Author Archives: craig
About craig
Just another random Linux user
Community Updates
Posthuman Studios raises the bar in the pantheon of awesome
Adding to the growing pantheon of awesome companies with phenomenal customer service is Rob Boyle of Posthuman Studios. Around Christmas-time I realized the Panopticon book that I’d purchased from my FLGS was coming apart. I sent a photo over to Posthuman Studios and after a little back and forth discussion they sent me a new… Read more: Posthuman Studios raises the bar in the pantheon of awesome Read More »
April 8th, 2014 MUG Meeting
There’s no denying Facebook is the largest website in the Internet, with more than 1 billion people accessing its services every month. Behind the user interface is one of the most robust and sophisticated infrastructures in the world, with several thousands of servers distributed in multiple data centers in strategic places. Marlon will show us how Facebook can support a huge amount of traffic every day, working with an availability close to 100% and a very low response time. The presentation will show how … Read More »
Computers: Making Identity Theft Possible
When your entire business model is pretty much a moot point in the digital age your best line of defense is to go the paranoia route. Never mind that said directory arrived in an unsealed envelope to our house, and anyone in said congregation has access to your address / phone number / email address… Read more: Computers: Making Identity Theft Possible Read More »
Next meeting – March 11th, 2014
We meet at 6:30pm on the second Tuesday of each month at the Farmington Community Library. Our topics this month include: Kanban Some days developing applications feels like drinking from the fire-hose. New features coming in from design, bugs from users, mounting technical debt, and folks wandering the halls wondering about the status for their particular piece. How do you manage it all? Kanban is a lean process that can overlay over your existing processes and roles. It includes common-sense … Read More »
Busy Busy Bugs Redux
Back in 2007 I participated in PyWeek 4. The results of that contest were a game that I “released” called “Busy Busy Bugs”. The premise is you are a spray can of insecticide trying to keep bugs away from your plants. Every time they attack your flower it “droops” a little more. There’s also a… Read more: Busy Busy Bugs Redux Read More »
The Quantified Self
Chalk this one up to another one of my blinding flashes of the obvious. On a recent episode of Back to Work they mentioned about quantifying yourself. Dan and Merlin talked about how they use the FitBit for tracking both their sleep and movement. I’ve been using mine as a little motivator for keeping myself… Read more: The Quantified Self Read More »
Shitty controls in video games.
I’d love to understand why there’s a certain video-game fad over featuring shitty controls. Flappy Bird: Shitty Controls. QWOP: Shitty Controls. Octodad: Dadliest Catch: Shitty Controls. Perhaps the reason I’m so jaded with playing these games is because I’m old enough to remember the Intellivision, Colecovision, and Atari 5200. Been there. Done that. Even Gallagher… Read more: Shitty controls in video games. Read More »
Completely Amazingly Superb and Above the Call of Duty Customer Service
I’ve wanted to post this for a while. You’ll remember I recently posted about a dreadful customer service experience with Barnes and Noble and an amazing customer service from O’Reilly Media. I was tempted to include this experience in that previous post but thought better of it for various reasons. One of those reasons was… Read more: Completely Amazingly Superb and Above the Call of Duty Customer Service Read More »
Next meeting – February 11th, 2014
We meet at 6:30pm on the second Tuesday of each month at the Farmington Community Library. Our topics this month include: LXC – LinuX Containers It’s safe to say that today’s cloud computing wouldn’t be nearly as prevalent without virtual environments. But virtual machines that emulate hardware (VirtualBox, VMware, QEMU, etc.) can be resource intensive and slow to provision. LXC (LinuX Containers) is an operating system-level virtualization solution that allows for running multiple isolated Linux systems (containers) on a single control host. It allows for flexible … Read More »