BRYAN’S BLOG

ZFS is a beautiful thing. This could be the next generation of NAS servers. Now if only they would support 3ware disk controllers which are very good controllers for handling large numbers of disks which is exactly what ZFS likes, just keep adding cheap disks to the pool.

• http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/whatis/
• http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/zfs/intro/
• http://www.sun.com/software/solaris/zfs_learning_center.jsp
• http://www.podtech.net/scobleshow/technology/1619/talking-storage-systems-with-suns-zfs-team
• Lots of other useful zfs useful links.

In smary — you only need *two* commands to manage things — zpool and zfs. Nice…

And with solaris 10 you get dtrace. Very handy.

This link is regarding “Perfecting Your Presentations” but the slide show of Merlin Mann‘s “Inbox Zero” is excellent (Merlin Mann of 43folders.com fame). Keeping that Inbox to zero is surprisingly useful (and relieving).  Get all that stuff into your trusted system and OUT of your Inbox ala GTD.

Highlights.

• Make sandwiches, don’t just take orders. My translation – You need to make Action decisions and “just do it.” Just taking orders is equivalent to just fiddling in your inbox all day.
• Turn off your email sometimes.
• Am I putting my time into the right place? Is there a way to make this email less noisy and more useful?
• ToDo list are for collection, reducing anxiety.  Now what do you do with it?
• You have to stop sucking before you get good.   Just funny.
• Addresses How to get started – Create a DMZ in email.  Move all current stuff into the DMZ and start over. Deal with DMZ as you go, but do the system along the way.
• The technology will do your bidding, but it won’t FIX communication problems or broken practices. (excellent point).
• More on Inbox Zero at InboxZero.com.
• Common sense stuff.  My adage — It needs to be put into practice when most often it’s not.
• 1-5% of emails are actually actionable at Google. 500+ emails per day.  (sounds familar)

Powered by ScribeFire.

IBM has always been a progressive company, and here’s an interesting take on vacation.  Of course this only works with certain kinds of jobs and certain kinds of individuals (at least well motivated, pushing workaholic types), but it’s exactly what my philosophy has been for a long time.  As long as the work is getting done, progress is good, and things aren’t left “undone” it works nicely in today’s busy world.  It also fits into the “GTD paradigm” of Getting Things Done.

“ It’s every worker’s dream: take as much vacation time as you want,
on short notice, and don’t worry about your boss calling you on it. Cut
out early, make it a long weekend, string two weeks together–as you
like. No need to call in sick on a Friday so you can disappear for a
fishing trip. Just go; nobody’s keeping track.”

Powered by ScribeFire.

A great article on meetings:

“What are the things you are supposed to do to make a successful
meeting?” First hand: “Make sure everyone closes their laptop.”

Powered by ScribeFire.

Perfect explanation of Anamorphic Enhancement of video stream (not just for DVD’s).

Powered by ScribeFire.

A great vim tip.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Good basic, simple to follow financial advice from Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert:

1. Make a will.
2. Pay off your credit cards.
3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support.
4. Fund your 401(k) to the maximum.
5. Fund your IRA to the maximum.
6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it.
7. Put six months expenses in a money market account.
8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement.
9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, a tax issue), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio.

Technorati Tags: Financial

Here’s a nice straight forward HowTo on setting up the use of ssh keys for use with ssh or sftp between servers.

What is “-a (–archive)” in rsync, and the alternative if one just wanted to just get any missing files copied to dest.

-a, –archive = -rlptgoD

-r, –recursive

-l, –links

When symlinks are encountered, recreate the symlink on the destination.

-p, –perms

This option causes the receiving rsync to set the destination permissions to be the same as the source permissions. (See also the –chmod option for a way to modify what rsync considers to be the source permissions.)

-t, –times

This tells rsync to transfer modification times along with the files and update them on the remote system. Note that if this option is not used, the optimization that excludes files that have not been modified cannot be effective; in other words, a missing -t or -a will cause the next transfer to behave as if it used -I, causing all files to be updated (though the rsync algorithm will make the update fairly efficient if the files haven’t actually changed, you’re much better off using -t).

-g, –group

This option causes rsync to set the group of the destination file to be the same as the source file. If the receiving program is not running as the super-user (or if –no-super was specified), only groups that the invoking user on the receiving side is a member of will be preserved. Without this option, the group is set to the default group of the invoking user on the receiving side

-o, –owner

This option causes rsync to set the owner of the destination file to be the same as the source file, but only if the receiving rsync is being run as the super-user (see also the –super option to force rsync to attempt super-user activities). Without this option, the owner is set to the invoking user on the receiving side.

-D The -D option is equivalent to –devices –specials.

–devices
This option causes rsync to transfer character and block device files to the remote system to recreate these devices. This option has no effect if the receiving rsync is not run as the super-user and –super is not specified.

–specials
This option causes rsync to transfer special files such as named sockets and fifos.

# -v, –verbose
# -z, –compress compress file data
# -P equivalent to –partial –progress
# –partial keep partially transferred files
# –progress show progress during transfer
# –size-only only use file size when determining if a file should be transferred
# -W, –whole-file copy whole files, no incremental checks
# –ignore-existing ignore files that already exist on the receiving side
# -n, –dry-run show what would have been transferred

To copy files, without worry about perms, times, groups, etc:

rsync -rlvz –size-only –whole-file –ignore-existing

i.e. rsync -rlvz –size-only –whole-file –ignore-existing –stats ~/Sites/ /Volumes/sites/

Finally a solution to the warnings of mismatched domain-names when using SSL for IMAP and/or POP. If your like me, and query several different domain-names served by a hosting company, the domain-name of the actual machine queried for IMAP and/or POP (the reverse DNS lookup) will differ from that of your domain-name. The email client then thinks something is suspicious and barks at you for every account and you have to interact by telling it it’s “ok to continue.” If you have several accounts this can get annoying, as every time you open your email client you will be prompted once for every account. And if you use SMTP over SSL, you’ll get the same thing when trying to send. I finally found some fixes for this problem.

For Thunderbird (win or mac), see this posting.

For OS X Mail client: see the section “Avoiding SSL Certificate warning” in this posting.

Here are some very nice DC connectors. In particular, the PowerPoles. Usage: For any large amperage DC connection. Or at least what I would call “large amperage.” Good connectors of this sort are hard to find and one is usually left with spade clips or something very expensive.

Also mentions on Cool Tool = 12V connectors. and here.

Technorati Tags: Connectors

I setup and am going to start using Delicious to keep some good bookmarks.

http://del.icio.us/bryannielsen

A good article outlining what it takes to invent. I’ve always been interested in the part serendipity plays in the discover process or how discovery requires “tinkering” with failures along the road to success. We shouldn’t under estimate the importance of allowing our creative people time to tinker. Some great discoveries have evolved from that process, and the companies who allowed it profited greatly. e.g. google and 3m.

A nice write-up from Lee Campbell on building a home theatre system with a Mac Mini and an LCD screen, which doubles as a workstation in the living room while you sit on the couch.

lee wrote:

I’d recommend the $799 Mac Mini with intel dual core. http://www.apple.com/macmini The computer ships with two 256 MB memory sticks. I would spend the approximately $170 to upgrade the memory to 2 GB. I bought two 1 GB DDR non-ecc memory sticks at Fry’s Electronics for about $170. The computer has 2 memory slots and both slots must have the same size memory stick. If you plan on running Windows and Mac OS X at the same time, you will certainly need 2 GB of ram. Apple charges $300 per GB and you need two of them, so I don’t recommend buying memory from Apple. Upgrading the ram in a mini is a little tricky.

When shopping for an LCD TV, I valued how the TV displayed the computer image the most. The picture quality for TV/Cable signals wasn’t as important for me. I chose a Polaroid 32″ LCD because it was the only model I could find that displayed the computer image perfectly. A similar 37″ Polaroid is availabe. Sony projection, Sony LCD, Panasonic, LG, Samsung, and Mitsubishi all clipped the image so that the Windows task bar or Apple menu was not visible. Of all the models I tested at Best Buy, Sears, Circuit City and Tweeters, the Polaroid was the only model that worked well as a computer display. The picture quality for TV/Cable is perfectly acceptable but not the best. I found this TV at Circuit City for $900. The Apple store uses a NEC LCD display that looks beautiful, but I could not find any NEC TVs to test. The Polaroid LCD defaults to using a color profile that makes the computer image look dark and very high contrast. To fix this problem, use the “Apple RGB” Color profile in System Preferences | Display | Color.

To run Windows XP or Linux at the same time you’re running Mac OS X, you will need this software: http://www.parallels.com/

To dual boot Windows XP and Mac OS X, you will need this: http://www.apple.com/macosx/bootcamp/ With these components, I now have a full Windows and Mac workstation with almost no footprint in my living room.

Technorati Tags: OS X, Home Theatre, Workstation

Battery Chargers – This looks like an interesting Lithium Ion Charging Chip. As all the features one needs in a charger in a small package and with minimal external components.