Thank you Steve Jobs

October 5, 2011 Leave a comment

SteveJobs in Apple

I was 16 years old in 1983 when my high school physics teacher, Rocky Trembly, carried a little white box into the classroom. He fired it up and the dark screen lit up and said, “Hello.” I didn’t know it at the time but that moment turned out to be the cornerstone to a lifetime of exploration and discovery. Throughout my life I’ve earned a living as a art director, writer, technology manager, web master and systems engineer and none of it would have been possible or probable without that single moment. Now as the screen goes dark I’d like to say thank you to Steve (and Rocky) for making my world and the whole world a better more different place. “Goodbye”

Filed under Experience

Make: Online | Why Every Maker Should Learn Chinese

July 8, 2011 Leave a comment

via Make: Online | Why Every Maker Should Learn Chinese.

Nǐ hǎo 你好! Permanently on my desk, and everywhere I go is an iPad/iPhone app called Pleco, which has my custom flash cards that I use to quiz myself about 300 Chinese (Mandarin) characters. I’m getting pretty good with the help of a weekly instructor found via Craigslist, daily walks through Chinatown in NYC, and a website called Memrise. In less than a month I’ve been able to specifically translate (a lot of) the data sheets for products I’m sampling/purchasing for my job at Adafruit Industries, and for fun/downtime I’m translating some of the Chinese graffiti in Blade Runner (I always wanted to know what they said).

At this point, you might be asking, “Why are you wasting your time learning such a hard language? Computers can do it — why don’t you hire a translator?” Or “the USA will make electronic components again, really!” Well, I’m going to tell you why and how I’ve decided to devote the next 2+ years or so of my free time to learning (Mandarin) Chinese with my own deadline to be fluent by 2016.

In this week’s article I’ll talk about why I think it’s a good idea for any maker to consider picking up some new language skills and specifically what I’m doing. A lot of my articles tend to be about the future (I can’t wait to look back on these 5 years from now). So, yes, I think a lot of us are going to find speaking, reading, and writing the language of the soon-to-be biggest economy in the world and, who makes almost everything, is a good idea. It’s something to consider learning, starting now, particularly for makers, especially the ones who run maker businesses.

continue reading at Make: Online | Why Every Maker Should Learn Chinese.

Filed under Interesting

Picking the Right Web Server for the Right Job

July 6, 2011 Leave a comment

When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Thats as true for Web servers as it is for work around the house. This overview explains the pluses and minuses of the obvious candidates — IIS and Apache — and suggests a few alternatives worth exploring.

via Picking the Right Web Server for the Right Job.

Filed under Experience

Evernote – Architectural Digest (http://blog.evernote.com/)

May 23, 2011 Leave a comment

Not everything is best suited for the cloud. I’ve used Evernote for a few years and always thought their performance was impressive.


http://blog.evernote.com/tech/2011/05/17/architectural-digest/#

Take aways:

  • Shards – protection in silos
  • Single-tier architecture; No remote storage
  •  Evernote’s business model and cost structure. Evernote is notable for their pioneering of the freemium model, based on the idea from their CEO: The easiest way to get 1 million people paying is to get 1 billion people using. Evernote is designed to become profitable at a 1% conversion rate.

Filed under Interesting

PHP on AWS Elastic Beanstalk | Cameron Stokes’s Blog

April 19, 2011 Leave a comment

A great article and simple way to take advantage os Amazon’s Elastic Beanstalk service even if you don’t work in Java. I’m working on integrating this approach with Eclipse’s AWS Toolkit to access all the server management tasks close to my code. I’l post and update if it turns ugly.

via PHP on AWS Elastic Beanstalk | Cameron Stokes’s Blog.

While Amazon claims they’re working on other platforms, initially Beanstalk only supports Java applications deployed in the Apache Tomcat 6 container. However…using Quercus, a “100% Java implementation of PHP 5″ from Caucho, we can run PHP using AWS Elastic Beanstalk. All it takes is setting up a simple Maven project.

Filed under How-to Tagged with , ,

Install Python Fabric Library on Mac 10.6 (Snow Leopard)

April 11, 2011 1 Comment

I’ve been doing a lot of Python work lately to manage a butt-load of Linux servers and I’ve been using the Fabric Library to help me connect remotely and securely. I had some problems getting the library and dependencies to install on my Mac laptop so here is what I did. Add a reply if there is an easier way.

> sudo easy_install pip    # PIP is recommended for installation
> sudo -s   # Creates a new sudo shell 
> export ARCHFLAGS="-arch i386 -arch x86_64"   # Need to set some GCC flags
> pip install fabric   # Get the install on

Props go to these guys and stackoverflow for helping out.

Side note: If you run into this error in the console or log when running your script there is a simple fix. Wrap your env.password with str() (ie str(env.password)) and voila. A better solution may be to create a log handler and ignore and I’ll post that solution if I have tome to figure it out. 

> No handlers could be found for logger "paramiko.transport"

Filed under Fix-it, How-to, Python

Out of DiskSpace? Use Ducks | aplawrence.com

January 21, 2011 Leave a comment

I’m always looking for better ways to find the disk hogs… there are a ton of one liners and tools but this is the first time I’ve heard of “ducks”. Thanks A.P!

Where has the space gone?

Although time consuming, the following procedure can be used to track down where your space has been used.

cd /

du -s *

(Some folks like to use “du -cks *”, which is easy to remember as “ducks”.)

This command will print the number of blocks used by each directory and file in the root. Most likely, the largest number printed is where you should be looking. You can then cd to that directory, and examine it. If it has sub-directories, you might use:

find . -type d -exec du -s {} \;

You can search for “large” files by cd’ing to a suspect directory ( or even starting at /, if you must), and typing

find . -size +5000 -print

will print the names of all files over 5,000 blocks (2,560,000) bytes. This may find many, many files, so you might want to refine it with larger numbers. You might also want to sort it:

find / -size +2000 -exec ls -s {} \; | sort -nr | more

To limit find to the filesystem you are on, add “-mount”:

find . -mount -size +5000 -print

via Out of DiskSpace?.

Filed under How-to

Ten Essential Linux Admin Tools | Linux Magazine

September 27, 2010 Leave a comment

System Administrators SAs need a set of tools with which to manage their often unmanageable systems and environments. These ten essential Linux administration tools provide excellent support for the weary SA. Those listed aren’t your standard list of tools deemed essential by industry bystanders. These are tools that have proven track records and have stood the test of time in the data center.

Read on for the list.

via Ten Essential Linux Admin Tools | Linux Magazine.

Filed under Experience Tagged with ,

NGINX + PHP-FPM + APC = Awesome

September 20, 2010 Leave a comment

Here is an excellent article on the merits, install and use of NGINX and PHP

NGINX + PHP-FPM + APC = Awesome

via NGINX + PHP-FPM + APC = Awesome.

Filed under How-to, Interesting Tagged with , , ,

HOW TO: Run Your Business Online with $10 and a Google Account

September 7, 2010 Leave a comment

Online infrastructure for your small business doesn’t have to be complicated or expensive. By leveraging many of the free and inexpensive products offered by Google, you can create a website, a domain-branded e-mail system, and a document collaboration platform, all unified under one master login and password.

Once all of the virtual wires are connected, these services are extremely user-friendly, allowing anyone with a bit of web savvy to become the “system administrator” for their office.

Follow the steps below, and you’ll be on your way to a customizable and scalable business infrastructure that lives where your employees do: in the cloud.

via HOW TO: Run Your Business Online with $10 and a Google Account.

Filed under How-to Tagged with

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