Global Switch Day
I’m going to take a cue from @sylv_a and declare today Global Switch Day! Images curtesy of @sylv_a@mastodon.social (post).
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Bluesky
To those currently caught up in the Bluesky euphoria, will you please snap the fuck out of it? Honestly, I hate being the wet blanket, but y’all are killing me with this. There is nothing new here, nothing that hasn’t happened before, and no reason whatsoever to think that it won’t end exactly the same way. I hear Bluesky’s leaders articulating their vision, and I believe…
Xitter Deleted
It’s been a bit less than 2 years since I parked my Xitter account. I rationalized leaving it in place at the time to prevent anyone from claiming my name. Enough time has passed though that if that were to happen, I don’t expect there would be any confusion. And I really don’t want to contribute to their subscriber count in any way. So I deleted my account.
Oh shit, I Am Legend
I want to talk for a moment about I Am Legend. No, not the film with Will Smith, but the 1954 novel by Richard Matheson. The film is (allegedly) based on the novel, but if you’re familiar with the movie and not the book, then some explanation may be required (because it was not a great adaptation). Of course, it goes without saying that if you continue reading, expect spoilers (of both novel…
Goodbyes
Some years ago I wrote a sardonic series of posts tagged cat-a-log. I won’t delve too deeply into that here, but suffice it to say that we had come into a lot of cats, and I was not very happy about it. In my resentment, I wanted nothing to do with any of them. Most took the hint and steered well clear of me, one of them did not. Thumper was day 8 of the Cat-a-log.
You are not entitled to your opinion
The phrase I’m entitled to my opinion needs to be stricken from discourse. Unless your use of opinion can reasonably be used as a synonym for preference, then it is simply not true. Let me provide an example: If you are of the opinion that say—Oatmeal Raisin are the greatest of all cookies—then you and I disagree, clearly White Chocolate Chip Macadamia are greatest. Oatmeal Raisin is a…
Borescope Fun
I used to really want a borescope. The problem back then was that they were very pricey (and I had less money, more mouths to feed, etc). I recently discovered though that the prices have come way down, so I bought one (on principal) off Amazon for about $40. Here is some video from sending the scope down the seat tube of my bike, to the area above the bottom bracket.
Goodbye Twitter, Hello Mastodon
After nearly 14 years of Twitter, I’m calling it quits. Even before Musk took over, Twitter had become pretty awful; It was already a cesspool of hateful trolls, disinformation campaigns, wingnuts, and the aggrieved (basically, a sea of Karens, Kyries, Kanyes, and the odd Ted Cruz). Its algorithms work to fill your timeline with the content most likely to generate anxiety or rage. The point…
Blog Redux
The software previously hosting my blog was a bespoke thing that I’d used to experiment with Django. Once it was complete, my appetitite for maintaining it evaporated, and bitrot began to set in. I haven’t blogged in years, and it’s not likely that I’ll resume, but I thought I’d at least preserve what is here (this time using Hugo). Note: I did not preserve the link…
OpenNMS User Conference Europe + Cassandra London Meetup
Next week is OUCE in Southampton UK, where I’ll be presenting on my recent work in time-series storage. I’ve never been to an OUCE, or Southampton, and I’m really looking forward to it. Since you get to Southampton via London (from here), and since I haven’t been back there in more than a year, I arranged to have a day or two there, and scored an opportunity to talk to the…
OpenNMS Dev Jam 2013
I had tentatively planned on attending OpenNMS Dev Jam this year, but then I got a new job, and it became mandatory. The eighth annual Dev Jam will be held June 23-28 at the University of Minnesota. NP: In Absentia, The Mars Volta
Cassandra Summit 2013
Datastax’s yearly Cassandra Summit has grown into a two day event this year, June 11-12 in San Francisco. If you are a user of Cassandra (or are considering it), then you probably want to attend this conference (use code SFSummit25 for 25% off). I’ll be there to present on virtual nodes; Find me if you want to chat about databases, network management, beer, or the Can’t Hug Every…
Worlds Apart
For the first time in several years I find myself working in Java again[1]. It occurs to me though that it probably isn’t anything about Java itself that rubs me so wrong, it’s the community or ecosystem if you will. The conventions, common practice, standards, frameworks, etc. Case in point, embedding third-party libraries. In the sane world, embedding code from another project into…
Second Guessing
I’ve noticed an interesting phenomenon take place with development projects at work, it happens when someone new steps in to take over a legacy system. Most projects generally have humble beginnings. Someone is tasked with a from-scratch implementation, often under the worst of circumstances, but ever thing has to start somewhere. Later, after the original engineer has moved on, someone new…
Bragging Rights
I just upgraded a Cobalt RaQ 2 (1U MIPS machine, circa 1999(?)) from Debian Etch (released 2007) to Lenny (2009), and then from Lenny to Squeeze (2011). While it was in use. Remotely. Blindfolded, and with one arm behind my back.
Berlin Buzzwords 2013
I’m fortunate enough to be speaking at Berlin Buzzwords again this year. As usual, chats over beer or currywurst (or both) are always welcome. Hope to see you there!
Going to Berlin Buzzwords 2012
I’ll be at Berlin Buzzwords again this year, this time talking about Acunu Castle and Cassandra. Buzzwords is definitely one of my favorite conferences; I’m really looking forward to it. As usual, if you think we’ll cross paths and want to meet for beer, coffee, or currywurst, let me know!
Going to Debconf11
See you in Banja Luka!
Berlin Buzzwords
I’ll be presenting at Berlin Buzzwords again this year, this time on CQL. This is shaping up to be another great conference (schedule here) so I’m really looking forward to it. This year, the organizers are arranging for a number of hackathons and workshops to precede and follow the main conference. One of those will be a Cassandra event hosted by Acunu and Datastax (date to be…
Kurt's "Magic" Quadrant
I was recently reminded of a quote from a German General, Kurt von Hammerstein-Equord, in 1933: I divide my officers into four classes; the clever, the lazy, the industrious, and the stupid. Each officer possesses at least two of these qualities. Those who are clever and industrious are fitted for the highest staff appointments. Use can be made of those who are stupid and lazy. The man who is…
Christmas Lights (redux)
Last year, if you’ll remember, I did a half-assed job of putting together a musically coordinated christmas light rig, and promised to Do Better this year. Lucky for me I was vague because under-promising made over-delivering a lot easier. :) What I did manage to do was tackle last years technical debt, and get the code cleaned up. I’ve named it Lumen and put it up on Github. Lumen has…
Berlin Buzzwords
I’ll be attending Berlin Buzzwords on the 7th and 8th of next month, and presenting on Cassandra. This is shaping up to be a great conference (schedule here), and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve also managed to work in a couple of days after the conference to poke around Berlin, (this will be my first time in Germany). If you’re in the area and want to meet up for…
Upcoming travel
April is shaping up to be a busy month; I have several trips lined up. Texas Linux Fest on Saturday April 10th (tomorrow!) in Austin. POSSCON on April 15 and 16 in Columbia South Carolina. The Cassandra Hackathon at Digg HQ in San Francisco. I’ll be giving talks on Cassandra at Texas Linux Fest and POSSCON, and I’ve organized a Debian booth for Texas Linux Fest (a first for me).
Haters Gonna Hate
If you’ve been around for more than a few years, you’ve probably bore witness to how susceptible the tech industry is to hype. Some new-shiny comes along, people lose their minds, and seemingly overnight The Next Big Thing has spread like wildfire. Like it or not you find yourself bombarded by blog posts, tweets, articles, and water cooler chat from wild-eyed co-workers. Clearly, Ted…
FOSDEM 2010 and the NoSQL Devroom
As I mentioned earlier, I was fortunate enough to be able to attend FOSDEM this year. The sheer scale of FOSDEM is amazing, with literally thousands of people in attendance, dozens of projects represented, and hundreds(?) of talks. It’s doubly impressive when you consider that it is entirely volunteer driven and 100% sponsored (it’s no cost to attend). The NoSQL track organized by…
Christmas Lights
We put up lights each year for the holidays, and while I don’t mind having the house decorated, I do not like having to put them up. Despite this, I feel mounting pressure each year to Do Better, which by default means more lights and decorations, which in turn mean even more work. The year before last I had the idea that if I worked smarter I might avoid working harder, and that one of…
Going to FOSDEM
Due to a scheduling conflict, Jonathan won’t able to present on Cassandra in the NoSQL devroom at this years FOSDEM, so I’ll be going in his stead. I’ve always wanted to go to a FOSDEM, and getting to see Brussels will be a real treat as well. I can’t wait! NP: Black & White, In Flames
Lowest Common Denominator
From the git-svn manpage: For the sake of simplicity and interoperating with a less-capable system (SVN), it is recommended that all git svn users clone, fetch and dcommit directly from the SVN server, and avoid all git clone/pull/merge/push operations between git repositories and branches. The recommended method of exchanging code between git branches and users is git format-patch and git am, or…
NoSQL: What's in a name?
Depending on the circles you travel in, you might be aware of the whole NoSQL “movement”. If not, I’m not going try and explain it at this time (explaining it is sort of the problem), but you can get the general idea from wikipedia. I’ve spent the last couple of days at nosqleast and one of the hot topics here is the name “nosql”. Understandably, there are a lot…
Upcoming travel
I have several trips lined up for the next few weeks: NoSQL East from the 28th to the 30th in Atlanta ApacheCon US 2009 from November 2-6 in Oakland OpenSQL Camp 2009 in Portland, November 14-15 There is also a NoSQL meetup on November 2 as a part of ApacheCon; I’ve offered to present on Cassandra there. I’m also thinking of giving a session at BarcampApache, and I’m scheduled to…
Ooops, I did it again
I rewrote my blog software again (actually, it was done months ago but I just now got around to deploying it). The last one used Turbogears, but the 1.x branch is getting long in teeth, and 2.0 came a little too late. Besides, Django is the new hotness these days. Somehow the rewrite resulted in about half as much code, which is always cool, and I finally got to make use of mod_wsgi, (it is…
Git repo for Cassandra packaging
I put the repository for my Cassandra package up on Github. The repo browser can be found here, and the wiki has a brief writeup of the build process for those unfamiliar with git-buildpackage. Patches welcome! NP: Take It Out On Me, Bullet For My Valentine
Day Trip Redux
For my last day in Spain I took Hector’s advice and hopped on a high-speed train from Madrid to Toledo. Toledo is another UNESCO World Heritage Site, a city dating back to the Bronze Age with Christian, Jewish, and Moorish influences. It’s a beautiful place and the six or so hours I spent there was woefully inadequate. There are a few pictures up on flickr, but I took quite a few more…
On the road again
Debconf is over. Boo. :( Like those I’ve attended in the past, Debconf9 was well organized with plenty of interesting talks, in a great venue. I had loads of fun, learned a ton, and even managed to get a bit done. Many thanks to the organization team, the local team, the speakers, and the sponsors. This year I managed to sneak an extra couple of days post-conference which will be spent in…
Cassandra 0.3.0 for Debian
As announced here, I put a Debian package together for Cassandra 0.3.0. I don’t have any (immediate )plans to upload a Cassandra package to the Debian archive, (this package isn’t even policy compliant), so consider this unofficial and report any packaging bugs directly to me. Enjoy.
Debconf9: Day trip
Yesterday was the Day Trip at Debconf, an opportunity for folks to step away from their computers (usually), and leave the venue (always) for some sort of group activity or tourism. When the organizers first started talking about this years Day Trip there were two candidates, Valle del Jerte and Teatro romano de Merida, or “Roman theater of Merida”. I’m kind of a history junkie…
Cassandra 0.3.0
The Apache Cassandra team has managed the release of 0.3.0, its very first. It took a lot longer than I had hoped to get a release in the can, (almost a month from the approval of the last release candidate). Part of this was a lack of familiarity with ASF’s processes, but part of it was poor or incomplete documentation, or lack of consensus about what is required. In the end, it boiled down…
Debconf9
A week from today and I’ll be headed to Spain for Debconf9. Can’t wait! NP: Worlds Collide, Apocalyptica
Transitioning My GPG Key
A few months ago a group of researchers announced a fairly serious attack that shattered everyone’s faith in SHA-1. It has frightening implications for anyone who relies on cryptographic signatures, and while consensus is that there is little danger in the near-term, most people agree that now is the time to start a move to something stronger. So, I’ve begun my transition, (document…
NOSQL 2009
Johan Oskarsson has organized a meetup for folks interested in distributed structured data storage and is calling it NOSQL. The event, being held June 11th in San Fransisco, will have subject matter experts presenting on Hypertable, HBase, Voldemort, Dynomite, and Cassandra. There were 100 slots available slots to attend and they all went in a matter of hours, so if this is the first you’ve…
Howto: Epson Perfection 3940 on Debian
Getting the Epson Perfection 3940 scanner setup on Linux requires jumping through just enough hoops that even if you have managed it before, it’s easy to forget when it comes time to do it again. I put this here in the hopes that it will make things easier for someone, (and it’s entirely likely that someone will be me one day :). Make sure your user is a member of the scanner group,…
Thrift Packaging
My latest project at work is Cassandra, a distributed, eventually consistent, column oriented data store. It’s somewhere between Dynamo (Cassandra’s original author worked on Dynamo), and Google’s BigTable. It was developed as an internal application at Facebook, later open sourced, and is now an Apache incubator project. The external interface to Cassandra is thrift-based.…
Swine Flu
I don’t have it. Do you?
Brain Rewiring
A co-worker of mine uses one of the stranger keyboards I’ve seen, a Kinesis Advantage. He picked it up his after a bout with tendinitis and was sold on it. He was kind enough to let me borrow his spare for about a week so I could try it out. It’s been an interesting week. :) The Advantage differs from conventional keyboards in a number of ways, the ones I think most relevant are:
Lenny Released On Time
Lenny released yesterday. This is great news, and congratulations all around to everyone that worked their asses off making it happen. By my calculations this comes 677 days after the initial release of Etch, (or 22 months and change). I’ve said before, Debian releases When Ready and that (to the best of my observations), consensus seems to be that somewhere between 18 and 24 months is the…
Cat-a-log FAQ
I received a surprising number of questions related to the cat-a-log series. I’ve attempted to collect them all, and answer them here. Q: Does your wife think all cats are sweet? What about dogs? A: Any member of felis catus is by definition unconditionally sweet. She also views many dogs as sweet, though they tend to be held to a much higher standard, (for example, “humping” is…
That's all (the cats) folks
Apparently there is in fact a 15th cat (or a 14th for you purists out there). If cataloged, it would have been Unknown #3, an as-of-yet unnamed cat that comes to my porch to eat the food my wife puts out. I wasn’t able to get a picture, and I’m not sure I recall ever seeing it (they all look the same to me anyway). A shame really, rumor has it that it’s missing a paw, I could…
Cat-a-log Day 14: Pepe
Last but not least, Pepe. Alright, granted this one might be borderline, but to be fair, many people refer to these guys as Polecats. It comes onto my porch to eat from a dish of food, and my wife and daughter have named it, I think that counts for something. Other interesting facts: Smells awful.
Cat-a-log Day 13: Unknown 2
Unknown #2… or is it Zorro? Yet another cat that I suspect has applied for citizenship under the terms of If it eats, we must greets. I refer to it here as Unknown #2, but someone let slip the name “Zorro” when the subject came up. Other interesting facts: None.
Cat-a-log Day 12: Unknown 1
This one has been cropping up more and more. When I first brought up Unknown #1, my wife explained that it was not her cat, she didn’t know why it was hanging around, and that more than likely it belonged to someone and was just wandering a bit. This would be comforting if I hadn’t heard it before (see day 6 and day 11 for current examples). And yes, it eats the food that is placed…