Jacob Emcken

Using idempotency for application interfaces like REST APIs

Applying retry strategies on API calls to make them more robust often brings its own set of problems. Occasionally, rather than losing an entity-creating call, you end up with multiple, and trust me — duplicates are a pain to clean up.

However, idempotency can neutralise the inconveniences from retries, making the pair a powerful combo. 💪

Exception handling differences between Clojure map & pmap

With this post, I am in deeper waters than usual. What might sound like a recommendation in the following could be a potential disaster in disguise. Be warned.

Personally, I prefer not to know about implementation details about the function I’m calling. Although that was the situation I suddenly found myself in, when a function I call replaced map with pmap.

Here is how I approached the weirdness with exceptions tangled with pmap.

Stumble upon in October 2025

I reflect on AI from time to time, and though I don’t see how it will replace me in the near future, it is worth keeping an eye on.

Scalable LEGO brick labels in SVG

It just looks amazing when things are neatly organized, so of course, I wanted some crisp-looking labels for my drawers with LEGO.

There’s a cool solution for those in possession of an actual label printer, but since that isn’t me, I needed something a bit more “generic”.

Having flirted with Inkscape in a previous lifetime, I turned to SVG.

De-stressing with Lego

The last couple of years, I’ve been finding stress at work more often than I’d like. Apparently, experiencing problems, having the skill to address it, but not being allowed to, is something that really gets to me.

So much that I don’t even feel like working on side projects, open source and writing posts on my blog.

Enter Lego