I’ve been attempting to understand how hard disk cache sizes affect performance recently (and whether it’s worth shelling-out about twice as much for a drive with 128MB vs one with just 64MB). What would be the best way to personally investigate the performance differences to help determine which is better (if there’s even a noticeable difference)? …
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Category:technical
always use verbose output when troubleshooting
In my eBook, Debugging and Supporting Software Systems, I wrote about several aspects of submitting good bug reports and support ticket, how to communicate, and more. If you’re ever troubleshooting a problem, it is universally helpful to enable the most verbose output possible in logging (stdout, stderr, and log files). You may not want it …
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irony at olf2013 – the olpc and sugar
I played with the OLPC for a little bit at the Fedora table at OLF this past weekend. The Sugar desktop environment works on the metaphor of circles. It took me a few minutes to figure them out, but as soon as I was pointed at the right button (a dot, of all things), I …
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#moosefs @smartfile – distributed, redundant file management (#olf2013 talk)
As promised, some follow-up to OLF. Chris from SmartFile gave a great talk at OLF this year on MooseFS and how SmartFile leverages it to handle their rapidly-growing storage infrastructure. Specifically, he compared it to Ceph and GlusterFS. In short, MooseFS provides better configurability than either Ceph or {{GlusterFS}}, runs with lower overhead, and provides …
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olf 2013 in the bag
This past weekend I went to OLF with my friend Peter and a fella who’s now more than an acquaintance, Nathaniel – one of the lead devs for FreeIPA at Red Hat. Got to go to a variety of great talks and sessions, met some awesome folks, and just generally enjoyed the geek weekend 🙂 I’ll be …
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pmp project management professional certification exam preparation course in a book for passing the pmp project management professional exam by william manning
New record for longest blog title I’ve ever had. I think. First, the pros: it’s concise, finishing at a mere 91 numbered pages, including sample questions and the index. Second, the cons: it’s 63 pages of bullet points with little-to-no explanation of terms, examples, etc. {{William Manning}} appears to have done an admirable job of …
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after “the cloud”
Cloud computing has been hyped for the last decade+. For those few of you haven’t heard of it and understand it, cloud computing is a computing-as-a-utility concept wherein compute (and storage) happens on systems which you may not own. That’s it. So – now that we’ve been offloading our storage, computing, and other tasks to …
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what if human cloning …
… instead of making a unique individual spawned from a synapse record instead created the reverse of a horcrux? For those who haven’t seen the {{Harry Potter}} movies or read {{J K Rowling}}’s books, a horcrux is an object (potentially “alive”) into which a wizard can split his/her soul to make themselves harder to kill. …
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alif the unseen by g willow wilson
Along with {{Mira Grant}} (Feed & Deadline reviews), I think I have found a female author I can read. {{G Willow Wilson}}’s debut novel, {{Alif the Unseen}} blends technothriller (a la {{Cryptonomicon}}), Arab mythology, statism, distrust of the government, and more. The story follows a young mixed-blood technophyte who has been making his living on …
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hashtagiquette – inline, or append?
There seems to be a great deal of divide over where, when, and how hashtags should be used on social media services like Twitter. If you google “hashtag etiquette”, you’ll get a variety of differing results. So – what’s the best route to follow? When is it ok to create your own? Why would you want …
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what is the “new” python?
9 years ago, {{Paul Graham}} made a controversial statement: [W]hen you choose a language, you’re also choosing a community. The programmers you’ll be able to hire to work on a {{Java}} project won’t be as smart as the ones you could get to work on a project written in {{Python}}. And the quality of your …
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p2p cloud storage
I have yet to find a peer-to-peer file storage system. You’d think that with all the p2p and cloud services out there, there’d be a way of dropping files into a virtual folder and having them show up around the network (encrypted, of course) – replicated on some kinda of RAID-over-WAN methodology. I’m thinking {{Cryptonomicon}}’s …
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avnet buying seamless technologies
Avnet (AVT) is acquiring Seamless Technologies (my employer). Full Press Release (well, the important part): (and WSJ reprint) Avnet, Inc. Announces Agreement to Acquire Assets of Seamless Technologies, Inc. Significantly Expands Cloud and Automation Solutions PHOENIX–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Avnet, Inc. (NYSE:AVT) announced today that it has agreed to acquire substantially all of the assets of Seamless Technologies, …
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automation {gp}
The way people moved up the ladder in IT during my early days (starting in 1975) was to take on new projects that allowed them time to master the new software and become the local expert. As you became the local expert on many new software products, management became very comfortable giving you more and …
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this is not the year of the linux desktop
2013 will not be the YoLD. Nor will 2014. Or 2015. This will be a shock to the fanatical FLOSS heads out there. But not to me. I’ve never thought that “this will be the year of the Linux desktop” – regardless of how many magazine, journal, blog, and other articles have been published about …
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the gospel according to hashtags
For the past many months I have been meeting almost bi-weekly with a small group to study the book of Matthew. We started in Jan 2012, and as of the end of May of 2013, we’ve made it through chapter 21. At our last meeting, I had an epiphany: if the gospels were written today, …
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updates to connexions modules
Starting this week, and continuing over the next several weeks, there will be several updates and expansions coming to my published Connexions Collection (original publishing comments), “Debugging and Supporting Software Systems“. I would love to collect feedback and be able to incorporate any suggestions for improvement that you may have. Please feel free to either …
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delivering solutions – “shipping is a feature!”
Back in 2009, {{Joel Spolsky}} wrote an article called The Duct Tape Programmer. Of everything he has written, I think this is the very pinnacle, and it is summed in one simple sentence in the middle: “Shipping is a feature.” I’ve referenced this article twice before (in Feb and Sep of ’11). Why is this …
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don’t implement your scheduler in a pure queue design
Recently came across a seriously funky issue with one of HP’s products (don’t laugh – I know there’s loads of funkiness in HP tools). HP Cloud Service Automation (3.1) allows you to schedule requests in the future. It also allows you schedule end dates for subscriptions. That’s neat. Here’s the problem: if you delete a …
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cloud computing in easy steps by david crookes
In my ongoing hunt to find worth-while tech books (most recently in the field of cloud computing), I’m here today to write about {{Cloud Computing in Easy Steps}} by {{David Crookes}}. First to note – this book is NOT about how to deploy cloud computing. It is about how to use lots of free and inexpensive options if you …
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call
I learned about the call command in Windows recently. Some context – was trying to run a command via HPSA at a customer, but kept getting an error that the program was not a recognized internal or external command. Very frustrating. Then one of the guys I worked with suggested adding a “call” to the …
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cloud computing bible by barrie sosinsky
The first comment I have about {{Barrie Sosinsky}}’s book, {{Cloud Computing Bible}} is that it’s the first one I’ve read that doesn’t appear to have any sucky parts. This is a plus. {{Hybrid Cloud for Dummies}} was pretty much a waste of time. {{Deploying OpenStack}} was even worse. {{Sosinsky}}’s work, though, is not only less …
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organizational knowledge capture, retention, and dissemination
Knowledge capture, retention, and dissemination has been an interest of mine for a long time. I have written about various aspects of it before. The most vital commodity any organization has is the knowledge of its members – it does not matter if it is a historical society, company, church, or school: the organizational knowledge …
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decentralizing email
After several years of pushing all of my personal email into Gmail, I’ve decided that relying [almost] exclusively on one provider is just not the best idea ever. Google is great. But, as with any cloud service, exclusively relying on just one provider is not the best. Going forward, I am going to be relying …
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hybrid cloud for dummies by judith hurwitz et al
Many years ago, I started programming C++ with a friend of the family and member of my home church. We dove in with {{Borland C++ for Dummies}} by {{Michael Hyman}} and {{Stephen Prata}}’s {{C++ Primer Plus}} (Waite Group). Prata’s book was fantastic – if you were at the advanced high school / collegiate level. While …
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