I went back to my mother
I said, "I’m crazy ma, help me."
She said, "I know how it feels son,
‘Cos it runs in the family."The Real Me, Quadrophenia
Tags: Quadrophenia, the who, Pete Towshend, bipolar
The Boston Marathon is this weekend, in case you live in a cave. In honour of this event, the CBC has a great story about the man who won the 1907 running: Tom Longboat. [here]
Tags: Tom Longboat, Boston Marathon
Tags: Boston, cbc, HTML, HTTP, it, live, Om, run, Technorati, tn
This morning, after months of increasing performance issues, and connectivity issues, I have retired the Boston Verizon measurement location. This location hosted 2 measurement agents.
The machines, hosted in my basement, are connected using Verizon FiOS, which has become increasingly flaky over the last couple of months. As well, the machines are 7 year old Pentium IIs, and require a substantial amount of spoon-feeding that I don’t have time for at the moment.
I have re-enabled the Technorati #1 Agent to fill the gap, but this leaves only 4 measurement locations running. I again put out my plea for more volunteers to host GrabPERF measurement locations. I have had one volunteer contact me about this (thanks Henrik!), and this location should be up in about 3 weeks.
If you have a spare linux box and a static IP, have I got a project for you!
PS: The contact page is fixed. It was set to auto-refresh and overwrite your e-mails. Ooooops.
Tags: GrabPERF, Agent, Verizon, Web Performance, measurement, performance measurement
Tags: Boston, connectivity, GrabPERF, GrabPERF.org, HTTP, IM, IP, Issues, it, leave, Linux, Mac, measurement, Om, One, performance, performance issues, performance measurement, PHP, pr, run, Technorati, tv, Verizon, web, Web Performance, Web+performance
This weekend, we went to Maine and spent a wonderful time with the Bodines at the Sweetgrass Farm Winery. Things are rolling into high gear, and there is fruit in the vats, fermenting into fine wine.
I took the time to take some pictures in their old barn, and around the property.
If you like wine and are in Maine, you should definitely look for their grand opening in May
Tags: Sweetgrass Farm, Sweetgrass Farm Winery, Union, Maine, Union+Maine.
March 10, 2007
March 12, 2007
Tags: Vista, annoyances, list, OWA, Exchange, IE7, Juniper, Netscreen Remote
Tags: app, cro, HTTP, IE, IP, it, Microsoft, Om, One, Outlook, pr, run, server, Technorati, users, web
I try and avoid the “me-too” factor that has dominated the land of blogs for most of the time I have been involved in it. Simply aping one persons comments with a slight variation, or personal interpretation doesn’t add much to the initial thrill of finding the original germ of an idea.
Kathy Sierra, someone who has been quoted and analyzed multiple times in this blog, has hit another double to the wall. She talks about the value of serendipity, randomness, in exposing us to new ideas and concepts, ones that we would not have run across in our siloed, standardized lives.
Yesterday was a great example of this for me. Something I read a post on Notebookism that spoke of outsider art or Art Brut. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and spiralled into a 90-minute voyage of discovery into this genre of expression, fueled not by training and ideology, but by a raw, unchecked need to express the world in an artistic way.
I would have never gone down this path unless I had read the Notebookism post, and would have been hard-pressed to find structured explanations (whatever you may think of them) of the topics without Wikipedia.
As I explore myself, and examine the foundations that support my cracked mental structure, I find that I appreciate the random explorations far more than a formal education process. I don’t learn the way that we have been taught.
I prefer to discover.
And when you get right down to the basics of Kathy’s post, that’s what she is saying. People are far more enthusiastic, receptive, and amazed when they discover something for themselves.
It may be an old idea to you. I may not interest you. But when a person gets that gleam in their eye, that rush in their mind, when they get the “WOW!“, then they are committed.
Personally, I am finding that I am having a lot more WOW! moments lately. The combination of therapy, and my medications, has forced me to look at the world that I live in, and the world that I have created, substantially different than I have for the last 15 years.
I am re-discovering the joy and awe of discovery. There is so much out there that gets left behind when your mind is absorbed, consumed, by a single devouring purpose. I am awakening from that period, and finding that my mental indigestion requires the soothing relief of the new and unexpected.
Tags: API, app, blog, book, content, cro, EAD, education, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, IP, ISP, it, LAN, live, Om, One, personal, pr, run, Technorati, the Origin, variation
It’s always funny when somewhat tech-savvy folks purposely make their bandwidth bills higher than they need to be.
Here’s TechCrunch’s HTTP header response.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:02:23 GMT Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) DAV/2 SVN/1.4.2 PHP/5.2.0-8 mod_ssl/2.2.3 OpenSSL/0.9.8c X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.0-8 X-Pingback: http://www.techcrunch.com/xmlrpc.php Status: 200 OK Transfer-Encoding: chunked Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8"
Port80 Software’s Compression Checker gives us some idea how much bandwidth Mr. Arrington, et al. could save just by activating this little feature, which comes baked into Apache 2.2.x.
Turn. On. Mod_deflate.
Tags: apache, ARIN, bandwidth, compress, compression, content, deflate, EAD, GrabPERF, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, IP, ISP, it, LAN, Om, performance, PHP, pr, run, server, ssl, techcrunch, Technorati, web, Web Performance
Up here in Maine, wineries are done the old-fashioned way. Back-breaking physical labour. Check out these photos of construction on the winery part of the winery (here).
However, the nicely framed and hospitable winery space has another side: The old barn with the trench down the middle. Well, yesterday it had a trench. After two days of rock-hurling and dirt-flinging (mainly by Samantha and a small amount by me), the three-foot wide and two-foot deep trench running to the formerly askew septic tank is mostly filled in.
It had to be done by hand in order to protect the PVC waste pipe from damage.
UGH.
That said, the work that Keith and Constance have done up here staggers my mind. They have done more work in a year than I have done in all my life. Hard, brutal work. While Constance holds a full-time job, and they manage a flock of sheep and three kids.
Next fall, you should be able to sample their winery and distillery products.
And (shameless plug) if you want to invest in a winery, or need winemaking/distilling consulting, let them know; e-mail and snail mail address on their web-site.
Tags: HTTP, IE, IM, IP, it, LAN, Om, One, pr, run, web, web-site
So, how did you spend your Thanksgiving Day?
Keith is installing the run-off / septic tank for the Winery. Last week, in the heavy rains, the hole it was in filled with water and the tank was bobbing up and down in a pit of muck.
Now that the muck has been drained, he needed to make the tank level and fill around it. Keith did most of the work, but we had to jam rocks under it, and then lever it until it was level. Then Keith dumped fill in around the tank.
Hopefully it will be stable.
Now, it looks like we will get a blast of frozen rain.
Oh, the joys of farm life.
And not a Starbucks in sight.
One of the lengthy conversations I have had with my wife as I work my way through understanding how my bipolar works and affects my life focused on how I think, and see the world.
I am just now coming to terms with the fact that the filters I process my world through are radically different than those that most people use. This is a breakthrough for me, as I assumed that everyone saw the world as I did and do.
A lot of this comes from my family. Both sides of my family are rife with bipolar and schizophrenia. My mother has it; my father had it to a lesser degree. My family was unusual because of this. Not dysfunctional; just differently functional.
My wife filters the world in a logical, linear way. Imagine one of those orderly mass protests you see on the news. Lots of people, lots of noise, but everyone moving in the same direction, headed for the same goal.
Then there’s me. I filter the world as if there was a riot going on. People running everywhere, throwing rocks, Molotov cocktails, screaming. Troops in vehicles rushing through spraying water cannons. But occasionally, one side or the other gathers enough strength to achieve a small tactical victory, push the other side back a little.
When you step back and look at those of us who have bipolar, remember that we see your world very differently. And it is your world, designed to preserve order and organization, protect you from the “madness” in our minds.
Tags: conversation, design, EAD, IE, IM, IP, it, Om, One, pr, run, the other
