KeyholeSoftware.dev—the innovation arm of Keyhole Software—has released a new open-source HTTP load testing command line utility implemented in Go. khsLoad is used to test the performance of APIs and websites through user simulation with features for creating data graphs useful for SLAs.
Kubernetes on Raspberry Pi
Kubernetes, or k8s, is an important container orchestration platform. In this blog, I’ll describe creating a workable Kubernetes cluster implemented on a stack of four Raspberry Pi boards. In the end, I’ll have provided an outline of how I created it and I’ll show how to replicate a stateless app across Kubernetes pods running on the nodes — the Pi boards.
Back in the Groovy 4
When I heard that Groovy 4 is coming out, I decided to get ahead of it. I went online to explore what new features we were getting and how I could start using them in my own code.
This article will not be a full list of the new features of Groovy 4; there are simply too many for one post. This post will simply be my thoughts on a select few of those features and how I would plan to use them.
Let’s get started!
Updating Microservices with Netty 5, Kafka 3, and React: Whirlpool Revisited
Back in 2015 and 2016, I wrote two blogs that went step by step to develop a microservice/Netty architecture with fully working code called Whirlpool.
A lot has changed in the years since, so recently I decided to come back to the project, update it with the latest versions of Kafka and Netty, and add a React UI to it (rather than the vanilla JavaScript version it used before). In addition, I also added Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL) scripts in addition to the Mac and Linux scripts that were there before and made all of the scripts more robust.
This blog will be about the work that went into all of those updates, plus a look at the new React UI. This provides an excellent view into what it takes to update an outdated microservices application implemented with Kafka (version .9 –>3.0) and Netty (4.1.3->5.0.0-alpha2), bringing all versions up to date and adding a React UI. By the end you’ll be familiar with the latest versions of these frameworks, know some “gotchas” to avoid, as well as understand how to integrate WebSockets into React.
Using Node.js To Create a Discord Bot
From Zoom to Skype to Microsoft Teams, there is an endless number of platforms to help keep you connected. One such platform is Discord – a service primarily intended for gaming that allows you to voice chat, video chat, or screen share with a community you have developed on your own hosted “server.” One of Discord’s best features is a developer portal with an open API that allows you to add bots and apps to your server, as well as write your own.
There is true beauty in the ability to create your own custom solutions to fill your needs. So in this brief tutorial, I’ll show you how to get up and running writing your own Bots and Apps for Discord with Node.js.





