This is one of those things that is just too weird to be true, and then you realize that it's not a joke, but then it might actually have some merit and might actually be exactly what's called for.
PaperBack translates a digital file into an array of dots that you can then printout and store securely. To recover the data, you use a scanner to create a bitmap, and then the application recovers the paper into the digital file.
Crazy, you're thinking, but then you realize:
. paper, on the other hand, to claim it will last for 100 years is not even vaguely impressive. High-quality paper with good ink regularly lasts many hundreds of years even under less than optimal conditions. (via CodingHorror)
To the right is a small sample of the microdot array that is generated by the PaperBack product. I printed a copy of a 36MB PDF file, and it ended up being about 100 pages of nearly edge-to-edge microdots. Not terribly efficient, but when you think about it that long after you are dead this could be readable by a computer, it's kind of cool!
I almost forgot the most important part. You can recycle paper, so when you're done redigitizing your content, you can shred it and recycle without fearing where those nasty petrochemicals will end up in the waste stream. Cool!
And yes, it even has built in redundancy to protect against those darned coffee mug rings!
Ran across an article extolling the Greenly virtues of Dell, Inc. (via Greenbiz.com), talking about their reducing their greenhouse gas emissions, cutting its packaging, and increasing the number of Energy Star certified computer systems. Go Dell!
Of keen interest to me, though, is that Dell has managed to recover approximately 67,500 tons of e-waste worldwide. That seems like a lot, but how do they do that?
Turns out they've got a bunch of different programs to reclaim e-waste, including donations, recycling, and trade-in programs. Strictly in the consumer products space, so all those aging Enterprise-y iSCSI arrays that we've got are, yet again, up to us to responsibly recycle.
Good job, Dell. I'm impressed with your efforts, and that's saying a lot coming from me!
Well, really it's not recycling, but it's re-using, which is another one of the "Big-Three" pillars of the sustainability model.
Over the weekend, Ted and I were doing a late-summer cleanup of our cluttered garage, and I came across a few boxes of DVDs, copies of which we both had so one copy (most likely the least pristine one) ended up in this box in the garage.
I have been trading in my old video-games with Amazon.com trade-in for several months, and remembered recently that they started accepting used movies (DVD, HDDVD, and BluRay) for Gift Card bucks. Uber-convenience factor: Amazon will give you a pre-paid shipping label to ship it to them. My last shipment was dropped off on Monday, and I got the credit today (Wednesday). Awesome.
And then, come to find out, there's an online service that will do just about the same thing for your gently used, previously enjoyed, still-working gadgets! I ran across this article on Greenbiz.com about a company in Boston, started by an entrepreneur and Ebay Exec pair, give you cash for your electronic clunkers (thanks to the author for that fabulous line).
"Our vision is nothing short of redefining consumption, changing the way people buy, sell and recycle electronics," Ganot, who is president and CEO of Gazelle, told me recently by phone. "We own too many products that we don't use. We always buy the latest and greatest. They end up tucked away in your attic. Some get thrown in the garbage. Or recycled improperly."
Brilliant, folks. Do you have a few gadget that are gathering dust that could use a second or third life in the developing world or in the hands of an erstwhile young person just getting started in their college lives? For those of you who are somewhat gadget obsessed, take heed!
In the end, the screencasts didn't seem to fit with the overall message of the Greening: Monitor Sleep in Brainstorm, but I did put in some work into creating them so I figured I'd include them below for your please.
Animated Bubbleplot of Lab Usage by hour over a 1-month period.
Animated Bubbleplot of Lab Usage over a 1-month period.
It includes narration, too!
Ah, the wonder of JMP. Oh yeah, and I used Jing to capture the screen-contents (and my mellifluous voice).
Dell released some details about their new 11th Generation PowerEdge line, and while of course it's more of the usual faster procs, more embedded hypervisors, and higher density and more power-efficiency, the thing that catches my eye is just how awesome they look.especially when you've got them all stacked together.
The new M710 Blades are looking pretty cool, too. I'd love to have 8 of these arranged in an awesome renderfarm, grid, or VMware ESX Cluster. By my count, there are 18 memory sockets, which means at least 72GB of ram for the max (assuming 4GB modules).
Still only two CPU sockets (can I get some 4-way action please?***), but with 6-cores (and likely 8-core procs on the horizon), that's still a good deal of compute-power in a 0.8U package. Here's my favorite picture from Dell's 11G Flickr photoset (because I'm a geek about blades).
And believe me when I say that I wish I could wake up every day and look at a row of DataCenter equipment that looked this HOT!
*** In the immortal words of Vala Malderan, "Not everything I say is innuendo!"
I happened to be browsing www.stardock.com, looking at their latest 4X gaming offerings, and ran across a product that they claim will help me "clean up my desktop clutter".
If you're anything like me, you keep a ton of links, documents, folders, and other stuff all over your windows desktop (not unlike your physical desktop). I have been manually organizing my clutter for a long time. PDFs here, Zip Files there, To-Dos up there in the right-hand corner. My "nightmare" scenario? Having to do a presentation with my laptop on a projector with less than the native 1920x1080 resolution of my screen. All of my desktop icons get re-arranged all over the place!
I installed Stardock's Fences about three days ago, and it really has changed the way I interact with my desktop. For the better! Here's a look at my desktop with Fences, followed by my favorite feature: double-click on any empty space on your desktop and all your icons are automatically hidden.
I wish I had a picture of my desktop *before* installing Fences, but I never want to go back! It's free for personal use (at least for now). Here's a short video giving you a demo of the product.
Any other nifty desktop productivity apps you want to recommend? Shout out in the comments!
A year ago, roughly, we had a major SAN outage; half of all the LUNs on our primary Fiber Channel SAN went belly-up, and services were down for approximately 36 hours. That event started us down a long path to a different storage vendor and technology.
Today, me and some die-hard SAN geeks, met and said goodbye to the disk subsystem we've affectionately known as TUPPERWARE (in all-caps, 'cause that's how we identify systems, ya dig?). And yes, at one point we had a ZIPLOC, a HEFTY, and a RUBBERMAID. And PYREX is still humming along in the new DataCenter.
Yes, we had a TUPPERWARE Party. Check below for the festivities! First up, the storage scene before and after. Our power and cooling requirements just got a heckuva lot lighter in that DataCenter! Woohoo!
UPDATE: I accidentally deleted my blog directory on GUTENBERG and had to re-create this post. Sorry for the redundancy! I'm furiously adding the Backup Client to the server now!
More photos after the break.
Had this strange conversation over IM this morning. It's like Kurt and I were sharing a brain or something!
Oh yeah, and we're *still* running Live Communications Server 2005. Upgrades coming soon!
First off, I thought this day would never happen:
<N/A> | BlackBerry Messaging Agent bes-blackberry Agent 1 (Application Event Log on BES) | 01/20/2009 20:14:17 (*********) -> [AUDIT] jcruz@wharton.upenn.edu - User activated on the BES
That's one of the automated messages we get when a user successfully connects to our BlackBerry Enterprise Server. Yes, true believers, I've switched from a vaunted Windows Mobile phone to a BlackBerry.
Mostly because my AT&T Tilt is dying, and an 8820 became available recently, but also because we need some in-house support expertise on the BlackBerry itself.
Which leads me to the subject of this post.
BlackBerry and their vaunted Enterprise Redirection is not worth the money. Here's my tally (assuming we're buying a phone for a new account)
- BlackBerry Enterprise License: $100
- BlackBerry Enterprise Redirection Plan: $45/month (unlimited), $39.99/month (4MB.yeah.*4*MB)
- BlackBerry Bold: $299
Look at the below for an iPhone:
- Exchange Active Sync License: Free/included
- iPhone Data Plan: $45/month (unlimited for Enterprise)
- iPhone 8GB: $199
And for a new HTC Fuze:
- Exchange Active Sync license: Free/included
- MS DirectPush Data Plan: $29.99/month (unlimited)
- HTC Fuze: $299
Out of the gate, the iPhone costs us less, and even more insidiously, the data plan costs us less per month. So my question to everyone is:
Why are we still buying BlackBerries?
Granted, you know, we're *not*, because we're trying to cut spending, but think about how much money we could be saving if all 200+ BlackBerry users we have had started with iPhones to begin with?
Do I hear a call to switching to the iPhone? Even switching to Windows Mobile phones (the HTC Fuze being the current example) would save us some bucks!
Don't even get me started on the amount of staff time *wasted* because the various carriers out there don't have a clue about how to add BlackBerry Enterprise Redirection to the phone's plan. It took me 55 minutes to do that tonight, and I know exactly what I need and what to ask for!
<sigh>
As you were, true believers. I'm saving up for an iPhone.
UPDATE: So it turns out that the Enterprise plan for the iPhone, the one that lets you connect to Exchange, is actually $45/month, not $30/month. Soooo, looks like this whole post is a wash!!!
UPDATE2: According to peeps in the know (and an actual iPhone user on our Exchange servers) only the $30/month plan is necessary. Take that, BlackBerry! iPhonez still rulexz!
I was tooling around with my Brother's home computer over the holidays, and noticed that there may have been a good bit of malware installed (thank you BearShare!).
I was about to run a scan using Symantec, then my other brother piped up and said:
Why don't you use Windows OneCare? It's online and free!
I was confused, befuddled, and intrigued! There's a free scanning tool from Microsoft? And my little bro' knew about it and I didn't? Something isn't right with the world.
Turns out it's quite useful and pretty effective; check it out:
