Writing on James Fricker

Writing a Ring Buffer in Rust

Mon, 04 Aug 2025 15:03:23 +1000

A ring buffer aka circular buffer that holds some kind of data (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circular_buffer).

The requirements are that the buffer has some fixed size, and we have at least one consumer of events and one producer of events.

🤖 WAL(LE)

Sat, 06 Apr 2024 12:21:28 +1100

BACK with some tech news and tech info.

This week is special! Thanks to Suno.ai, we have an official welcome song for this newsletter. (Recommend playing around, it’s free)

Listen Here

Welcome to the newsletter. 🎉

Content this week

⏭️ Skipping into Easter

Sun, 31 Mar 2024 12:24:28 +1100

Gm friends! It’s been a while 👀

After some social pressure and a spurt of motivation - we are back!

Welcome to the newsletter. 🎉

Skip Lists 🧐
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The current Bradfield CSI module is ‘Data Structures for Storage and Retrieval’. In this module, we are looking at key/value databases, and the data structures used within them. Broadly, we want to have two main functions, Get and Put.

2023 Review - 2024 Resolutions

Sun, 31 Dec 2023 07:19:31 +1030

It’s finally time.

The end of the year is a time to review the past and set a new vision for the future.

Previous Reviews

2022 Review

Mitch, Grandma, Me, Dad and Grandpa at Easter

2023
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A year of changes and hard work this year! I put lots of effort into my work this year, in which I learnt heaps. I also moved in with my partner, which has been great so far!

🏃‍♂️ Jittery!

Sun, 29 Oct 2023 08:40:52 +1100

I hope you are well! This week we dive into Compilers.

Systems Programming and Compilers
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The mountain of compilation, from Crafting Interpreters.

We start on the bottom left and end on a different node at the bottom of the mountain.

🔙 The Return

Sat, 21 Oct 2023 13:21:50 +1100

After one week’s break, we are back again with another edition!

Let’s dive in.

Systems Programming and Compilers
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After completing our networking mini-course, we start on Systems Programming and Compilers this Monday.

🔗 The Link Layer

Sat, 07 Oct 2023 17:14:16 +1100

I’ll be honest, it was a slow week this week.

Despite this, I’ve read a few interesting things and shared them below.

I hope you enjoy!

What I Learned This Week
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Why IPv6 Sucks
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As the number of devices using the internet grows, society needs to migrate from IPv4 to IPv6. This article on IPv6 makes me chuckle, and I often share it with friends.

🕸️ The Web and The Internet

Sun, 01 Oct 2023 14:54:39 +1100

Week 40 of this year and into Q4, almost time for Mariah Carey to enter the radio waves.

This week, we seek to understand the difference between the Web and the Internet.

What I Learned This Week
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The Difference Between the Web and the Internet
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What is the difference between the Web and the Internet?

🚂 The Magic Number: 13

Sat, 23 Sep 2023 15:40:50 +1000

What is up friends and welcome to another edition.

I missed last week because of life, but we are back on the train this week 🚂

Let’s choo-choo right along to what I learned about over the last fortnight.

End Your Dopamine Addiction!

Sat, 09 Sep 2023 14:15:18 +1000

Tweaking the newsletter this week. I’m hoping to keep going until I find a structure that works and feels good to me.

As always, if you have any feedback, let me know!

Now, close your social media and let’s get to it.

3 September, 2023

Sun, 03 Sep 2023 13:15:09 +1000

Hey there, and welcome to James’ Notes.

Module One: ‘Introduction to Computer Systems’ of the Computer Science Intensive is nearly complete.

(Read all posts here)

New posts this week:

Performance
- Loop Unrolling
- Multiple Accumulators
- SIMD
Caching
- Locality
- SRAM/DRAM

Bradfield: Computer Science Intensive

Mon, 07 Aug 2023 08:35:02 +1000

This year, I’m taking the Bradfield CSI program.

It’s an intensive, and designed to teach you everything you’ll need to know about the fundamentals of computers.

Here, I’ll document my progress, write some short posts and try to teach some things.

Passing the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect Exam

Tue, 21 Mar 2023 09:03:39 +1030

So today, I passed the Google PCA exam. In this post, I’ll share my study approach and how I found the exam.

You can see my certificate for the exam here.

Table of Contents
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My Background
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I finished university with a Maths degree and a Finance degree. I’ve been working as an engineer for over two years, one year using GCP.

2022 Review - 2023 Resolutions

Sat, 24 Dec 2022 07:19:31 +1030

It’s finally time.

The end of the year is a time to review the past and set a new vision for the future.

Bonnie Doon, 2022

2022
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This year was a fantastic year for me. After moving back to Melbourne from Adelaide for the second time in January and starting my third rotation at work, things started to pick up steam.

What I Learnt from One Year of Podcasting

Fri, 11 Nov 2022 19:18:00 +1030

I released 52 episodes of my podcast, Graduate Theory. This is its story.

The pandemic started in early 2020.

As I spent days and days sitting inside, I had an idea.

What if I started a podcast?

Hosting my Hugo Site on GCP with Terraform

Wed, 14 Sep 2022 09:03:39 +1030

This article was written by me. Subscribe to get updates to your inbox

This article appears on my personal website, hosted with GCS and Cloudflare.

Passing the HashiCorp Terraform Associate Exam

Thu, 11 Aug 2022 09:03:39 +1030

Table of Contents
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HashiCorp Terraform Associate
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Today, I sat and passed the HashiCorp Terraform Associate exam.

My Podcasting Tools

Wed, 26 Jan 2022 17:07:06 +1100

Image From Unsplash

Recently, I started my podcast called Graduate Theory. I wanted to create a place to have meaningful conversations about having successful and fulfilling careers.

I won’t go into the podcast too much here, but so far it’s been a great experience.

The Steak and the Spice

Tue, 03 Aug 2021 08:06:40 +1030

Note: In this post I refer to ‘reading’ as the reading of predominantly non-fiction/self-help books

When we sit down to eat a juicy, fresh steak, we rarely eat it without some kind of topping. Be it salt and pepper, or something more extravagant like truffle sauce, the spices we have with steak make it taste significantly better.

Stupid Simple

Fri, 23 Jul 2021 13:20:44 +1000

Welcome to James’s Newsletter by me, James Fricker.

Reading, learning and sharing about all things Technology, Data and Finance

In the meantime, tell your friends!

Beginners Guide to Zero Knowledge Proofs

Sat, 12 Jun 2021 19:18:00 +1030

In today era, secure communication and privacy are more important than ever. Keeping our communication secure is done with this thing called ‘Cryptography’. Basically some smart calculations with prime numbers that mean we can secure and verify things easily, but it’s hard for a bad actor to come and steal the information.

Communication Styles - Radical Transparency

Mon, 17 May 2021 19:18:00 +1030

The following article was written in preparation for a Toastmasters speech. The aim of the speech is below

The purpose of this project is for the member to learn about different communication styles and identify his or her primary style.

Moving Interstate

Sat, 17 Apr 2021 11:56:39 +1100

It was the 31st of December 2019. I got my phone out to record another video journal.

As I sat on my balcony, wondering what the past year had meant to me and all the things I had done. I couldn’t help but think about what the future might hold.

What Does a Great Graduate Look Like?

Fri, 12 Mar 2021 19:24:09 +1100

It’s something I always wondered.

I’m a decent student, I’ve done some cool things. I’m applying to these cool jobs.

And I’m hearing nothing back.

Sometimes I’d even get a rejection email the same day that I sent my application.

Solitude

Sun, 21 Feb 2021 11:56:39 +1100

Contents
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Rarely do we spend time alone with ourselves.

52 Books in a Year

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 13:54:06 +1030

View my 2020 Reading challenge on Goodreads here.

Here are my top 5 books that I read this year (in no particular order):

High Performance Habits by Brendon Burchard
The Ride of a Lifetime by Robert Iger
Range by David Epstein
The Alter Ego Effect by Todd Herman
The Dictator’s Handbook by Bruce Bueno de Mesquita

A Year of Books
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This year was an incredible year. For the first time in my life, I managed to get through 52 books in a single year. On average, one book per week.

Gym Principles in Life

Sun, 13 Dec 2020 19:24:37 +1030

Lately I’ve been thinking.

I’m kinda successful in the gym.

I’ve built a fairly decent body.

I get compliments regularly.

My progress in the gym came quite easily. I didn’t feel like I was trying that hard.

The Hero's Journey

Tue, 08 Dec 2020 18:34:34 +1030

The following is a speech I gave at Toastmasters.

Heroes .

Heroes are all around us. Whether they’re in film, movies, books or in real life. Heroes are everywhere.

Blog Challenge

Mon, 23 Nov 2020 11:54:29 +1030

Quick Links to my favourite posts

This is the homepage for my blog challenge over the summer break. My aim is to have a new blog post every single day (for 10 weeks). The last post will be made on the 31st of January, 2021.

Challenge: CS162 in 1 Week

Sun, 23 Aug 2020 07:19:31 +1030

Ever since I wrote my first program, I’ve been interested in computer systems and computer programming. One thing that I felt was missing from my computer knowledge was that deeper understanding of computers. At university I had only taken subjects relating to Algorithms, Data Structures and Problem Solving, but never things like Computer Architecture, Networking or Operating Systems.

Increase Your Typing Speed

Sun, 05 Jul 2020 09:03:39 +1030

View my video about this topic below.

Navigation
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Imagine being able to type twice as fast as you can now.

March Newsletter

Tue, 31 Mar 2020 09:03:39 +1030

Navigation
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Introduction
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What a month we have had in March. In Adelaide, March is comically called ‘Mad March’ as we have several festivals and car races in our city. This Mad March was ‘Mad’ for much more than that.

My First Data Science Internship

Sat, 22 Feb 2020 09:03:39 +1030

Navigation
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At the start of this year, I began my first internship as a Data Scientist. I was offered this role by the RAA, one of South Australia’s largest companies.

Sudoku Solver

Sun, 16 Feb 2020 08:43:49 +1030

I created a Sudoku Solver. You can view the app here.

There are a few important aspects of the program I thought it would be useful to talk about. These are the general process of solving a board, as well as the process of creating a board to be solved.

Creating a Chess AI

Wed, 18 Dec 2019 19:18:00 +1030

View my Chess AI in action here

Chess is one of the most popular games on the planet. Many people have tried to create a chess AI, that can play chess at a high level. The best attempt so far was AlphaZero by Google. The software managed to learn how to play chess in a number of hours, and defeat some of the best computer players such as Stockfish.

Portfolio Rebalancing and Spend Rule Analysis

Sat, 12 Oct 2019 20:04:10 +1030

This page contains a project I worked on as part of a University assignment. The project was for a subject called “Portfolio Theory and Management” and the aim was to provide a fund with a diverse portfolio, earning a target of 5.5% real return per annum. The fund would also like to make real donations of 5% per annum.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

-–

title: “Why C is Faster than Python”

date: 2023-04-22T07:19:31+10:30

draft: True

Everybody knows: C is faster than Python.

But why is this? How can one language be faster than another? If the instructions tell the computer to do exactly the same thing, how can the run-time be different?

Writing on James Fricker

Writing a Ring Buffer in Rust

🤖 WAL(LE)

⏭️ Skipping into Easter

Skip Lists 🧐 #

2023 Review - 2024 Resolutions

2023 #

🏃‍♂️ Jittery!

Systems Programming and Compilers #

🔙 The Return

Systems Programming and Compilers #

🔗 The Link Layer

What I Learned This Week #

Why IPv6 Sucks #

🕸️ The Web and The Internet

What I Learned This Week #

The Difference Between the Web and the Internet #

🚂 The Magic Number: 13

End Your Dopamine Addiction!

3 September, 2023

Bradfield: Computer Science Intensive

Passing the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect Exam

Table of Contents #

My Background #

2022 Review - 2023 Resolutions

2022 #

What I Learnt from One Year of Podcasting

Hosting my Hugo Site on GCP with Terraform

Passing the HashiCorp Terraform Associate Exam

Table of Contents #

HashiCorp Terraform Associate #

My Podcasting Tools

The Steak and the Spice

Stupid Simple

Beginners Guide to Zero Knowledge Proofs

Communication Styles - Radical Transparency

Moving Interstate

What Does a Great Graduate Look Like?

Solitude

Contents #

52 Books in a Year

A Year of Books #

Gym Principles in Life

The Hero's Journey

Blog Challenge

Challenge: CS162 in 1 Week

Increase Your Typing Speed

Navigation #

March Newsletter

Navigation #

Introduction #

My First Data Science Internship

Navigation #

Sudoku Solver

Creating a Chess AI

Portfolio Rebalancing and Spend Rule Analysis

Skip Lists 🧐
#

2023
#

Systems Programming and Compilers
#

Systems Programming and Compilers
#

What I Learned This Week
#

Why IPv6 Sucks
#

What I Learned This Week
#

The Difference Between the Web and the Internet
#

Table of Contents
#

My Background
#

2022
#

Table of Contents
#

HashiCorp Terraform Associate
#

Contents
#

A Year of Books
#

Navigation
#

Navigation
#

Introduction
#

Navigation
#