Month: July 2016

Here at the Washington Botanical Garden, the enormous “corpse flower”, the corpse flower (Amorphophallus titanum), is about to bloom in a few days. It is the smelliest flower in the world, and, coincidentally, the largest. The blooming of the titan arum lasts only two days. The scent of the flower resembles a mix of rotten eggs and spoiled fish, and visually, the flower looks like a piece of decaying meat. The leaf is up to 3 meters long, up to 1 meter in diameter. This particular specimen has not bloomed in the last six years. It fully blooms in a couple of hours, stays bloomed for 24-48 hours – meanwhile, the flower even noticeably heats up (up to 40 degrees Celsius), then it rapidly collapses. Imagine, a typical flower waits seven years to collect insects-pollinators for a few days, three or four times in its lifetime. It has a hard time with self-pollination – male and female flowers are in the same inflorescence, and first the female flowers open, then a day or two later the male ones appear.

Here is a live broadcast from this botanical garden – the camera is focused on the flower, everyone is waiting: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k8hiVv8SRFQ

I feel somewhat awkward, chaining my bike at the bank’s bike rack when there are two empty cars parked next to it with their engines running. Is this some kind of a setup and someone’s after my bike?)

Another update on my blog. I managed to integrate Varnish with Hybris for caching pages and their parts. This is a continuation of the previous post about caching, but in this case, I actively use Varnish. It’s a very handy tool if you need to accommodate more traffic with fewer licenses – you know what I mean 🙂

The video in the post shows that the requests to Hybris come in significantly less often than they go from user browsers to Hybris. This is because Varnish intercepts them along the way and serves them, if it has everything needed. If something is missing, it asks MongoDB, which definitely has that something.

The architecture is not like that of the paid Hybris extension released with similar intentions. Details are in the post.

Possibly of interest to @[100000077047562:2048:Marina Zhigalova] @[100001168004708:2048:Erik Babadzhanov] @[100001894770015:2048:Viktoriya Shaimardanova] @[100004031421822:2048:Alexey Lyubimov] @[1509384824:2048:Anatoly Mokhov] @[617283947:2048:Renata Mussina] @[1817791335:2048:Victor Romanovsky] @[100000571996239:2048:Maxim Antonov] @[100002859265802:2048:Ilya Timchenko] @[1328575098:2048:Max Shelukhanov] @[100006908653177:2048:Alexander Dnestranskiy] @[1698960808:2048:Alexander Zolotilin] @[100001735299023:2048:Alexey Pronin]

https://hybrismart.com/2016/07/27/varnish/

How pharmacology works in the USA. Our doctor prescribes a prescription for a specific pharmacy. Half an hour later, we pick up a package like this. With insurance, it costs pennies; without insurance, hundreds of dollars for a simple antibiotic, which in Russia is sold on every corner. The thing is, only 10% of medications are available over the counter here; the rest require a prescription. A doctor’s visit without insurance for a prescription costs $150-200. Plus, in the pharmacy itself, the prices for insured and uninsured are very different even with a prescription. The amount we have to pay is calculated based on an electronic request to the insurance specifically for each patient.

Additionally, pharmacies offer vaccinations, and sell food and alcohol.

http://www.pharmvestnik.ru/publs/aptekar/obrazovanie-i-karjera/apteka-v-ssha-boljshe-chem-prosto-apteka.html

http://www.mednovosti.by/news.aspx?id=32

http://marina-callas.livejournal.com/9490.html

Just conducted a major presentation at EPAM with my workshop colleagues on “SOLR in HYBRIS: capabilities, customization, implementation cases.” Almost a hundred people attended, mostly technologists, primarily hybris developers and SAs. Covered 90 slides about marketplace, tips & tricks, known issues, performance tuning, and much more. Was intensely preparing these last few days, now it’s time to start noticing the world around me again 🙂

Update on my blog about Hybris.

I’ve added a smart caching mechanism for page fragments in hybris. Each fragment has a composite key that reflects its dependencies. For example, to cache the list of delivery addresses for an online store (I have a video example), the composite key might be the user identifier – this way, different caches will be used for different users.

This mechanism is particularly effective if “heavy” features (in terms of memory and processor usage) are moved from page controllers to components, as the described technique is not perfectly suited for caching page controllers.

To better understand the idea, it’s easiest to look at the template screenshots in the middle of the article.

Caught up with and photographed a butterfly today in Shenandoah National Park.

Made it to Mary’s rock. Took two hours to get here, met a bear on the way. #nationalpark #shenandoah

We did it. We also met a bear along the way to here

https://www.swarmapp.com/r_aliev/checkin/5793d1e2498e71e462664680?s=CMYz1SPo38J0Njj5VI1RDsL1t4g&ref=fb&source=openGraph

I’m working on a presentation on SOLR+hybris, speaking on Wednesday. How I love this slide!