As some of you might know, I’m the Director for linux.conf.au 2013. I’ve tried really hard to not use my powers for evil and make the entire conference about OpenStack — in fact I haven’t pulled rank and demanded that specific content be included at all. However, the level of interest in OpenStack has grown…
Image handlers (in essex)
George asks in the comments on my previous post about loop and nbd devices an interesting question about the behavior of this code on essex. I figured the question was worth bringing out into its own post so that its more visible. I’ve edited George’s question lightly so that this blog post flows reasonably. Can…
The Forever War (again)
Still excellent. Title: The Forever War Author: Joe Haldeman Genre: Fiction Publisher: Macmillan Release Date: 1975 Pages: 287 “Del Rey book.” Battling the Taurans in space was one problem as Private William Mandella worked his way up the ranks to major. In spanning the stars, he aged only months while Earth aged centuries.
Some quick operational notes for users of loop and nbd devices
A quick note for OpenStack operators — if you are using loop or nbd devices to mount disk images in nova-compute, then you would be well served to have plenty of device files hanging around to reduce contention. For loop devices, that seems as simple as making more of them with MAKEDEV. With nbd, you’ll…
Starquake
The sequel to the very excellent Dragon’s Egg, this book covers the continued interaction between the humans and the super cute Cheela. Unfortunately for the Cheela they suffer a major natural disaster which destroys society. I love an author who is willing to kill of characters when it progresses the story, and there is lots…
Moving on
Thursday this week is my last day at Canonical. After a little over a year at Canonical, I’m moving on to the private cloud team at Rackspace — my first day with Rackspace will be the 17th of December. I’m very excited to be joining Rackspace — I’m excited by the project, the team, and…
Fuzzy Nation
Yet another excellent Scalzi novel. This one took me a while to really warm up to, but it was worth the patience. The ending is fast paced and excellent. [isbn: 9780765367037]
Mockingjay
This is the final book in the Hunger Games trilogy. To be honest I don’t think it is as the previous two books. This is mostly because while the plot is quiet believable, Katniss simply comes across as whiney for most of the book. The plot is believable so it doesn’t feel insincere, its just…
On conference t-shirts
Conference t-shirts can’t be that hard, right? I certainly don’t remember them being difficult when Canberra last hosted linux.conf.au in 2005. I was the person who arranged all the swag for that conference, so I should remember. Yet here I am having spent hours on the phone with vendors, and surrounded with discarded sample t-shirts,…
The Tuloriad
This book’s underlying premise isn’t really my thing. The escape of the remnants of the Posleen works for me, and I think holds together. However, I’m unconvinced by a religious mission setting out after the Posleen to convert them to one of the Earth religions. That just seems a bit far fetched to me. However,…