Category: Musings

The Computer is the new Valve

Interesting geek insight today: I was chatting to Cisco about how grid application servers look to be pretty darn interesting these days. For those of you who don’t know the grid application server model is where instead of getting a couple of large, over-powered computers to run your website, you get 10s if not 100s or even 1000s of cheapo, lower powered commodity computers and run then as a bit cluster. Each computer runs its own copy of code and sharing between the machines is kept to a minimum. This is he model used by Google, Amazon and eBay to keep scaling costs down. In fact when I was listening to Peter Yared talk about GASLAMP, his company’s grid enable application stack, he mentioned that at eBay they don’t even get support for computers any more – if one breaks, they just throw it away as it’s cheaper!

This line of conversation led to the stunning realisation that these days there are guys at Google whose only job is to walk around pulling dead computers out of racks and putting in new ones. Compare this to the old days, when some guy’s job at the original Eniac computer was to walk around pulling dead valves out of the system and replacing them. So now computers, made of 10s of silicon chips (for now), each holding millions of ‘transistors’, each of which is equivalent to a old school valve – have become the new valve themselves. Imagine 50 years time…

This is the mass of scooters that was chasing Critical Mass participants round New York last night. The Critical Mass crowd cycled past me chanting “more bikes, less war” then suddenly there were shouts of “Scooters! Go back!” and these guys shot up in the mass of bikes on Bleeker Street. There was a minor road block of police cordening them off and I saw one girl get arrested. As someone said when walking past “This is Bloomberg’s New York”. Makes you wonder why the Critical Mass guys don’t have front runners with phones to navigate safely away from this unwarrented harassment of peaceful protest. America the free. Guess not.

A post

Again people have been commenting that I haven’t posted much recently. And they’re right.

Basically it boils down to being stoopidly busy on the various projects we have at work that all seem to have deadlines around now. The whole of September has gone by and I have no real idea of where it went – so here’s a quick list of highlights:

• Seeing the twin towers of light from my roof, as opposed to standing right underneath them as at last year’s resFest.
• This year’s resFest: highlights of which were Mike Mills’ short film asking ‘what would you do if you had 30 days left to live?’. That guy is a genius and I’m looking forward to seeing Thumbsucker.
• Another fun trip up to Montreal getting away from the crazyness of New York.
• Autumn finally arriving after some brutally hot August days – time to get the a/c out of the window again.

Dinner: Brasserie.

Today

Today is a strange day, like it has been every day for the last four years. A day for remembering those who died unexpectedly and undeservedly, like many who die at another person’s hand. A day for reminding ourselves of the way governments globally capitalised on people’s fear in the name of ‘safety’, as opposed to the real agenda of domination and greed. A day for working towards a better society together as a united world and not letting wrong actions stay ignored because it is uncomfortable to do so.

Today is for our future. For each other. For love. For being together as one world.

Today is every day.

Designed to read

Was just flicking through the latest issue of arthur[t], a free magazine I picked up in some Billyburg shop. It’s a great read, with beautifully simple design and a flowing, art noveau style on great paper stock. Did I mention that it’s free? Go pick one up at your nearest alternative vendelry and find out about modern counter-culture.

For those of you who aren’t in the US or Canada and want to read a different perspective on the world check out we make money not art[t]. This is a great filter on new products, designs and art around the world.

Now off to work. For the last few weeks all has been crazyness getting ready for some imminent new stuff (watch this space). Not sure when the crazyness will end, but in the meantime I’ve found that working really really late and getting much less sleep than I normally do is making me feel pretty darn chipper. That and the weather here in NY of C is beautiful now – sunny but not too hot. Ah, fall how I love thee.

Beside the seaside

Another fun day down at Coney Island, recovering from the excellent enjoyment of the Thompson wedding yesterday. Beautiful sunny day, still warm waters with little fishes swimming in it and even a lovely man selling pre cut mangoes on a stick. Yay! Only downside was watching a guy get dragged out of the sea about 20m away from us who the lifeguards weren’t able to resucitate. Pretty upsetting. Or just ‘good tv’ if you were one of the large crowd that gathered to watch the drama unfold.

What made this death at Coney Beach drama all the more unsettling was that under an hour later the lifeguards’ whistles blew again and someone else was dragged from the water! I belive this person survived though, helped by the fact that the police and other emergency services were still around. This was good news for him given that it took a good 15-20 minutes for any sort of rescue vehicle to turn up for the first guy. All in all very unsettling. Perhaps Coney Island is suffering an visitation of Australia’s finest killer jelly fish the irikanji?

On the subject of large cockroaches… Here’s one from Thailand last year. Guess insects also like to have minty fresh mandibles or whatever.

Unwelcome visitor

The other night I was lying in bed feeling a bit ill and crappy when I heard this rustling in my window. At first I thought it was a breeze, but the sound was a little bit off for that. The noise then stopped so I started to fall asleep, but suddenly a movement above me woke me up – throwing the light on I jumped back as I saw a HUGE cockroach right on the wall above me. The bugger was almost 3 inches long and didn’t move slow for its size.

Long story short: epic chase round apartment, handy plastic bowl later the little wotsit was caught and I went to sleep. This morning, after a minor jail break, the little chap (or chapette) was duely released into the wild on my fire escape – where it proceeded to fly away. Huzah!

Meanwhile New Orleans is going through a major disaster in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. As I write they are talking about thousands being dead as the bowl that is New Orleans fills with water from the broken levees around it. 80% of New Orleans is under water – not good. However the Daily Post headline ‘Our Tsunami’ still does not seem appropriate.

33 and a day

Wow. I want to turn 33 all over again. What a great day so there’s a few people I want to thank.

First up a big thanks to the weather – perfect. Sunny, warm but not too hot and a great breeze. This, combined with my new dive watch (thanks dad, Kate & Abby) proved the perfect incentive for the first trip to Coney Island since 2001 – had it really been that long? Wow. Guess it must have as they’ve done over the subway station there and it looks awesome.

Wandering along the boardwalk is an intense visual feast – people of all shapes, size and dis-robement wandering around. the interplay of characters who have been there for years, selling things, watching people and just enjoying the sun is amazing. In fact it was slightly unnerving to be there without a camera since it broke without warning on Friday night. One minute there was a totally working Canon S30, the next – nada. Zip. Bupkiss. The camera just stopped and no attempt at turning it on/off, taking out batteries, sliding random things or anything seemed to bring it back. Hmm.

Being back on the beach really felt good. My last beach trip was out to the Hamptons back in September the previous year – too long. Just hearing the sea break against the shore made me feel happy. Jumping into the sea and playing in the waves felt so good – according to my Mosquito it was a lovely 24 degrees in the shallows and the water was 0.7m deep. Swimming 20m killed me completely – a far cry from my 18th birthday swimming in the olympic pool in Chamonix where I did a length for each year without straining. Hmm. No body surfing in that pool though. Give it a few days and hurricane Katrina will be passing by so there may be some crazy surf to play in.

Heading out from the beach – a sad moment with some beautiful views of the fairground as the sun set – we stopped to get nathan’s hot dogs for that proper tourist moment then headed back to the ‘burg. Being at the beach had reminded me of thailand yet they’re both so different – all Thailand had next to most of the beaches was palm trees and small huts, although I’d imagine that since the tsunami a lot of those places are gone, replaced by bigger developers with money for ugly concrete hotels. Dinner the night before at Sweetwater had also reminded me of Thailand, their back garden is wooden slats, with a beautiful tree hanging down across triangular shaped sun shades – the whole effect was just like so many places in Thailand on the beach and it really made the evening.

Back in the ‘burg we met up with John and Jemma for dinner at aurora, a great italian with a garden and an apparent dislike for lighting. Then back over to supreme trading for drinks in their courtyard – the weather was still holding out so getting the chance to be outside so much was just perfect. Then there may have been some drinking. And then maybe some more. Finally we all piled over to Union Pool for the final beer garden of the night. Finally the bar closed at 4 and my extended birthday celebration was over.. although I’m considering playing the ‘birthday weekend’ card today. Nice!

Thanks to everyone who came out to play – it was great to see you all on what was possibly the only night you’ll ever see me without a camera. Today’s task: camera shopping – thanks to mum, nan & Henry for that. And a big thanks to Miette for putting up with me all day – you roque.