Alex Rudy

Hi! I’m Alex Rudy, a Machine Learning Engineer and Data Scientist in the Bay Area.

Currently, I’m at Discord on the Machine Learning Platform Team.

Very occasionally, I post mostly technical things here.

Blog Posts

Apr 29, 2020
Tox-server – an excuse to learn asyncio
For a few projects I’ve found myself with tests designed to run in a containerized environment (often via docker-compose). Containers make a great, quick way to get a bunch of software up and running, but they can be slow. Well, not slow in production, but they sometimes slow down the local development cycle. If I have to run my tests via docker run ..., I get tired of waiting for the docker engine to start my containers.
Jan 19, 2020
A python environment
Setting up a good python environment for development can be pretty thorny – largely because using your system python and installing packages globally with pip, is often a bad idea. On macos, the system python is usually a pretty old version:
```
$ /usr/bin/python --version
Python 2.7.16
```
and installing packages globally (using the system python) can result in conflicting requirements, difficult upgrades, and poor isolation if you want to share your work or move from one environment to another.
Nov 17, 2019
SuperTunnel
SuperTunnel is a tool I’ve often wanted for keeping SSH tunnels alive – mostly by just watching for when a tunnel dies and starting a new one. Its a handy way to re-connect after some temporary loss of connection like walking to a meeting, or going through a real tunnel on the train.