iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 1h

Finished: Spec driven development Now specs are written for the agents, but also version controlled. This book shows a way of doing it. Hoped for more infos to integrate in existing workflows. Still need to dig into openspec, spec-kit for that I guess Huge font, 150 pages, 29 EUR for the softcover

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 10/10/2026

Finished: Code to cashflow German book, explains the different steps from permanent employee to freelancer to business owner to investor as a path to financial freedom and autonomy. Very short and informative written, however not sure where the AI part really is, except on the cover :-)

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 04/10/2026

Finished: Architecting Agentic Solutions with Claude Should help with the first claude certification, however was released 6 months ago, not sure, how up-to-date it is with regards to that. Covers the most high level getting started parts, but not much more.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 19/09/2026

Dashdown - Use Markdown & SQL to create dashboards Uses tailwind, allows to create own components, realtime updates, has a dozen connectors. Used CSV solar data to try. Seems that evidence now has cloud lock-in, so that someone else created an open source alternative in python. dashdown.ai

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 12/09/2026

Finished: Designing Data intensive applications, 2nd edition Had this on my desk for some time, finally read it. 2nd edition came out nine years after the first & includes some cloud specific updates. Very well spent time, lots of follow up links. Recommendation for any backend developer.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 30/08/2026

Our backup strategy when the little one is ill and bored are small Le… err I meant bricks Quick to hand out, keeps her busy for a bit. This one here is actually quite a cool series. Unfortunately it’s finished now and we have to look for new and more complex ones, hints appreciated :-)

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 02/07/2026

Been playing around a little with the public data from the German Marktstammdatenregister (in Germany naming is not hard, haha) about solar/wind/battery installations. Converted XML to parquet and then imported into DuckDB to test with Shaper. Massive battery & PV growth since 2023, I like!

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 05/03/2026

Just uploaded the slides of my talk about Apache Lucene yesterday, along with a GitHub repo to check out the code samples. Thanks a ton for the JUG Münster for having me and see you next time! speakerdeck.com/spinscale/un...

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 21/02/2026

Finished: Machine Learning - kurz & gut A short (well, relatively) 300 pages, german reference guide about machine learning using python. If you know what you are searching for, this is a quick reference for ideas, but not so much for beginners.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 06/01/2026

Sunboard - A privacy-first, local-only dashboard for your PV/solar data A Javelit app, that can be configured via the browser, downloads data from the open AlphaESS API, visualizes power consumption, grid pushing and how much money you saved over the years. github.com/spinscale/su...

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Actually not, I did a big book reset when moving three years ago 😀 this is all I have plus a way too big stack of unread books…

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 19/11/2025

Finished: Latency Dives into the various concepts/ideas of reducing delay in software. More geared towards junior/mid level engineers who haven't had to touch latency/performance topics yet and want to get familiar with, explaining a lot of concepts. Around 240 pages, nice rust based code samples.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Finally free of crutches, thanks to 3d printing I could at easily reach them after having a shower. Measure, create design, print prototype. Took half a day. And code in a git repo. Need to learn rounding edges, but we'll get there. Hoping no tools for post surgery equipment are involved.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 14/11/2025

Finished: Modern concurrency in Java Nice 300 page introduction into Virtual Threads and Structured Concurrency, how those two work together. As I didn't have time to delve into both topics so far, this was a great refresher.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 07/11/2025

Achievement unlocked: Added a cover slide using a terminal with figlet to my no-slides #elasticon presentation showing ES|QL to look into three years of solar data. A part of the demo has also been written down in a blog post. See spinscale.de/posts/2025-1...

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 26/09/2025

Finished: Optimizing Cloud Native Java Great explanations, how the JVM works in general, performance testing, GC. A small cloud chapter at the end, but more about general k8s configuration and less about java specifics. Good general overview, quite recent, not cloud specific IMO, bit of a misnomer

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 15/09/2025

Finished: A Philosophy of Software Design by John Ousterhout Relatively short with a bit less than 200 pages, but I really enjoyed it. If you have been coding for long enough, so many things seem intuitive and factual in this book, but it's hard to put them into words.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

Finished: Kill it with fire - Manage aging computer systems Great book, around 220 pages. When you work on a successful piece of software, it becomes legacy, cause it sticks around for long, the world moves on. How do you tackle upgrades without that evil full rewrite plus good mgmt advice

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 18/08/2025

P.S. As a total pro-am techfluencer I had to include a completely unrelated picture, but that octopus is 🔥

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 16/08/2025

Finished: The Java Cookbook A thick 600 pages book with dozens of different recipes. Suited for the beginner - but also kept up to date, like an example for using the Vector API. Learned about ChoiceFormat for handling plurals. Only recommended if you are getting started with Java professionally.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 23/07/2025

Finished: In-Memory Analytics with Apache Arrow What a great introduction into the arrow ecosystem, which is quite big already. Code samples in python, go and C++, lots of explanations. Last chapter explains how to contribute - what a great final chapter for a book about an Open Source product.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 15/07/2025

Finished: Apache Iceberg - The definitive guide I've always delayed taking a look at Iceberg, until it had emerged as the winner in the open table game. Like the idea of puffin files as a possible extension to allow data stores to keep the data in an open format, while applying own optimizations.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 09/07/2025

Paper of the day: Anarchy in the Database - A Survey and Evaluation of Database Management System Extensibility Looking into several datastores and how certain extensions clash with each other. "Our tests found that 16.8% of extension pairs failed to work together." www.vldb.org/pvldb/vol18/...

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 28/06/2025

Finally managed to finish AI Engineering by Chip Huyen It's packed with 500 pages, and covers a lot of topics like evaluation, inference optimization, security & guardrails, architecture and more and is really good explaining concepts. www.oreilly.com/library/view...

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 04/06/2025

Had an area and quick team meeting last week. For the second time, I printed the yearly gitlab stats of my team members. So, now it's basically a tradition. Got print quality improvements by reducing infill, but still not a 100% happy. What should I read to learn more about print quality?

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 06/05/2025

Finished: Building AI Powered Products - The Essential Guide To AI and GenAI Product Management Read this relatively thin book (about 200 pages) during the holidays. I might not be the intended target audience not being a product manager, but I found it hard to read.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 28/02/2025

Finished: AI-Powered Search IMO an introduction that should not be missing in any search engineers book shelve. As most such books, very focused on english as a language, that often has the luxury of existing good huggingface models that can be easily reused.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 26/02/2025

I have to admit, I am still in the 3d printing phase of being fascinated. Just like software engineering it's the ability to create something out of nothing. You have an idea in your head (like a replacement lid for your compost bin), measure the old one a little, reproduce first and ...

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 25/02/2025

Finished reading: Becoming a data head Nice introduction into statistical topics if you have never dealth with them. If you had some previous exposure, probably too high level. Just like many books, this is a variant of the 'now draw the rest of the owl' meme, nice intro but what for next steps?

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 08/02/2025

Current blog post plans for short reads in the next weeks...

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 20/01/2025

Finished: Database design and implementation by Edward Sciore I really like the underpinning with a lot of Java code in this one, having a full sample database including buffers, different join implementations and more. Recommended for getting started, lots of code plus a lot of exercises on top.

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 15/01/2025

Finished: All Hands on Tech A very (probably too) high level introduction of how a modern IT/tech department within an organization should look like. Favorite quote in common misconceptions: "Your culture document reads like the ten things everyone should have learned in kindergarten."

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 24/12/2024

Finished: Ultimate Typescript Handbook One of the better introductions into Typescript for experienced developers. Covers a lot of language features/project setup. Missed a little on the debugging part or running/packaging applications in production, but you want a concise book, not 1k pages..

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

Forgot to add the book image.. still learning to bluesky 🤦‍♀️

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Alexander Reelsen @spinscale.bsky.social · 23/12/2024

because it is covering a lot of those topics already. In the second part of the book my standard thoughts about k8s in combination with platform engineering come into play: When is a good size of your company or the number of teams that you really need this kind of complexity?

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