After spending much time post editing, and in the process discovering how much I like Lightroom 3 (beta 2) over Aperture 3, I’ve finally posted the photographs. Clicking on a banner will show the photoset:
India was a great experience and I’m very appreciative of how kind Tina’s family was and how welcome they made us feel. Getting to see and be a part of the wedding was an experience I will not forget.
Ruby 1.9 is released. Time to play around and see how things are going to work in it and exp with the new kernel threading. It’ll be interesting to see how this progresses. Is this a step in the right direction or a holdup in what may need to be true concurrency to survive the future?
From 37signals,
Overall storage stats (Nov 2007)
* 5.9 terabytes of customer-uploaded files
* 888 GB files uploaded (900,000 requests)
* 2 TB files downloaded (8,500,000 requests)Server stuff
We’re currently upgrading our server infrastructure to use significantly faster hardware along with the Xen virtualization software, so we’ll have fewer servers to manage. Our current server cluster contains around 30 machines, ranging from single processor file servers to 8 CPU application servers, for a total of around 100 CPUs and 200GB of RAM. Over the next couple of months, we plan to reduce the number of servers to 16 with around 92 CPU cores (each significantly faster than what we use today) and around 230 GB of combined RAM. Not only will our applications run faster, but our cluster will be much simpler to manage when we’re done.
Here’s another reference from High Scalability.
This PDF is definitely the best resource I’ve found for figuring out the whole REST in Rails thing. I’ve purchased, but not yet watched, the peepcode video, which will probably be very good, since they normally are.
Coming to your local theaters in May 2008…
In “Implementing Toyota’s Product Development System,”
[Toyota engineers’] overarching goal is to generate a constant flow of new products, so instead of assigning a team to focus on developing one in particular, work is concentrated at the subsystem level. The idea is that subsystems can be mixed and matched to create a whole host of possible new products, fostering creative possibilities.
and…
This approach has definite advantages when a new product reaches the testing stage. If a subsystem proves unworkable, a proven subsystem is always available, which eliminates the need to double back. All knowledge is captured and reused in future projects.
Even acknowledging that something won’t work is good because it identifies a path for engineers to avoid in the future.
Toyota Development System virtually eliminates risk and promotes a myriad of creative possibilities for new products.
This can also be applied to software development, as part of the agile process.
The Mini-IP camera design targets surveillance and other types of monitoring applications. It is said to accept audio and video input from attached sensors, compress it in real time, and send it out using single- or multi-cast Internet protocols such as RTSP.
The Mini-IP camera is based on Micronas’s Cypher 7108A SoC, which is powered by an unspecified 32-bit MIPS application processor core. The SoC integrates a streaming media encoder said to support MPEG-4, MPEG-2, MPEG-1, H.263, and MJPEG video encoding, together with an audio codec, external memory controller, cryptographic accelerator for VPN (virtual private network) functions. Other interfaces include a 10-bit camera/audio interface, standard PC hard drive and USB interfaces, and an HPI (host port interface) for attachment to a Texas Instruments DSP.
Sweet! I want one of these for Christmas! :)
Another spiffy geeky appliance - IPTV!
[Sigma Designs and Celrun] say their respective products can stream compressed high-definition video wirelessly over an extended range. Non-line-of-sight applications are said to be possible, thanks to “Intelligent Array Radio” (IAR) technology.
The SMP8634 shipped about a year ago, billed as the first SoC for HD-DVD players and set-top boxes to integrate hardware media decoders for “all major formats,” including H.264, WMV9/VC1, and MPEG-2. In addition to Linux, the chip is available with Windows CE support.
I read something about JRuby today, I think it was that they have a new release that is many many times faster. Anyways, this inspired me to play around with it some. I pulled the newest code from their subversion repo, set up my environment and wrote out some code for a bit
Conclusion… Its really cool and its hard to believe that it actually works. It feels strange creating Java objects in ruby, using their Java methods, and then using them like ruby objects. Very strange, but that strange feeling is cool. Thinking about the huge set of Java libraries instantly available is pretty amazing. No wonder Sun wanted these guys. :)
Much funnier when watched with audio.
Someone did a comprehensive comparison between Linux and Windows kernels. Yahooo! Enjoy the reading.
Source: http://widefox.pbwiki.com/Kernel%20Comparison%20Linux%20vs%20Windows
Sun’s Porject Blackbox is nothing new. Google already has this, except Sun is commericalizing it whereas Google is keeping it internal.
It is nonetheless magnificient piece of technology. It’s a mobile, 8-server rack stuffed in a shipping container that itself is a cooling center. It’s basically a “set it and forget it” datacenter!
You need to check out this tour video. Fat Penguin should place one of these in the backyard and power the Fat Penguin Blog and Lan parties off of it!
This article is very intriguing, but yet not surprising. I already noticed that Fat Penguin already works “normal 60-hr” work weeks, except it’s not working in China and doesn’t live in a dormitory.
I bet that Fat Penguin will soon be outsourced to China and will be working next to children and prisoners making iPods and toys since Christmas is around the corner. It wouldn’t know the difference!
