Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/07/27/varnish-architect-notes/
Interesting, enjoying, and even funny technical read from Poul-Henning Kamp: Architect Notes for the Varnish HTTP Accelerator
His big point is that programmers need to stop fretting over moving things between memory and disk themselves. He explains that on a modern computer system, RAM is backed by disk, and disk accesses are buffered in RAM, and a lot of work goes in to the kernel to ensure that the system behaves effectively. By managing your own RAM-or-disk conundrum, you end up making a mess of things, because when you go to move an unused “memory” object to disk, the kernel may already have paged the memory region to disk, and what happens is the object then must move from virtual memory on disk, to RAM, to a disk memory cache in RAM, and then back out to disk. It is simpler and more efficient to just ask for a big chunk of memory and let the kernel page things to disk for you.
He then explains some clever things you can do for multi-processor programming. It seems to boil down to trying to give threads their own stack space wherever practical, and managing worker pools as a stack, so that you are most likely to find yourself processing on the same CPU at the lowest level of cache, and least likely to need to pass memory variables between CPUs.
Not that I write multi-threaded applications, but if I ever do, I’ll try to keep this understanding in mind.
1 Comment
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/07/25/ritalin-for-swine/
Until the last twenty out of a million years of human history, our “neurological disorders” were merely our personalities.
–Poe Ballantine
“Methamphetamine for Dummies”
from The Sun, July, 2007
Which only brings to mind that line from Pulp Fiction:
Vincent: Want some bacon?
Jules: No man, I don’t eat pork.
[ . . . ]
Vincent: Why not?
Jules: Pigs are filthy animals. I don’t eat filthy animals. . . . I ain’t eat nothin’ that ain’t got sense enough to disregard its own feces.
Vincent: How about a dog? A dog eats its own feces. . . . do you consider a dog to be a filthy animal?
Jules: I wouldn’t go so far as to call a dog filthy but they’re definitely dirty. But, a dog’s got personality. Personality goes a long way.
Vincent: Ah, so by that rationale, if a pig had a better personality, he would cease to be a filthy animal. Is that true?
Jules: Well we’d have to be talkin’ about one charmin’ motherfuckin’ pig. I mean he’d have to be ten times more charmin’ than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I’m sayin’?
Perhaps Jules is avoiding “mad swine” disease. Were the pigs to receive proper medication that addressed their poop-eating neurological disorders, he might find their personalities tasty delicious.
5 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/07/06/listening-to-users/
I recall Tom Limoncelli giving a presentation called “Time Management for System Administrators” and he explained how, as part of his routine, he would walk over by his customers–his users within the company he worked at–and check in at a regular time. Some days, they might ask questions that would reveal to him potential improvements in the systems architecture, and other times they might ask simple technical support questions. Either way, by dropping in at regular intervals, the users came to feel good about their Systems staff. This can be damned handy when, as they occasionally do, the systems go down hard, staff scramble to fight fires, and users are left out in the cold with little more to work with than their innate feelings about the Systems staff. If they like you, they will feel sympathetic in your hours of stress. If they don’t like you, they hope the present outage may be a nail in the coffin of your tenure.
I was put in mind of this by the story presented in today’s Daily WTF . . . the user, who could be described as “dim” had been following a really complicated, error-prone process. She had no idea that a trivial change to the system could be made to make her life easier. The hero of the story happened to be walking by, hear her frustration, politely inquire, and five minutes later, make betterness happen:
Still, there’s a good lesson here that’s often missed; pay attention to what users are doing with the provided system and by unblocking minor bottlenecks you can become the hero.
Amen. Amen. Amen. (more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/07/04/independence-day/
[Update: weaselly underscores omitted from cuss words per Andrew Ho’s patriotic fervor, and because it might look neat.]
Girlfriend came over, with six peaches she picked from her peach tree this very morning. I washed the earwig out of one. We walked down to the beach, and back up again, stopping for pastries and a slice of pizza. We watched “Winged Migration” which is really good if you don’t pay attention to the self-important French people, and tolerate the silly parts when the bird flies up an out of the atmosphere to circle the Earth like Sputnik, except yeah, “no special effects were used while filming the birds.”
Saw the girlfriend off . . . neighborhood goes boom . . . boom . . . occasional bursts in the distance. A groovy Independence Day.
Then I see a URL to a comic strip with kids eating Bald Eagle tacos. Okay, crass. But the commentary rant is worth sharing:
I know I’m starting to sound like a curmudgeony old bastard but… it really did used to be better, even just a few years ago. I swear to God right now you could watch Dick Cheney beat a homeless vet to death with a cinder block and everybody would just kind of let out a weak sigh and go “only two more years” but then go into full-blown warrior mode when the Youtube button on their iPhone got scratched. Stand in line to buy portable telephone, wondering what you’ll say to the first person to ask you to touch it while the thing you Pledged Allegiance to everyday when you were growing up gets gang-banged by a handful of frat boys that pay less taxes than you and don’t have to go to jail when they may have committed treason.
And, quiet as I have kept, I gotta admit, I think the iPhone spectacle . . . geeks waiting in line to pay $600 for a cell phone with a $1400 service commitment . . . but what is worse is to hear President Bush prattling on about how we must defeat Al Qaeda in Iraq or else they’ll follow us home–the best that can be said for why we need to be over there is because we chose to go there and f_ck up that sh_thole of a countryfuck up that shithole of a country, and it is hella true if Dick Cheney beat the crap out of a homeless man we would just shake our heads with a tear in our eye. If you commit treason you should go to jail, even, hell, especially if you’re just some hack taking a bullet for the White House! GAH!
Okay, back to munching on my toast and pondering my regular life. If there’s a protest in the streets sign me up . . .
2 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/07/02/marriage-socrates-ferber-campbell-fellini/
The morning of July 2, I have arrived at the last page of June’s “The Sun” and find an occasion to chuckle:
“By all means marry: if you get a good wife, you’ll become happy; if you get a bad one, you’ll become a philosopher.”
–Socrates
Socrates is a mortal. And so am I.
“Wasn’t marriage, like life itself, unstimulating and unprofitable and somewhat empty when too well-ordered and protected and guarded. Wasn’t it finer, more splendid, more nourishing when it was, like life itself, a mixture of the sordid and the magnificent; of mud and stars; of earth and flowers; of love and hate and laughter and tears and ugliness and beauty and hurt.
–Edna Ferber
It was.
Yes, the title says “Two Perspectives” but we wouldn’t want this content to be too well-ordered, yeah? Here’s an assertion that I know many would take exception to. (more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/06/26/too-close-for-comfort/
Copied without permission from the Readers Write section of “The Sun” May, 2007.
The theme was “Too Close for Comfort”.
NOT ONE WOMAN LOOKS UP WHEN I walk into the breast-cancer clinic and sit down. We are invisible to one another as we anxiously anticipate placing our bare breasts between the cold metal plates of the mammogram machine.
Before leaving home, I placed a rosary in my pocket. Now, I secretly move my thumb and forefinger from one royal blue bead to the next. Some of the women appear to be reading magazines, but I can tell by the way they turn the pages that it is only to give the impression of doing something. Next to me, a pretty, thirtyish woman talks nonstop on her cellphone, her body turned away to muffle her conversation.
When it’s my turn, I enter the dressing room as instructed, take off my clothes from the waist up, remove my deodorant with the wipe provided, and put on a pink gown. Then I wait in the second holding area until I am called behind door number two.
I always wonder if the technician (who says little and smiles even less) ever tires of looking at breasts. She expertly takes four frames, two of the right breast and two of the left, then tells me to return to the waiting room and not to get dressed until I am given permission. If some abnormality is discovered, more pictures will have to be taken. All of us waiting women long to hear the same five words: You may get dressed now.
After I am finally given permission to leave, I exit past the young woman on the cellphone, who is the last one still waiting at 6:30. She rocks forward and back, cupping her forehead in the palm of her hand, taking no notice of me. As I rush past her, relieved to be cleared for another year, my hand slips into my pocket and closes around the rosary. My fingers trace the cross, and I ask the Lord to have mercy on this woman.
Back on the street, I feel hungry. At the bottom of my purse I find a small dark chocolate that I packed this morning — in case of an “emergency.”
I hurry back to the waiting room, tap the woman on the shoulder, and hand her the chocolate. Her cheeks are wet, but she smiles
Adele Sweetman
Pasadena, California
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/06/07/hot-monkey-sex/
From “The Week” for June 8, 2007:
Male baboons may be the biggest voyeurs of the animal kingdom–they love to listen in on other baboons copulating. Researchers at a game reserve in Botswana found that low-status single males in a community of baboons often skulk around the love nests of higher-ranked males and their female consorts. While a female is in heat, she will often pair off with a high-status male and engage in sex multiple times during the day. The female’s love cries–long, song-like calls–draw a crowd of male baboons. If the couple fights, or if the male leaves her for even a minute, the other baboons will step in for a chance at a hookup. Researchers tested their theory by playing female sex calls over a loudspeaker. Male baboons from miles away literally dropped what they were doing to home in on the noise. “For male baboons, copulation calls are the most interesting vocalizations,” study author Catharine Crockford tells Discovery News. “From the calls, they hear about who is doing what with whom.”
Man, where to start?
- This piece is beautifully written.
- “While a female is in heat, she will often pair off with a high-status male and engage in sex multiple times during the day.” (My idea of a good Saturday.)
- And, “the female’s love cries–long, song-like calls” . . . amen!
- I have found that a noisy sex partner can be very gratifying . . . unless you have company over.
- Even so, roommates and neighbors may be fascinated and gratified by your aural emanations.
- “Low-status single males . . . often skulk around the love nests of higher-ranked males . . . If the couple fights, or if the male leaves her for even a minute, the other baboons will step in for a chance at a hookup.” Ahem. Yup. I have noticed this within my own species . . .
- . . . it occurs to me that this may explain why high-status males might feel especially threatened around upstarts.
- If baboons truly are the biggest voyeurs in the animal kingdom, then multimedia technology, electronic commerce, and overall economic prosperity could be boosted if we got them Internet access and some disposable income.
- “For [males], copulation calls are the most interesting vocalizations.” Yeah, dudes are reputed to be poor listeners at other times.
- “From the [long, song-like calls], they hear about who is doing what with whom.” . . . and this is why opera can be enjoyed in a foreign language.
4 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/30/wordpress-22/
I successfully upgraded WordPress to 2.2. I don’t bother with WordPress upgrades that often, because even the simple “Five Step” procedure can get a bit hairy. I’m still grinning at “Step 3: Overwrite Files” . . .
Step 3: Overwrite Files
Get the latest and greatest WordPress and upload it to the WordPress directory, overwriting all the files that exist there only after you have delete the old files, which is explained as follows (do not overwrite your wp-content directory or wp-config.php). Important: when upgrading from 2.0.x to 2.2, or from 2.1.x to 2.2, you will need to delete old files on the server, because several file names have changed. What if something goes wrong, you ask? Well, did you not create a backup of all files in Step 1? You can fall back upon them in the worst case scenario. Deleting your old files on the server and uploading the newer files from the new version you downloaded is an alternative which will ensure that the files on the server have been replaced for sure.
According to my “worklog” file, the process took 25 minutes: (more…)
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Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/28/scott-berkun-how-to-stay-motivated/
To achieve demands discovering personal motivations and learning to use them. The masters in all fields are foremost great self-manipulators, orchestrating their will to achieve what the rest of us can not. However, since our minds are the only ones we see from the inside out, there can be no true handbook for motivation: only a treasure map of landmarks and a handful of bones to roll.
And so Scott Berkun introduces us to his latest essay: How to stay Motivated. Given that I am in one of those special periods where I am the principal arbiter of how I spend my days, I find that his essay is especially timely. And given that he had the moxie to leave work some years back to devote his passion to writing, I am inclined to trust his advice. He’s got some zingers:
Crazy Necessity: “If you don’t ask, or never get crazy in any way, at any time, you’re the only one to blame: no one else can pull the pin out of the grenade in your soul.”
Fun: “Take time to listen to the little voice, the voice of your 8 year old self, the voice adults, including yourself, interrupt and speak over, and you’ll discover what you love. You might need long walks alone, or solo travel, long stretches of time where you make every single decision for 144 hours, before you’ll hear it, but it’s there. If you know how to have fun (by yourself if necessary) you’ll always be motivated to do something.”
Lately, I have been thinking to myself that, “I want to be a good parent to my inner child.” This means acknowledging and loving that child within, and then paying attention to his fancies, and giving myself some room to indulge. This, of course, must be tempered with some adult-style “Okay, that would be a lot of fun too, but we need to get these chores done and finish this other thing.”
The Discipline: Whenever you find yourself unmotivated, run the list of feelings and questions of likely motivations and see which ones get your heart rate going. It takes discipline to seek motivation when feeling unmotivated, but that’s the difference between commitment to a craft, and beer fueled fantasies.
Amen, Scott.
In my corner of the world, I have been reading up on Ruby on Rails and finishing (Berkun’s) “The Myths of Innovation” . . . and I have two slender books on the way, “The Rational Guide to IT Consulting” (recommended by Haidong) and its cousin, “The Rational Guide to IT Project Management” . . . I have some ideas of things I want to pursue, and a hope that I should have something more interesting to show before long, so that when I find a job opportunity I really really want, I will have something exciting to show for it.
I should soon act upon this advice:
Pride: Have no critics? Set a goal for yourself you’re not sure you can meet. Write it down, sign it, post it on your bedroom wall, showing it to friends and family so there’s no way to sneak out the back door.
Stay tuned . . .
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/26/3m-tolerating-initiative/
A quote presented at Scott Berkun’s presentation last week, which I copied down. Apparently I wasn’t the only person in attendance who dug the quote:
As our business grows, it becomes increasingly necessary to delegate responsibility and to encourage men and women to exercise their initiative. This requires considerable tolerance. Those men and women, to whom we delegate authority and responsibility, if they are good people, are going to want to do their jobs in their own way.
Mistakes will be made. But if a person is essentially right, the mistakes he or she makes are not as serious in the long run as the mistakes management will make if it undertakes to tell those in authority exactly how they must do their jobs.
Management that is destructively critical when mistakes are made kills initiative. And its essential that we have many people with initiative if we are to continue to grow.
William McKnight, 3M Chairman, 1948
One thing I have enjoyed about working for smaller companies in the Silicon Valley is the degree to which employees must be trusted to take the initiative. This can mean a lot of hard work, of course. But it also allows one to exercise the passion that they feel for their work.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/25/scott-berkun-the-myths-of-innovation/
I think it was last week that I attended a presentation at Adaptive Path, where Scott Berkun gave an engaging presentation based on the material he presents in his new book: The Myths of Innovation. He is a very engaging speaker and the presentation was a treat. He got me thinking about innovation, what it means to be innovative, and what to expect along the way.
Some ideas include:
- Innovation doesn’t just happen: apparently, Newton may never have been struck by an apple, but even if it did, it was just one of many inspirations along with a subsequent twenty years of work to describe the mathematical idea of gravity.
- History picks winners and heroes to remember, but the truth is that innovation is the product of taking many many new ideas and putting together something new. Standing on the backs of giants . . .
- . . . it takes more than just a great idea to produce the next innovation: without the resources to implement, promote, et cetera, and even more important: if the culture is not yet ready for a great idea, it will be remembered, if at all, as “ahead of its time.”
What I found more interesting is when he talked about what people have done with this improved understanding of how innovation really works. He spoke about the 3M corporation: Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing. After some false starts with mining they ended up making good money selling sandpaper. Then an engineer, noticing the difficulty a customer was having at trying to paint cars two different colors, asked his boss if he could work on an idea to solve that problem. The boss resisted, but the engineer couldn’t let the idea go, and he eventually figured out masking tape, which was an even better product than sand paper. Management realized that allowing for some creative exploration was within the company’s best long-term interests, and worked to develop a culture friendly to creative endeavor. Post-it notes are another famous example from 3M: they had developed an adhesive that was too weak, but after some time this led to a creative solution to the question of “I would really like to make notes in my research without marking up these books.” (Actually, I think Google was what happened when Larry and Sergei wanted to create an annotation tool for the web . . . and now they are famous for their “20% time”.)
I bought the hardcover for nearly $30, and Scott was good enough to sign it for me. I am nearly finished reading, and since Scott is not only very engaging, but he also left work some years back to devote his entire energy to writing, I thought it good to plug his work. It is not some weighty, serious tome: he has fun along the way, gets you thinking, and then lets you off where you were with perhaps a bit better insight. I will share the very first paragraph from the preface, which made me smile, and if you choose to read further, it is all on you:
“Prefaces are often like bad first dates: too much talk, too soon. Books, like future significant others, should know how much to say and when. Chapter 1 gets the first slot for a reason: if I’ve done my job, you can start with the first sentence and continue until you hit the back cover. That said, I offer you the choice of skipping the rest of the preface and digging in, or skimming around. It’s the only way to know if we’re right for each other. I hope we are, but if you don’t like what you find, it’s me, not you.”
If Scott’s words intrigue you, you can explore a bit further: read a sample chapter (pdf), check out a “teaser video” that Scott produced, or buy the book online from Amazon.com.
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/11/vonnegut-on-marriage/
Tim! I shall steal this from you, as you stole it from Kurt, verbatim! Because it is good stuff!
Ok, let’s have some fun. Let’s talk about women. Freud said he didn’t know what women wanted. I know what women want: a whole lot of people to talk to. What do they want to talk about? They want to talk about everything.
What do men want? They want a lot of pals, and they wish people wouldn’t get so mad at them.
Why are so many people getting divorced today? It’s because most of us don’t have extended families anymore. It used to be that when a man and a woman got married, the bride got a lot more people to talk to about everything. The groom got a lot more pals to tell dumb jokes to.
Most of us, if we get married nowadays, are just one more person for the other person. The groom gets one more pal, but it’s a woman. The woman gets one more person to talk to about everything, but it’s a man.
When a couple has an argument nowadays, they may think it’s about money or power or sex or how to raise the kids or whatever. What they’re really saying to each other, though without realizing it, is this: “You are not enough people!â€
A husband, a wife and some kids is not a family. It’s a terribly vulnerable survival unit.
I met a man in Nigeria one time, an Ibo who had six hundred relatives he knew quite well. His wife had just had a baby, and they were taking it to meet all its relatives. Everybody was going to hold it, cuddle it, say how pretty or how handsome it was. Wouldn’t you have loved to be that baby?
I sure wish I could wave a wand, and give every one of you an extended family, make you an Ibo or a Navaho or a Kennedy.
I hope America, over the long run, finds some way to provide all of our citizens with extended families – a large group of people they could call on for help.
Living in California has caused me to worry, in varying degrees, about the need for family connection. Although the pay wasn’t great, I really enjoyed living in Chicago the last time around, in part because I was near family and because the Office was a close-knit bunch. Two tribes! Right after the marriage I accepted the raise to move to Walnut Creek, and I did worry somewhat that leaving family and friends behind could make the marriage more difficult . . . but that we’d do alright.
Living in San Francisco, though, is much better. Plenty of social activities even for those of us between families, between jobs . . . and you don’t even have to drive to get there! (Parking is horrible, anyway.) But, yeah, next marriage, especially when we get to child-rearing time, we want to be a little more vigilant that we have got some manners of family to back us up!
Feedback Welcome
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/06/love-actually/
Today, I was invited to add the crazy naked lady to the Flickr wheelchairs pool. So, I took another look at the photo, with an eye toward the old lady in the wheelchair, and figured I’d play with a crop to see if I could re-balance the scene a bit.
Uhm, there’s a naked lady involved . . . in case you’re at work . . . you should know that . . . (more…)
4 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/05/06/in-yer-toobs/
Adapted from a blog comment I just posted:
Regarding Mountain View burrito restaurants, if I recall correctly, La Costena annoyed me because it involved driving and too many choices, so I’ve always been a Los Charros guy. I think we had La Costena the day Tellme had its first round of layoffs. We were in mourning for a fallen comrade and we needed to get AWAY so we got burritos and ate them in the park. Since it was on the company tab, Joe ordered their very largest burrito, which was, as he described it “about the size of a baby.” It took him two days, but as I recall he says he ate every bite.
Citing the ever-awesome Maciej Ceglowski, I then offered a link to his recent write-up of the most impressive burrito-related public works project our nation has ever undertaken:
The Alameda-Weehawken Burrito Tunnel
A must-read for anyone who digs burritos, tunnels, tubes, advanced physics research, or refried beans.
3 Comments
Link:
https://dannyman.toldme.com/2007/03/30/ten-commandments-eating-well/
If you are interested in a healthy diet, but have grown wary of the ever-changing advice of diet fads, and you appreciate an understanding of the food offered by the contemporary American industrial food system, then I heartily recommend a serving of Michael Pollan.
If you can afford a half hour for a healthy intellectual treat, then check out his article, “Unhappy Meals”, in the New York Times Magazine. If you prefer to indulge his prose for a longer, fuller understanding of the special challenges of America’s food culture, then you should definitely check out his novel, The Omnivore’s Dilemma.
For the less patient, or for those like me who like a handy reference, I’ll share a stripped-down version of his advice on eating well, adapted from the “Unhappy Meals” article, (more…)
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