Category: Uncategorized

If you know this joke, you also know which band I have been listening to this morning….

Technorati Tags: Music, Deep+Purple

A few years ago, I wrote an article on how GZIP compression improved Web performance. Don Marti at the Linux Journal was a great editor, and eventually, the article ended up in the online version of the Magazine.

At the time, I used Ian Holsman’s webperf.org (now renamed ITScales) to capture the data. Now that I have built my own Web performance monitoring network, I thought I would repeat the experiment.

You can see the comparative results at these locations:

• Wikipedia
• Google News
• Technorati
• Juniper Networks — they own the Redline hardware acceleration device
• F5 Networks — they sell the F5 hardware acceleration device

After I have collected a lot more data, I will be re-visiting the article and commenting on the state of compression technology on the Internet.

If you would like to suggest a site to measure, please leave a comment.

Technorati Tags: HTTP, Web+Compression, Web+performance, GrabPERF, study, HTTP+compression

The last 4 weeks have been extremely traumatic for me. It has culminated in an extended period of renewal, reflection and rejuvenation, where I have looked back over the last 15 years of my life and asked, “What next?”.

An interesting note on the word rejuvenation: it means to reclaim your childlike state (ok, I’m playing fast and loose with the definition).

Why now? Why 15 years?

In the Fall of 1991, I bought my first computer. Until then, I had avoided using them like the plague. I had managed to get through my undergraduate years with a pen, paper, and an electronic typewriter with rudimentary spell-checking. I felt that I had achieved something; I felt bonded to the works I created.

I was also an avid and active journal-keeper. In the months after my father died, the writing in my journal was what let me empty my naive mind, letting me vent the chaos that rushed through my head on a constant basis.

Then I went to grad school. And I realized then that I would need to step up in order to generate the massive amount of paper that is required in a graduate history program.

It turns out that I found the technology more enticing than the program. To this day, my failure to complete my Masters degree haunts me. Someday, I will return to that, and complete it. Knot the loose ends of my life together.

Ok, this really is going somewhere; thanks for hanging on this far.

After 15 years of intense immersion in technology, the Web, networking, and all that comes along with that, I have realized that something has been missing from my work, my writing, my life. I have missed the rushing sound of pen on a clean sheet of blank paper. No lines to slow you down; nothing besides the edges of the page to define what you put in the book.

Technology has lost its lustre. The rushing stream of this new laptop, that new technology, another over-inflated boom have left me feeling empty, asking “So what?”. In a hundred years, we can be so far down the path to post-humanism that computers as we know them are a vague and distant antique amusement.

Or we could be living in caves, scratching by a subsistence existence.

In either case, the only thing that will remain, that will linger, that will connect us to the past will be the written word. Not the electronic bits and bytes we are now so addicted to, but the ink on paper, graphite on wood pulp.

The smooth, quiet, seductive transition of ideas from mind to physical reality.

I have been trimming back my blog-reading. Gone are the political blogs. I fear that the gadget blogs are next.

What you have left are those people who celebrate life outside the electronic realm. Those who step back, and look back on the knowledge that preceded us. Who pick up a book that was published before they were born.

A book that left the mind of the author and flowed gracefully from the pen, to the paper, to another mind.

15 years is a long time to try and live without paper. Those 15 years have seen the niceties of a bygone age evaporate, get swallowed by an endless sea, a raging torrent of information.

The cursive hand; the thoughtful response; the flowing of ideas from person to person.

To calm the storm of my mind, I have returned to my first love: ideas of the mind, of the soul. Ideas that were worthy of the preparation of the parchment, the sharpening of the quill, the grinding of the pigment to create the ink.

We have walked away from those ideas, grasping at the brass ring in front of us, to the disdain of the treasure chest we leave behind.

To focus on the ideas, that is to live again.

To heal my mind, I must write my mind. Not type it; not IM it or e-mail it or blog it.

That familiar scratch of pen on paper. The rush that comes from committing something to paper; something that you can share with others.

Something that you can set adrift, watch as it floats, the glow from its candle on the gentle rippled flow of all the ideas that have come before.

I am setting my ideas free again.

Picture: girlzone41

Technorati Tags: ideas, quill, ink, pigment, death, life, resurrection, rebirth, technology, paper, pen, rejuvenation, myths, legends, chaos, healing, mind

Well, I just heard that everyone’s favourite corporate rock and greed group is returning to Boston.

That’s right: The Rolling Stones.

They announced that there are student discounts available. Perhaps they should start adding senior’s discounts as well.

Technorati Tags: Rolling+Stones, Rock, Greed, Boston, AARP, Seniors

Ok, I am taking a break from writing yet another customer report to make the note that lately I have been cranking through the vast amounts of Progressive Rock that dominated AOR in the 1970s. So yes, my mind is filled with Pink Floyd, Yes, King Crimson, Deep Purple, Steely Dan, Fairport Convention, and EARLY Genesis (not the Phil Collins schlock).

Did I miss anyone?

I’m with Kevin Burton on this.

The more restrictions they place on air travel the more our economy will suffer – which means the terrorists win.

Technorati Tags: Terrorism, capitalism, ryanair, economic+terrorism, relative+victory, Political+capital, politics

I was considering the amazing popularity of WordPress (the hosted service as well ad the application), now the agreed upon champ in the blogging world. I was considering this in light of the fact that when I started blogging in the dark ages of 2004, MoveableType and TypePad were the undisputed champs.

When did the shift occur? What was the watershed moment?

It hit me. it was the day Scoble announced his blog would be a WordPress.com blog. [here]

Now, Scoble may not be as large a force in the blogging world anymore, but that day in October 2005 when he made that announcement sealed the fate of SixApart. The buzz momentum swung to WordPress and all of the yummy goodness therein.

The SixApart/MoveableType/TypePad fiends out there are likely to flame me, but the latest release of MoveableType received the response usually reserved for yet another Who farewell tour. It is bloated, complex and difficult to manage.

On the other hand, I can install and/or update WordPress in less than 5 minutes and no one would notice a thing.

I wonder what the next seminal blogging tool will be?

Technorati Tags: Scoble, MoveableType, Moveable+Type, SixApart, Six+Apart, TypePad, WordPress, photomatt, Matt+Mullenweg

Apparent using HTTP compression alongside HTTP/1.1 will cause certain versions of MSIE 6.0 to implode. [here]

I personally think this was because the NSA power shortage was making it too hard for the spooks to snoop on compressed Web traffic. [here]

Via: Port80 Software

PS: No, I won’t turn off compression because Microsoft did something really stupid.

Technorati Tags: Internet+Explorer, Internet+Explorer+6.0, MSIE, Port80+Software, HTTP+Compression, Web+Performance, Microsoft, NSA

This post has two underlying reasons for existing: 1) to test out the new MSFT Live Writer Beta; and 2) to talk about a great story that GigaOm pointed us to today.

Om Malik pointed out a story in the Seattle Times today that talked about “Broadband in the Boonies”. Having grown up in the boonies of British Columbia, this immediately got my attention. The story discusses the explosive growth of Internet businesses in the now heavily wired interior of Washington State; the story focuses on the are around Twisp, Winthrop and the Methow Valley.

Until you have been in this area, and I have, you don’t get the possibility of winter isolation. The story talks about how these places are four hours from Seattle; what they neglect to mention is that this is 4 hours in the period between April 15 and October 15, depending on snow.

The direct westerly route to Seattle from these locations passes through the Cascades. Through the extremely high and snowy Cascades.

Samantha and I took a spur of the moment detour through this little part of heaven, pausing a night in a campground in Twisp. Right on the river. When we woke up the next morning, I remembered how much I missed those early morning moments in the mountains.

Twisp is far more isolated than Golden, BC, or any of the other towns that we passed through on our trip this summer. But it is a reminder to us all that place is important. Not because we have to be there, but because it is where we are at home.

I have lived in the Valley. I have lived in Massachusetts. But neither has been home.

And to me, home is worth more than anything.

Technorati Tags: GigaOm, Seattle+Times, Twisp, Winthrop, Methow+Valley, Washington+State, Home, Broadband, Freedom, Om+Malik

The new GrabPERF Agent code, with support for plain text or regular expression content matching, is now in production on all active measurement agents.
I added one more feature before I rolled out the new code: when a content match error occurs, the server headers and HTML content for 14 days.
I have not exposed this feature yet, but will be doing so in the next few days.
Again, thanks to the GrabPERF community for your continued support.
Technorati Tags: GrabPERF, Web+performance, Text+match, Content+match, Agent+upgrade