new laptop with a decent card and wouldn't you know it...it's not working properly or it's performance is shoddy at best. After having to re-install Ubuntu 3 times I've decided to write a quick post...

1 min

2013-04-16

The tick box education system

I'm sat here, the last day, the dissertation for by undergraduate bachelors due at midnight...about 7.5hrs from now.

2 min

2013-02-08

The abc,123 of Software Engineering

## Intro

6 min

2013-02-03

Building Fillta - Express JS, NodeJS,WebSockets & Socket.IO - Thinking Realtime

One of the things we've aimed for when Fillta was being designed is having everything as "real time" as possible. And before I go any further, let me define what is meant by "real time" in this context. I often see peopl...

5 min

2013-02-01

Windows 8: My First impression

Windows 8 (W8), MicroSoft's (MS) new flagship OS. I've been wanting to get one of those new "transforming" laptops since the first CES event that showed them off! I resisted, wanted to wait until prices go down, glitches...

5 min

2013-01-11

My Informal CV and a note to recruiters.

This didn't turn out as planned. Started as what was suppose to be a note to recruiters and a small summary of things I like to help them decide if I would like a job or not but by the end of it I'd ranted about far too ...

9 min

2013-01-09

AngularJS - Communicate between controllers, services and directives

This solution uses JQuery. I already include JQuery in the page so why not use it. If you need a non-JQuery solution here are a few links:

2 min

2012-09-29

Install HAProxy on Windows (Cygwin) - Good for testing

I've been developing an App for most of the summer. It's using a few backend services so in production I use HAProxy in front of them.

2 min

2012-09-21

Learning Algorithms with "Introduction to Algorithms"

I've been reading "[Introduction to algorithms, third edition](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Introduction-Algorithms-Thomas-H-Cormen/dp/0262033844/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1303333188&sr=8-1)" (on [Lorenzo](http://www.alb...

1 min

2012-09-11

Building RPMs on Windows

I finally got tired of build RPMs in a VM. Its ridiculously slow because its done on a shared Windows partition. I started looking around to see if it was possible, all indications where that it hasn't really been done.....

2 min

2012-05-05

A leave of absence.... not really.

Hello all,

5 min

2011-12-25

Cassandra Terminology : Cheat Sheet

*This document will be updated continuously until it is as complete as can be, please let me know what I can add to make it more useful for everyone, especially new Cassandra users*

4 min

2011-12-20

Learning Scala : My first attempt at a command line progress bar

While on my path to learning Scala, or rather improving my very lacking Scala knowledge I've written a progress bar for the command line... I'm pretty sure it is far more verbose than it needs to be, but until I know how...

1 min

2011-12-13

Cassandra Cheat Sheets

I'll be getting some free time over the next few weeks and I intend to put together a series of Cassandra Cheat Sheets. I've been wanting to for a while but haven't gotten round to it, so the following list are the indiv...

1 min

2011-11-11

Cassandra Hector Wrapper - Hector Simplified

This a simple wrapper I wrote for Hector. ----------------------------------------- Available at : [https://github.com/zcourts/cassandra-hector-wrapper](https://github.com/zcourts/cassandra-hector-wrapper)

5 min

2011-10-06

Dynamically require/include a Javascript file into a page and be notified when its loaded

This is a simple little JavaScript snippet I wrote the other day that basically includes an external javascript file in an HTML page head section.

1 min

2011-09-17

Cassandra Query Language (CQL) v2.0 reference

This is an update to my two previous posts: [http://crlog.info/2011/03/29/cassandra-query-language-aka-cql-syntax/](http://crlog.info/2011/03/29/cassandra-query-language-aka-cql-syntax/) AND [http://crlog.info/2011/06/13...

13 min

2011-09-10

Install and configure Varnish (3.0.1) cache with Wordpress

A few days ago I promised I'd go through what I did when [setting up varnish with wordpress](http://crlog.info/2011/09/07/wordpress-varnish-cache-a-match-made-in-heaven/), its been slightly delay but here goes. The blo...

7 min

2011-09-07

Wordpress + Varnish Cache, A match made in heaven

Recently my other blog, [Script and Scroll](http://www.scriptandscroll.com), started to get a decent amount of traffic. One blog in particular linked back to a post someone published and it gained a lot of attention. Wit...

2 min

2011-08-24

Archimedean Spiral - "Plug a bit of maths in and 'magic' will happen!"

After looking at a few options for placing stuff in an outward spiral I came across the [Archimedean Spiral](en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archimedean_spiral). I'm rendering my items on an HTML5 canvas so this is all being done ...

2 min

2011-08-21

Introduction to NOSQl and Apache Cassandra.

A while back (April 2011) I wrote an article that I wanted to publish on Sitepoint but I guess they didn't like it because I haven't had a reply back. I was just randomly cleaning up my mail and found it in my sent messa...

1 min

2011-08-14

Github access denied or SSH key already taken on windows (Putty+VS git extension)

This is just a quick post to point to the solution. I had to do some C# work a week or so ago and then push everything to [github](http://github.com). I already had an SSH key on my account but since that was generated u...

1 min

2011-08-07

Quick tips for squeezing performance out of Google's Javascript charts with live (continuous) data/streams

I, until a few days ago always used JQuery for literally everything that needed Javascript. I've recently needed to use [Google charts](http://code.google.com/apis/chart/) to show a live graphical representation of data....

6 min

2011-07-09

Setting up a multi-node Cassandra cluster on a single Windows machine

In Windows explorer, go to "C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc" Copy the file called "hosts" to your desktop ( or any editable location) Open the hosts file from the desktop and add the following to the end of the file:

6 min

2011-07-04

Getting started with PHPUnit unit testing

The follow up to my[ previous post](http://crlog.info/2011/07/02/creating-a-string-class-to-represent-and-manipulate-strings-in-php/). The below is the php unit test class for the string class example I wrote.

4 min

2011-07-03

Creating a String class to represent and manipulate strings in PHP

In getting started with PHPUnit, I didn't have any code I felt like writing unit tests for. Mainly because I wanted to start with something very simple. I started writing some code, one thing lead to another and I ended ...

3 min

2011-07-02

Installing Xampp and adding/updating PHPUnit and PHPDocumenter and configuring Netbeans 7 to use them on Windows

That title is quite a mouthful isn't it? I usually do development on [Ubuntu ](http://www.ubuntu.com/)and only ever develop Windows specific programs on Windows using [.NET](http://www.microsoft.com/NET/) but I've found ...

5 min

2011-06-30

Upgrading Eclipse on Ubuntu (from 3.5 to 3.7 indigo - works for other versions too)

After upgrading my Ubuntu version to 11.04 I installed eclipse using the software centre. It turns out that only v3.5 of Eclipse is available (as the latest) from the software Centre. I wanted to update to 3.7 but I wan...

2 min

2011-06-22

Ubuntu 11.04 black screen fix (after install or upgrade)

I have been stumped for the last two days with my Ubuntu install. I naively upgraded to 11.04 without checking the [Ubuntu release notes](https://wiki.ubuntu.com/NattyNarwhal/ReleaseNotes)... Turns out their is a known b...

2 min

2011-06-18

CQL : Creating a column family

Following on from my last post about how to [create a keyspace with CQL](http://crlog.info/2011/06/13/cql-creating-a-simple-keyspace/), in this tutorial/post I'll create a Coloumn family. Unless this has changed recentl...

3 min

2011-06-13

CQL : Creating a simple keyspace

I promised a few tutorials covering [CQL](http://crlog.info/2011/03/29/cassandra-query-language-aka-cql-syntax/) examples so I'm going to kick off a series to demonstrate all/most of the features of [Cassandra](http://ca...

3 min

2011-06-13

Cassandra Query Language (CQL) v1.0.0 (UPDATED)

NOTE: CQL V2 reference is available here [http://crlog.info/2011/09/17/cassandra-query-language-cql-v2-0-reference/](http://crlog.info/2011/09/17/cassandra-query-language-cql-v2-0-reference/)

13 min

2011-06-07

Finally back...

I've been out for over a month. Exams all through May, birthday June 4th and a decent holiday break in a few days...

1 min

2011-04-28

Implementing the Bubble sort algorithm in J2ME

A friend asked me two days ago how to implement a sort algorithm on J2ME... Never used the J2ME API but I thought, hey, can't be that bad right. I must say, after seeing the primitive nature of J2ME I don't think I would...

3 min

2011-04-19

Cassandra London Meet up and my introduction to CQL talk

I was given the opportunity to do a talk on the up coming CQL feature in Cassandra at the recent meet up. While it wasn't highly comprehensive I thought it went well, it was a very gentle intro to CQL which basically goe...

1 min

2011-04-15

Hypnotic photo

I was looking a [Lorenzo](http://www.alberton.info/)'s [slides](http://www.slideshare.net/quipo/nosql-databases-why-what-and-when) (slide 50) and found a very interesting and hypnotic photo. I stole it from his slides a...

1 min

2011-04-07

Apache Cassandra + PHPcassa + Code Igniter = large scale PHP app in 5 minutes

I'm working on a new project, migrating an existing site using custom code with a very monolithic design on top of [MySQL](http://www.mysql.com/).

4 min

2011-03-29

Cassandra Query Language AKA CQL syntax

NOTE: CQL V2 reference is available here [http://crlog.info/2011/09/17/cassandra-query-language-cql-v2-0-reference/](http://crlog.info/2011/09/17/cassandra-query-language-cql-v2-0-reference/)

12 min

2011-03-28

Migrating from self-hosted to hosted wordpress

Been a while since I posted an entry, I thought I'd do one today after my little migration.

5 min

2011-03-07

My NoSQL presentation to my lecturers!

It's been a mission in the making but this Thursday I finally get to do my NoSQL presentation to some of my lecturers, and I can't wait!!!

1 min

2011-03-06

Frustrating times...

For a blog I haven't ranted much have I? Had the most ridiculous weeks ever... A tonne, tonne of work

3 min

2011-02-25

C (#) sharp - Nullable type (null-coalescing/ double question mark) operator

I came across a very interesting operator today in C#. At first I thought it was like a ternary operator but it turned out not to be. The operator "??", yes two question marks.

2 min

2011-02-21

Creating a PHP URL mapper to parse fancy URLs and query strings

I've been working on a PHP framework for my group over the last few weeks. We were required to build almost everything from scratch so using another framework such as [Codeignitor](http://www.codeignitor.com) was not an ...

5 min

2011-02-17

Nokia & Microsoft in bed...What does it mean for the rest of us (QT devs especially)?

Don't you just hate when you discover something,only to find out its future is in question? No this isn't the dinosaurs going extinct! I've recently been working extensively with [Nokia's](http://www.nokia.com) [QT Fram...

4 min

2011-02-16

Algorithm to swap the values of two variables without using a temporary variable

In a recent interview, I was asked whether or not it would be possible to swap the contents of two variables without using a temporary variable of any sort.

2 min

2011-02-14

Install thrift and build PHP (and other language) bindings for Cassandra

# Install thrift and build PHP bindings for Cassandra

3 min

2011-02-13

Create custom widgets for the wordpress dashboard

Following on from my previous post on [how to remove the default widgets/modules on the wordpress dashboard](http://www.crlog.info/tutorials/remove-the-default-dashboard-widgets-from-wordpress-programatically.html), toda...

2 min

2011-02-12

Remove the default dashboard widgets from Wordpress programatically

It's been over a week since I made a decent post (been extremely busy) so I thought I'd give it a go today.

2 min

2011-01-30

Limit wordpress post content out put automatically

This is a quick and dirty hack to limit the amount of words wordpress outputs on your homepage.

1 min

2011-01-29

RESTish Wrapper for Hector/Cassandra data manipulation

Introduction to RESTish, a REST wrapper around Hector/Cassandra for language-independent data access.

8 min

2011-01-28

Building a simple Java none-blocking server

[O'reily NIO tutorial](http://tim.oreilly.com/pub/a/onjava/2002/09/04/nio.html?page=1)(1)

3 min

2011-01-22

Skillsweek reflection

This week we were put into random groups of 5 at Uni. The group's role was to design a desktop application in java or c# as well as a website. While the scenario given is a bit absurd the specs had enough info to get on ...

2 min

2011-01-19

Useful links to free programming books (inc Thinking in C++ by Bruce Eckel)

Just a quick post to mention a few useful links I came across today. Ever heard of [Bruce Eckel](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bruce_Eckel)? A legend, really...anyway, I found an interesting post on [StackOverflow](http:...

1 min

2011-01-19

Some University courses are a waste of time!

Since starting my undergraduate course it has become increasingly apparent that some courses offered by various Universities are a rip off and complete waste of time.

2 min

2011-01-16

Fix wordpress blank page

Now, I like many others use wordpress. Not just for blogging but for a range of things.

3 min

2011-01-12

Setup SVN for your team

Okay,as discussed earlier we will be using SVN as our version controller system.

1 min

2011-01-12

Java MultiMap or MultiValue Map

In my recent course work I found the need for wanting to have a key value type object which maps one key to multiple values.

3 min

2011-01-12

Getting a work placement is ridiculously harder than expected.

If you can maintain an 85+ average at University, you'd expect yourself to be able to get a work placement.

1 min

2011-01-10

NoSQL/Cassandra SQL parser

Today I embarked on a wonderful misadventure. I decided to write an SQL parser/Interpreter for [Apache Cassandra](http://cassandra.apache.org).

2 min

2011-01-08

My new blog :-)

I finally decided to collate all my posts and articles one blog. I'm considering moving all my old posts. Sounds like a job that will take a while, I may just leave them all on the various sites... who knows.

1 min

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Courtney Robinson

zcourts.com

Building the infrastructure for the agentic future.

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