tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-231375802024-03-25T02:09:39.960-04:00o l l a vthoughts on IT, publishing, and randomnessollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.comBlogger191125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-25384666122115955622021-07-10T10:37:00.005-04:002021-07-10T10:39:56.728-04:00Sightseeing in CzechiaCzechiaA couple years ago we visited two cities in Czechia. Here are some of our favorite places in no particular order.BrnoSuper Panda CircusThe most amazing drinks and experience. Just go here!Šilingrovo nám. 257/3, 602 00 Brno-střed, Czechiahttps://goo.gl/maps/t6qRGhvzWi44qs2u8Atelier Bar & BistroA place that makes you feel at home even when you are so far away from home. Wonderful food, ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-8118177860550166082021-03-07T12:13:00.002-05:002021-03-07T12:13:27.208-05:00Importing photos from Apple Photos to Adobe Lightroom ClassicI've been really disappointed with Big Sur (Mac OS v11). Neither the 11.1 or 11.2 release have allowed my laptop to work correctly with my Apple Thunderbolt display and there have been various little bugs that should have been fixed by a .2 release. What really made my decision to move away from it though was how Apple continuously obfuscates your data files. I think it is smart to have ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-5166009361971576472020-09-05T16:09:00.004-04:002020-09-05T16:09:38.562-04:00Hacking Mac Image Capture for Higher DPI ScansI have been frustrated that Image Capture (the built in scan and camera tool on the Mac OS) seems to be limited to 600 DPI no matter what your scanner's ability. What also surprised me is when I search for it I can't find anyone else talking about this limitation. I do find advice on scanning that says if you want quality don't use the OS or software that came with the scanner and buy third ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-50599151095320011862020-05-31T10:57:00.000-04:002020-05-31T10:57:09.001-04:00Mustang BXR ManifoldIn the early 2000s I had a website dedicated to my car (naturalaspiration.com) and over the years the most popular part about it was the information I had on it about the intake manifold. I decided to keep some of the information around as a blog post.
BXR Intake Manifold without covers
My car was a 1989 Mustang and the intake manifold was a BXR, which stands for balanced cross ram. The ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-55447958124411408732016-06-27T21:50:00.000-04:002016-06-27T21:50:13.554-04:00The microS WayAs a conclusion to my notes and reflections on the CA Microservices Conference, I wanted to share the MicroS Way that was presented there.
1. Establish the right boundaries in your code and organization
2. Have a system that balances easy and speed with safety
3. Have the right processes and standards
4. Steer the system and measure it
5. Accept that right, easy, and safe are a product of ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-5569380937498212702016-06-27T21:44:00.000-04:002016-06-27T21:51:29.399-04:00MicroS - lessons learned part 3This is a continuation on my notes from (and reflections on) the CA conference on microservices.
How to Change
Use shock and awe to make change. Be a little outrageous. Do not pivot by spinning on your heel --sprint with a two-by-four, slam it in the ground, and spin round to a new direction. An enterprise is about maintaining stability, so it won't change just because you casually mention it. ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-46953844899103422016-06-26T18:35:00.000-04:002016-06-27T21:52:24.269-04:00MicroS - lessons learned part 2At the CA Microservices Conference, Vijay Alagarasan spoke about some anti-patterns. I have reworded them to be patterns to follow and added a couple of my own thoughts.
Automation is Litmus
The litmus test on whether you can handle microS is if you can automate. Automated testing and deployment is key to microS, but beyond that if what you have is not regular enough or so eccentric that ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-6527305294071976002016-06-25T14:56:00.002-04:002016-06-27T21:54:28.140-04:00Microservices (microS) - lessons learned part 1This is a continuation on what I learned from the API Academy's microservices conference. None of these are rules, they are all principles. My personal belief is that the only rule should be to embrace continuous improvement.
wAgile
Holger Reinhardt introduced the concept of wAgile which is a blend of waterfall and agile. On the one hand this sounds like an oxymoron and certainly there were ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-70792543072363163962016-06-18T12:09:00.000-04:002016-06-26T17:36:06.180-04:00Microservices (or microS) - overviewThe API Academy hosted a conference on microservices in Manhattan. I only stayed for the morning due to a busy schedule for myself that afternoon, but I was impressed. When a presentation includes pros and cons or includes stories of what went wrong I regard it as honest (more on that in my next post). A flawless IT project or technology is a rare thing and probably more about luck than skill. Ifollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-7408124560326924352015-12-06T10:42:00.002-05:002015-12-06T10:42:49.803-05:00Drivehttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJcollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-44948007740593800732015-10-24T16:44:00.004-04:002015-10-24T16:55:53.971-04:00Holacracy - notes from a taster workshop
Instead of structuring a company around the people, as we do in traditional management hierarchy, holacracy says you should structure the company around the work that the company needs to do to express its purpose.
If there is nothing that makes you skeptical about holacracy then you're probably missing something. It is a radical shift from traditional management hierarchy.
Holacarcy is a ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-86269057040477789842015-10-24T15:14:00.003-04:002015-10-24T15:14:45.836-04:00Agile Scrum - a few important pointsEmpirical process control says we should observe what happens in the world, learn from that, apply the knowledge, and repeat the cycle.
In generic terms: Plan --> Do --> Asses (test) --> Act (adapt) --> repeat
In Agile Scrum terms: Adapt --> Scrum --> Inspect --> Scrum --> repeat
At the center of both of these cycles is transparency.
What can be useful is to ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-81346789601427454252015-10-10T09:55:00.000-04:002015-10-10T10:51:37.523-04:00ColorHere are a couple references on color. Copyright info is within the images.
ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-20358594794328319002015-08-09T13:07:00.002-04:002015-08-09T13:07:52.650-04:00Adobe Conference
Recently I attended a conference from Adobe about Creative Cloud and marketing. Although there were more presentations, I found the first three most interesting. Here are my notes with some photos of the presentation.
1. Debbie Millman
Branding = deliberate differentiation
Human beings metabolize everything quickly. We see this literally with food, but ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-52347302152286452612015-08-03T10:00:00.000-04:002015-08-03T10:00:02.868-04:00How to discover a server's mail relay
On Solaris 10 run the following command as a regular user:
grep rhmailer /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
On RedHat/Centos 5 and 6, first discover the OS release level:
cat /etc/redhat-release
For redhat or centos 5 run the following command:
grep rhmail /etc/mail/sendmail.cf
For redhat or centos 6 run the following command:
grep rhmailer /etc/postfix/main.cf
ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-4012574200987844282014-12-21T20:14:00.000-05:002019-10-31T19:28:06.097-04:00Opening large files with Oracle SQL DeveloperOracle SQL Developer is my go to SQL tool. It is powerful, easy to use, and free. The only issue is that it can easily produce SQL files that are larger than it can open. For instance if you want to quickly back up a table, you can just run an export in "insert" format and it builds all the insert statements for you. Trouble is if that file's over around 30 MB you can't open it. The issue is thatollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-21884817713302855082014-10-11T16:41:00.001-04:002014-10-11T16:41:44.115-04:00Our Home Made SukkahWe've always lived in apartments and until this year didn't have private outdoor space where we could build a sukkah. Our current apartment though has a balcony and even before we were sure we wanted to rent the apartment, we were sure that if we did, we would build a sukkah on the balcony.
So a few weeks back I started. I have never built a sukkah and only been in a handful of them. As I ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-87648919733954085022014-09-28T09:44:00.001-04:002014-09-28T09:44:20.890-04:00PoemIt is the rhyme
and of course ... the rhythm
bow down to 'em
break words to make time
to the form we pray
and the meaning within
this too we trimollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-76393062872117792152014-09-14T16:40:00.002-04:002014-09-15T21:31:25.187-04:00London, Wales, and Festival No.6 - a recent vacation - part two of twoAnd on the seventh day of their trip was the festival...
We spent the next four days in Portmeirion for Festival No. 6. It was an amazing experience and we are already pondering going back next year. Rather than stick to the day-by-day format of my last post, I'll lead you through the festival topic by topic.
"To begin at the beginning..."
The Prisoner
To those of you who are ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0Portmeirion, Penrhyndeudraeth, Gwynedd LL48, UK52.913571 -4.09852352.913571 -4.098523 52.913571 -4.098523tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-65589680106227339742014-09-14T07:47:00.001-04:002014-09-14T18:13:59.308-04:00London, Wales, and Festival No.6 - a recent vacation - part one of two
My wife and I took what was for us an unusual trip outside the country. It was one of our best vacations ever, so I decided to record it here in more detail than is probably interesting to anyone but us.
We spent a few nights in London, a few nights in Hightown, and a few nights in Portmeirion. One general note about our trip is that the UK is friendly to vegetarians now. A little over ten ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0London, UK51.5073509 -0.1277582999999822351.1912379 -0.77320529999998222 51.8234639 0.51768870000001777tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-1001667301286874992013-10-15T16:06:00.002-04:002013-10-15T16:06:25.782-04:00I Hate Meetings - Michael Lopp - PalantirA bad meeting = Nth discussion on the same topic and no one owning the decision.
books by MichaelBored people quit - that's what they do.You are (at most) three years away from building something new. Look at resumes you'll see that people do this.Irrelevancy is always just around the corner. And shows up usually when you're happiest.Meetings exist to scale communication and to try to keep track ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-41870861015472603732013-10-15T13:59:00.004-04:002013-10-15T13:59:58.235-04:00Leveraging Logic as a Leader - Patty McCord - NetflixIt's not what you aspire to do - It's what you actually doFundamentals Company First (if you don't have a successful company you don't need a culture) Judgment trumps everything (intelligence, speed, intuition) You can just tell the truthTeams: Visualizing Greatness Imagine in six months if everything was amazing and you had ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-75070954732366606082013-10-15T13:56:00.002-04:002013-10-15T13:56:25.487-04:00Leading from First Principles - Scott Chacon - GitHub
One hundred years ago there was a knitting mill where the employees were not paying enough attention to the spools of thread running out. The solution was to put kittens on the factory floor to play with yarn. What's more amazing than that it worked is that people were open to it.Five years ago the four founders of GitHub were open source developers without business credentials. They worked ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-33448242370035732592013-10-15T13:47:00.000-04:002013-10-15T13:47:24.819-04:00How to Create a Culture of Shipping Product Continuously - Hiten Shah - KISSmetricsFounder Bombs - when someone high up gives ideas to others and they have no idea how to deal with this thing that came out of the blue and seems to be a request, but it isn't clear. One person realized that a founder bomb only matters if in a seven day period it is mentioned three timesThe solution to founder bombs has been for founders to be more mindful and also to find someone who can handle ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-23137580.post-53990846935657089102013-10-15T13:39:00.003-04:002013-10-15T13:39:48.480-04:00Nothing to Hide: Living with Complete Email Transparency - Patrick Collison - StripeHad unconventional ideas: no office, pay everyone the same, not having a phone number, not having a receptionistLater realized an office is needed if you have a few employees. Also that compensation has to vary.Believer in ambient transparency, where you can overhear things in the office and join in if it is important to you.At first it was just a couple brothers and they shared an email address ollavhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15416445917952217148noreply@blogger.com0