Performance Zen

Author: spierzchala

  • Another Happy Mac User…NOT ME!

    Doug Kaye, the guy who wrote my favourite book on Web hosting, just grabbed himself a new 15″ G4 Powerbook. [here]
    I am turning green out here…Donations and sponsorships are gratefully accepted!

  • Dave Winer — Two-Level Communities

    Dave Winer hits it on the head: What’s the point of doing something or going somewhere if your experience is going to be secondary to those who are considered “special”?

    A conference experience should not be substantively better because of who you are. If you arrive late, the overflow room should be just as acceptable as the front row.

    I live what would be considered a privileged life. If you look on the right-side of the page, you will see that I pine for a Powerbook. Instead, I keep gas in my tank, food on my table, and be the best father I can be.

    I wish that my laptop bag looked like Joi Ito’s. I wish that I clocked as many air miles as Tom Peters. I wish I lived on the beach like Dave Winer. I wish my blog got as many hits as Robert Scoble.

    But when my wishes are held back not because of who I am, but because of who someone else is, I get cranky.

  • Mmmm…let’s call our customers dinosaurs!

    The Site! The Site! OMG! The site is even more insulting! Bring on the firing squad!
    HERE! [Flash Link – NO LONGER WORKS]

    I agree with this post: The team that created the Microsoft Dinosaur campaign need “to be the first up against the wall when the revolution comes”. [here]

    The campaign is insulting. The campaign does not inform. The campaign makes me feel that I work for a backward company (even if it is in the Fortune 100).
    And the campaign is greedy. Microsoft is no longer making any money from those Office 97 and 2000 licenses, so it has to figure out how to keep the gravy train flowing. Problem is…can you make any of these already heavily bloated apps better?

    Yes, I know that there are great new features, blah, blah, blah. Don’t care. Don’t Need them.

    And OpenOffice is only 80MB to download for free. And it generates PDFs on the fly without an add-on piece of software.

    Hmmmm…the emperor has no clothes.

    Blogging synchronicity strikes again. Read this little gem about 30 seconds after I completed the original post. Pretty much nails the state of Microsoft’s cash cows.

    And this from someone on a MSFT blog.

  • Tamiani Trail Synchonicity

    I cashed in the last of my Triple B bonds
    Bought a double-wide on the Tamiani Trail
    I parked it right outside the reservation
    Fifteen minutes from the Collier County Jail
    And the SEC is far behind
    Down in the swamp with the gators and flamingos
    A long way from Liechtenstein
    I’m a junk bond king playing Seminole Bingo
    Well, the SEC is far behind
    Down in the swamp with the gators and flamingos
    A long way from Liechtenstein
    I’m a junk bond king playing Seminole Bingo
    Seminole Bingo

    Warren Zevon

    I was listening to this song while reading this.

    You don’t often have a synchronistic experience involving the Tamiani Trail. And after reading the post, and listening to the song, I can almost feel the swamp surrounding me as I wade through the primeval much searching for my lost dabber, absorbing the desperate failure in the eyes of the bingo zombies and other refugees and outcasts from the Great Society.

  • More Thoughts on the HTTP(S) Application Concept

    Yesterday, Scoble noted (and I validated) the idea that the browser is less and less relevant for those of us on the bleeding-edge.
    In the blogs that I read, people access information:

    • Via mobile phone
    • Via PDA
    • Via data aggregators
    • Via IM
    • Via e-mail
    • Via personal interaction

    Web sites are now targets of information, not providers of information. I increasingly hear of new ways for HTTP(S) to be a conduit of information, not limited to the browser.
    Port80 is used by so much more than it was designed for. Extensible browsers attempt to lock customers into the old way of approaching this information. The decade-old paradigm is disintegrating.
    My main Web access is through FeedDemon. I use my browser to write, check e-mail and check my server stats. This is very different from 2 years ago, where in lived in the browser.
    Two years from now…where will I be spending my online time?

  • My name…in Flickr Photos!

    My Name in Flickr Photos

    I chose this one because the “H” comes from a British Columbia License plate. Heh.
    Very Cool. Play with it here!
    Found by Peter Davidson.

  • More Google Desktop Search Features! RUN!

    Ohhh…this one is classic! [here]

    “You can search the hard drives of other computers on your network with Google’s new desktop search. I followed the instructions on the site and I was able to search through my roommate’s computer. Quite a scary bug in one of Google’s fastest growing programs.”

    YIKES!

  • Bank Offline Again

    I use a major Northeastern US bank. Today is the second day in a row that they have effectively been unreachable through their Web interface.
    From the customer service rep I talked to last night, I got the feeling they lost their backend and have had to re-build it from transaction and rollback logs.
    And today, their system is swamped.
    Not a good scene.

  • Are Browsers less important?

    As the Web moves toward the delivery of services, I have been ruminating on the continuing importance of browsers.
    Scoble writes:

    Oh, well, back to my RSS news aggregator. That’s where I spend 90% of my Internet time now anyway. Are you still using a Web browser? Good. I’ve been telling audiences that those of you still using Web browsers are wasting your time. I think that Opera might be more concerned by that.

    I agree. I use Firefox to handle large applications, such as my employers interface, and my blog editor, but beyond that, it has become less and less important in my everyday online life.
    This is the trend. HTTP and HTTPS will be the vehicles to deliver this data. Web servers will become more and more important, but as transformation and application servers for back-end data, not as presentation and image servers.
    This is a long-term trend. But it also explains things like the decline of Slashdot. Although they have had an RSS feed for a long time, their bleeding-edge readers found that Slashdot was no longer bleeding-edge. Information is flowing faster and in a more personalized manner through aggregator, desktop and online.
    I agree with Scoble (something that happens infrequently): the browser war may be irrelevant. The Web Application era has begun.

  • And now they’re both gone…

    I am sitting here listening to Warren Zevon.
    And then I remembered this gem. Hunter and Warren. Watching the Stanley Cup Playoffs.
    The world is a lesser place without all three things.