cottee.org - wabi-sabi in Chester comments

"The Hardy Heron" by Roger Lancefield

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 11:44:06 GMT

Hmmm. Just thought I should update my comment above about GNOME feeling ‘snappier’ under Hardy. Having just spent some more time comparing the two, if I’m honest, Gutsy seems the slightly quicker of the two for most common operations, although a meaningful comparison is not possible because my two desktops, while theoretically comparable in terms of CPU power, memory, video and hard disk performance, are nevertheless built with different components.

"The Hardy Heron" by Roger Lancefield

Mon, 28 Apr 2008 10:59:07 GMT

Ta-Da! Posting this from Firefox 3 Beta 5 on Hardy. I did the installation last night on my second desktop (my main machine has a hard-working copy of Gutsy, which will probably remain for a while). The install routine over-wrote my Debian partition and respected Windows XP in its NTFS partition, without any problems. Grub updated accordingly, totally smooth experience. As you say, it seems to boot up a few seconds quicker and some of the GNOME operations appear, if anything, snappier.

As was expected, there are few radical new features in this version and it appears that Hardy is a consolidation and refinement of the version it replaces, which is no doubt how it should be given that it’s an LTS .

This time around it seems that, relatively speaking, the server version got a lot more developer time than was the case with previous releases, with a basketload of new features, such as new security features, management tools, performance optimizations, increased levels of hardware support, improved interoperability, etc. etc. All perhaps not surprising given that it’s intended to be a viable corporate platform for at least five years and Canonical are committed to supporting it for that length of time.

All the signs are of a continuing smooth and progressive evolution, which personally I’m chuffed about.

The only thing that I’m surprised about is the decision to go with a beta version of Firefox on an LTS , not least because (as you point out) some of Firefox’s add-ons don’t yet work in version 3, including Firebug, although most of the other goodies I use, including Adblock Plus, the Web Developer Toolbar, YSlow, and SQLite Manager, are already working under version 3.

I feel obliged to highlight your comment “Gutsy gave me my best working environment ever and removed my Mac lust (for the moment)”. Coming from you, I’m assuming that’s a serious complement ;)

The Release Party at De Hams in London the other night was fun. Sorry you couldn’t make it (was there anything going on in Nagoya?). I’m totally impressed by the Ubuntu crowd. Not because they’re all technology tyrannosaurs wearing their comp-sci degrees on their sleeves, but because of their positive outlook, their inclusiveness, and the sheer sense of fun that they’re bringing to this frequently dull and cynical business. And it’s all underpinned by that non-dogmatic dedication to take Linux to the masses. It was also good to see that at least a quarter of those present were women. It’s about bloody time that computing became an attractive proposition to members of the other 51% of humanity. Yet again, the Ubuntu community is showing more established players how to do it.

Enough fanboyism, back to work for me!

"Heroes Happen Here" by Roger Lancefield

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 12:53:47 GMT

I wonder how often the heroes’ computers will be Macs and the OSes (visible in the full-sized image) anything other than Vista?

"Ruby/Rails -> Python/Django" by Ian J Cottee

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 06:25:49 GMT

We did some work on a database backed ‘framework’, using Plone as the frontend and SQL Object talking to the database. Was interesting but we had some serious problems with SQL Object.

After that I looked at (from memory), RoR, Django, TurboGears (I think), Subway (now defunct I think) and CherryPy. That was … erk … three years ago now I think, certainly before I left Japan and things looked very different then. We first used RoR for a live client system in the Autumn of 2005. According to Wikipedia Django wasn’t even released on an Open Source license until the summer of 2005 in which case I think my mind was probably already set.

Probably, being honest, the bad experiences of SQL Object had left a bad taste in my mouth and I was hankering after something ‘new’ and ‘better’ across the board. RoR was and is still 100 times better than Zope with raw sql backends. But the only way you see how these things really work is to try them in real place. Always a dicey business.

"Ruby/Rails -> Python/Django" by Shaun Hills

Mon, 7 Jan 2008 18:12:17 GMT

I remember asking Aidan “why not Django?” a couple of years back when I first heard that you guys were going to be doing more RoR and less Zope (which I can certainly sympathise with ;-)

At the time I think it had something to do with SQL Object, or maybe my memory’s buggy. Do you recall?

Anyway, interesting. And 300K, ouch.

"Ruby/Rails -> Python/Django" by Roger Lancefield

Sun, 6 Jan 2008 12:11:26 GMT

Very interesting indeed Ian (downtime at 300K an hour? bet that focuses minds!).

It’s funny, after wondering the other day why RoR talk (i.e. hype) had gone so quiet in the general blogosphere over the course of 2007, I went looking for information, and quickly found the two posts you’ve linked to. I wasn’t quite sure what to make of the Zed Shaw post. Someone so clearly lacking in interpersonal skills is always going to end up having issues with many of the people he meets and works with. But even after stripping out the ‘angry man’ stuff, the remaining picture of the Rails world wasn’t a particularly attractive one. But then of course, a single person’s view does not a definitive picture paint, what’s more, many of the experiences he’s had are not exactly unique to the Rails community.

I’ve been doing some back-burner pondering over what to learn after PHP . Obviously, for web scripting Python and Ruby are the the two stand out candidates from the FOSS world. I’ve reading around the issue for many months, I’ve pretty much decided that Python will be my next language. I’m impressed with Django’s features, philosophy and the recent feverish activity within its expanding community, I feel more comfortable with Python’s position as the language of choice for FOSS application scripting (although this status is not guaranteed of course), and I don’t hear the same grumblings about Python’s performance that I’m hearing with increasing regularity about Ruby these days.

In a sense, I’m almost pleased that Ruby is suffering growing pains. If it wasn’t, I don’t think I would have been able to choose between it and Python, and would have ended up flipping a coin, something that would obviously preclude any conviction that the decision was made for the right reasons. Still, I’m getting ahead of myself, I doubt that I’ll be making a start on Python for at least six months – and maybe in the meantime someone will wave a magic wand over Ruby’s performance issues?

Whatever, will be very interested indeed to hear about your experiences with Django. Do hope you’ll be able to eke out some time to blog about it.

Oh, and a belated happy new year!

"Still not eating mussels in Brussels" by Roger Lancefield

Wed, 14 Nov 2007 13:40:07 GMT

Ah yes, of course, it wasn’t an NT4 server, it was Takashi’s Sun box! How on earth did I mangage to forget that? It’s all coming back to me now. It was largely the fact that an old desktop 486 loaded with free software had replaced those very expensive and highly specialised machines, and offered superior flexibility, that made the whole thing so impressive.

The confusion over NT4 came about because the office file (Lotus Notes?) server at the time was NT4 , wasn’t it?, and that would grind to a halt and require a reboot at least once a week, whereas I remember you providing smug, regular reminders to all in the office of the latest Linux server “uptime” stats :)

£5,000 for port-forwarding. It sounds ludicrous now. One reason the event has stuck in my mind is that having spent, by that time, at least a year or two reading story after story about how businesses of all sizes were discovering Linux’s flexibility, power, low cost, etc. it was the first time I’d personally seen an example in action. It was the perfect demonstration that the hype was based on something real. An old, secretarial-spec desktop replacing a dedicated and very expensive Unix machine, the high-end functionality (and subsequent reliability), and that email you sent to all, together really drove home the point.

That installation inspired me to buy Eric Raymond’s “The Cathedral and the Bazaar” and O’Reilly’s “Learning Redhat Linux”. On an old machine I installed the version of RedHat that came on the CD in that book. But, quite honestly, I felt overwhelmed by the complexity of Linux at the time, and my new RedHat box just end up languishing in a corner. Just how much do I regret that lost opportunity now?

Oh well, it was a minor event really, but it certainly changed the way I viewed software. You really ought to write up the story one day, on this ‘ere blog. I’ve always wondered to what extent that was the turning point for you personally, regarding open source that is. Had you had similar, previous experiences that had demonstrated to you the value of Linux and free software, or was that weekend a watershed for you as well?

"Still not eating mussels in Brussels" by Ian J Cottee

Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:33:23 GMT

Your memory is only slightly faulty ;). It was actually a Sun machine (a duplicate of what worked in Jetro) and was maintained by Takashi san. It was when we needed it to do port forwarding and he told us we’d need to upgrade the software at a cost of 5K that I lost it.

The rest is correct – he came in Monday morning to find his beloved Sun switched off and sitting in a corner. Can’t remember the spec of the replacement machine but it must have been low as it was basically not being used. It would have been Mandrake I think. I even had it running xearth as well just to make a point.

A good example of something we seem to be doing more and more to force change through in Blue Fountain.

It is easier to ask for forgiveness than permission. See my next post ;-)

"Still not eating mussels in Brussels" by Roger Lancefield

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:48:48 GMT

Oh, and I agree totally with the ‘innovation’ post. If you ever want to make it out of beta, sooner or later someone with a vision has to drive things through.

"Still not eating mussels in Brussels" by Roger Lancefield

Mon, 12 Nov 2007 13:47:12 GMT

Ian, I’ve been telling people for years that great story of you losing your patience with the old NT4 web server at Blue Fountain (back in 1999, or 2000?) and coming in one weekend to build a Linux web server server in its place.

I remember the meemo you mailed to all the following Monday, in which you totalled up the parts, labour and software costs. What with you donating your time for free, the hardware already having been depreciated, and the software being, well, free, the total at the bottom of your bill came to £0.00. :)

I’ve been trying to remember the machine and distro you used, wasn’t it something ridiculous like a Dell Optiplex 486 DX33 (which ran the server just fine if memory serves)? And the distro was Mandrake wasn’t it? Or was it RedHat?