What I Think Of Assange
Posted on | December 9, 2010 | 1 Comment
At this point, my thoughts most likely dwindle on becoming obsolete, but I’ll post them anyway.
When a sensational glob of information is posted, I’m thrown back to the Nixon era. George Wiley is technically my uncle, though, unfortunately he met his demise long before our familial relationship began. When I hear the word “scandal”, I expect that a hard working journalist has devoted a significant amount of their life, despite personal loss, to uncovering something that has value beyond sensation and shock. This sort of devotion demands a level and understanding of ethics that is far superior to the person(s) named in the report, no? Nixon had a ‘hit list’ and my uncle did meet his death under rather curious circumstances. I’m not beyond the scope of conspiracy, but it was a boating accident. Read more
The Engineering Panic Room
Posted on | November 3, 2010 | No Comments
Have you ever been in a situation where you were forced to act knowing that the margin for error was zero? I think that most of us have, perhaps just avoiding an animal on the road without swerving into oncoming traffic while driving. In a crisis, the most appropriate response usually comes not from thinking, but simply allowing reflexes to take over.
If you are a software engineer, you will enter what I call the panic room whenever your reflexes say run like hell and doing so is not a possibility. You have three months to rescue something that has been languishing for three years and you know that there is zero room for mistakes. Every line of code you commit must be your friend next month, going back to the drawing board is not going to be an option. It is a recording with one take, every single thing you ship gets carved into stone.
What exactly is the panic room? It is a place where smart people go to observe everything and play with possibilities to try to determine what course of action is going to be the correct course to take. It is the process of removing yourself from the problem in order to more effectively solve it, while everyone else sees you wasting time and not committing anything. It is not your happy place, it is your safe place and you need to be prepared to go there and seal the door. Read more
All Saint’s Day
Posted on | November 1, 2010 | No Comments
So here I am, enjoying my sixth rendition of All Saint’s Day here in The Philippines. The last five years found me travelling to the family grave plot to keep those who have passed company on this day, the day where spirits can purportedly walk in daylight. This year found me home, alone with my wife and daughter enjoying the festivities at hand without me while I get over the last leg of a nasty case of conjunctivitis.
Filipinos are a very spiritual and quite often superstitious people, which is one of the many traits that they enjoy with almost every other living (or dead) inhabitant of planet Earth except in most situations the US. While the idea of a large, united family unit was lost to many Americans around the time that LSD was mass produced, the atomic family is still very much a part of the culture of the rest of the world. I can’t help but digress from work and study today in order to ponder the world’s tenacity to cherish and sometimes worship those who have passed.
Death, when you look at it closely, is a very complex process. In fact, I can’t conceive a reasonable exponent to illustrate the sheer number of ways that someone could die, I suspect that the possibilities are infinite. No matter the catalyst (a piano falling on you, a train wreck that severs you in half, a blast of some kind , etc) our bodies always shut down in some kind of order. If one thing stops working, another soon follows and an orderly chain of predictable events ensues. It is therefore natural and convenient for us to stop contemplating just how someone died, beyond taking measures to avert a similar tragedy in the future. Given this, we also want to know why someone died (from some sort of verdict handed down by our ethereal court of choice) and what mystical force decided that it was time to initiate such a motion. This has birthed wisdom since before Christ, yet we still believe in mystical forces. Read more
So You Want To Be A Linux System Administrator?
Posted on | November 1, 2010 | No Comments
I was digging through Server Fault today looking for some thoughts on CARP (think HSRP, just free) and came across an honest and interesting question. The author wanted to know what skills and experience would make him more desirable in the world of UNIX like operating systems. I began to answer his question and found myself writing an entire anthology as an answer, so I’m bringing it to my blog instead. A bit of background for those who don’t know me, I’m someone who hires programmers and system administrators. My business card says CTO and I’m not ‘part owner of a start-up’ (anyone who doesn’t get that joke wouldn’t appreciate it anyway), so I consider myself to be somewhat authoritative on the topic.
The first thing you need to do is stop thinking and saying the word ‘Linux’. I’m not going off on an idealistic tangent, I’m advising you to realize that you are working with a UNIX like operating system. Linux is an awesome kernel, your experience is rooted (no pun intended) mostly in user space. For now, get the word out of your head completely. Go meditate if you think it will help, I’ll wait. When you start thinking “UNIX that doesn’t suck”, continue reading. Read more
Tags: certifications > gnu linux > learning > marketing-fud > mindfulness > Rants > teaching
Banning airtelbroadband.in Due To SPAM and no response
Posted on | September 24, 2010 | 4 Comments
Every day, I get at least 10 human submitted e-mails through my contact form that promise my blog can become #1 on the Internet. I’m sorry, and I don’t want to offend my visitors from India, but this is very typical for ISP’s in India. So long as a client pays and doesn’t attract government attention, let them do what they do .. seems to be the motto of that company. Every time it comes not only from another IP, but a whole new /20. Thankfully, their IP ranges are reversed.
In 24 hours, if airtelbroadband.in is your ISP, some parts of this web site will not work. I’m sorry, I have no other recourse.
I have contacted the listed abuse e-mail for airtelbroadband.in no less than ten times in two months. Radio silence.
Eat my string-matching fu, you spamming (but hard working) call center agents!
Debunking SEO Myths And Old Webmaster’s Tales
Posted on | August 6, 2010 | No Comments
Would you wear a tin foil hat if it thought it would help your page rank? I wouldn’t either, but you would be surprised what some people do in an effort to get more visitors to their web site. One of the most useful tags on Pro Webmasters is the SEO tag, we’re already working collaboratively to debunk or prove myths about search engine optimization. There are even several Google employees helping out by cautioning people to not try any crazy tricks to improve their ranking.
Who would have thought that the best way to attract visitors is to provide standards compliant semantically correct HTML documents that also offered interesting and useful content? I’ve known this for years, but it feels good to see my thoughts validated and endorsed by my peers.
If you have not already done so, check out Pro Webmasters. The questions are interesting, the community is friendly and the turn around to get an answer is often less than an hour. If your question has anything at all to do with maintaining or operating a web site, it is welcome there. Just try to ask questions that can be answered with facts and data vs opinion.
On Q&A And Broken Windows
Posted on | July 13, 2010 | No Comments
Have you ever driven through a bad neighborhood with lots of rubbish blowing about and felt less guilty than you would otherwise by throwing a banana peel out of your car window? Perhaps an empty soda can? If you have, you’ve demonstrated what we call the broken window theory. Not surprisingly, the theory also applies to digital real estate, if you can accept that term long enough to finish this brief essay.
When most people get in their cars, they have every intention of arriving at a specific place in a certain amount of time. Some people just get bored and go for a drive. The Internet works this way as well, you might boot up your computer and go straight to e-mail, or wander around a bit. In either metaphor, both people have equal chances of driving through the same ‘digital’ neighborhoods.
I’m digressing into metaphors, so lets get to the point. One of the broadest reasons people use the Internet is to gain some kind of knowledge, though some may not realize that hidden intention when they start. If you want knowledge, its most conveniently obtained by asking a question. Q&A sites help ensure that your natural “how do I ...” question works in search engines, by providing results that they can index. Read more
No More Favors To Internet Explorer
Posted on | July 2, 2010 | No Comments
This is a short rant. I am not going to continue to work around a browser that does not adhere to standards, no matter how many people use what I wrote. If this site looks awkward for you, get a standards compliant browser. I am also officially ignoring any bug reports pertaining to stuff that I wrote not working correctly in various versions of Internet Explorer. I’d rather just issue you a refund than add kludges that will break in the future, only to add more kludges.
Try:
- Firefox
- Google Chrome
- Opera
- Konqueror
- Or even lynx might be a better experience.
We have standards, the company that wrote Internet Explorer choses to ignore them, hence I won’t support it. Note, I’m not demeaning Lynx, I use it avidly.
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