In April 2007, I tried out the Joost desktop client.  [More on Joost here and here]

I was underwhlemed by the performance, and the fact that the application completely maxxed out my dual core CPU, my 2G of RAM, and my high-speed home broadband. I do remember thinking at the time that it seemed weird to have a Desktop Client in the first place. Well, as Om Malik reports this morning, it seems that I was not alone.

After this week’s hoopla over Chrome, moving in the direction of the browser seems like a wise thing to do. But I definitely hear far more buzz over Hulu than I do for Joost on the intertubes.

Update

Michael Arrington and TechCrunch weigh into the discussion.

My system has a daily job to collect and aggregate the IP Blocks distributed by the five registrars into a single database, and then provide high-level WHOIS information for this data. If you want to try this yourself, the interface here.

On an extremely irregular basis, I aggregate the statistics from this data, and present it to the masses for the examination. I might actually automate this data someday!

So, for August 2007 (as of August 21, 2007), here are the aggregated IP distribution statistics broken down by registrar and country.

Starting with the country data, I figured that a sane cutoff for values would be 1,000,000 IP addresses. The list here is mostly unchanged, except for the addition of the European Union (EU). The EU is a recent addition, as it was not listed in the Country Code lookup table I had been using, and had to be added manually on August 20, 2007.

COUNTRY
IPS


UNITED STATES
1394044928


JAPAN
156239616


CHINA
127511296


EUROPEAN UNION
120433884


UNITED KINGDOM
82641530


CANADA
73318912


GERMANY
69600688


FRANCE
65257760


KOREA, REPUBLIC OF
57733376


AUSTRALIA
32543744


ITALY
24079040


BRAZIL
21366272


SPAIN
20058528


MEXICO
19406848


NETHERLANDS
19265064


TAIWAN, PROVINCE OF CHINA
18736896


SWEDEN
16378336


RUSSIAN FEDERATION
15920408


INDIA
13495040


POLAND
12080076


SOUTH AFRICA
10817792


FINLAND
8577920


TURKEY
8287680


DENMARK
7872864


SWITZERLAND
7311136


HONG KONG
6909952


AUSTRIA
6634208


NORWAY
6611232


ROMANIA
5997696


BELGIUM
5419904


NEW ZEALAND
4971008


CZECH REPUBLIC
4791168


ARGENTINA
4749056


ISRAEL
4042176


CHILE
4041728


IRELAND
3851776


SINGAPORE
3821568


VIETNAM
3795712


THAILAND
3629568


VENEZUELA
3457536


PORTUGAL
3371840


HUNGARY
3312768


MALAYSIA
3133440


GREECE
2941440


COLOMBIA
2817280


UKRAINE
2446144


BULGARIA
2395648


PHILIPPINES
2328832


INDONESIA
2221056


EGYPT
2105088


LITHUANIA
1920384


SAUDI ARABIA
1572608


SLOVAKIA
1358080


IRAN, ISLAMIC REPUBLIC OF
1331712


COSTA RICA
1303296


UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
1230848


LATVIA
1161536


SLOVENIA
1060890


PERU
1023744

The next data is the IP addresses by registrar. Again, the order of this list is not surprising, except for the continued overwhelming dominance of ARIN.

REGISTRY
IPS


arin
1552509952


ripencc
497148492


apnic
406221568


lacnic
61819136


afrinic
16387328

I hope that this information is helpful and informative.

Technorati Tags: ARIN, RIPE, LACNIC, AFRINIC, APNIC, registrar, IP bloks, internet dominance, internet geography, statistics

A colleague of mine suggested that the Tour de France give up all pretense of being drug free, and embrace the performance-enhancing image it has developed so carefully over the last quarter century.

His idea was to have the racing teams sponsored by the major pharmaceutical firms, pitting one performance-enhancing approach against another, in a competition to demonstrate not the strength of the human spirit, but the power to manipulate the human body.

Samantha further suggested that they then abandon all of the rules that make the race civilized, and turn it into a free-for-all, a Tour de France, EXTREME EDITION!

That would get the le tour on Spike.

Thanks to the generosity of Henrik Sjostrand of Netvouz, there is now a measurement location up and running in Gothenburg Sweden.

You will find it listed in the data as Gothenburg Sweden #1.

I have had a few other parties expressing an interest in hosting a measurement agent, but there is always room for more measurement locations! Send me an email if you can host a site!

Tags: Netvouz, GrabPERF, measurement locations

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

This is good to know. I have been spending years trying to make my speech sound as non-descript as possible. It was interesting this summer to go home and talk to my family. They have a uniquely Southeastern BC/Southwestern Alberta accent. Hey, even Canada has unique accents.

You don’t think so? Well, the stereotypical “Canadian” accent that is portrayed in the US popular media is actually a Southern Ontario / Toronto Area accent. It is easily recognizable and immediately pegs you in the rest of Canada as someone who should be distrusted as a likely carpetbagger.

The only spoken/written giveaways I have retained are:

– “a- bowt” and “owt”
– “prawcess”
– “sheduel”, although I do alternate this with “skeduel”
– I spell “theatre”, “centre”, “colour”, etc. correctly

However, if you call me American, I will be very quick to correct you.

Just went online and thought I would share the Yahoo TV comments so far.

Rushi’s Ramblings

Jason Blogs

Paul Kedrosky

Dave Winer

RowdyData

Oh, and my comments.

Yahoo, please give us an opt-out on this monstrosity. Or better yet, do a complete rollback.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo, Yahoo+TV, Bad+Design, Web+2.0, Bad+upgrade

Looks like Yahoo TV upgraded overnight.

Guess I will get my TV schedule information from other sources now.

DHTML/AJAX Schedule is slow and confusing.

Front page looks like a Flash designer got lucky — Look at all the dancing images!

Complex, complicated, and visually disturbing.

Oh, and no option to downgrade to the original, functional version.

All I want is the TV listings.

How hard is that?

Since August of this year, I have been exploring the insides of my mind in greater detail. If you read this blog regularly, you are pretty likely aware of the fluctuations in my mood, and the rationality of my behaviour.

If you get the chance, find and watch The Secret Life of the Manic Depressive hosted by Stephen Fry. In his open, intelligent and witty way, Fry tackles the topic of Bipolar Disorders (oh yes, there are more than one), including his own. If you can find it (you will have to try all of the usual channels to get it in North America), watch it.

So, why am I openly discussing the fact that I am Bipolar in a public forum? Why would I confess to the world, to people who may in the future meet me, or even consider hiring me?

It’s simple. Many months ago, I wrote that if you were going to hire me based on what I had done in the past, or what school I went to, I most likely wouldn’t want to work for your company anyway. The same applies to this illness, this condition I suffer from. If you or your company won’t hire me because I suffer from an illness that is beyond my control, that I will have for the rest of my life, why would I work for your firm?

I have had Bipolar for a long time. I can track the behaviours that identify the condition back into my childhood, through my teens, through until today. Normally, the cycling that I go through is benign, punctuated by periods of utter and complete hyperfocus. Most of the time, hyperfocus is a benefit for me — it is what got me through re-building the GrabPERF interface last year, and helped power me to absorb and write as much on Web performance as I have.

The manic side does have its pitfalls. My mania usually results in buying and spending sprees that have often endangered my financial stability. An example of this is my acquisition or stationery supplies, pen, notebooks and books.

Two weeks ago, I cleaned out my desk and aggregated all of the writing instruments I have purchased over the last 12 months. When I was done, I had filled a 1-gallon Zip-Lock baggie with pens, pencils, highlighters and Sharpies.

In my lifetime, I could never use them all.

I fanatically acquire notebooks. Rhodia, Moleskine, Rite-in-the-Rain, anything. How many of them have I written in? Well, lets just say that my kids will be using my blank notebook collection for many years after I have departed this world.

The spending sprees, the intense desire for the acquisition of things, is my most noticeable manifestation of manic behaviour. In most instances, the manic process starts to wind down after a while. In a few instances, it continues upward. It continues upward until my rational mind dissipates, and I start ranting and raving, making irrational and potentially destructive choices in my life. Choices that have (or could have) affected the course of my life.

I suffer from a small subset of the condition, Bipolar I. What differentiates this group from the standard “manic-depressive” or Bipolar diagnosis is that is more MANIC-depressive, with a sustained emphasis on the manic episodes. Depressive episodes occur, don’t get me wrong; but it is the intense and unstoppable mania that has shaped me more than the depression.

However, this condition is not “curable” in the standard way. It also doesn’t manifest any physical symptoms. So in most cases, people just say that I need to get a grip and get on with my life. I am grateful that I have an understanding and (in some cases) forgiving wife who is intent on helping me control and regulate my behaviour. I am also extremely lucky that my current manager understands this part of me, and gives me the freedom I need to ebb and flow with the condition.

To wrap this up (I hate long postings), I leave you with this thought. In his programme, Fry asks his interview subjects the following question (and I paraphrase it here):

If there was a button you could push, a button that cured you of this condition, and gave you a normal mind, would you press it?

Only one of the interview subjects said yes. Everyone else said that despite the pain and suffering that accompanies the condition, there is no way that they would be willing to give back the state of mind that allowed them to achieve what they had achieved.

We are not in our right mind. And I am proud of that.

Technorati Tags: Bipolar, manic+depression, manic+depressive, Bipolar+I, psychiatric+illness, mental+health, depression, mania, manic

It took 3 calls, 6 people, and 90 minutes to resolve the problem with Samantha’s new Dimension 3100.

And what was the fix? A secret squirrel hotfix for Media Center.

Still wouldn’t buy another Dell.

Technorati Tags: Dell, Dimension 3100, tv tuner, Windows XP Media Center