He talked about the importance of building tools to help you solve the problems you face. He gave three steps for tool building:

1. Learn something
2. Encapsulate what you’ve learned in code
3. Repeat and go faster

Basically, any time he learns something new, he builds a tool with it, so he can forget what he’s learned. He gave an example of building a TextMate bundle with node.js as his first ever Node project.

One of the many super powers of the cloud is elasticity, the ability to dynamically acquire and release resources in response to demand. But like any good superhero, their strength must also form the basis of a not quite fatal flaw. Years and years of angsty episodes are usually required to explore this contradiction.

In the case of the cloud, the weakness reveals itself in slow VM spin-up times. Spinning up a VM in EC2 can take a little as 1-3 minutes, or can average 5-10 minutes, or it can take much longer if there’s heavy usage in your availability zone. EC2 is not alone. A common complaint about Google App Engine is the cold-start problem. When a request comes in, an application must be initialized to handle it, which takes time, which means the end-user experiences increased latency.

This means with VM oriented systems–be they IaaS or PaaS–your ability to deal with bursty traffic is much more limited in the cloud than you might have expected. You could of course reserve capacity, but that kind of defeats the point of elasticity, and really just moves the point where the problem occurs further down the curve. App Engine will have a feature to keep warm instances around, but you will pay for those too, which again defeats the point of on-demand pay for what you use elasticity.

All this might not matter, if it weren’t for the idea that those spin-up times could cost you. Joe Weinman has taken a more formal look at this problem in his paper Time is Money: The Value of “On-Demand,” and this is the paper James was referring to when he made his observation.

Joe Weinman, as the founder of Cloudonomics, a rigorous analytical approach leveraging mathematics and Monte Carlo simulation to characterize the sometimes counterintuitive multi-dimensional business of cloud computing and pay-per-use business models, has written a string of interesting papers on his website. Some of the titles include: Smooth Operator: The Value of Demand Aggregation (PDF); Cloud Computing is NP-Complete (PDF); Mathematical Proof of the Inevitability of Cloud Computing(PDF). At the core of these papers are many many pages of rigorous mathematical analysis, but fortunately this creamy goodness is bookended with chocolatey cookies explaining what it all means.

From the abstract of Time is Money: The Value of “On-Demand” :

Cloud computing and related services offer resources and services “on demand.” Examples include access to “video on demand” via IPTV or over-the-top streaming; servers and storage allocated on demand in “infrastructure as a service;” or “software as a service” such as customer relationship management or sales force automation. Services delivered “on demand” certainly sound better than ones provided “after an interminable wait,” but how can we quantify the value of on-demand, and the scenarios in which it creates compelling value?

The degree of effect is related to traffic patterns:

We have seen that not only is there a time value of money, there is a money value of time, specifically, increased agility and responsiveness lead to reduced loss, including a reduction in missed opportunities. Time is money.

For exponential demand, the loss associated with even fixed interval provisioning grows exponentially, so on-demand provisioning is essential.

The VM spin-up interval is your period of lost opportunity. If your traffic is bursty and/or growing exponentially, then you may be losing out on more profitable opportunities than you thought, because cloud elasticity doesn’t match demand elasticity. While not quite the cloud’s kryptonite, it is a flaw worth considering in your architecture.

CIAO!

The X79 Express will replace the X58 as the top desktop chipset when the new high-performance CPUs are launched in the fourth quarter of this year.

Along with the new processors and chipsets, Intel will roll out a new socket, the LGA2011. The X79 fully supports two PCIe x16 lanes, has 14 SATA ports — including 10 of the 6Gbps flavor — and possesses 8 ports that support SAS. There are 14 USB 2.0 ports, but no mention of USB 3.0 connections — or Thunderbolt ports, for that matter. PCI x1 support is eliminated.

Sandy Bridge E processors will replace the Gulftown-based Extreme six-core CPUs as the top performers in Intel’s desktop lineup.

Needless to say, like all bleeding edge technology this will be expensive no doubt.

Make sure you replace < > with your dreamhost user name.

$mkdir ~/src
$ cd ~/src
$ wget http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.7.4.1.tar.gz
$ tar xzf git-1.7.4.1.tar.gz
$ cd git-1.7.4.1.tar.gz
$ ./configure –prefix=/home/< >/packages NO_CURL=1 NO_MMAP=1
$ make
$ make install
$ git –version

That should return:
git version 1.7.4.1

And then you have git on that machine.

At the moment most of my desktop machines are Apevia Q-pack micro atx cases, which have served me well, except now that micro-atx motherboards are getting more powerful and can take bigger and more powerful graphics cards, etc, I am now running out of space inside the case.

Why am I rambling on here, well all this powerful hardware put higher demands on the PSU. So I looked at purchasing a high quality PSU, such as a silver certified Corsair brand.

Got the new PSU, went to replace it in the Apevia case and guess what? It would not fit the case, argh. My next step was to do some research, the options were:

1. Get a new micro-atx case,
2. Return the PSU,
3. Get a small DVD burner drive (smaller in length by an inch).

Well, my approach ended up being keep the power supply and swap it out with another one I had. It worked, but I felt that I did sacrifice on watts, it was a smaller one.

After, at least 12 months, I am wanting to upgrade the case. In fact that will be the only piece of hardware that isn’t the latest.

I wanted to stay with the micro-atx form factor, so I started to look around and I think I have found the case. Here is the link: http://hivelogix.com/cases/case-qmicra

Above is a picture of the case. Reading the reviews they are all very positive. What the reviewers all say is that you can’t really see in the photo, is the quality. Also, this is a case they only manufacture in limited quantities. At the moment the next batch orders won’t happen until January 2011. I want to stress, this case is not for the novice as the price tag is a pretty penny too, starting at: $239.95.

Well, now the wait is on. After I get the case, I will do a more detailed review.

Cheers!

quirky – Trek Support Electric Backpack.

-Gunner

Now when you do a git commit without specifying a commit message, TextMate will pop-up and allow you to enter a commit message in it. When you save the file and close the window, the commit will go through as normal. (If you have another text editor you prefer instead, just change the “mate -w” line to the preferred one).

git config --global core.editor "mate -w"

For those curious what the -w argument is about, it tells the shell to wait for the mate process to terminate (the file to be saved and closed). Read this for more information about how to associate TextMate with various other shell scripts and programs.

Cheers! 

This was some of the response from zdnet.

The move is an interesting one. For starters, Facebook’s move will be well received. Folks may not actually take their information away from Facebook, but they will certainly appreciate the option. By opening up data portability, Facebook is more likely to keep people in the fold. Just because a door is open doesn’t mean you’ll leave.

Other key points:

• Facebook is also planning an apps dashboard that will highlight applications that have permissions so you can manage them.
• Download you information will verify your identity before moving data via password, confirmation and CAPTCHA. The feature rolls out today.
• Facebook is apparently allowing you to map your social graph to the real-world friend network via an algorithm. Potentially creepy, but could be effective. In a blog post, Zuckerberg primarily outlined the new Groups feature.

What is interesting here is that all FB has really done is allowed anyone without programming experience to download their data. There were already ways to do this if you were a developer using the GraphAPI. What is going to be interesting is have FB updated the GraphAPI in order streamline this process as well make any new API updates, changes, which developers can then leverage? I will check that out soon as it is part of my research in the data collection phase.

later…..

http://www.norgeapps.com/designbrief/

Design Brief helps you “ask the right questions!” 
Design Brief is a specially targeted app that aids creative professionals put together a great design brief document/agreement for a new design project.

• Designed for creative professionals to efficiently capture the right information for a great design brief
• Great user experience on iPad
• Fast Information Capturing and easy exporting
• Designed to enhance your business and ‘help ask the right questions’

I would be interested in folks who have used this and what they think of it?

Also, I am hoping to see more applications like this for the iPad. I think Apple’s competitors should look closely at this, as this is what I like about the iPad, that applications are being developed in new and interesting ways that we can use.

UX Fundamentals: Focus

Cheers.