Tue, 02 Nov 2004
Unixdaemon (and blog) Google Site Search
Using the very excellent Blosxom
Google Site Search plugin I've added a Google search box to the left
hand column. The search itself will only return results for the
blog.unixdaemon.net and www.unixdaemon.net domains (assuming the "Search
Unixdaemon.net" option is selected). This is a new addition so there may be
a few teething problems for the first few days.
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Posted: 2004/11/02 23:56 | /unixdaemon | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
Debian Packages via Bittorrent
Arnaud Kyheng, a very bad man (but in a good way :)) has released an early
version of Apt-Torrent. I'm not sure why but this seems like a
madcap idea to me. The basic principles behind it, take the load away from
the generous hosted main sites and distribute it a little, are sound and
valid but it just seems odd to me. Still I feel the need to give it a
twirl.
Update: In the email based discussions I've had with people about this the one killer issue seems to be the security issue of down-loading packages from random sites. This is a false problem, the tracker (which contains the package data and checksums) can be hosted on a trusted site, if you don't trust the Debian servers why are you using the distribution, this way any packages you download can be verified against a known good baseline.
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Posted: 2004/11/02 22:01 | /operatingsystems/linux | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
Books, Early chapters and Wheel Reinvention
How many books for beginners exist for your programming language
/technology of choice? I'm assuming that if you are reading this site
you are a tech of some description and so have some exposure to coding,
if not stay with me ;) How many times, and in slightly different ways,
has the same basic introduction to Perl, Python, TCP, Linux or Java been
written? Now include the how-tos, on-line articles and tutorials. I'd guess
a lot.
With the invention of the Creative Commons license you can now choose to distribute your own work under a relaxed set of rules. For example you can allow full use except for commercial purposes, permit your work to be published any ware but restrict modifications etc.
I'm going to go off on a tangent for a couple of second. Most publishers (in the tech world at least) put a sample chapter books online to drive up interest in the book. Now I'm going to make an assumption and say that this can't actually hurt the sale of the book otherwise they wouldn't do it.
Now I've thrown that into the mix lets combine the two ideas. A publisher puts the first chapter of their beginning books online under a Creative Commons license, the exact one can vary based upon how altruistic they are, putting this chapter online has cost them nothing more than it would to put it up as usual. This is where it gets interesting; to me at least.
The people writing the books, articles and how-tos can now draw upon the professionally edited chapter to add a beginning to their own work, this saves them the effort of re-inventing the wheel and providing yet another intro chapter. From the publishers angle they get some extra (and free) PR from people reading any of the resources that use the chapter. If the chapter is actually good quality then people will read it and hopefully go and buy the book.
O'Reilly has a service called Safari that allows college tutors to pull together material for their students, imagine the gain that could be made from opening a few sample chapters like this. Even with just the basic details of TCP/IP the number of sysadmin how-tos, networking guides and network programming books that could reuse the work is staggering.
Does this idea have holes in it? Yep. Does it warrant thinking about? I think so.
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Posted: 2004/11/02 21:35 | /books | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
The Nature of the Beast: Sysadmins
While I'm in this navel gazing mood (which shouldn't last very long) I
thought I'd say a little bit about the oddness of being a system admin in a
corporate environment; it might be the same in academia but I've never done
that.
Firstly you have the contradictions, in most companies, and heavily so in a small team/company, you are supposed to be open and approachable. But you also have to manage your time, their requests and the sanctity of the live environment. Saying 'no' a lot doesn't make you very popular. It is also this last one that causes the most grief, ensuring the service is running correctly becomes your responsibility. You have to become seriously paranoid, pessimistic and suspicious about any changes that need to be made while also understanding that the system is there for a reason; to be used.
I've mostly had this discussion with management and developers, the quality assurance team normally provide some support, once you've had a failure and 'requested' that whoever wants the change added is present for as long as you are things typically get better. For a while anyway.
Something that also deserves a mention is the sheer agony of joining a new company where not everything is perfect, or as we call it, all of them! You have to be prepared for everything to go wrong. Inconsistent naming, multiple copies of config files (and of course you need to edit the one in the non-standard location), lack of documentation and being expected to work at the same speed as the people that have built the system all add up and combine with the paranoia, pessimism and defensive instinct.
Being a good sysadmin and a well balanced person seem to be mutually exclusive goals. No wonder there are so many social groups for geeks, not only do we need to escape from the server room but we need to socialise with 'our own kind' ;)
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Posted: 2004/11/02 21:13 | /career | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
Drive, Motivation and Restlessness
"You described them as teenagers."
"But I don't think teenagers are the way they are because of their age. It's
because they have nothing to lose. They simultaneously have a lot of time on
their hands and yet are very impatient to get on with their lives."
Quote: Neal Stephenson - Cryptonomicon
This is an odd thing to post about online, especially considering that this is a public blog and that I know at least two of my co-workers read this site on a semi-regular basis, but I need to get this off my chest and see where it leads me; and it's my site dammit! I've recently been suffering from a lack of motivation, while I've still been working my way through the daily task list I seem to have lost the ability to get 'in the zone' and clear a weeks worth of simple work in a day and a half. I can't even remember the last time I looked up from my desk, found it was nine thirty and thought "just another hour and then I'll leave."
I've spent a fair bit of time on the tube (for the foreign readers -- a moving torture chamber you share with hundreds of other people while travelling underground with the heating on) thinking about the reason behind this and I'm not sure I've found the problem. I'm actually working in a team of nothing but seriously clued people for the first time in ages and so I should be too busy learning new stuff to actually notice how un-motivated I am; but it never seems to work that way.
Is it the fact that I'm not really learning anything new? While I am learning how the new place does things and how the systems work I'm learning more about their conventions and habits rather than anything really new and shiny. Again I can't even remember the last time I worked on something original inside of work or out.
That leads me to another point, I always considered myself lucky to get paid to do what amounted to my hobby. From my early days in IT as a developer to my more recent roles as a systems administrator I've always tinkered with the same kind of technology at home as I did at work (although typically a generation or so ahead) but the downside is now becoming apparent; what do you do at home when your hobby gets dull?
So now the whiny bit is over where to from here? Firstly I'm going to try and recapture some of the enjoyment of what I do and lose some of my preconceptions and change my perception a little, the Stephenson quote at the top of this entry appealed to me when I re-read it for pretty much that reason. Secondly I'm going to try and get involved in projects that actually have an end. It's nowt but a hunch but I suspect working on open-ended projects that never seem to finish or have any real milestones has a negative effect on me. Thirdly I'm going to start playing with unfinished hacks, script and projects. Just not on the production system; honest!
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Posted: 2004/11/02 20:53 | /career | Permanent link to this entry | This entry and same date
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