Monthly Archives: July 2008

Automatic version control

July 14, 2008
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When I reread this post an idea sprung in my brain: automatic version controls could be intermixed with backup schemes now that storage seems to grow (soon) to 80 petabyte on a common iPod :) .  (yes, we have left the terabyte age and are now entering the petabyte age) ( 1 petabyte = 1000 terabyte). I even wonder if it could be integrated in virtual machines.

But please note: automatic version control is not automatic configuration management, which is in the end a little block in this.

Meaning in the end: why don’t we just version anything and everything on any pc, laptop or any device and keep the history forever? Surely the exa-, zetta- or yota age will soon follow afterwards.

Putting meaning to the data, identifying branches etc… could be done by some smart tooling and some configuration files.

Currently you have to pinpoint the stuff that you want to be versioned e.g. some code, some documents, etc… When automatic version control would kick in, it would also register that you installed the little bug fix pack for  tool Y on your system on day 25 and deinstalled it on day 26. IF, for some reason, everything goes down because of it, everyone will know who is to blame… hahaha.

p.s. this list is way cool “(1.25 terabytes) – capacity of a human being’s functional memory, according to Raymond Kurzweil in The Singularity Is Near, p. 126” which brings me to this totally unrelated, but still cool, image:

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Which then again makes me think: when are we able to version control humans?

My next X-Box 360 game: Fallout 3

July 14, 2008
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So far I have bought quite some X-Box 360 games. Most I ditched and didn’t even play longer than 10 minutes (I might bundle them some day for ebay).

Four games I fell in love with and played for a long time (and I need extra accomplishments for all of them so I will play them all again and ongoing):

- Lost Odyessey: the story, characters, the dreams, the spells, awesome graphics, addictive!
- Assassin’s Creed, awesome graphics, history, storyline, sweat in my hands
- Prey, storyline, awesome graphics
- Halo 3, shoot everything that moves, I *wow*ed when I shot my first scarab tank

So… my X-Box automatically downloads demo’s for me from new games, which makes it pretty easy to ongoing play demo’s from new games. 90% of the games are not for me *delete*. About 9% I like but I wouldn’t buy them. And 1% is actually something I would buy. So… what will be my next game? I’ve decided on Fallout 3, which will appear soon.

I tried to order the Survival Edition on Amazon but that gave me: “We’re sorry. This item can’t be shipped to your selected destination." *grmbl* this is quite a shame because it includes a pretty neat version of the Pip-boy 3000. So let’s wait for the regular version.

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Apart from “the” game, I will probably also go for Civilization Revolution and some other games that were in the news lately. However I think that Fallout 3 will fit in my “top 5 games” list, which now only contains 4 games.

Google Gears Turbo Speeds your WordPress!

July 13, 2008
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So what can you get out of Google Gears?

It downloads some parts of a far-away web site to your local disk, but then again, I surf to so many web sites that I didn’t occur to me that it could be beneficial, there is is much stuff out there that this was very low on my todo list.

However, I didn’t realize one particular application for which it might be very handy: WordPress, the package that runs behind this web site.

Inside the WordPress Administration panel you will find a new button called “turbo”, when you hit that you are lead to the Google Gears website, which lets you install Google Gears in your browser. After that, when you start WordPress again and hit the turbo button again, you get the prompt to enable your WordPress:

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I then downloads a whooping 209 files to your local pc so do not use it on a public computer!

After that your complete WordPress Administration is incredibly fast. This is really awesome!

So… since I am now pinpointed with my nose into Gears I’m diving into it somewhat more, like this interesting thing here.

Big change for the stumble upon plugin

July 13, 2008
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The stumble-upon site-wide WordPress plugin displays next to each of your links the popularity of the stumble-upon rating. It does this by checking with my server and afterwards sending a ranking from 0 to 9 to your site. (example).

The use of it is pretty heavy.

I’m caching the requests for performance and saw that it any time contained 25.000 requests pages. Furthermore the amount of requests, though only being little text requests slurps away 1/3 of all my bandwidth:

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So I had to think of a solution for this. I decided to leave the functionality intact, so it will still show you the icon. But instead of jumping to the corresponding page it will jump to http://populair.eu , another site that I am running.

In this way the functionality will stay intact but at the same time I have the benefits of a link back to one of my sites.

If however, you would like to retain the original functionality you can donate me some money and I will send you the complete source-code of the server-side part so you install it on your own server.

New York Times Inflation little bits

July 9, 2008
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I’m still thinking of how to setup http://householdframework.org : the website that will teach you how to mature your household. It will definitely consist of multiple languages. It will probably be in wiki format.

It will reason that there are about 1500 specific elements in your household that you need to control. Apart from these specific elements there are 1500 generic practices. Each of these 3000 elements will have a maturity level assigned from very immature to very mature. For each of these 3000 elements you will find supporting tools (websites, consultancy, shops and so on) and best practices and templates “a stain fix sheet”.

One of the many questions is how to organize the structure of the finance part.

The New York times has published this overview, where you can mouse-over and which is one of the many different structured ways for a household finance. It’s best not to invent this ourselves but to align with common best practices so you can integrate better with external services.

Hundreds of questions and ideas spring to mind: would it be handy if you could integrate with the supermarket to see which groceries you did and their costs instead of the paper rollout you get, etc..

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Other ontologies can be found on http://statline.cbs.nl/StatWeb/dome/default.aspx or http://www.consumentenbond.nl/ and ofcourse the financial index is embeded in a much larger structure since it is only part of the 1500 elements of a household.

One of the ideas is that integration should be strong with all external parties. For instance: if you buy a new plant for in your garden it should automatically be inserted in the garden index for your personal garden in your home wiki including costs, maintenance, some pictures etc… As a reward the third parties can offer new third party services to customers because of the tight integration.

This project “http://householdframework.org” can only succeed if it is independent of specific suppliers and is completely open. Some day it will open and then I will ask you all to participate in it.

Since I do not have the time to spend lots of energy in it: if you have the time and are interested mail me.

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