The indoor part of the snow day Wednesday, Dec 9 2009
Uncategorized 9:23 am
The Cowtown Computer Congress » Ionic flyer Wednesday, Dec 9 2009
Uncategorized 2:59 am
Here’s a video with some of the setup. A flyback transformer from an old CRT monitor is providing the HV source.
Healthcare’s effect on innovation Friday, Dec 4 2009
Uncategorized 4:57 am
It occurred to me (through my own experience) that there may be a relationship between the decline of innovation and the increase of healthcare cost in the United States. As public interest and debate over the healthcare issue picked up this year I’ve given the theory more thought and today posed the question to Paul Graham’s Hacker News, an online community composed of innovators, entrepreneurs and generally smart folks.
So far the results have been interesting and I’ve learned a little bit more about issues of which I was previously unaware. Take a look for yourself and share your thoughts:
Mac Server Timeshare (Skylab 3000) Friday, Dec 4 2009
Uncategorized 4:02 am
Lately I’ve been intrigued about the idea of hosting my various websites on my own server again. Some of you will remember “Skylab”, my first self-hosted public webserver* and ever since it was shut down by Charter I’ve pined to once again have my very own island on the internet to conduct experiments without the interference of pesky administrators, management “systems” and the like.
This time around however I’d like to run the site over something a little more “reliable” than my personal, “non-business-class” internet connection so co-location appears to be the way to go. I’ve also become interested in admin-ing an OS X server box, which led me to the guys at macminicolo.
I won’t turn this into a discussion on the appropriateness of the Mac Mini as a server (Apple apparently deems it satisfactory).
Of course with co-location comes cost and while macminicolo’s rates are reasonable, it’s a habit I’m not willing to take on all by myself at the moment. Really there is no need to, since while I do want to “run” the site the available capacity it will provide will exceed my needs, at least for the foreseeable future.
So the thought occurred to me to “sublet” the additional capacity as a way to cover the co-location costs. Nothing new here, running multiple sites on the same box has been de-rigor for many years and serves millions of websites just fine. What is different is that finding OS X Server hosting is difficult and expensive, so if you have a need (or desire) to host your site on a Mac, even a shared one, you’re going to pay for it.
What I’m offering is Mac OSX Server website hosting at a reasonable rate to a small group of reasonable folks. I’m looking to find ten individuals who would be happy with a virtual webserver and FTP access for about $10.00 a month (I’m willing to discuss other services as long as they don’t have a negative impact on they rest of the system, introduce security risks or otherwise give me a headache). Bandwidth will be 200GB/month shared, and if we go over the biggest hog pays the overage fees.
Payments will be made via PayPal (unless you have a better idea) and can be monthly or in bulk. Unpaid accounts go back “on the block” for the next available bidder.
For my part I’ll provide system administration and a ”sane” level of technical support (via email typically) as well as the up-front investment of getting the site off the ground.
What I’m attempting to do is setup a flexible, affordable shared environment for people who want to do interesting things without allot of rules and complexity (think Hostel not Hotel). This should keep costs low and creativity high.
There are currently eight (8) slots/shares remaining; if you are interested or have questions leave a comment here or contact me directly via email (jason dot gullickson at gmail dot com).
*technically, “skylab” was composed of a number of servers, a ProLiant 200 IIS server as the primary web/app server, a Macintosh SE/30 mail/smtp server and a Beowulf cluster of between 5 and 20 HP Vectra’s.
General Aviation Serves America Saturday, Nov 28 2009
Uncategorized 6:22 pm
If you won't listen to me, listen to Han Solo!
<script src=”http://player.ooyala.com/player.js?width=400&embedCode=IzcWl5OlbwK0_43nrMS6BfrVvWADaasj&height=219″ ></script>
Litl in a Nutshell Monday, Nov 23 2009
Uncategorized 4:49 am
What follows is a summary of the information I’ve been able to glean about the Litl computer on the public internet. I’ve yet had a chance to lay my hands on the device personally, but if someone were to provide me with a loaner/demo unit I would be more than happy to post a more in-depth write-up…hint, hint, hint…
Last week I was turned on to the Litl computer by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball. The Litl fits so nicely (alongsideHaiku) in my vision of the future of computing that I could hardly believe it existed as anactual, shipping, product. Here’s what I’ve learned about the device in the last week…
The Litl is the only computer I’m aware of that has been designed exclusively as a “home computer” in at least 20 years. To accomplish this, it has a custom operating system designed to aggressively eliminate anything that unnecessary for the home user.
Booked as a “Webbook“, most of the Litl’s functionality comes in the form of web-based applications. These applications are not installed on the Litl and require an internet connection to operate, however the Litl’s operating system treats web-based applications the same as other systems treat “native” apps, allowing the user to switch between them seamlessly.
The Litl does away with icons and windows (in the traditional sense) and replaces these with “channels”; in fact the television metaphor is carried throughout the software which may make the system actually easier to use for novices than for those with extensive computer experience.
The hardware begins with a “laptop” form-factor with the added ability to flip the screen almost completely around, allowing the Litl to be placed on a flat surface like an artist’s easel. From this position a wheel and a button (located on the hinge of the screen) are easily accessible and, due to the “channel-based” navigation of the operating system, most functions of “Easel-Mode” can be carried out with just these two controls. In addition, a remote control is available which duplicates these controls wirelessly.
At the heart of the device is Atom processor, currently running at 1.86Ghz with 1GB RAM and 2GB of local compact-flash storage. Litl downplays the hardware specs and reasonably so; there’s no apples-to-apples comparison to make between this device and other laptops, and this allows them to change the hardware details when improvements make sense instead of based on marketing cycles, etc.
The software, while often billed as a “new” operating system isn’t quite that, but from the users’ perspective it certainly appears that way. Under the hood is an optimized version of Ubuntu, which as far as the user is concerned might as well not exist; all interaction with the unix core is handled automatically. At first I found this disappointing but I’m re-considering that opinion (after all, I considered NeXT to have it’s own O/S even though the kernel wasMACH).
Continuing with the “Webbook” design, while Litl comes with 2GB of local storage (as noted above), user data is stored “on the internet” via Amazon S3. Updates, maintenance and the like are downloaded from the internet and installed locally on the machine.
I have a few outstanding questions for the folks at Litl, for example:
- As a “Webbook”, what functionality is available when the Litl cannot connect to the internet, and if a connection is required, will there be a more “pervasive” network (for example, 3G) network available in future models?
- Does the operating system support offline-capable web app technologies (Google Gears); allowing the device to be useful when not connected to the internet?
- Is there an api/sdk that will be made available to third-party developers to extend the operating system/environment, or will this be kept in-house?
These questions aside I think there is allot of potential for this device and it’s bold creators. Even though I personally don’t see myself as the target audience for such a computer, it is a critical part of my model of the future of computing, where companies are open to the idea of producing specialized machines for different types of users and applications, opening up the possibility to go beyond the limits imposed by the need for “general purpose” computers and allowing entirely new categories of applications to be developed.
References
Node.js is genuinely exciting Monday, Nov 23 2009
Uncategorized 2:29 am
Event driven programming takes advantage of the fact that network servers spend most of their time waiting for I/O operations to complete. Operations against in-memory data are incredibly fast, but anything that involves talking to the filesystem or over a network inevitably involves waiting around for a response.
This is a great summary of the up-and-coming event-driven approach to a webserver (in this case, “Node”). I’ve been doing a ton of jquery/ajax stuff lately and I can say from experience we need support like this on the server-side.
Ambient Life – Animated Vision of the Future on Datavisualization.ch Friday, Nov 20 2009
Uncategorized 4:27 am
Freeband Communication and IIPIC share a vision of the future: a world in which information and communication technology render one’s surroundings into a thinking and caring environment.
