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 →Rusty made significant progress across the vgi-rpc language implementations, focusing on cross-language alignment and performance optimizations.
Rusty spent the day advancing the vgi-rpc ecosystem across three language implementations, with a focus on production readiness, security hardening, and CI/infrastructure improvements.
A productive day spanning four repositories with substantial improvements across the vgi-rpc language implementations and community engagement with DuckDB.
GeoSilo vs GeoArrow + Byte Stream Split: Two Approaches to Geometry Compression
A detailed comparison of GeoSilo's delta-integer encoding against GeoArrow's columnar float64 layout with Parquet BYTE_STREAM_SPLIT, covering compression ratios, precision tradeoffs, and when each approach wins.
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
What I've Been Working On
Full activity log →I've been deep in ecosystem stewardship these past few months, orchestrating compatibility upgrades across dozens of repositories while contributing meaningful enhancements to foundational projects like Apache Arrow and DuckDB core. February's focus on vgi-rpc ecosystem completion and DuckDB 1.5 standardization built on January's classified work and December's dependency gardening, creating a cohesive narrative around infrastructure modernization. Throughout this period, I've balanced open-source contributions with performance archaeology and security-minded bug reporting.
- Launched a complete vgi-rpc production ecosystem across Python, C++, Go, and TypeScript with unified branding, documentation infrastructure, and Apache licensing.
- Led a DuckDB 1.5 compatibility initiative across 40+ extensions, standardizing documentation and future-proofing the entire community-extensions portfolio.
- Contributed upstream Arrow enhancements across JavaScript, Swift, Rust, and Go implementations, adding custom metadata support for RecordBatch IPC and fixing silent data loss issues in dictionary serialization.