Category: Life

London Explosions: Web performance impact

2005-07-07 / / 0 Comments

Most of the time, I leave the morbid Web performance post-mortems to my former employer. However, I had to note that the flash traffic resulting from the explosions in London has effectively crushed the Web sites of the BBC (main site, not the news site), Sky News, and ITN.

This information is purely anecdotal; I am having incredible difficulty getting to any of these sites from here in the US.

On a side note, Technorati is either responding very slowly, or not at all. Not sure if this related to the events in London, or some other event.

This is shocking. Listening to Tony Blair, you could hear the anger in his voice.

UPDATE: Flickr Pool

UPDATE: Steve Rubel tells us that he is experiencing similar performance degradadtion. He also points to Jeff Jarvis linking to bloggers on the bombing.

Geek Irony: Adult Entertainment, Bandwidth Leeching and Apache Modules

2005-06-10 / / 0 Comments

Port80 tells a great story about a product that they had in the pipe that would prevent bandwidth leeching (defined in the post). [here]

Their observation that technology that could do this would be of particular interest to purveyors of adult-oriented sites does not surprise me. However, their rationale for stopping development was not based on any moral issues; the fact is that LAMP development platforms are preferred in this industry because of their cost.

Now, I am sure that some enterprising Apache hacker could very quickly develop a functional module that would plug right onto the server to deliver on some of the basic design elements laid out by the Port80 Team. This would be a benefit to both the IIS and Apache communities, as interest in this feature would push for a similar feature in IIS, allowing Port80 to finally release this software.

Rightly or wrongly, porn has fueled a large number of the developments in the open source community. My place is not to judge; it is to benefit from the advancements.

Comcast: Lower Your Prices Or Lose More Customers

2005-06-08 / / 2 Comments

Dear Arrogant Monopolistic Cable Operator:

The day of reckoning is upon you. Your formerly monopolistic power has been drained by years of failed mega-mergers, media plays, satellite providers and gross mis-management. Your cash cows are showing signs of Mad Cow Disease.

The final straw for me is your incredibly pig-headed strategy of price inflexibility on your high-speed Internet service. I pay what I consider a ridiculous amount every month for what is a necessary service for me. Now I see that your Telco competitors are slashing prices every way they can to win back business.

I read that you will lower your price if I call you and threaten to move to an alternate provider. But only for 3 months.

You really need to step back and realize how dead your business is going to be in 2 years.

I live in the testbed for fiber-to-the-home in Massachussetts. Every day, Verizon linemen, training to string fiber to every home, drive up and down our street, leaving spools of high-speed goodness on every corner.

They say that in a year, I can have incredible speeds to my home, for less than what I pay for your high-speed Internet service.

So, Mr. Cable Operator (you have to be a man, because only a man would be this pig-headed), what are you going to do to keep me a customer?

Sincerely,
me

TECHNORATI: , ,,

Moleskinerie: On Harriet the Spy and Paying Attention

2005-05-25 / / 0 Comments

Moleskinerie, my fave online blog of notes and paper-lust, posted a short quote from Harriet the Spy today.

[NOTE: Original blog removed. But check out this on Harriet the Spy from Kat Patrick – Harriet the Spy helped me come to terms with my queer identity]

This brought back a flood of memories of the sixth grade. That year, I carried around an old, reporter-style notebook and made notes very similar to those that I had seen and read about in this book. Observations. Comments. Vague thoughts.

It is probably from here that I began to understand the power of everyday events to shape people’s lives in a larger way. What does arriving late to school tell me about what happens in the rest of someone’s day? What does it tell me about their life outside of the context I see them in?

From here, I developed a sensitivity to how people’s behaviour is driven by the forces in their life, and what it tells me about what they are thinking.

The most empathetic and insightful people you know aren’t psychic; they are just paying attention.

US Banking: WTF?

2005-04-21 / / 0 Comments

SOGrady has some comments on the US Banking system. [here]

I have yet to figure out the US Banking system. I have lived in this country for 6 years, and what banks do here seems so 19th century. In Canada, when you use the nationally accepted electronic debit system (InterAC), the money is gone from your account. Now. Like, Right Now. Not sometime within the next 1-30 days.

When I pay my bills online, the money is taken out…sometime.

We gave up on electronic transfers from the US to Canada, relying instead on the Ground Yak method: when we move money home, we send a real cheque to our Canadian bank.

How hard can it be? How can the banking system in the US be so outdated that it is the laughing stock of third-world nations?

Please…I really want to know.

Creative Burnout and the Future

2004-12-29 / / 1 Comment

NOTE: This was written in 2006. I achieved 1.5 of the 3 items.

  • I am working for a different company – 3 different companies counting acquisitions.
  • I am working in the Pacific Northwest, just not in one of the major cities
  • I am not living in Canada, but I can see it from my desk while I work.

Scott Berkun has an excellent essay on creative burnout.

For those of you who read this and may know me, this is a hard thing to accept. That I have gone so hatd at something for so long that it no longer excites me. Yes, there are elements of it that do motivate me, but the day-in, day-out work of taking apart companies’ Web performance data, answering the same questions, and hearing the same questions is no longer fun.

I used to live for this sort of thing. I would work from 06:00 – 00:00 because there were so many cool and interesting problems to solve. Now I heat those some questions and almost roll my eyes.

I have been immersed in this field for so long that I have lost a lot of my focus. But now I am asking questions that are the foundation of my life.

  • Where do I want to be in 5 years?  Short Answer: Working in Canada, consulting and speaking to an international audience on trends in Web performance from a technical and process standpoint
  • Will I be working for the company I am working for now? Not likely.
  • Where will I be living? At minimum in one of the Pacific Northwest’s triad (Vancouver/Victoria, Seattle or Portland). Preferably near but not in Victoria, where I can easily get flights to my gigs.

I have been thinking about this a lot lately, and thinking how much better I would feel being closer to home. I accepted this move as a way to get out of one backward, dead-end job, but I often find myself questioning if it was a good move, or simply one of convenience.

Last night, I updated my resume/CV. Tomorrow, I will transfer it to Word, Text and PDF formats. Time to hit the pavement again.

Interesting theme appearing — US Foreign Service Not Helpful

2004-12-29 / / 0 Comments

One of the themes I keep reading about in the stories from the Southeast Asia Disaster Zone is that Americans are all reporting how ineffective and/or invisible members of the US Foreign Service are in dealing with citizens trying to get replace documents, find loved ones or simply get home.

I hope that the Canadian Foreign Service is doing a better job.

Faye Wachs said she was impressed by the efforts of the Thai
government and the International Committee for the Red Cross, but “she was appalled at the treatment they got” from the U.S. government, her mother said.

At the airport in Bangkok, other governments had set up booths to greet nationals who had been affected and to help repatriate them, she said.

That was not the case with the U.S. government, Wachs told her mother. It took the couple three hours, she said, to find the officials from the American consulate, who were in the VIP lounge.

Because they had lost all their possessions, including their documentation, they had to have new passports issued.

But the U.S. officials demanded payment to take the passport pictures, Helen Wachs said.

The couple had managed to hold on to their ATM card, so they paid for the photos and helped other Americans who did not have any money get their pictures taken and buy food, Helen Wachs said.

“She was really very surprised” that the government did so little to ease their ordeal, she said.

http://www.cnn.com/2004/US/12/28/tsunami.diver/index.html

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