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HP C7000 Bladecenter: awesome new test lab in one unit!
Last year I picked up a surplus HP C7000 Bladecenter (generation 1, complete with BL460c and BL480c G1 blades, fibre channel, Cisco switches, etc) to run Openstack test loads. At about 150 KG, I paid just under £3 per KG, which is pretty damn good for a self-contained test lab (near scrap metal prices, actually).…
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Pi-Top First Impressions
So, my Pi-Top arrived last week. Today I took everything out and put it together. Here are some initial observations: Slick packaging, well thought-out, and very professional. It looks like a real product the minute you open the box. This is a cool educational device that will help kids tinker, but it is definitely a…
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Moving to the public cloud? Yes, you still need operations staff.
A quick note, following from news of Google Compute outage yesterday, and outages caused by DNS changes at Amazon S3 slightly more than a week ago, it’s important to remember that moving to the cloud still requires operations (sysadmin, devops, whatever we want to call it). There is a belief that moving to the public…
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Why Privacy Matters, A Real-World Example
Earlier this month, someone I went to school with a long time ago was arrested and charged with some fairly serious crimes. I wouldn’t call him a friend in pre-social media terms, but we knew each other a long time ago, and that’s good enough in the era of Facebook. Which is telling. I found…
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Do Not Throw Away That Laserwriter, Ramsay Wood!
Yesterday I was having dinner with Ramsay Wood at the Priory Tavern. We hadn’t seen each other for a little while, and were having a nice catch up. Then he said something which offended my every sensibility. ‘I have to throw away my Laserwriter,’ he said. ‘My guy came around to install a new printer,…
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A bit of PC history (personal computing, that is)
I just finished reading Walter Issacson’s biography of Steve Jobs. If you’re interested in the personal computer revolution, you should read it. It’s an insightful look at one of the men who definitely helped shape the digital world. I also realised that that as of April 2014, I’ve been running Linux on the desktop for…
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Troubleshooting
Computers are not magic. Nothing in technology is. Computers are tools that follow the operator’s instructions. Commands can be complex, and underlying code can possibly be send incorrect instructions, but in the end, there is no room for interpretation. Computers cannot ‘get mad’ at you, or have a bad day, or do something that they’re…