Category: Technology

BlackBerry tether with Ubuntu 9.10

There are many pages out there about how to use a tethered BlackBerry internet connection with Ubuntu 9.10. Here is one that actually works. It uses Barry, BlackBerry support software generously provided by Net Direct Inc.

I’ve found this quite useful with an Ubuntu based netbook. There is Wifi a lot of places, but not even close to “everywhere”.

My BlackBerry is on the T-Mobile network, which (nicely) includes tethering at no extra cost, but (not so nicely) offers only EDGE (not 3G) in most of the US. Still, in a pinch an EDGE connection is far better than no connection, and is quite suitable for occasional use at zero incremental cost. For heavy mobile wireless tethering users, I suggest Verizon or Sprint service with their respective USB dongles.

Book Giveaway at Lambda Lounge, Dec. 3

This Thursday is the next meeting of the Lambda Lounge, I’m giving away another stack of books:

Kyle is giving away these books

I love books. I love them so much that my house became crowded with them. Then I realized that The World is My Warehouse.

Please take a book, free. There are some excellent books in this pile, most notably the “Generative Programming” book and Bitter EJB.

Update: All but a couple of the books were snapped up at the meeting.

Massive Parallelism and Microslices

I just read James Hamilton’s comments on “Microslice” servers, which are very low-power, but high CPU-to-wattage ratio servers. As he explains in detail, at scale the economics of this design are compelling. In some ways, of course, this is the opposite of another big trend going on, which is consolidation through virtualization. I reconcile these forces like so:

  1. For enterprises with a high ratio of emloyees-per-server-CPU, the cost factors tend to drive cost as a function of the number of boxes / racks /etc. This makes virtualization on to a few big servers a win.
  2. But for enterprises with a low ratio (lots of computing work, small team), the pure economics of the microserver approach makes it the winner.

The microserver approach demands:

  • better automated system adminstration, you must get to essentially zero marginal sysadmin hours per box.
  • better decompisition of the computing work in to parallelizable chunks
  • very low software cost per server (you’re going to run a lot of them), favoring zero-incremental-cost operating systems (Linux)

My advice to companies who make software to harness a cloud of tiny machines: find a way to price it so your customer pays you a similar amount to divide their work among 1000 microservers, as they would amount 250 heavier servers; otherwise if they move to microservers they may find a reason to leave you behind.

On a personal note, I find this broadening trend toward parallelization to be a very good thing – because my firm offers services to help companies through these challenges!

I Went In a Boy, I Came Out a Man

Apple Store large logo sign

Not really, it just seemed like the sort of over-the-top thing a rabid Mac fan might say.

But I did replace my main Windows PC with a MacBook Pro. I’ve used Apple products occasionally over the decades, going all the way back to the Apple II, IIe, IIgs, and orignal 1984 Macintosh. I’m not “switching”, but rather adding; our client projects at Oasis Digital continue to run primarily on Windows or Linux. Our Java work runs with little extra effort on all three platforms.

Here are some thoughts from my first days on this machine and OSX:

  • The MacBook Pro case is very nice. I didn’t see any Windows-equipped hardware with anything similar. The high-tech metal construction is an expensive (and thus meaningful) signal that Apple sends: Apple equipment is high end. The case also has the great practical benefit of acting as a very large heat sink.
  • The MPB keyboard is a bit disappointing; I miss a real Delete key (in addition to Backspace), Home, End, PageUp, PageDown. At my desk I continue to use a Microsoft Natural Keyboard, so this is only a nuisance on the road.
  • I bought a Magic Mouse for the full Apple experience; but I’ll stick with a more normal mouse (and its clickable middle wheel-button) for most use. I find wireless mice too heavy, because of their batteries.
  • Apple’s offerings comprise a fairly complete solution for common end user computing needs; for example, Apple computers, running Time Machine for backup, storing on a Time Capsule. I didn’t go this route, but it is great to see it offered.
  • Printing is very easy to set up, particularly compared to other Unix variants.
  • VMWare Fusion is fantastic, and amply sufficient to use this machine for my Windows work. Oddly, my old Windows software running inside seems slightly more responsive than the native Mac GUI outside (!).
  • I need something like UltraMon; the built in multi-monitor support is trivial to get working, but the user experience is not as seamless as Windows+UltraMon. For example, where is my hotkey to move windows between screens, resizing automatically to account for their different sizes?
  • Windows has a notion of Cut and Paste of files in Explorer. It is conceptually a bit ugly (the files stay there when you Cut them, until Pasted), but extremely convenient. OSX Finder doesn’t do this, as discussed at length on many web pages.
  • I would like to configure the Apple Remote to launch iTunes instead of Front Row, but haven’t found a way to do so yet. No, Mr. Jobs, I do not wish to use my multi-thousand-dollar computer in a dedicated mode as an overgrown iPod. Ever.
  • The 85W MagSafe power adapter, while stylish and effective, is heavy. I’d much prefer a lighter aftermarket one, even if it was inferior in a dozen ways, but apparently Apple’s patent on the connector prevent this. I’d actually be happy to pay Apple an extra $50 for a lightweight power adapter, if they made such a thing.
  • This MBP is much larger, heavier, and more expensive than the tiny Toshiba notebook PC it replaces; yet it is not necessarily any better for web browsing, by far the most common end user computer activity in 2009. This is not a commentary on Apple, it merely points out why low-spec, small, cheap netbooks are so enormously popular.

Micro-review: Bose QuietComfort 15 noise-cancelling headphones

I recently bought these Bose headphones:

qc15_si_lg

Yes, they cost $300. Ouch.

If you travel by airplane more than 1x per year, buy these headphones.

Slightly longer review:

These headphones use active noise cancellation to dramatically slash the volume of loud environments; they work best for continuous, white-noise-like sounds (for example, riding in an airplane). The experience of 4+ hours in the air is completely different when you cut down the noise level. Wearing these, vs. not, is a more dramatic difference in overall unpleasantness, than the difference been first-class and steeragecoach.

Each AAA battery lasts a few flights, sometimes more. You can plug in your media player, computer, etc., or just use the noise cancellation alone.

Missing your .svn\tmp directories? One line fix.

You may find with “svn cleanup” (or its TortoiseSVN equivalent) fails with an error message about “system cannot find the path specified”. If you research this error, you may find that the SVN dev team knows that svn-cleanup does not clean up this particular problem, and as of SVN version 1.6.5, considers that OK.

There is an easy fix, though. The tools are already present on nearly any Linux system, and are available in Cygwin or MSYS on Windows. Navigate to the top of your SVN working directory, and run this:

find . -iname '.svn' -exec mkdir {}/tmp \;

If all you were missing was some empty tmp directories, svn cleanup will now work, as will svn update and friends. Of course you may have other, additional problems with your .svn directories.

A mystery, for me and others, is how the missing .svn\tmp directory situation comes about. The best guess I’ve seen, but not yet reproduced here, is that a helpful piece of software (perhaps a backup tool?) deletes empty directories.

The great majority of all software I’ve used, does not depend on empty directories, and I likewise heartily recommend not designing software in such a way that it requires that empty directories are preserved. If you need a directory, please keep something in it. If you don’t need anythign in it, be willing to rereate it when you have something to put in it. Make it Just Work.