Rusty Conover
Data infrastructure engineer and founder of Query.Farm. Building DuckDB extensions, scaling data platforms, and writing about what I learn along the way.
Recent Activity
View all →A remarkably productive day focused on bug fixes and open-source stewardship across the DuckDB ecosystem.
Rusty focused on private repository work today, making 2 commits to an internal project. While the specifics of the private codebase remain undisclosed, the day's activity suggests focused iteration on an ongoing initiative.
Rusty cut multiple releases on vgi-rpc-python today, shipping three versions in quick succession: v0.6.6, v0.6.7, and v0.6.8. The rapid release cadence suggests either bug fixes or refinements rolling out to address issues discovered in testing or production use.
VGI Injector: A Tiny HTTPS Download-and-Execute Binary in Zig
I needed a self-contained binary that downloads a program over HTTPS and exec's it — small enough to run in a FROM scratch container with nothing else. Go and Rust couldn't get small enough. Zig could.
TIME Data Type Compatibility Across Databases
A survey of the TIME data type across 14 databases, comparing supported ranges, maximum values, and whether the special value 24:00:00 is accepted.
Telemetry for DuckDB Extensions Without the Pain
I open-sourced the telemetry client I use across Query.Farm's DuckDB extensions. It's two files, one function call, and it only collects platform and version info.
Releasing vgi-rpc: An RPC Framework Built on Apache Arrow
I built an RPC framework for Python that uses Apache Arrow IPC as the wire format and Python Protocol classes as the interface definition. No .proto files, no codegen — just type annotations.
Acronym-Aware Case Conversions in the DuckDB Inflector Extension
The Inflector extension for DuckDB now supports configurable acronyms, so case conversions preserve terms like HTML, API, and URL as fully uppercase — configured through a native DuckDB setting.
DuckDB Extension Development Workshop
DuckDB Developer Meeting #1 — Amsterdam, Netherlands
Building on Flight: Real-World Lessons from the DuckDB Airport Extension
Apache Arrow Summit 2025 — Paris, France
Query.Farm: Growing DuckDB Community Extensions
DuckDB Amsterdam Meetup #3 — Amsterdam, Netherlands
What I've Been Working On
Full activity log →I've been deep in DuckDB ecosystem stewardship these past months, upgrading infrastructure across dozens of extensions while contributing upstream enhancements to Apache Arrow and shipping production-ready systems like the vgi-rpc ecosystem. The work spans from low-level performance archaeology and core database improvements to high-level community gardening—keeping the open-source landscape fresh while tackling everything from silent data drops to SEGVs in aggregate callbacks. Between the visible contributions, I've also been conducting classified operations across multiple projects that remain tastefully mysterious.
- Led a DuckDB 1.5 compatibility push with 40+ PRs across the Query-farm extension portfolio, standardizing documentation and future-proofing extensions like airport, shellfs, webmacro, and inflector.
- Contributed upstream to Apache Arrow across four language implementations, adding custom metadata support for RecordBatch IPC messages and fixing silent data drops in dictionary serialization.
- Shipped Fair Weather Friend with PWA support, astronomical stargazing mode, cycling-specific weather scoring, and dog walking mode with paw safety alerts.