Google Server Design + More

Sunday 29 March 2009 at 10:46 am An insight into Google Server Design. Cool - a 12v battery built in!

I'm doing less and less unix so I'm starting to loose my touch (however lightweight that may have been) - its still good to come across online resources that provide handy tips and shortcuts like Commandline Fu.

MIT are offering students their own VM's - XVM. Pretty funky!

See the Long Now Foundations Rosette Project in all its zoomable glory.

Interesting stuff - How Google Routes around Outages. Still seems refreshingly chaotic.

The Internet Archive are moving from a Petabox setup to the Sun Datacenter Container.



My kind of CIO - Jeff Bezos spends a week working in an Amazon distribution centre.

Brilliant - Collected infographics of the current financial crisis.

Another one of those handy unix skills (esp with the upswing in Ubuntu) - Becoming an apt-guru.

If you 'cd' around a lot then try J for 'jump'. Looks handy.

Are We Losing Our Memory ?

Monday 23 March 2009 at 5:34 pm I think I'm going to have to add a 'Long Now' category because this stuff is just fascinating -

From the Long Now Blog comes a series of articles which indicate that as information density increases its lifetime decreases - Are We Losing Our Memory ?

Some pretty awesome engineering feats are described including recovering images from tape take during the 1960's as part of the planning for the moon landings.

People that take up two seats on a bus (or train)

Tuesday 03 March 2009 at 7:13 pm I haven't had a good bit of spleen venting in awhile . . .

There is a special place in hell reserved for people that take up two seats on public transport (bus, train etc).

You know the type, they'll sit down at a window seat and plonk their bag down on the seat next to them. Usually oblivious to the hate-filled stare from everyone else on the bus.

On a mostly empty bus I have no problem with this - on a moderately full bus (particular the morning, evening rush) its just plain annoying and infuriating.

Not wanting to play the grumpy old man I have to say the majority of offenders tend to be teenagers (usually exuding that 'woe is me; life sux' attitude).

Generally, regardless of how many seats are free I try and make a point of indicating that they should shift their stuff so I can sit next to them - the annoyance value of having to be slightly confrontational is usually repaid by the knowledge that I've just given the person something else to be pissed off about. I can almost feel the hooded yoof texting madly 'some crazy person made me move my skateboard and sat right next to me' . . .

Siftables + More

Tuesday 03 March 2009 at 6:58 pm These look totally amazing - Siftables at TED and also covered Siftables at ArsTechnica. Toy blocks will never quite be the same. Imagine the same technologies built into mobile phones, or business cards (click them together to exchange details) . . .

Another in a long line of handy Drive Dock gadgets. Things have certainly come a long way since the clunky drive bays of the late 90's.

Always interesting to read of new tips - Managers as Servants. Must remember to send this to the boss.

For all your difficult math queries - ask Doctor Math.

Some brilliant tips - The Tao of War Photography.

Build it yourself for Linux or the Mac Homeworld - Opensource. I'll need to track down my Windows files so I can try the Mac port.

The dire state of the financial market has turned everyones gaze upon the dark and mysterious world of the Quants - check out these fascinating articles Recipe for Disaster: The Formula That Killed Wall Street and also They Tried to Outsmart Wall Street.

Last but not least PivotX is at Release Candidate status - if you're after a nice blog-engine that doesn't need a database give it a whirl. I'll be upgrading soon . . .