I want to go in the Philippines. This is just amazing:
They should let those guys out for at least a day just for the quality of choreography. I can see the warden now, “no it’s one AND two and three and four.” Solid.
Jul 20
Jul 17
I just upgraded my version of Parallels from 2.5 to the latest version 3. VMware had upped the ante when they added snapshots to VMware fusion on the last time around but Parallels matched their bet and then raised by adding multiple snapshots. If you haven’t used either product, snapshots is basically a way of preserving the state of a VM right from the virtualization console so you can easily revert back to it and undo any changes you’ve made without having to clone the entire disk image using an external tool. It also saves space since it just stores the delta from the previous version.
I had misunderstood thinking that Parallels just did multiple serial snapshots but it actually can do multiple branching snapshots. It’s a bit like lead climbing and placing pitons on your way up the rock face so you limit your fall. VMware gives you one route up the face and more importantly, one piton which you can continuously unhook and place right behind you. Parallels gives you unlimited routes up the face with unlimited pitons so you can choose to fall back to any previous position on the climb or jump to any point on an entirely different route.
You can also think of it like this: remember that movie Sliding Doors with Gwyneth Paltrow (hot) where there’s dual realities occurring simultaneously? In Parallels 3 you can branch a VM indefinitely and grow multiple realities from the same VM. The coherence features and offline file explorer stuff they’ve added in this release is nice, but multiple snapshots is the killer feature now that VMware will have to match if they hope to keep up with Parallels in the desktop virtualization space. We’re partners with both companies so frankly, having this kind of competition elevate the level of play is thrilling to see.
Jul 13
This is just awesome. The hall monitor from highschool is apparently in charge of our HOA now. The last one is particularly comical. I can think of a couple situations they haven’t accounted for though… clearly needs to be an addendum to this. Feel free to submit any rules you’d like to see and I’ll suggest them to our HOA.
Jul 11
I had two different friends last week “lose the keys” to their own web site. One situation was a disgruntled admin who thought he had leverage and decided to make demands and the other was an accident where the developer left the country for a 2yr mission in an isolated city in South America without leaving behind the server/domain credentials nor a copy of the code. Both sites were static and I was able to use the free HTTrack tool to suck down a copy and mirror them on my server. We were able to reclaim the domain for one and on the other we’re hosting on the .net alternate while we wrestle control back from the rogue ex-employee. This scenario got me thinking though and I submitted an idea to Cambrian House which is now in the running in this week’s tournament. The idea simply is this:
Automate everything I did for my friends last week. I’m starting to think that this situation occurs more frequently than expected and not everyone has a friend with a server and the knowledge to copy a site remotely, mirror it and pursue the domain reclamation process. There is an opportunity to make a online service that allows the victim to immediately snapshot a copy of his/her site, mirror it on an alternate URL and get assistance with the process of recovering the domain in the event that it’s been lost.
My question is: does this idea seem viable? Market big enough? If it did exist how would you go about promoting awareness of the service to the people afflicted with this problem? Not that we have any extra cycles to pursue creating this (that’s why I submitted to CH). But here’s the official entry that’s in the tournament:
Jun 29
If you’re in Phoenix, you won’t want to miss this. Details below. Check out some past shows here.
Jun 28
I’m planning to do a few short hops this summer to neighboring user groups in the states around Arizona. If you have a developer user group on the West Coast or in the Southwest and are looking for speakers for an upcoming meeting, get in touch with me. The talks I’m tentatively planning on doing:
I need to line up at least two back-to-back meetings in a city to justify a trip so if you know a neighboring user group and can make an introduction or referral, that helps. Looking forward to making the rounds and seeing what everyone is working on these days!
