Wednesday, July 3, 2013
My Take on the Marshmallow Experiment
I just finished reading an article that apparently explains "What Marshmallows Tell Us About Silicon Valley". It's a take on the classic Stanford Marshmallow Experiment.
On and off, I have considered what I would have done if I were in that situation... and what would I do if I were in that situation now?
I honestly believe that it doesn't matter when it took place, I am 99% certain that if the 'marshmallows' offered were basically of equal value to me, I would eat the first one then and there.
Apparently that implies that I have little patience and not much self-control. While that is true to an extent (I mean, everyone can point to moments in their lives when that is true), I don't believe that is the reason for me eating the marshmallows straight away.
For me, it's a lot simpler: firstly, I don't really care that much for 'more candy' and as far as I can remember, I never have. For me, a second marshmallow in 15 minutes time just seems like a stupid thing to wait for... but then that may be what the experiment proves. Secondly, however, is something that I think more defines why I would not wait.
I was raised to believe that expecting a 'host' to have to do more work for me is unacceptable (where in this case, the host was the experimenter). As far as I'm concerned, a host provides their guests with a venue to facilitate a good time. Although they probably will have food, drink, music or whatever, I've never been to someone's home and then complained after leaving "man, they could have at least offered me a coffee!"
When I was a boy and my friends would come over, my parents made sure that they all knew to "make yourself at home". That means to feel comfortable and if you want something to eat or drink and it's not been offered, that doesn't mean that you have to go without. As my parents would say "you're a big boy... use your legs!".
On a tangent now, but I don't want to give the impression that our home was "that place" where everyone just raised themselves. Quite the opposite, actually. "Make yourself at home" meant "you're part of the family", not "treat this place as the place you live in". Therefore, conversely, if you didn't want to be part of our extended family, that was fine... just don't expect us to offer you the same courtesies. That meant some interesting interactions between my friends and my parents at times... but at least everyone knew where everyone stood!
Anyway, back to the marshmallows. If I am a guest somewhere and I am offered something, with the option of more later, then for me it would just be rude to expect my host to then have to go out of their way to organise the extra stuff. If it was already prepared and they actually wanted me to have it, they would have offered it to begin with. Anything other than that and they were obviously just being nice and I would obviously not want to put them out. If I wanted another marshmallow, surely I should get one myself at a time and place that's more convenient to everyone.
So, long story short: as far as I'm concerned, the reason I would take the marshmallow today has only a little to do with impulse control, and mainly all to do with the fact that I would consider it rude to have the host have to get me something else later on. Instead, stop worrying about me, sit down and have one yourself!
Oh yeah, and you could at least offer me a coffee :)
Monday, June 24, 2013
Northeast PHP Conference 2013
This is me, telling anyone who cares that the Northeast PHP Conference is set to run again this year from August 16-18.
This year is a little different, though, in that as well as the two days of talks, there's also a day of workshops. The line up for speakers is looking awesome and as a way of testing my typing fingers, I'll probably start writing about which talks I'm most interested in... just to keep myself excited :)
The thing I love about this conference is that it has a focus on inclusion: the talks are ranging from beginners to advanced, and there is an entire track dedicated to User Experience, which I think is sorely lacking in our industry.
If anyone else is going to be in Boston for the conference let me know, as I think it'll be an awesome opportunity to catch up or meet for the first time!
This year is a little different, though, in that as well as the two days of talks, there's also a day of workshops. The line up for speakers is looking awesome and as a way of testing my typing fingers, I'll probably start writing about which talks I'm most interested in... just to keep myself excited :)
The thing I love about this conference is that it has a focus on inclusion: the talks are ranging from beginners to advanced, and there is an entire track dedicated to User Experience, which I think is sorely lacking in our industry.
If anyone else is going to be in Boston for the conference let me know, as I think it'll be an awesome opportunity to catch up or meet for the first time!
Monday, June 10, 2013
Backing up from Plesk to S3
Recently I went looking for a solution for backing up from a Plesk server to S3: what I settled on was surprisingly simple.
I started with a simple list of criteria, but as I went looking for a solution, and as I continued to find no good ones, my list got longer. I have a tendency to be quite OK with the bare bones if I'm going to be using an existing system, but if I have to build it myself, I'm normally happy to add more features.
I started with basically "I want to be able to backup files and databases", but the solution I ended up with also gave me the following features:
- backup multiple domains
- along with files and databases, backup the actual domain configuration and mail if required
- rotate backups automatically
- define the frequency of backups and the number of backups to keep before rotating
- open source
- a simple interface right in Plesk
So what did I do?
I don't know, really, if this is a super smart way to do it, or just a cop-out, but basically I realised that hey, the Plesk backup manager already let's us do all of the above... except for the S3 part. All that I ended up doing was installing s3cmd from http://s3tools.org and setting it up to do the syncing to S3, looking at the location on the server that Plesk puts it backups.
So basically, users (or I) define backup rules for each domain as needed (via the Plesk UI) and then s3cmd runs with the sync option once a day.
With s3cmd located in my /root/cli-tools directory, and assuming s3://example.com is the name of the bucket I will use, the actual cron tab entry I use is as simple as:
cd /var/lib/psa/dumps; /root/cli-tools/s3/s3cmd -c /root/cli-tools/s3/s3cfg --delete-removed -H --no-progress sync domains s3://example.com/backups
UPDATE: as per a comment by Rutger below, you may actually want to use:
cd /var/lib/psa/dumps; /root/cli-tools/s3/s3cmd -c /root/cli-tools/s3/s3cfg --delete-removed -H --no-progress sync clients s3://example.com/backups
instead of, or possibly in association with, the above line.
When I commission a new Plesk server, I just copy the s3cmd directory over, create a new bucket and I'm done.
The only downsides I see, really, are that if I wanted to just have a single rule for all of the domains, I couldn't. Also, I'm assuming that all of the backups have been run when the cron job runs once a day. Not that that matters too much, as I could just bump the cron job up to hourly if I liked and I wouldn't see much difference.
I think the biggest negative to this approach is that I'm pushing backups explicitly even if what has been backed up actually hasn't changed. That is to say, if Plesk does a backup everyday, then I push a new backup every day... even if nothing has changed since the last backup.
Anyway, I hope this helps someone as for me it was completely obvious once I realised it, but it took me an embarrassingly long time to get to it.
I started with a simple list of criteria, but as I went looking for a solution, and as I continued to find no good ones, my list got longer. I have a tendency to be quite OK with the bare bones if I'm going to be using an existing system, but if I have to build it myself, I'm normally happy to add more features.
I started with basically "I want to be able to backup files and databases", but the solution I ended up with also gave me the following features:
- backup multiple domains
- along with files and databases, backup the actual domain configuration and mail if required
- rotate backups automatically
- define the frequency of backups and the number of backups to keep before rotating
- open source
- a simple interface right in Plesk
So what did I do?
I don't know, really, if this is a super smart way to do it, or just a cop-out, but basically I realised that hey, the Plesk backup manager already let's us do all of the above... except for the S3 part. All that I ended up doing was installing s3cmd from http://s3tools.org and setting it up to do the syncing to S3, looking at the location on the server that Plesk puts it backups.
So basically, users (or I) define backup rules for each domain as needed (via the Plesk UI) and then s3cmd runs with the sync option once a day.
With s3cmd located in my /root/cli-tools directory, and assuming s3://example.com is the name of the bucket I will use, the actual cron tab entry I use is as simple as:
cd /var/lib/psa/dumps; /root/cli-tools/s3/s3cmd -c /root/cli-tools/s3/s3cfg --delete-removed -H --no-progress sync domains s3://example.com/backups
UPDATE: as per a comment by Rutger below, you may actually want to use:
cd /var/lib/psa/dumps; /root/cli-tools/s3/s3cmd -c /root/cli-tools/s3/s3cfg --delete-removed -H --no-progress sync clients s3://example.com/backups
instead of, or possibly in association with, the above line.
When I commission a new Plesk server, I just copy the s3cmd directory over, create a new bucket and I'm done.
The only downsides I see, really, are that if I wanted to just have a single rule for all of the domains, I couldn't. Also, I'm assuming that all of the backups have been run when the cron job runs once a day. Not that that matters too much, as I could just bump the cron job up to hourly if I liked and I wouldn't see much difference.
I think the biggest negative to this approach is that I'm pushing backups explicitly even if what has been backed up actually hasn't changed. That is to say, if Plesk does a backup everyday, then I push a new backup every day... even if nothing has changed since the last backup.
Anyway, I hope this helps someone as for me it was completely obvious once I realised it, but it took me an embarrassingly long time to get to it.
Sunday, June 9, 2013
On having nothing to hide...
Obviously, there's a lot of discussion right now about what information should be considered private, and whether or not people really have nothing to hide. I believe that people have a lot of information that they want to keep private: even when they say they don't.
When I meet people that say they have nothing to hide, I 'play' one (or more) of three cards.
The first thing I will do is ask them how often they masturbate. I know it's a fairly taboo question, but that's the point. It's not illegal, it doesn't hurt anyone, but not many people want to answer the question and I will push them a bit before I change tack. A lot of people think that this is a stupid question because it doesn't make a difference and that it's meaningless. Apparently that makes it somehow mean that they still have nothing to hide, but anyway.
Sometimes I choose to play the "we don't know the future" aspect. One of my cousins is gay. That is not illegal where we live, but there are places where it is and let's face it, there are no doubt people even in our community that would prefer for it to be illegal. In the future, what if it became illegal? All of a sudden, all of that knowledge of what I didn't need to hide becomes a problem.
Let me reiterate that: right now, my cousin has nothing to hide, and I have nothing to hide in knowing that they're gay. In the future, if it became illegal, there's a ton of information that suddenly we may wish to have been kept secret. Unfortunately, that stuff that we didn't have any reason to hide suddenly becomes something we may wish we were able to.
Finally, depending on who I'm talking to, sometimes I will play the family card. If the person I'm talking to has a child (especially a daughter) I like to ask them how they would feel if in the future that child was dating a good government employee that had access to all sorts of information. Then I begin to wonder, what would happen if they went through a messy break-up? I wonder, what if that ex turns out to be a little jealous and maybe a bit of a stalker? Would you support, then, there being a heap of information on your child, being easily accessible to this ex?
I guess a lot of my arguments come down to this: you don't know the future. In this, you have no idea what you do at the moment that may be considered dodgy behaviour in the future.
Even if you think that that's not a problem, there's a very good chance that right now, you do stuff that you don't want people to know and as far as I'm concerned, the very fact that you haven't considered that means that you haven't spent nearly enough time thinking about it. And to be honest, that frightens me just as much.
When I meet people that say they have nothing to hide, I 'play' one (or more) of three cards.
The first thing I will do is ask them how often they masturbate. I know it's a fairly taboo question, but that's the point. It's not illegal, it doesn't hurt anyone, but not many people want to answer the question and I will push them a bit before I change tack. A lot of people think that this is a stupid question because it doesn't make a difference and that it's meaningless. Apparently that makes it somehow mean that they still have nothing to hide, but anyway.
Sometimes I choose to play the "we don't know the future" aspect. One of my cousins is gay. That is not illegal where we live, but there are places where it is and let's face it, there are no doubt people even in our community that would prefer for it to be illegal. In the future, what if it became illegal? All of a sudden, all of that knowledge of what I didn't need to hide becomes a problem.
Let me reiterate that: right now, my cousin has nothing to hide, and I have nothing to hide in knowing that they're gay. In the future, if it became illegal, there's a ton of information that suddenly we may wish to have been kept secret. Unfortunately, that stuff that we didn't have any reason to hide suddenly becomes something we may wish we were able to.
Finally, depending on who I'm talking to, sometimes I will play the family card. If the person I'm talking to has a child (especially a daughter) I like to ask them how they would feel if in the future that child was dating a good government employee that had access to all sorts of information. Then I begin to wonder, what would happen if they went through a messy break-up? I wonder, what if that ex turns out to be a little jealous and maybe a bit of a stalker? Would you support, then, there being a heap of information on your child, being easily accessible to this ex?
I guess a lot of my arguments come down to this: you don't know the future. In this, you have no idea what you do at the moment that may be considered dodgy behaviour in the future.
Even if you think that that's not a problem, there's a very good chance that right now, you do stuff that you don't want people to know and as far as I'm concerned, the very fact that you haven't considered that means that you haven't spent nearly enough time thinking about it. And to be honest, that frightens me just as much.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
A Friendly Reminder About Something I'd Already Paid For
A few weeks ago I purchased a product online called Texture Packer Pro. The purchase went completely smoothly and without a hitch.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I received an email about my purchase the other day. To be honest, I was a little concerned.
Opening the email was a pleasant surprise. Simply put, the email was a timely reminder about the fact that I should expect a certain payee on my credit card statement, telling me how much it was for, who the payee was and, especially, what the purchase was for.
Such a simple little thing, at the right moment, and there will no longer even be a second of doubt when I look at my statement. I loved it, and intend to do a similar thing as soon as I start selling online, too.
And for what it's worth, if you're looking for a tool to resize and place images into a texture map (and let's face it, who isn't looking for one?) I can totally recommend it!
Imagine my surprise, then, when I received an email about my purchase the other day. To be honest, I was a little concerned.
Opening the email was a pleasant surprise. Simply put, the email was a timely reminder about the fact that I should expect a certain payee on my credit card statement, telling me how much it was for, who the payee was and, especially, what the purchase was for.
Such a simple little thing, at the right moment, and there will no longer even be a second of doubt when I look at my statement. I loved it, and intend to do a similar thing as soon as I start selling online, too.
And for what it's worth, if you're looking for a tool to resize and place images into a texture map (and let's face it, who isn't looking for one?) I can totally recommend it!
Tuesday, January 29, 2013
How FLOSS Software Became More Easily Accepted at Work
This was a long time ago now, but it was at a time when things were really starting to get big in the place where open source / free software and the Internet collided. It was also the time that we were looking to replace our in-house built, desktop based, bug tracking system.
It wasn't great, but it did the job. Even so, I started looking at a web-based bug tracking system that just happened to be licensed under the GPL.
I understood the requirements that were on us. I knew what it meant for us to use and change the code, and I knew what our obligations were for doing so.
Even still, a few people had concerns and I wasn't able to persuade them that we were OK. I suggested that we run the license past our (very technical) legal guy: if he knew what we intended to do, he would also know what was expected of us. My theory was, if he approves the license for our use case, then who really could argue differently?
The use of the GPLed software was approved and we went on our way. If the story ended there, it wouldn't be much of a story, though.
As time went on, we found ourselves gravitating to software licensed under GPL. But why? Quite simply, we knew two things: (a) legal had approved it; and more importantly (b) because the GPL itself is copyrighted, the very fact that legal had already approved that license meant that we didn't have to worry about fine print anymore!
All of a sudden, we didn't have to wonder "does this randomly drawn license for this particular software package allow us to do what we want?" and we didn't need to get 're-approved' to use the GPL (assuming we stayed within the parameters that we were given to begin with).
It was a weight off of our shoulders: almost overnight, we were confident that our understanding of the license requirements was correct, as we knew exactly what that license represented. We no longer had to try and understand hundreds of lines of legal terminology... we'd already done that once!
As time went on, we got a better understanding of a few more licenses (especially LGPL and MIT) and with that, we were able to make better and faster decisions about the libraries of code that we were looking at using.
It all really came down to the simple fact that because the licenses we were looking at were themselves copyrighted, any project that claimed to be using that license was not going to have some strange 'twist' to the license.
Yes, there were the odd times that the project tried to add a rider to the license, but even then, we were no worse off as legal would have had to look at it anyway.
To cut a long story short, these licenses made our lives easier because we all knew what we were able to do without ever really having to specifically analyse the license, simply because we knew that it couldn't have been modified from what we already understood.
And that made us happy.
It wasn't great, but it did the job. Even so, I started looking at a web-based bug tracking system that just happened to be licensed under the GPL.
I understood the requirements that were on us. I knew what it meant for us to use and change the code, and I knew what our obligations were for doing so.
Even still, a few people had concerns and I wasn't able to persuade them that we were OK. I suggested that we run the license past our (very technical) legal guy: if he knew what we intended to do, he would also know what was expected of us. My theory was, if he approves the license for our use case, then who really could argue differently?
The use of the GPLed software was approved and we went on our way. If the story ended there, it wouldn't be much of a story, though.
As time went on, we found ourselves gravitating to software licensed under GPL. But why? Quite simply, we knew two things: (a) legal had approved it; and more importantly (b) because the GPL itself is copyrighted, the very fact that legal had already approved that license meant that we didn't have to worry about fine print anymore!
All of a sudden, we didn't have to wonder "does this randomly drawn license for this particular software package allow us to do what we want?" and we didn't need to get 're-approved' to use the GPL (assuming we stayed within the parameters that we were given to begin with).
It was a weight off of our shoulders: almost overnight, we were confident that our understanding of the license requirements was correct, as we knew exactly what that license represented. We no longer had to try and understand hundreds of lines of legal terminology... we'd already done that once!
As time went on, we got a better understanding of a few more licenses (especially LGPL and MIT) and with that, we were able to make better and faster decisions about the libraries of code that we were looking at using.
It all really came down to the simple fact that because the licenses we were looking at were themselves copyrighted, any project that claimed to be using that license was not going to have some strange 'twist' to the license.
Yes, there were the odd times that the project tried to add a rider to the license, but even then, we were no worse off as legal would have had to look at it anyway.
To cut a long story short, these licenses made our lives easier because we all knew what we were able to do without ever really having to specifically analyse the license, simply because we knew that it couldn't have been modified from what we already understood.
And that made us happy.
Friday, January 11, 2013
Where's Lad Vampire and Muguito When You Need Them?
Another week, another call from "Windows IT Support" trying to get me to download some malware. I do my best to keep them on the line for a few minutes at least, but all it does is upset me, which leads to me calling them names and then fuming for a bit :)
Artists Against 419 is an awesome site that maintains a database of fake bank sites. Along with actively reaching out to the hosting companies etc., trying to get them to take the sites offline, they also used to have an application called Lad Vampire that was (I believe) replaced by another application called Muguito. These applications participated in what were called "virtual sit-ins". Basically they continually downloaded images and so on from the websites, helping to diminish the available bandwidth to the site and therefore making it less likely that a victim will actually be able to use it.
Some people may call it a DDoS, and to be perfectly honest, I might too. It didn't stop me running it though.
After my last call with "random IT support company" I wondered: at some point in the process of them 'helping' you, there must be something downloaded from somewhere. I'm not talking about the remote access software, but the malware that is intended to run in the background.
So where is the list of the servers that are hosting these files and where's the tool to continually download them? Unfortunately I'll never have the self control to get far enough into one of those calls to find out, but I tell you right now: if there's one use of my fibre-op connection I could get behind, it's downloading that malware as often and as quickly as possible.
For what it's worth, I know that random three letter acronym agencies are trying to deal with these companies, but in the meantime, surely there's something else we can collectively do?
Artists Against 419 is an awesome site that maintains a database of fake bank sites. Along with actively reaching out to the hosting companies etc., trying to get them to take the sites offline, they also used to have an application called Lad Vampire that was (I believe) replaced by another application called Muguito. These applications participated in what were called "virtual sit-ins". Basically they continually downloaded images and so on from the websites, helping to diminish the available bandwidth to the site and therefore making it less likely that a victim will actually be able to use it.
Some people may call it a DDoS, and to be perfectly honest, I might too. It didn't stop me running it though.
After my last call with "random IT support company" I wondered: at some point in the process of them 'helping' you, there must be something downloaded from somewhere. I'm not talking about the remote access software, but the malware that is intended to run in the background.
So where is the list of the servers that are hosting these files and where's the tool to continually download them? Unfortunately I'll never have the self control to get far enough into one of those calls to find out, but I tell you right now: if there's one use of my fibre-op connection I could get behind, it's downloading that malware as often and as quickly as possible.
For what it's worth, I know that random three letter acronym agencies are trying to deal with these companies, but in the meantime, surely there's something else we can collectively do?
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