Ken Thompson (L)and Dennis Ritchie(R) ,creators of UNIX

Ken Thompson (L)and Dennis Ritchie(R) ,creators of UNIX:

paulmhernandez posted a photo:

Dennis Ritchie improved on the B programming language and called it 'New B'. B was created by Ken Thompson as a revision of the Bon programming language (named after his wife Bonnie). He later called it C.

Steve Woznaik(sitting) and Steve Jobs of APPLE Computers.

Steve Woznaik(sitting) and Steve Jobs of APPLE Computers.:

paulmhernandez posted a photo:

Steve Woznaik(sitting) and Steve Jobs of APPLE Computers. He was three months late in filing a name for the business because he didn't get any better name for his new company. So one day he told to the staff: "If I'll not get better name by 5 o'clcok today, our company's name will be anything he likes..." so at 5 o'clcok nobody comeup with better name, and he was eating APPLE that time... so he keep the name of the company 'Apple Computers'

Quantifying Job Satisfaction

CNN Money has an interesting article on an attempt to quantify job satisfaction by Economists John Helliwell and Haifang Huang at the University of British Columbia.

Some choice snippets;

Trust in management is by far the biggest component to consider. Say you get a new boss and your trust in management goes up a bit at your job (say, up one point on a 10-point scale). That's like getting a 36 percent pay raise, Helliwell and Huang calculate.

I definitely got a raise switching from a big corporation that wasn't doing so well to a smaller company that is clearly a success.

So, apparently, if you have to work, you might as well do something you like because the money alone won't make you that happy.

I can fully concur with this point as well, in fact it's one of my most important considerations. You're spending maybe 8 hours a day minimum doing something, and if you're like the average North American worker, you spend an hour getting there and an hour getting back per day. Make sure that you like where you're going!! Money is not enough.

Some more articles about happiness and the workplace;

CNN Money: C'mon, get happy. Seriously, it pays.

CNN Money: How To Buy Happiness. Cheap.

NPR: Finding Happiness in a Harvard Classroom via LifeHacker.

Technorati Tags: Health and wellness

See anything wrong here?

The leaderboard in Nintendo's online play for Metroid: Hunters is seemingly "I EAT POO"

Indeed...

Technorati Tags: funny, nintendo

Did I already post about textpander?

http://www.petermaurer.de/nasi.php?section=textpander

Basically what it does is replace a word you type with a predefined sentence, or macro. So for example if I type dtime (I had to do something fancy there to get it to not replace that word with the date) I will get the following;

Wed Mar 22 15:51:35 2006 --

Infinitely handy when I'm taking notes via SubEthaEdit.

How to bind your own paperback book

Via Lifehacker: Achieve-IT has a really handy post on binding your own paperback books.



This sorta ties in pretty nicely to an idea I had about re-using some of my wasted paper to make my own notebooks. I love Moleskines, but I'd also love to take a crack at making my own for some reason.

computer promotional photos from the 60s and 70s, roasted.

Got this from BoingBoing: Lileks comments on computer promotional photos from the 60s and 70s.

Apart from the great commentary, there are some really good pics for old-computer fetishists like myself; Check below where I've posted some selections. Visit Lileks himself for the rest of them.

Fun claymation video for an Aphex Twin song

Technorati Tags: video

Script: cluster_exec.sh

I just wrote a new bash script that is designed to streamline some fairly simple administration tasks and I thought I'd share it with everyone; cluster_exec.sh

It's far from perfect but it gets the job done. In my day to day tasks it's helpful to be able to execute a command on a series of servers one after the other, so that I can gather information, or reload a service, or whatever.

In the past I would either use SSH to connect directly to each box individually, run the command, and then move on to the next box. If it was really repetitive I might write a script that would do something similar to the one below, but it would be much less flexible.

The flexibility of this bash script is what sets it apart from writing job specific scripts every time you have a task that needs to be executed on let's say like 10 servers. I don't have to write any more of those, or at least I won't have to write large components of them in the future.

This script could be hacked to execute all these commands at the same time and it's pretty easy to integrate into other scripts. You can also use it with multiple clusters by defining the CLUSTER environment variable with a list of the servers you need to connect to.

It's really simple in it's design so it should work anywhere. It's been tested on Mac OS X 10.4 and Debian Linux.

#!/bin/bash

#
# execute a command via SSH on a cluster of servers.
#

# Setting the CLUSTER environment variable
#
# In bash, you would execute the following at the command line, as an
# example...
#
# CLUSTER="server1 server2 otheruser@server3 root@server4"
#
# And then;
#
# export CLUSTER
#
# Otherwise it will use the default file listed below..
CLUSTER_FILE=~/scripts/cluster_exec.data

##set up other variables;
if [ -x /usr/bin/sshas ]; then
    SSH=/usr/bin/ssh;
else
    SSH=`which ssh`;
fi

##Check for an argument.
if [ ! "$1" ]; then
    echo "usage $0 \"\"";
    echo "see script comments for CLUSTER variable description.";
    exit 1;
fi

##If there is no CLUSTER env variable, define some data.
if [ ! $CLUSTER ]; then
    CLUSTER=`cat $CLUSTER_FILE`;
fi

##Let's do it!!
for EXECUTE_ON in $CLUSTER
    do
        echo "EXECUTING ON $EXECUTE_ON: \"$1\"";
        $SSH $EXECUTE_ON $1;
    done

Technorati Tags: Linux, osx, sysadmin

My Stuff! Folder is a menace (A post rich in GTD lingo)

I've got a folder on my Powerbook's Desktop called "Stuff!" that I use to clear items off of my desktop, and I also drag URLs, pictures and videos that interest me into it so that I can inspect them later when I've got more concentration time.

It's a roundabout version of the GTD In-basket. Rather than going through the traditional GTD process though, the Stuff that is cluttering my desktop will be funneled into sub-folders within the "Stuff!" directory.

Click the above for a full-sized version.

So the process is;

Drag something into "Stuff!".

At some point, open "Stuff!" and organize files based on what they are.

At some other point, go through each folder and apply a GTD process to each.

So already, there's a problem. Technically everything that goes into "Stuff!" is a Someday/Maybe item, if I process each item the same way. The reason this is actually working for me, though, is that if I process each item by the type of file it is, I can concentrate more fully on figuring out what to do with it. Since I'm dealing with items of the same type, I'll be using the same applications to process them, or I'll at least have a block of time dedicated to that activity (for example, video watching, or reading PDFs I've picked up).

At least that's the theory, and that's why I think it's been working for me thus far.

If it's something that's actionable, as you can see, it will get it's own @Project or @Something folder, and then I add an item to my OmniOutliner list with the same name. Those become my support files for that project.

So how's this really working so far? Not bad, but it could use improvement. It's too complex, and it lends itself to unintentional archival of data.

I have 293 URLs in one folder, and some of them are already dead! If I opened them 10 at a time in Firefox tabs, I'd have to open up 29+ Firefox windows to deal with them all.

280MB of images I've plucked off the web, or that I've taken and I don't know what to do with yet.

Some of the folders are more organized though. The video folders I tend to clear out regularly (since I like watching videos) for example.

Some of this stuff I'm never going to get to, so it is becoming clutter that I have to think about, and that's the part that's a larger problem. All that being said, it's more organized than I was in the past, so it's a step up.

To be continued as I re-org my systems this month. I'll update what changes I have made and how they're working.

Technorati Tags: apple, gtd, osx

Some companies are more militant about GTD than others...

GTD with mistress Chi Chi:

GStuartCohn posted a photo:

Technorati Tags: gtd

The e-mail DMZ and other filters...

At the beginning of this year, Merlin posted a tip to 43Folders that outlined an e-mail DMZ. I've been using it with great success since the day it was posted, and here's how it's helped me focus my e-mail usage two months later.

At the time, my inbox was filled with well over 100 "important" items I had flagged, and people I was never going to get back to in a timely manner. (A running gag is if you e-mail me and send me a postcard, you're more likely to get a response to the postcard first).

So when I read this tip, I didn't even think twice about creating a folder called 00_DMZ in Apple Mail (since it's named 00_ it will be filed first, or at least as close to first as possible).

So now my folder list looks like...

* Inbox - Anything that passes through my gauntlet of filters will end up here.

* 00_DMZ - I manually drag and drop items in here from my Inbox, Lists folders, or my 00_SUPERUNKNOWN folder.

* 00_SUPERUNKNOWN - This folder is propagated automatically by rules set up in Apple Mail. If a piece of mail is not caught by Apple Mail's junk filters, but that piece of mail also doesn't meet specific rules (like the sender has sent mail to me before, and that it is addressed directly to me) then it will end up here for further manual inspection.

Assuming it's legit, I will apply a white-list to the sender, or the subject, and I will drag it to my 00_DMZ folder. This catches mostly junk that is well crafted, but it will sometimes catch stuff that is legit.

It's very handy for keeping your Inbox clean, while still letting you feel confident that you're not filtering mail that may be important.

* The Lists and System Messages folders are propagated automatically by rules set up in Apple Mail to catch mailing lists I am on, and automatic messages generated by servers on the internet (Mine, Amazon, Google, etc).

* The Work folders and My Stuff are folders I drag mail into manually. Work-Ineocom is for my small business stuff that relates to running the company. Work-Customers is for e-mails that my customers generate. within that folder are sub-folders with each customer name.

This is one area that could be cleaned up a lot. I'm still figuring it out. In the mean time it works, it's just not optimal.

My Stuff is just for me. It's not particularly important, but it's for e-mails that I'd like to keep for later reference.

* Drafts, Sent, Trash and Junk are all system folders.

I could improve this by making better use of Apple Mail's Smart Folders, or even compressing my Work folders into one, and I could cut down on the content of my 00_SUPERUNKNOWN folder by implementing SpamAssasin server side.

Now: how do I keep from dragging stuff into my 00_DMZ folder just to forget about it? That's something I'll try and detail in another posting.

Technorati Tags: gtd

Banner test...

I can't pretend I'm not a lazy man. I just want to see what our new banner is going to look like when it's actually mounted on a web page, and Ecto allows me to just drag and drop images.

Behold!

Jpeg...



Gif...

[posted with ecto]

Hmm.. not bad!

Cool train

Cool train:

cathilee posted a photo:

IBM 3340 storage system 1973

IBM 3340 storage system 1973:

Jawnee79 posted a photo:

held 1.7MB per square inch, a record at the time. Companies shared these systems, leasing time and space when required. The going rate was $7.81 a megabyte, 38 percent more than the price of oil at the time.

Microsoft wants to give you a free USB drive.

Check it out...

Cheat sheet!

Q1. How many ways are there to obtain a full Microsoft® Windows® Desktop license?
Answer:: 2

Q2: Volume License Agreements cover Windows Desktop operating system upgrades only.
Answer: True

Q3: OEM operating system licenses are non-transferable.
Answer: True

Q4: The most cost-effective way to acquire an initial, full underlying Windows Desktop license is preinstalled.
Answer: True

Technorati Tags: free, microsoft, pwned, usb

Apple Training Series : Mac OS X System Administration Reference, Volume 1

Just in time; as my interest in becoming a paper-worked Apple consultant has hit a milestone.

"Apple Training Series : Mac OS X System Administration Reference, Volume 1 (Apple Training)" (Schoun P. Regan)

"Apple Training Series : Mac OS X System Administration Reference, Volume 2 (Apple Training Series)" (Schoun P. Regan)

Apple certification training courses can run into the thousands of dollars. This is a much more inexpensive alternative, especially for already seasoned admins.

Technorati Tags: apple, macintosh, sysadmin

Soybean-Fueled sportscar with video goodness.

(CBS) The star at last week's Philadelphia Auto Show wasn't a sports car or an economy car. It was a sports-economy car — one that combines performance and practicality under one hood.

A car that can go from zero to 60 in four seconds and get more than 50 miles to the gallon would be enough to pique any driver's interest. So who do we have to thank for it. Ford? GM? Toyota? No — just Victor, David, Cheeseborough, Bruce, and Kosi, five kids from the auto shop program at West Philadelphia High School

The five kids, along with a handful of schoolmates, built the soybean-fueled car as an after-school project. It took them more than a year — rummaging for parts, configuring wires and learning as they went. As teacher Simon Hauger notes, these kids weren't exactly the cream of the academic crop.

Link

Technorati Tags: cars, hardware, Vehicles, video