Some Brisbane Guy

Google has a LOT of IP addresses.

You can query ARIN.net’s WHOIS database if you don’t believe me. Fixed Orbit says Google has control of approximately 32,763 IP addresses. But that’s very incorrect, it seems to me. It looks like they have at least 40 seperate allocations, some of which are 8192 IP addresses alone! I don’t have time to work this all out now, but let’s just say GOOG has a lot of IP addresses.

APNIC and RIPE have entries for Google as well, but there’s less than 100 IP addresses all together in those two.

How cool.

At the risk of being a Guy Kawasaki fanboi, I’m posting about him again.

Chris Salazar of California just posted the guts of a Guy Kawasaki presentation he attended - the Ten Steps of Entrepreneuralism.  There’s some really good material in there.  I won’t bother reproducing here, just click the link dude.

http://seek.com.au/showjob.asp?JobId=6336275

Maybe I’m naive, lazy and narrow-skilled, but if one person can do all this then I’d like to see it:

Programming Skills:

• PHP
• ASP.NET
• VB
• MSSQL
• MYSQL
• HTML
• DHTML
• JavaScript
• XML
• Flash (action script)
• Director
• Lingo
• Windows Server2003
• Exchange
• Linux Networking (samba / netatalk)
• OSX
• Photoshop
• Final Cut Pro
• CSS.

…take a breath aaaaand here’s the software you need to be able to use:

• Macromedia Flash
• Director
• PhotoShop
• Freehand or Illustrator
• Final Cut Pro
• Microsoft Office
• QuickTime
• Acrobat
• Putty

So they’re the skills you need.  Don’t forget though, that you need to have experience!  See here:

• Three years PHP+MySQL programming and “maintaining various networks”
• High knowledge level of server maintenance on Linux and Windows 2003 and OSX, not to mention networking hardware and systems
• PLUS you also get to manage a project from a client brief to final deployment “in conjunction with” account managers…ie they tell the client what you can have done and you manage to get it done or else!

Whew, they’re not asking for much!  Just a graphic designer, software developer, systems analyst, project manager, network administrator and internal technical support person, all in one.  I can’t see how one person could fulfill all those roles.  How could any kind of quality be achieved?  How would the person stay sane?  I love variety in my work, but this just seems crazy.

Anyway,  I think it’d be helpful if the job ad was focused.  I could do Linux and Windows system administration, PHP and MySQL development, internal support, some graphics with Photoshop, CSS and Javascript, which covers maybe half the requirements.  Are they the important half?  Who knows…

Code names…how stupid!  Or so I used to think.  Naming servers fun names like Greek gods (ergh, ok that’s not really fun it’s just tired) or food (spaghetti, noodle, wasabi) seemed like good fun but not that useful. I didn’t really understand what project codenames (like Whistler, Yukon and Whidbey for Microsoft software releases) were for, either.

Well now I’ve come to my senses, and I realise that it’s for communication, fool! When you work in a team, you need some name to refer to things by. Saying “the USA server” works OK, until you have two servers — then you need to say “the new USA server” or “the USA server with client X on it”. Or a software project like a web service to link two systems, you can call it “the inter-department synchronisation project” but that gets a bit tedious when you’re trying to refer to it several times in a conversation. It’s easier to say “Project Nimrod,” named after the guy who designed the database of the legacy system you’re trying to integrate with, or call a server “Maggot” after the virtual infestation of crufty rubbish that clogs its hard disks.

The important thing is that you have some easy to remember handle to use to share with other people what object or idea you’re talking about. It could be thought of as a level of abstraction, a bit like a variable name in software source code. Actual product names are thought out carefully as a sound, a word or a few words that evoke some idea or thought so that you feel as though the product will do what you want it to and improve your life. All a codename has to do is be a handle you can pass around to refer to something. Unlike in software, it doesn’t need to be something that helps you remember what it’s referring to (eg totalShareholderDebt), it just has to be memorable (eg Project Enron).
So next time something new comes around, I’m not gonna feel bad about giving it some stupid but memorable name. Here’s my code name tips:

1. it doesn’t matter what the name is, but it’s better if it’s something with a sense of humour
2. using a stupid name is a lot easier than trying to think of how to describe whatever it is you’re referring to every time
3. it’s fun, and without fun, life sucks

Here ends today’s lesson.

Can’t upload large files in IIS6, and just getting “Operation not Allowed” errors?

Whatcha gotta do is edit the metabase. You have to change AspMaxRequestEntityAllowed in the metabase.xml file to whatever file size in bytes that you want to allow. Go forth and upload!

After further fun and games with another Windows 2003 Server that’s just been freshly installed, I have some more info on this uploading matter. The server was setup with IIS6 out of the box and then had the AspMaxRequestEntityAllowed value in the metabase.xml file changed. This caused uploads larger than about 200KB just to time out, seemingly forever. More annoying than complete failure, ’cause you have to wait…and wait…and wait to see if the upload is going to work — just slowly — or if it’s not going to work at all. So what I did, was also change the registry key

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSetServices\w3svcparameters\MaxClientRequestBufferas it says to above in the Microsoft KB article. This, combined with the previously-made metabase change, seems to work satisfactorily.

Well, only just after that post it looks like I’ll have to challenge Daniel to use the new Whereis interface and tell me it’s not better, because it’s a LOT better thanks to some AJAX kinda stuff (and of course the new graphics that bring it well into 2002 :P). Clicking to re-centre the map is lots faster now because you only need to reload the map image, not the entire HTML page. It also features dragging but that doesn’t work as nicely as the drag feature in Google Maps.

Good work to Whereis for getting this stuff going, it makes the site a lot nicer to use than before, when it was actually quite frustrating as everything disappeared and was rendered again each time you clicked. Wow, and I also just noticed that you can change the map size, which is great to see instead of the postage-stamp map view the site’s always had.

Now they just need some keyboard shortcuts, haha!

Daniel tonight told me that he hadn’t yet seen a good implementation of an ajax application, that they’re always too slow and the delay bugs him. I really don’t know what he’s talking about so maybe I should have clarified, although I think it’s possible that he’s used ajax on sites that aren’t so obvious and he hasn’t noticed, like, say adoptapet (do an animal search and change the state/territory you’re searching in and the site will ajax you up a new list of shelters in that state).

One app we discussed quickly was Google Reader, the RSS aggregator that I actually use for keeping up with blogs. I reckon Daniel must have been using the mouse to navigate, while I use the shortcut keys which are just like the navigation keys in everyone’s favourite editor, vi. ‘j’ goes to the next post, ‘k’ goes to the previous one and so on. I think it’s a great UI, but then again I don’t really like to use the mouse.

An interface where you plonk your hand down and move one finger or another to make it do things is my cup of tea, not some stupid thing where you have to muster all these motor skills to accurately position a mouse cursor over some tiny target on the screen and then, without moving the mouse, click its button. That’s a lot harder than using simple keystrokes. That’s the only reason I can figure out that people think Google Reader is apparently slow, because I did try using it with the mouse and it’s clunky and irritating.

That said, keyboard shortcuts on web pages aren’t a very conventional feature; most websites force you to use the mouse or make you suffer endless tabbing around every element on the page. Hooray for keyboard shortcuts.

Another eminent heavy-hitter in the tech world is Richard Fuser, a mate of mine from the big smoke, Sydney. He’s an opinionated character and he’s started out with a pretty funny first real post about a lady driving around with her iPod blasting into her ears.

Richie I hope you keep posting now that I’ve dedicated this valuable space to promoting your blog

Something tonight pointed me to Guy Kawasaki’s reasonably new blog titled “Let the Good Times Roll”, I think it was Om Malik.
Om mentioned how people have wondered why Guy hasn’t started a blog before, and I wonder the same ’cause his blog is excellent reading. Who is he? Well, just an ex-Stanford and UCLA guy with an MBA, an honorary doctorate, a director of a venture capital firm, an author of four business books, one of the people responsible for the success of the Apple Macintosh computer…yeah he’s reasonably qualified.
Anyway the interesting stuff is that Guy does these great “How To” type lists, such as:

• The Art of Emailing - A lot of people could learn say, everything on this list
• The Art of Schmoozing - I could learn say, everything on this list
  

I’ll be reading more of this man’s work.