Life, IT & the Rest

The Book “Deploying Rails Applications” gives an good overview and tutorials on the infrastructure needed for a successfull web project. The central tool is the domain specific language for deployment capistrano which is inspired by rake, written in Ruby by Jamis Buck and integrated with the Ruby on Rails framework.

I really liked reading this clear and progressive book by Ezra Zygmuntowicz, Bruce Tate, and Clinton Begin published by Pragmatic Programmers. The chosen analogy “moving into a new house” helps to understand why it is a good idea to automate server handling and web deployment. The main parts are

1. “bootstrap subversion” chapter on version control
2. hosting environments on shared and dedicated hosts.
3. The chapter on capistrano is the only printed documentation on that tool by now.
   Capistrano offers default deployment “tasks” for Ruby on Rails, but can be adopted e.g. for PHP Projects or admin tasks like key deployment, installation/compilation of software. Commands get pushed to servers in bash syntax via SSH in parallel. The servers can be grouped in “roles” like “web”, “db”, “all” or “most fancy customer”.
4. mongrel servers
5. scaling, performance
6. deployment on windows

This Linux Netbook looks amazing!

• Models “Ideapads S9″ and “S10″ cost about 320-360 EUR in .de
• From Oktober in shops
• 1GB RAM memory
• 160 GByte-Harddisk or 4 GByte SSD (Solid State Drive)
• Display is 1024 wide
• Express Card Slot
• Linux (Distro to be announced) or WinXP

Full News text in Linux Magazine Germany

This is the product picture you can see in the News http://www.linux-magazin.de/content/view/full/24797

I found a nice text called The Researcher’s Bible by Alan Bundy (not Al Bundy for sure). He wrote this document about reading & writing skills, finding a decent topic, common pitfalls.

This is a shorter one How to write an Informatics Paper.

Alan Bundy seems to know what he is talking about and was Head of the Division of Informatics, University of Edinburgh, 1998-2001. Students like him, they wrote this Liber Amoricum:

Some guys from the HdM Stuttgart did a nice TV documentation on “the” Web 2.0:

• barcamping
• Web 2.0 Expo Berlin
• Interviews (partially english) with
  • Alpha Geek Tim O’Reilly
  • Enterpreneur Peter Ambrozy
  • Blogger Oliver Gassner
  • and many many more web 2.0 “aware” people
• and you won’t believe it: economic background

The film was sponsored by dmc, Cisco & Otto, broadcasted in german TV on 3sat and ZDF. It will be “reloaded” tomorrow 31.07.2008 13.30h on ZDF-infokanal.

Have a lot of fun!

Links Background

• http://www.web2null-derfilm.de/
• http://www.hdm-stuttgart.de/view_news?ident=news20080729173439
• http://www.3sat.de/3sat.php?http://www.3sat.de/neues/sendungen/magazin/123704/index.html

Links Stream

• http://www.3sat.de/webtv/?080729_webzweinull_neues.rm
• http://de.sevenload.com/videos/nJE9sqq-Web-2-0-Der-Film

This nice litte thingy ASUS eeePC rocks. The new “netbook” *buzzz* trend.

No Setup needed, the pre installed Linux in a stripped down Xandros Distribution. I was using the internal webcam 3 Minutes after the first boot, inside the shop :). Not too bad, compared to the session I had with my Orininal Lenovo Think Pad “ready for Vista” pre installed Vista Business Laptop…

285 EUR street price in .de, graphical WiFi Configuration Tool / Wizard, 3 USB 2.0, Skype, Media Player…

• Overview
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ASUS_Eee_PC
• Inside out
  http://beta.ivancover.com/wiki/index.php/Eee_PC_Research

The only 4 things you need to know about this netbook

• the console is hidden in the File Manager under Extras / STRG-T
• Software upgrade just do

  $ sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade

• If the sound gets to low open the console and adjust

  $ alsamixer

• The black colored netbook has the same price as the fresher looking white one, MacBook fans might be confused…