I’ve been playing with prometheus for monitoring. It feels quite familiar to me because its based on an internal google technology called borgmon, but I suspect that means it feels really weird to everyone else. The first thing to realize is that everything at google is a web server. Your short lived tool that copies…
Author: mikal
Gods of Metal
In this follow-up to Command and Control, Schlosser explores the conscientious objectors and protestors who have sought to highlight not just the immorality of nuclear weapons, but the hilariously insecure state the US government stores them in. In all seriousness, we are talking grannies with heart conditions being able to break in. My only real…
BonkersCon video: something introductory about radio
Michael Carden kindly gave a talk at BonkersCon about the origins of radio at my request. Tim Ansell was there during the day to record these videos with his bonkers home brew video capture hardware. Sorry about the sound quality at the end of the video. We had some issues on the day with the…
Game review: Betray at House on the Hill
Here’s our second game. We played this one tonight after dinner.
Game review: Guillotine
AJ, Matt and I have decided that we need to play more board games and that we should write up our thoughts about them as we play them. I’ve decided to keep quick notes here to keep us honest. We start with a card game named “Guillotine”. AJ: A fun by simple game. Matt: Fun, but…
Event wrap up
Thanks to everyone who made Technical Topics 2016 a success. I enjoyed the talks, and I think the turnout was much better than I expected. I’ve also given up on convincing people to use the big boy name for the event, and have accepted that “BonkersCon” has stuck as a name. So congratulations on that!…
A Walk in the Woods
I found this tale of Bill Bryson walking the Appalachian Trail (rather incompetently I must say) immensely entertaining. Well written, interesting, generally exaggerated, and leaving me with a desire to get out somewhere and walk some more. I’d strongly recommend this book to people who already care about bush walking, but have found other pursuits…
Leviathan Wakes
I read this book based on the recommendation of Richard Jones, and its really really good. A little sci-fi, a little film noir, and very engaging. I also like that bad things happen to good people in the story — its gritty and unclean enough to be believable. I don’t want to ruin the book…
Technical Topics weekly update, week starting 31 October
(This just got emailed out to registered attendees of Technical Topics). So, I went quiet for a while because I got busy with other things, but now its time to focus on getting Technical Topics [1] ready for action. There is a program of things people are currently talking about at this URL: http://wiki.madebymikal.com/index.php?title=Technical_Topics:December_2016…
Technical Topics weekly update, week starting 5 September
(This got emailed out to registered attendees yesterday). Oh you few, you glorious, trustworthy and foolhardy few! Thanks to all of you who have registered for Technical Topics. I think it is cool (and a bit bonkers) that we’ve gone from idle idea to a conference with a venue, delegates, speakers and insurance quotes in…