Complete GMail redundancy in 7 easy steps
If there is anything that the recent GMail outages taught us, it’s that losing access to your email for a few hours should not mean that the end of the world has arrived. I think it also served as a reminder that if you rely 100% on the cloud for access to your data, then be prepared to be disconnected from it every once in a while. Fortunately, it’s quite easy to take advantage of free email services from the likes of Google while also making sure that should the worst happen, you can still access your data.
Automatic key generation with App Engine
After playing Google App Engine for a few days, I’ve realised the power that even the basic framework provided by Google, webapp, provides. Working with Python adds a level of flexibility that I never had when working with PHP many years ago (although this was before OO had really infected PHP).
While working on my first real application for app engine I soon came across the problem of creating sensible key names for objects. If you aren’t familiar with the data object models in app engine, each object has a unique key, generated automatically when the object is created, and a key name (property: key_name) which can be specified by the user. The key name can be very useful if you need object identifiers which are human-readable, such as when you use them as part of your apps URLs.
Building a Diskless Linux Cluster: Debian (Etch) + DRBL + GridEngine
It’s quite common in University departments for roomfuls of very capable PCs to sit idle from 5pm until 8am everyday and all weekend. Thankfully, it’s possible to turn such a wasted resource into a powerful cluster of Linux machines using freely available open source software. In fact, even a group of machines in an office, or at home, can be transformed into a similar state with the minimum of effort. By booting the PCs (or nodes) over the network, no changes are made to the current setup of the machines, so reverting back to their normal state is as simple as rebooting. This guide will bring you through the process of creating a High-Performance Computing (HPC) cluster using the latest version of the Debian GNU/Linux operating system, Diskless Remote Boot in Linux (DRBL), and Sun’s Open Source N1 Grid Engine 6. (more…)
Google knows you better than you
Recently I came across this article on the Google blog about the launch of Google Web History. If you have a Google account and their browser toolbar installed, it will keep track of all the websites you visit, allow you to search through them, and give you stats on what you do online. It’s like del.icio.us but completely passive and encompasses anything you do with your web browser. Thinking that it sounds rather big brother-esque? Me too.
But that doesn’t stop people from using it. It seems that people really do trust Google with vast quantities of information about their lives. I can just about cope with using their Gmail/Gtalk services, but I’m very conscious about what personal things I send over email, and I say on IM. The concept of keeping everything about your ‘digital life’ in a central place which is easily accessible and linked together strikes me as one of those great ideas that you would find listed in a 1970s ‘Things technology will do for us in the year 2000′ article along with replicators and hoverboards.
However crazy it may seem to most of us, there are some people who take this to extremes, recording every bit of information about their lives in a digital form. While it is possible to understand how collecting so much data about yourself is an intruiging concept (remember the Truman Show?), it’s a whole other thing to hand that information over to a large for-profit company, even if they supposedly don’t do evil.
AAC vs. MP3 vs. minisformation
After the recent announcement that EMI will distribute DRM-free tracks on iTunes, John Gruber has some interesting commentary about the role of formats in the future of digital music ‘accessibility’. In contrast to some amazingly blatant misinformation, particularly over the AAC format, it’s nice to see some well-informed writing over at the Guardian website.
iPod Shuffle woes
Recently, I picked up the new 1Gb iPod Shuffle. The thing is so small it is almost unbelievable. After syncing and charging it for the first time I took it for a test drive, and 2 days later I was still enjoying the tiny device without any problems. When the time came to plug it back into my PC I was greeted by an error message from iTunes. (more…)
Considering a Zune?
Microsoft is resorting to some questionable ways of promoting its new portable media player, the Zune. Not exactly subtle! (via Daring Fireball).
A bit of advice to Microsoft… ‘Welcome to the social’ isn’t a sentence, even if your marketing department says otherwise.
Credible iTunes Alternative?
The BBC is running a story about a new music download service for us Europeans, eMusic. eMusic has been around for a while, but downloads were restricted to US customers. Their subscription rates seem reasonable, with the cheapest being £8.99/month for 40 tracks. The major selling point is that the tracks are in MP3 format and are encoded at 192kbps VBR. They are also DRM free - a nice change from iTunes restrictive policies, not mention their lower bitrate. Apparently they aim to make money from the fact that not everyone will download all their allocated tracks each month. They do have a download manager and I’ve yet to work out if it is required to use the service. However, it seems that once downloaded the music is in plain-old MP3 format.
Update: It seems that the eMusic experience is not as good as it appears (thanks Vicky). I’ve also been dismayed at the choice of tracks on offer after checking out the site a bit further. The catalog is restricted mainly due to the fact that they don’t have deals with record labels who demand DRM. A noble effort but the end experience is far from ideal.
Cleartype in IE7
I’ve been testing out IE7 in Vista for the past week or so to see how it measures up against Firefox. Most of my usual web haunts seemed to look and work fine, although I’m not a big fan of the interface layout. The positioning of the stop and refresh buttons still catches me out - I guess I just have to get used to it. One thing that was definately strange was the font rendering. I couldn’t really put my finger on it until I switched back to Firefox: suddenly everything was much easier to read and less fuzzy. It turns out that IE7 in Vista uses Cleartype font rendering even if you have disabled it for Windows in general. The offending option is found in the browsers options dialog. I find Cleartype rendering horrific to read at best. I can’t understand why IE needs an independant control for this…
Fixing the filling
I’ve been working on the site for the past few days trying to get used to Textpattern. I’ve updated the look of the site a bit which I will no doubt continue to tweak. For the moment, anyone viewing this in IE6 will see a lot of wierdness due to its lack of support for transparency in PNG files. I will fix this sometime… maybe. Meanwhile, why not try something better?
I’ve added a new code section where I will be releasing several bits and pieces that I’ve written over the past few years, mostly Python stuff. Hopefully someone will find it useful.
Update: Fixed IE problems. Things should look pretty okay now.
