These Things Matter to Me
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
OSCON 2006 Day One
The first two days of OSCON are dedicated to long tutorial sessions lasting at half a day each. Even though it's total information overload, there's definitely a less wacky atmosphere than later in the week, and less topics covered per-hour.
I checked out Javascript Bootcamp. Amy Hoy gave a super comprehensive overview of Javascript. It wasn't so much a tutorial on how to construct Javascript, but more of a deconstruction that catogorized almost any Javascript part you could think of. Her slides will be on her blog at some point. There was a part of me that would have dug it if she "tied it all together" in a different way, but she was extremely familiar with Javascript, and great at relating it to other languages. So it was cool get such specific definitions of everything.
Also: props to Amy for great design on her slides. Everything... from the font size, to the colors, made them the easiest to read slides I've seen so far at this conference.
The other tutorial from Day One I checked out was Damian Conway's Mastering Vim. Damian is a very engaging speaker, so any talk by him is going to be fun. But he gave a great "tricks" style talk about vim which really spoke to how people use editors, instead of just an item-by-item list. For now slides don't seem to be digitally available :(
TECHNORATI TAGS: oscon, oscon2006, javascript, conference, Amy Hoy, Damian Conway
I checked out Javascript Bootcamp. Amy Hoy gave a super comprehensive overview of Javascript. It wasn't so much a tutorial on how to construct Javascript, but more of a deconstruction that catogorized almost any Javascript part you could think of. Her slides will be on her blog at some point. There was a part of me that would have dug it if she "tied it all together" in a different way, but she was extremely familiar with Javascript, and great at relating it to other languages. So it was cool get such specific definitions of everything.
Also: props to Amy for great design on her slides. Everything... from the font size, to the colors, made them the easiest to read slides I've seen so far at this conference.
The other tutorial from Day One I checked out was Damian Conway's Mastering Vim. Damian is a very engaging speaker, so any talk by him is going to be fun. But he gave a great "tricks" style talk about vim which really spoke to how people use editors, instead of just an item-by-item list. For now slides don't seem to be digitally available :(
TECHNORATI TAGS: oscon, oscon2006, javascript, conference, Amy Hoy, Damian Conway
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
These Links Matter to You. Wednesday, July 19, 2006
- Windows Server virtualization to support XEN Virtual machines (a vaporware match made in heaven )
- dual proc vs. dualcore
- more meetings strategies. OK. You're obligated to attend. Now what? (37 signals? critical of meetings? whuh?)
- Why Reiser4 is not in the Linux kernel
- Slashboinged (measuring and surviving popularity. le sigh)
The Right Chip For The Job
From an interview with Sun CIO Bill Vass... I'm quoting an interesting part on how he differentiates between different server architectures, and the best application for them:
Because each server is capable of running the same applications, it can be confusing how to choose one over the other. Since I really like cars, I think of the servers in terms of capacity and speed. For mass transit-- such as an application, portal, Web, directory or proxy server--you might need as many as 32 threads at once. That's what the CoolThreads server offers. It is like a bus.
When you need to share memory quickly, in a large database or an ERP [Enterprise Resource Planning] system, you'd use an UltraSparc. There aren't as many threads, but it shares memory well from chip to chip, and it is pretty fast. I think of it like a BMW M5 sedan that can carry a whole family, with room for luggage.
Finally, the x64 Opteron--AMD's chip--runs very fast on two- and four-threaded applications. That's the two-seater Ferrari.
People are used to the idea of a general-purpose chip to do everything in the IT space. We're working on an application profiler where CIOs can enter information and generate a recommendation for how much memory-sharing they need and which chip is best for any given application.
Monday, July 17, 2006
Portland Nerd Summer
- OSCON July 24-28, 2006 aka O'Reilly Open Source Conference, aka Grab That Outlet
- FOSCON II: the Ruby Rodeo (free talks around Portland happening the same week as OSCON, often during OSCON off-hours)
- OSCAMP (mentioned this earlier. happens same week as OSCON, with the blessing of O'Reilly, overlapping hours with OSCON)
- Portland Code Camp v2.0
- Geek Fair 2006, Saturday July 15th. brought to you by Free Geek (yes, it just happened. I'm trying to establish a trend here, people. sheesh)
- Panic Software's Cabel on The (Portland) Apple Store That Wasn't
Sunday, July 16, 2006
Ubuntu's Classroom
Starting in August, there'll be regular biweekly, real-time IRC-based Ubuntu classes. Topics will range from newbie (email clients), to advanced (kernel stuff, encryption). To see the full schedule, visit the Ubuntu wiki page:
Friday, July 14, 2006
These Links Matter to You. Friday, July 14, 2006
- Skype protocol reverse engineerd ( allow me to quote Nelson when I say: Ha, Haaaaaaaaa)
- Jeff Waugh is leaving (Ubuntu-centric) Canonical ( Jeff's a great speaker and Ubuntu/ GNOME advocate. This change doesn't have to mean anything gnarly. Why such a cryptic post?)
- Ubuntu Studio (a wiki all about/ for musicians using Ubuntu)
Thursday, July 13, 2006
These Links Matter to You. Thursday, July 12, 2006
- VMware Server is out of beta, still free
- like, totally understand /etc/fstab! (did i link to this already? i refer to it a lot. it's updated regularly)
- Barebones Windows version for older hardware (they call it "Windows Fundamentals" More like Windows Awesomentals)
- Dell wants to simplify its pricing (it's true... so many coupon codes, and different prices depending on where you link to... first the blog, now this. it's like Extreme Makeover week for Dell!)
- Mofo cooked an egg on his Macbook
- Vanilla Forums maker wonders aloud if open source can work for him (i love Vanilla forums, and think Mark is great. But the question he's asking has been answered many times already... Tim O'Reilly says, "obscurity is a bigger threat than piracy." My variation: "obscurity is a bigger threat than competition!")
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
The Ubuntu Title Font: Free For All Operating Systems
More like the quick brown awesome.
via Ubuntu Blog
via Ubuntu BlogTECHNORATI TAGS: font, free, lgpl, sysadmin, ubuntu, linux, desgin, resource
...$sudo apt-get install ttf-ubuntu-title
will install the font and make it available to GIMP, OpenOffice and everywhere else that you can use fonts.If you only want the font, to install it on another OS or such, you can get it here. The font is an OpenType Font, which installs just like a TrueType font. The font is licensed using the LGPL...
These Links Matter to You. Wednesday, July 12, 2006
- Firefox usage get past 15% in the U.S., almost 40% in Germany (wowza!)
- Conde Nast (owner of Wired, the paper magazine) buys Wired Digital (the website) (you either care or you don't. it's a long story) (via Valleywag)
- Top 10 CEO blogs (barely any of these are CEO blogs, the blogger points out) (via Jason Calacanis)
- IBM shines its light on Drupal ( via Digg)
- There's an official Ubuntu commercial repository. You can add Opera and RealPlayer to Ubuntu via apt-get (the kicker here is that these non-open source programs are available via Canonical servers. no big whoop) (via Ubuntu Blog)
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
Operational Competency. Tim O'Reilly, You Like Totes Read My Mind!
Growing Pains, Operations, and Massages
My friends and I have parts of our digital lives spread out over various hosts and service providers. In both personal and professional use, it hasn't gone unnoticed that many places are struggling to keep up with operational issues. Even the posterchild of scalability, Flickr, is regularly down for maintenance. (With Flickr it's not that disruptive, because they usually give tons of notice, and have a cute message up during downtime. ) But it's indicative of the state of things when the people who literally wrote the book on the subject, are regularly down.
I don't mean to attack Flickr. They probably handle operational issues better than anybody else. But what's going right now is that it's easier to create a tool than it is to master its implementation. And tools and services are getting adopted and integrated into our lives faster than we're learning how to use them, support them,... or live without them.
RUBY ON RAILS
I know of one web-hosting provider who is a leader in Ruby-on-Rails hosting. Though very technically sophisticated and literate, their service-level lately has been horrible for all web-related services, not just RoR. They do concede a change in performance and availability, but blame this on their users not using Ruby on Rails "correctly," hijacking resources from everybody else! This explanation is acceptable with a one-off fluke runaway process. But when the service-level for users and servers has been suffering for months on end, it's time to re-think what's going on! If it's clear that certain Ruby on Rails tacts can kill a server, then tailor adminstration for such occurences. Clear-cut = controllable. But it's not clearcut. It's not predictable, and in the case of this service provider, they should admit that the "right" way to use Ruby on Rails, for both developer and administrator, is still being worked out.
I'm not suggesting Ruby On Rails is a bad tool, simply that the pace of development with the tool has lapped the pace of admistration of the tool.
OPERATIONS: THE NEW SECRET SAUCE
This week, Tim O'Reilly wrote a great post about operational/ deployment challenges of web services, and how operational performance could end up being a market differentiator.
One of his primary angles was comparing open source software to commercial software, in terms of operational options/ tools/ culture. He left the post undecided on whether any differences truly existed. But I was more interested in his phrase, "operational competency," a deceptively simple idea.
Whether software is for free, or for pay; the time, energy, and experience it takes to wire it for your needs is a crucial part of its utility to you. When we start to use and play with tools and services before we achieve operational competency, we need to understand the consquences. I guess this is typical early-adopter risks kind of stuff.
What can we do about these lopsided production: operational-competency relationships?
Related links:
Growing Pains, Operations, and Massages
My friends and I have parts of our digital lives spread out over various hosts and service providers. In both personal and professional use, it hasn't gone unnoticed that many places are struggling to keep up with operational issues. Even the posterchild of scalability, Flickr, is regularly down for maintenance. (With Flickr it's not that disruptive, because they usually give tons of notice, and have a cute message up during downtime. ) But it's indicative of the state of things when the people who literally wrote the book on the subject, are regularly down.
I don't mean to attack Flickr. They probably handle operational issues better than anybody else. But what's going right now is that it's easier to create a tool than it is to master its implementation. And tools and services are getting adopted and integrated into our lives faster than we're learning how to use them, support them,... or live without them.
RUBY ON RAILS
I know of one web-hosting provider who is a leader in Ruby-on-Rails hosting. Though very technically sophisticated and literate, their service-level lately has been horrible for all web-related services, not just RoR. They do concede a change in performance and availability, but blame this on their users not using Ruby on Rails "correctly," hijacking resources from everybody else! This explanation is acceptable with a one-off fluke runaway process. But when the service-level for users and servers has been suffering for months on end, it's time to re-think what's going on! If it's clear that certain Ruby on Rails tacts can kill a server, then tailor adminstration for such occurences. Clear-cut = controllable. But it's not clearcut. It's not predictable, and in the case of this service provider, they should admit that the "right" way to use Ruby on Rails, for both developer and administrator, is still being worked out.
I'm not suggesting Ruby On Rails is a bad tool, simply that the pace of development with the tool has lapped the pace of admistration of the tool.
OPERATIONS: THE NEW SECRET SAUCE
This week, Tim O'Reilly wrote a great post about operational/ deployment challenges of web services, and how operational performance could end up being a market differentiator.
One of his primary angles was comparing open source software to commercial software, in terms of operational options/ tools/ culture. He left the post undecided on whether any differences truly existed. But I was more interested in his phrase, "operational competency," a deceptively simple idea.
Whether software is for free, or for pay; the time, energy, and experience it takes to wire it for your needs is a crucial part of its utility to you. When we start to use and play with tools and services before we achieve operational competency, we need to understand the consquences. I guess this is typical early-adopter risks kind of stuff.
What can we do about these lopsided production: operational-competency relationships?
Related links:
- http://www.hawkwings.net/2006/07/07/hawk-wings-first-birthday-problems
- http://nazgum.wordpress.com/2006/07/10/my-web-hosting-journey/
These Links Matter to You. Tuesday, July 11, 2006
- Dell's new one2one blog (Dell already had product/ group blogs here and there, but this is one of those human blogs, updated frequently) (via Valleywag)
- VMware's VMTN has a Kubuntu 6.06 virtual appliance up
- Firefox 2.0 Beta candidates
- Tim O'Reilly's Canaries in a Coalmine (Two high-profile Mac users recently switched to Ubuntu Linux. Tim says lots of interesting stuff, like that Redhat should pay more attention than Apple.)
Monday, July 10, 2006
These Links Matter to You. Monday, July 10, 2006
- Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake lets you install VMware Player with apt-get/ Synaptic, without having to visit VMware.com ( Just make sure your Multiverse repository is enabled. BTW, doesn't it seem like Ubuntu and VMware Player are making eachother more and more popular?) (via VMware blog)
- O'Reilly keeps getting sweeter. During their OSCON event ('spensive), they're facilitating a free event that happens at the same time, OSCamp. (plus, last year there was FOSCON. Will it happen again?)
- There's gonna be a one-day Wordpress Conference Saturday, August 5th, 2006. San Francisco (via PhotoMatt)
- There's a WordPress podcast
- There's no such thing as a one-hour meeting "If you’re going to schedule a meeting that lasts one hour and invite 10 people to attend then it’s a ten-hour meeting, not a one-hour meeting."
These Links Matter to You. Sunday, July 9, 2006
- Best Week Ever's Mac Ad parodies (let it play through, there are 3 in a row)
- Sun working to get Xen on Solaris (article points out Sun's awareness of VMware's popularity and adoption of Solaris guests. Can we see Solaris VMware hosts in the future, please?!?)
- videos from RailsConf 2006 are creeping in. (haven't watched any of these, but generally can recommend anything by Why the Lucky Stiff, and just like to point out free videos. coz, duh: free videos)
- WordPress announces Automattic Support Network (so cool they did that without using the "E" word
enterprise )
Friday, July 07, 2006
Packages You Gotta Install When Running Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake As A VMware Guest (a newbie How-To, and a Why-To)
When running any VMware guest, it goes without saying that you want to have VMware tools installed.
In the case of Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake, here are some packages that will make VMware tools much happier:
Can I break it down for you?
1. sudo: Tells Ubuntu Linux you temporarily want root powers. These are needed to install this software)
2. apt-get: This is a software management tool. It tells Ubuntu to go out and grab some software that's not already installed.
3. install: an argument to apt-get. I think you can guess what it does.
4. build-essential: This a package name. This package happens to include to make, gcc (a compiler), and some other stuff.
5. linux-headers: This is also a package name. This package contains kernel header files that can provide helpful information to other programs in the future. In this case, VMware will find them handy.
6. uname -r: Go ahead and run it alone like that. It prints the kernel release of the version of Linux you're using. By combining it with linux-headers above, we were just adding the kernel release to the name of linux-headers, which were needed to specify which of the many linux-headers packages out there.
TECHNORATI TAGS: vmware, vmware-tools, virtualization, ubuntu, dapperdrake, linux, sysadmin, tips, Dapper Drake, newbie
In the case of Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake, here are some packages that will make VMware tools much happier:
- build-essential
- linux-headers (for your kernel version)
# sudo apt-get install build-essential linux-headers-`uname -r`(you will be asked for your password)
Can I break it down for you?
1. sudo: Tells Ubuntu Linux you temporarily want root powers. These are needed to install this software)
2. apt-get: This is a software management tool. It tells Ubuntu to go out and grab some software that's not already installed.
3. install: an argument to apt-get. I think you can guess what it does.
4. build-essential: This a package name. This package happens to include to make, gcc (a compiler), and some other stuff.
5. linux-headers: This is also a package name. This package contains kernel header files that can provide helpful information to other programs in the future. In this case, VMware will find them handy.
6. uname -r: Go ahead and run it alone like that. It prints the kernel release of the version of Linux you're using. By combining it with linux-headers above, we were just adding the kernel release to the name of linux-headers, which were needed to specify which of the many linux-headers packages out there.
TECHNORATI TAGS: vmware, vmware-tools, virtualization, ubuntu, dapperdrake, linux, sysadmin, tips, Dapper Drake, newbie
Thursday, July 06, 2006
Open Source Clone of 37signals' Basecamp Released!
You're probably familiar with 37signals' hosted software product, Basecamp. It helps teams collaborate and manage projects. It's fast, simple, very easy to learn, and has some fanatical users. It's built using the open source Ruby on Rails framework, but Basecamp itself is not open source. In fact, you can't buy it in any capacity to install it locally, proprietary or otherwise. The only way to get Basecamp is to use 37signals' hosted offerings, some of which are free.
Basecamp's hosted-only status makes today's public alpha release of activeCollab, an open source Basecamp-ish application, very exciting. Yeah, lots of people are interested in talking about what this means for 37signals' business. But I'm less excited about having a free alternative to Basecamp (which I do pay for, use, and like), and more excited about having a local install ofBasecamp activeCollab. Does everybody want to administer things themselves? No. But once something goes open, it means it can be local, hosted, whatever. It means your data can travel with you as you shrink and grow, or need slight customization. When there's only a single implementation of a way to interact or store data, it can sometimes make people a little scared to totally dive in to things.
activeCollab is alpha, and they barely survived their Digg today. Some people have reported trouble installing it. Who knows how it will turn out. But I'm really rooting for them (That doesn't mean against 37signals, sheesh. Haters.) There are so many cool web-based applications out there. And they're really convenient and fun to use. I just think the next step here is having the same options with them that you do with other kinds of data. 37signals is great about letting you get your data out in some form. It's just a little less useful outside of Basecamp!
You're probably familiar with 37signals' hosted software product, Basecamp. It helps teams collaborate and manage projects. It's fast, simple, very easy to learn, and has some fanatical users. It's built using the open source Ruby on Rails framework, but Basecamp itself is not open source. In fact, you can't buy it in any capacity to install it locally, proprietary or otherwise. The only way to get Basecamp is to use 37signals' hosted offerings, some of which are free.Basecamp's hosted-only status makes today's public alpha release of activeCollab, an open source Basecamp-ish application, very exciting. Yeah, lots of people are interested in talking about what this means for 37signals' business. But I'm less excited about having a free alternative to Basecamp (which I do pay for, use, and like), and more excited about having a local install of
activeCollab is alpha, and they barely survived their Digg today. Some people have reported trouble installing it. Who knows how it will turn out. But I'm really rooting for them (That doesn't mean against 37signals, sheesh. Haters.) There are so many cool web-based applications out there. And they're really convenient and fun to use. I just think the next step here is having the same options with them that you do with other kinds of data. 37signals is great about letting you get your data out in some form. It's just a little less useful outside of Basecamp!
- activeCollab's page (kinda barebones today, after their Digg)
- I found this story via a thread on the Lussumo Community forums (home of the excellent Vanilla forum software, a very pretty, open source, multilingual forum)
Ubuntu List of Lists
- Spiffing Up Ubuntu 6.06
- (Ubuntu) Essentials, 2006 edition (a fun, helpful, kinda snarky walk through Ubuntu applications, with a Mac-centric perspective)
"Kipi plugins. It’s just like iPhoto except it calls albums “tags”, exports to Flickr for free, exports to HTML that validates, stores my important metadata in a SQLite database, can be operated entirely with a keyboard, and doesn’t suck."
