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Bandwagon Hopping
I'm not sure what a bandwagon is or why jumping onto one is a pastime
indicative of populist persuasion, but I'll jump on up and grab a trumpet.
$ history|awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’|sort -rn|head bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('
Interesting. Being able to instigate cognition on a machine like mine that consists of millions of transistors all vibrating in unison so fast that a pet dog's pet dog couldn't even begin to hear their rhythmical communication running tens of millions of lines of computer incantation (those in the know call it 'code') produces a wonderful sense of technological prowess, meaning that I have no idea what just happened.
It must be a metaphorical premonition of near windfall or danger, I can't tell, but my best guess is that it's telling me strawberries will be on sale the next time I go get groceries. I like strawberries. Or perhaps my trumpet riffs don't accord with the prevailing mode of the bandwagon tune (likely), and I'll break a string on my viola the next time I get it out. That wouldn't actually be too bad, since I've been wanting to get a new set of strings.
$ history|awk ‘{a[$2]++ } END{for(i in a){print a[i] ” ” i}}’|sort -rn|head bash: syntax error near unexpected token `('
Interesting. Being able to instigate cognition on a machine like mine that consists of millions of transistors all vibrating in unison so fast that a pet dog's pet dog couldn't even begin to hear their rhythmical communication running tens of millions of lines of computer incantation (those in the know call it 'code') produces a wonderful sense of technological prowess, meaning that I have no idea what just happened.
It must be a metaphorical premonition of near windfall or danger, I can't tell, but my best guess is that it's telling me strawberries will be on sale the next time I go get groceries. I like strawberries. Or perhaps my trumpet riffs don't accord with the prevailing mode of the bandwagon tune (likely), and I'll break a string on my viola the next time I get it out. That wouldn't actually be too bad, since I've been wanting to get a new set of strings.
Utah Code Camp - Saturday, 26 April
We are proud to announce the upcoming Utah Spring Code Camp taking place on Saturday, 26 April at Neumont University in South Jordan. The event begins at 9:00 a.m.
If you go to the < http://www.utcodecamp.com/ > site, one of the first things you may notice is that this has traditionally been an event for software developers working on Microsoft platforms and, more recently, Apple platforms. The organizers are eager to include the open source developer community in these events going forward.
Registration is required to attend and should not set you back too much because registration is FREE!
Neumont University is at 10701 South River Front Parkway, Suite 300, in South Jordan. Here’s a convenient link to a Google Map to the location.
Here is an official blurb about the event:
The Code Camp is a one day training put on by local volunteers in your community. We have presentations ranging on all sorts of topics for Dba’s to Developers. We will have several tracks running throughout the day. You can check on the website for a current list of speakers and sessions. The Code Camp is open to all technologies and is a great place to get together with others and network.
We will have lots of giveaways including software, game system, and Ipod.
We are still looking for a few more speaker spots if you are interested in speaking.
Should you have any questions please visit the website or email. Pwright@medicity.com
Have you submitted your paper yet?
The 2008 Utah Open Source Conference is coming up fast, as you know. If you would like to present on a topic at the conference, there’s no time like NOW to whip up a response to the Call For Papers (if you have not already).
You only have until June 1 to get that paper turned in. You can submit your proposed topic by going to the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference website and clicking on the Call For Papers link.
If you’re not sure where to begin, check out our previous blog post about the Call For Papers.
2008 Utah Open Source Awards
Not only is 2008 the second year we will be holding the Utah Open Source Conference, it is also the second year we will be recognizing and awarding four remarkable individuals as part of the Utah Open Source Awards ceremony at the conference.
The Utah Open Source Awards will be given in four categories:
- Business
- Community
- Technology
- Education
In 2007, awards were given in three categories as the Education category was not added until this year. The recipients of the 2007 Utah Open Source Awards were:
- Matt Asay of Alfresco (Business) for his work evangelizing open source software in business
- Brandon Beattie (Technology) for his excellent contributions to the MythTV project
- Christer Edwards (Community) for his leadership in the Ubuntu Utah project
Now is the time for you to close your eyes and search deep in the crevices of your mind of who within the local community has made a positive impact on your experience using open source software. It could be someone who writes helpful documentation or blog posts. Perhaps you know someone who has developed valuable open source software. Maybe it’s someone who has made a difference in encouraging adoption and understanding of open source software. Whoever it is, concentrate on them. Now, imagine them receiving a big round of applause and a cool gift as thanks from the community. Okay, open your eyes.
When you have thought of at least one person, send a quick e-mail message to awards@utos.org with the name and a brief explanation of why you think this person is deserving of a Utah Open Source Award. There’s no limit to how many people you can nominate, but you can only submit nominations until August 1.
Winners will be announced (and awarded) during the 2008 Utah Open Source Conference held August 28-30, 2008 at the Salt Lake Community College Redwood Campus.
Command Shell History Hacks
I was once annoyed with how small the default bash shell history was and how
small the available history was, back when I didn't know they were two
different concepts in bash-think. I now know much better. In fact, I know so
well that I flatter myself you will gratefully appreciate the following clever
mods to bash history behavior.
First, I decided that I wanted the shell to remember every command I entered for about the past 5 years. Your limit may be higher or lower depending on your bash needs.
export HISTFILESIZE=65536
When I originally set this up I wondered how much effect having all 65536 lines of history would bog down each shell process, so I set the following global to a fraction of HISTFILESIZE and never researched the issue further. My ~/.bash_history file is currently 42025 commands long and has existed across distros, partitions, and originated on a previous hard drive in about Summer 2004.
export HISTSIZE=4096
What happens if I want to access a command that's older than 4096? This is where things start to get interesting. About the first hundred times I would begin a command that went something like this:
$ egrep "^command.*arg" ~/.bash_history | sort | uniq
Sometimes I may even know that the command itself had passed beyond the current shell's 4096 memory but the search command hasn't in which case I search for the search command (with C-r). The nested complexity this produced was sufficient to sustain my ego for some time, but ultimately I decided it could be much more elegantly done.
#!/bin/bash grep --color=yes "$@" ~/.bash_history | sort -u
I call this small script search-old-cmd and put it in my ~/.bin directory. Make sure you put it somewhere that's in your PATH and chmod +x it. Now you'll never have to let your shell commands get recycled into the bit bucket since you have a deceptively powerful means of searching out all the excellent one liners you banged out early in the morning to get the job done.
Here's my ~/.bashrc in it's full occult glory. Most of it I pirated from the /etc/bash/bashrc that ships with gentoo, but you will see my HIST settings near the bottom.
if [[ $- != *i* ] ; then return fi shopt -s checkwinsize shopt -s histappend case ${TERM} in xterm*|rxvt*|Eterm|aterm|kterm|gnome*) PROMPT_COMMAND=‘echo -ne “\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/$HOME/~}\007”’ ;; screen) PROMPT_COMMAND=‘echo -ne “\033_${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/$HOME/~}\033\\”’ ;; esac use_color=false safe_term=${TERM//[^[:alnum:]/?} match_lhs=”” [[ -f ~/.dir_colors ] && match_lhs=”${match_lhs}$(<~/.dir_colors)” [[ -f /etc/DIR_COLORS ] && match_lhs=”${match_lhs}$(</etc/DIR_COLORS)" [[ -z ${match_lhs} ] \ && match_lhs=$(dircolors --print-database) [[ $'\n'${match_lhs} == *$'\n'"TERM "${safe_term}* ] && use_color=true if ${use_color} ; then if [[ -f ~/.dir_colors ] ; then eval $(dircolors -b ~/.dir_colors) elif [[ -f /etc/DIR_COLORS ] ; then eval $(dircolors -b /etc/DIR_COLORS) fi if [[ ${EUID} == 0 ] ; then PS1='\[\033[01;31m\]\h\[\033[01;34m\] \W \$\[\033[00m\] ' else PS1='\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] \w \$\[\033[00m\] ' fi alias ls='ls --color=auto' alias grep='grep --colour=auto' alias less='less -R' alias tree='tree -C' else if [[ ${EUID} == 0 ] ; then PS1='\u@\h \W \$ ' else PS1='\u@\h \w \$ ' fi fi unset use_color safe_term match_lhs alias which='alias | /usr/bin/which --tty-only --read-alias --show-dot --show-tilde' alias cgrep="grep --color=yes" alias xterm="xterm -geometry 100x40" alias gnome-terminal="gnome-terminal --geometry 100x40 --hide-menubar" export EDITOR="vim" export HISTFILESIZE=65536 export HISTSIZE=4096 if [[ -f ~/.bash_local ] ; then source ~/.bash_local fi
First, I decided that I wanted the shell to remember every command I entered for about the past 5 years. Your limit may be higher or lower depending on your bash needs.
export HISTFILESIZE=65536
When I originally set this up I wondered how much effect having all 65536 lines of history would bog down each shell process, so I set the following global to a fraction of HISTFILESIZE and never researched the issue further. My ~/.bash_history file is currently 42025 commands long and has existed across distros, partitions, and originated on a previous hard drive in about Summer 2004.
export HISTSIZE=4096
What happens if I want to access a command that's older than 4096? This is where things start to get interesting. About the first hundred times I would begin a command that went something like this:
$ egrep "^command.*arg" ~/.bash_history | sort | uniq
Sometimes I may even know that the command itself had passed beyond the current shell's 4096 memory but the search command hasn't in which case I search for the search command (with C-r). The nested complexity this produced was sufficient to sustain my ego for some time, but ultimately I decided it could be much more elegantly done.
#!/bin/bash grep --color=yes "$@" ~/.bash_history | sort -u
I call this small script search-old-cmd and put it in my ~/.bin directory. Make sure you put it somewhere that's in your PATH and chmod +x it. Now you'll never have to let your shell commands get recycled into the bit bucket since you have a deceptively powerful means of searching out all the excellent one liners you banged out early in the morning to get the job done.
Here's my ~/.bashrc in it's full occult glory. Most of it I pirated from the /etc/bash/bashrc that ships with gentoo, but you will see my HIST settings near the bottom.
if [[ $- != *i* ] ; then return fi shopt -s checkwinsize shopt -s histappend case ${TERM} in xterm*|rxvt*|Eterm|aterm|kterm|gnome*) PROMPT_COMMAND=‘echo -ne “\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/$HOME/~}\007”’ ;; screen) PROMPT_COMMAND=‘echo -ne “\033_${USER}@${HOSTNAME%%.*}:${PWD/$HOME/~}\033\\”’ ;; esac use_color=false safe_term=${TERM//[^[:alnum:]/?} match_lhs=”” [[ -f ~/.dir_colors ] && match_lhs=”${match_lhs}$(<~/.dir_colors)” [[ -f /etc/DIR_COLORS ] && match_lhs=”${match_lhs}$(</etc/DIR_COLORS)" [[ -z ${match_lhs} ] \ && match_lhs=$(dircolors --print-database) [[ $'\n'${match_lhs} == *$'\n'"TERM "${safe_term}* ] && use_color=true if ${use_color} ; then if [[ -f ~/.dir_colors ] ; then eval $(dircolors -b ~/.dir_colors) elif [[ -f /etc/DIR_COLORS ] ; then eval $(dircolors -b /etc/DIR_COLORS) fi if [[ ${EUID} == 0 ] ; then PS1='\[\033[01;31m\]\h\[\033[01;34m\] \W \$\[\033[00m\] ' else PS1='\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[01;34m\] \w \$\[\033[00m\] ' fi alias ls='ls --color=auto' alias grep='grep --colour=auto' alias less='less -R' alias tree='tree -C' else if [[ ${EUID} == 0 ] ; then PS1='\u@\h \W \$ ' else PS1='\u@\h \w \$ ' fi fi unset use_color safe_term match_lhs alias which='alias | /usr/bin/which --tty-only --read-alias --show-dot --show-tilde' alias cgrep="grep --color=yes" alias xterm="xterm -geometry 100x40" alias gnome-terminal="gnome-terminal --geometry 100x40 --hide-menubar" export EDITOR="vim" export HISTFILESIZE=65536 export HISTSIZE=4096 if [[ -f ~/.bash_local ] ; then source ~/.bash_local fi
Utah Open Source Foundation and Ubuntu Utah bring you a release party of gigantic proportion
Fedora 9 (Sulphur) will be released April 29, 2008
Ubuntu 8.04 (Hardy Heron) will be released April 24, 2008
All are welcome to join in the celebration of newly released Fedora and Ubuntu distributions. Ubuntu Utah has been gracious to allow revelers from the Fedora camp join in with the Ubuntu Utah team. The entire event will be sponsored by the Utah Open Source Foundation who will also provide food.
FOOD IS FIRST COME FIRST SERVE, SO COME EARLY AND COME HUNGRY!
If you’ve never been to a release party, they are a blast, and this one proves to be nothing less than spectacular. In fact, Code Greene’s owner Mac Newbold has offered up his office (or rather playground) for us to hold our party. Code Greene has foosball, video games, pool, music and more for all to enjoy.
Why: Release of Ubuntu Hardy Heron (8.04) and Fedora Sulphur (F9)
When: May 3, 2008, 6-8pm (or thereabouts)
Where: Code Greene, 44 Exchange Place Salt Lake City, UT 84111
Please RSVP via upcoming.org if you are participating.
Cheers,
Clint Savage / Aaron Toponce
UTOSF / Ubuntu Utah
Enchanted
Good friends, forgive me this early morning for waxing somewhat
autobiographical and permit me to divulge a necessary truism governing the
impolitic investiture of this sardonic cynic, and that is fantastic. More
specifically I propose that this cynic is truly romantic. I am predisposed to
enjoy girly literature.
I even have a strong predilection for movies of the girl category. My most
recent committal of such a grievance against my sex, my nerdy geek
demographic, and my carefully cultivated sense for counterintuitive scientific
empiricism comprises a single act of dollar movie indulgence. My roommate and
I just got back from watching Enchanted, and what a delectable
enjoyment it was.
There's no joy in cynicism--no joy in coldly or eloquently mocking a world that cruelly deprives you of your manifest destiny. We are not creatures made to rue over such trite things. The opening sequence of this movie was supersaturated with mono and disaccharides. The effect thereof was a surreal cartoon experience. Yet I can only think it is a fool who will dismiss that world when it intrudes upon their own moody realism. I fear the only effect my life may produce will be rather silly, but that the hope for Mrs Happily Ever After may sustain me until the day that I will finally claim her. There is no achievement so impartially rational that may yield worldly glory comparable to that felicity--no, this saturnine cynic is truly a credulous romantic.
There's no joy in cynicism--no joy in coldly or eloquently mocking a world that cruelly deprives you of your manifest destiny. We are not creatures made to rue over such trite things. The opening sequence of this movie was supersaturated with mono and disaccharides. The effect thereof was a surreal cartoon experience. Yet I can only think it is a fool who will dismiss that world when it intrudes upon their own moody realism. I fear the only effect my life may produce will be rather silly, but that the hope for Mrs Happily Ever After may sustain me until the day that I will finally claim her. There is no achievement so impartially rational that may yield worldly glory comparable to that felicity--no, this saturnine cynic is truly a credulous romantic.
Planetary Wallpapers
Today I had a slight inclination to change my desktop background. I remember
that on Fedora releases they had a bundled desktop wallpaper of an Earthrise
from moon orbit. I don't know if they still have it, but a few months ago I
went looking for a hires pic online but didn't do much with it. Today I went
looking again and found a few of
them.
While searching for the first Earthrise shots from the Apollo 8 mission I found this beautiful photograph of Jupiter on slashdot. There are lots of beautiful celestial photographs, certainly, but let's just use these few as a start for some serious DIY background artwork.
One aspect (literally) you may notice about these images is that they aren't the same dimensions as your computer monitor (unless you have an unusual display). Another property you may observe is that same property that will allow us to easily splice in pixels, spanning them out to a ratio that perfectly matches the display: they all have an excellently achromatic black background. The Apollo Earthrise photos are square and probably came from a square camera by looking at the other photos from the Apollo 8 mission. The Jupiter photo only just frames the glorious sunlit limb in exquisite black, which may suggest that it has been cropped. That won't matter, but we're going to be adjusting the images at their full resolution.
I assume you have a Linux system handy, if not, you can drop in a livecd and reboot. Next make sure you have imagemagick installed. I researched how to perform the following image transformations in the imagemagick documentation.
Let's start with the first monochrome Apollo 8 Earthrise.
$ wget http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/photos/e/as08-13-2329.jpg
My screen's resolution is 1920x1440 (a 4:3 aspect ratio, see wikipedia for other common ratios). First observe the original image dimensions.
$ identify as08-13-2329.jpg as08-13-2329.jpg JPEG 2411x2448 2411x2448+0+0 DirectClass 8-bit 645.145kb
Since the moon is nearby in the right part of the image we will insert pixels to the left side effectively panning out a little more to match the proportions of a computer display-shaped viewport of the scene, and since the ubiquitous night circumnavigates the two celestial spheres ad infinitum we'll only need to add columns of pixels to one dimension. Thus, our final image size will become 3264x2448, which is a perfect 4:3 ratio.
$ convert as08-13-2329.jpg -background black -gravity east -extent 3264x2448 apollo_8_earthrise.monochrome.png
And the result is stunning; excellent. Let's try some of the others.
$ wget http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/photos/b/as08-14-2383.jpg $ wget http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/photos/b/as08-14-2384.jpg $ wget http://dayton.hq.nasa.gov/IMAGES/LARGE/GPN-2001-000009.jpg $ convert as08-14-2383.jpg -background black -gravity east -extent 3200x2400 apollo_8_earthrise.color.1.png $ convert as08-14-2384.jpg -background black -gravity east -extent 3276X2457 apollo_8_earthrise.color.2.png $ convert GPN-2001-000009.jpg -background black -gravity east -extent 4000x3000 apollo_8_earthrise.color.3.png
The Jupiter image was a little more tricky. I decided to split 3/4 of the pixel columns onto the right side to closely center the half illuminated Jovian planet.
$ wget http://oursun.open.ac.uk/images/jupiterp_cassini_full.jpg $ convert jupiterp_cassini_full.jpg -background black -gravity east -splice 960x0 jupiter_cassini.tmp.png $ convert jupiter_cassini.tmp.png -background black -splice 320x0 jupiter_cassini.png && rm jupiter_cassini.tmp.png
Now try out your spiffy new planetary wallpapers! Who needs digital blasphemy anymore? The real thing is more beautiful than the imagination. :-)
Unless your desktop does this automatically for you when you add a new wallpaper, like enlightenment, you may want to scale your images down to the exact pixel size of your display to reduce unnecessary memory usage. This is easy. Suppose I wanted to scale the images down to exactly 1400x1050 (SXGA+ 4:3). Documentation is here.
$ convert jupiter_cassini.png -resize 1400x1050 jupiter_cassini.scaled.png
Here's a full list of the images created in this post.
apollo_8_earthrise.color.1.png
apollo_8_earthrise.color.2.png
apollo_8_earthrise.color.3.png
apollo_8_earthrise.monochrome.png
jupiter_cassini.png
jupiter_cassini.scaled.png
While searching for the first Earthrise shots from the Apollo 8 mission I found this beautiful photograph of Jupiter on slashdot. There are lots of beautiful celestial photographs, certainly, but let's just use these few as a start for some serious DIY background artwork.
One aspect (literally) you may notice about these images is that they aren't the same dimensions as your computer monitor (unless you have an unusual display). Another property you may observe is that same property that will allow us to easily splice in pixels, spanning them out to a ratio that perfectly matches the display: they all have an excellently achromatic black background. The Apollo Earthrise photos are square and probably came from a square camera by looking at the other photos from the Apollo 8 mission. The Jupiter photo only just frames the glorious sunlit limb in exquisite black, which may suggest that it has been cropped. That won't matter, but we're going to be adjusting the images at their full resolution.
I assume you have a Linux system handy, if not, you can drop in a livecd and reboot. Next make sure you have imagemagick installed. I researched how to perform the following image transformations in the imagemagick documentation.
Let's start with the first monochrome Apollo 8 Earthrise.
$ wget http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/photos/e/as08-13-2329.jpg
My screen's resolution is 1920x1440 (a 4:3 aspect ratio, see wikipedia for other common ratios). First observe the original image dimensions.
$ identify as08-13-2329.jpg as08-13-2329.jpg JPEG 2411x2448 2411x2448+0+0 DirectClass 8-bit 645.145kb
Since the moon is nearby in the right part of the image we will insert pixels to the left side effectively panning out a little more to match the proportions of a computer display-shaped viewport of the scene, and since the ubiquitous night circumnavigates the two celestial spheres ad infinitum we'll only need to add columns of pixels to one dimension. Thus, our final image size will become 3264x2448, which is a perfect 4:3 ratio.
$ convert as08-13-2329.jpg -background black -gravity east -extent 3264x2448 apollo_8_earthrise.monochrome.png
And the result is stunning; excellent. Let's try some of the others.
$ wget http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/photos/b/as08-14-2383.jpg $ wget http://history.nasa.gov/ap08fj/photos/b/as08-14-2384.jpg $ wget http://dayton.hq.nasa.gov/IMAGES/LARGE/GPN-2001-000009.jpg $ convert as08-14-2383.jpg -background black -gravity east -extent 3200x2400 apollo_8_earthrise.color.1.png $ convert as08-14-2384.jpg -background black -gravity east -extent 3276X2457 apollo_8_earthrise.color.2.png $ convert GPN-2001-000009.jpg -background black -gravity east -extent 4000x3000 apollo_8_earthrise.color.3.png
The Jupiter image was a little more tricky. I decided to split 3/4 of the pixel columns onto the right side to closely center the half illuminated Jovian planet.
$ wget http://oursun.open.ac.uk/images/jupiterp_cassini_full.jpg $ convert jupiterp_cassini_full.jpg -background black -gravity east -splice 960x0 jupiter_cassini.tmp.png $ convert jupiter_cassini.tmp.png -background black -splice 320x0 jupiter_cassini.png && rm jupiter_cassini.tmp.png
Now try out your spiffy new planetary wallpapers! Who needs digital blasphemy anymore? The real thing is more beautiful than the imagination. :-)
Unless your desktop does this automatically for you when you add a new wallpaper, like enlightenment, you may want to scale your images down to the exact pixel size of your display to reduce unnecessary memory usage. This is easy. Suppose I wanted to scale the images down to exactly 1400x1050 (SXGA+ 4:3). Documentation is here.
$ convert jupiter_cassini.png -resize 1400x1050 jupiter_cassini.scaled.png
Here's a full list of the images created in this post.
apollo_8_earthrise.color.1.png
apollo_8_earthrise.color.2.png
apollo_8_earthrise.color.3.png
apollo_8_earthrise.monochrome.png
jupiter_cassini.png
jupiter_cassini.scaled.png
Our Widely Important Goal
For those of you who may be tuning in late here’s some background on this project. DirectPointe is betting on diversification into the linux-based CentralPointe Server (CPS) as a platform for our managed IT services, as well as developing great new features. Of course you will probably see the term Small Office Solution (SOS) used in this context. That is our product we offer as an alternative to our Complete Solution that is based on Windows Server. No, I’m not really trying to load up the search engine bots with all these keywords, but they do need a little help figuring out which way is up.
Each member of our small development team is a battle-hardened implementation veteran of implementing Windows and Linux systems for DirectPointe clients. We have actually been on the road and locked up in server closets so much in the past year that we haven’t been able to devote much attention to technical R&D. Now that kind of focus and innovation is officially one of our top company goals and our efforts are getting some serious attention. Of course by setting aside these resources for R&D there’s a direct loss to the implementation and support side of the company. It’s up to us in the short-term to justify pulling away from installs to sit in our lab daydreaming about VPNs.
Microsoft Bob Certified
What is the value of certification in the IT industry today? I ask this in the context of our strategy to reach out to partners to resell our systems. Our team members have all been through the “school of hard knocks” in deploying and supporting CentralPointe Servers. We may have even written a few of the textbooks as we were learning, but we’re familiar with the necessary knowledge and skill set to get the job done. We shudder at the thought of handing systems over to a reseller without confidence that they will know what to do. Ultimately, that will be a lot of off-hours phone calls directly to us. The obvious answer seems to be that we need to create a special certification program for the CPS.
Resumes were bursting with certification from Microsoft, Cisco and Novell in the late 1990s. That showed there were a lot of highly motivated and skilled technicians who spent a lot on training and took a lot of multiple-guess tests. IT skills are still highly valued, but I’m not so sure that a full page of certifications on your resume will get you very far. They are highly perishable and the values have depreciated. Seeing “Microsoft Certified Windows 95″ on the list will probably get a good laugh. Why do we want to add another technical certification to that list? Ideally our partners will want it! Not to pad their resumes but to give them what they need to efficiently take care of their clients so they can grow their own business.
Announcing an announcement list for announcements
Mailing lists can be a pain in the butt, especially when discussions spiral into topics about which pizza delivery company is best, which text editor is best, which Linux distribution is best, which caffeinated beverage is best, etc.
We at Utah Open Source (UTOS) know you work hard day in and day out and deserve a break from the hardship of having to deal with meaningless discussions about what’s best. We give you something better — perhaps the best mailing list ever: utos-announce. We created this list so we can mail out announcements about upcoming UTOS events, but you can use it too, to announce anything you’ve got coming up… well, as long as it has something to do with open source in Utah.
Subscribing to the utos-announce list is simple: Go to < http://utos.org/mailman/listinfo/utos-announce >, enter your e-mail address, your name (optional), a password (also optional), and select the Subscribe button. If you’ve followed these instructions so far without making any mistakes or being distracted by a flamewar continuing on one of the other mailing lists you’re subscribed to, a confirmation message will be sent to your e-mail address with instructions on how to confirm your subscription. Follow those instructions (They’re real, real simple… like “click on this” simple.) and you’ll be ready to receive amazing, exciting announcements!
Subscribing to the utos-announce list is a great way to stay informed about the latest developments of the upcoming UTOSC conference. Find out who the keynote speakers will be before the story is aired on the local evening news. Learn what exciting schwag and promotions conference sponsors will be offering in their booths. Get the low-down on entertainment options while you’re attending the Utah Open Source Conference. Ahhh… the possibilities are endless.
What? You’re still here? Go subscribe already!
Calendar Contingency Plan
The strength of the modern Western calendar (and I don’t mean the 2008 Louis L’Amour calendar) is that it has built in a clever contingency for immiment breakdown: Leap year. In astronomical terms our year is 365 and one quarter days long, so we have enough foresight to know our 365 day calendar will break down without adding an extra filler every four years. I commend the end users I talk with who grasp the reality that their IT infrastructure is likely to fail to some extent at some time too. They value network security, monitoring and backup services as a responsible necessity to their business rather splurging on a convenience.
When I think of the trends for technology to converge into fewer devices with more and more integrated capabilities I think of some worst case scenarios. For example, there’s a lot that we can engineer into our cell phones and it’s apparent we want to get away from separate devices for things like listening to music, text messaging, web browsing, and throwing at people. The same goes for the server form factor for office IT. We are able to move a lot of the network and business app functionality to that central device. Just imagine your office relying heavily on that single device for Everything, and having it trip out in a thunder storm or someone using it to bludgeon their nemesis. Literally everything would come to a stop! This thought has me a little concerned about some development ideas. The irony is that by converging to fewer devices the trend may be to split out just as many redundancy devices.
Ballistic Tech Support
How do you get past the awkward phone call to a friend who recognizes your voice after a few seconds and counts over seven months since they last heard from you? Get right to the news!
DirectPointe acquired Sweet Spot last year as a direct lesson from some of our favorite celebrities: You’ve got to reinvent yourself. The model that has served DirectPointe well for the past eight years is to build a direct relationship with clients and by directly managing their office IT. After eight years of sales charts and SBUs (Support Burnout Units) we see that growth is discernibly linear. We have aggressive goals for growth, but our method requires direct, “hands on” work to make those gains. This calls for working smarter.
What Sweet Spot brings to DirectPointe is S3, their portable VPN technology on USB flash. (It’s still under negotiations what “S3″ should stand for.) Our development team is already underway integrating that technology into the CentralPointe Server. The idea is that the CPS, being such a versatile platform, is the launch pad for an arsenal of great business IT technologies. We’re shooting for orbit now instead of just hurtling ballistic SBUs into battle.
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