Archive

Milvus started out as "Vector Similarity Search", but recently has rebranded as "Vector Database" in-line with current phrasing. Zilliz: Vector Database is the Cloud hosted version of Milvus. Read Vector Database Stories over at Zilliz's blog.

Watched a couple videos of Laser Welding by Rex Alexandre of Handheld Laser Institute

Malloy a modern language for analyzing,
transforming, and modeling data.

run: duckdb.table('../data/airports.parquet') -> {
  select:
    id
    code
    city
  limit: 10
}

is equivalent to SELECT id, code, city FROM airports LIMIT 10 in SQL.

In Malloy, all output fields have names.

One of the main benefits of Malloy is the ability to save common calculations into a data model. The data model is made of sources, which can be thought of as tables or views, but with additional information, such as joins, dimensions and measures.

source: airports is duckdb.table('../data/airports.parquet') extend {
  dimension: county_and_state is concat(county, ', ', state)
  measure: airport_count is count()
  measure: average_elevation is avg(elevation)
}

source can be imported into another using an import statement -- import "airports.malloy"

Sources can also contain named views.

Joins are also declared as part of sources:

source: flights is duckdb.table('../data/flights.parquet') extend {
  join_one: aircraft on tail_num = aircraft.tail_num
}

where is used for filtering. Filtering can be applied to  aggregate calculation (a mesure)

nested views produce with subtables.

Literals of type date and timestamp are notated with an @, e.g. @2003-03-29 or @1994-07-14 10:23:59. Similarly, years (@2021), quarters (@2020-Q1), months (@2019-03), weeks (@WK2021-08-01), and minutes (@2017-01-01 10:53) can be expressed.

There is a special time literal now, referring to the current timestamp, which allows for relative time filters.

Numeric values can be extracted from time values, e.g. day_of_year(some_date) or minute(some_time)

Time ranges -- @2003 to @2005

The output from one stage of a query can be passed into another stage using -> ( Pipeline )

More Reading

• SQL, Malloy, and the Art of the Renaissance
• Data is Rectangular and other Limiting Misconceptions from the creator of Malloy; Jan 2023.

I was interested in learning to read Arabic script and even bought a book with CD on it, in early 2020s. Didn't get around to it, and I left the book in India.

This is an interesting tutorial - Writing Arabic in English.

Tools

run-llama/semtools: Semantic search and document parsing tools for the command line

Jujutsu  is a version control system with a significantly simplified mental model and command-line interface compared to Git, without sacrificing expressibility or power (in fact, you could argue Jujutsu is more powerful). Stacked-diff workflows, seamless rebases, and ephemeral revisions are all natural with jj, and it uses Git as a backend, which means you can begin using it non-destructively with a single command and can always drop back down to Git if you need to. -- from Jujutsu For Busy Devs | maddie.wtf; Jul 2025.

I'm still investigating (Aug, 2025), and hope to slowly learn why and how. Perhaps more links to read.

See also: Jujutsu for everyone, and Switch to Jujutsu already