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!

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!

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!

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).

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!"

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!

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.

Oh yeah, and we're *still* running Live Communications Server 2005.  Upgrades coming soon!

<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 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:

http://onecare.live.com/site/en-US/default.htm

Not too shabby; read more about how we're saving the school some dinero by adjusting the temperature in our DataCenters.

Temperature Control in the Data Centers

I thought, hey, this would be a great thing to help you shave off even more of the electricity footprint of your always-on computers.  I know a lot of us might like to keep our desktops powered on, just in case we need access to them remotely.

So how about this?

• You put your computer to sleep when you leave for the day. Sleep modes routinely use <10W of power relative to the 100+W when it's fully powered on. 
• Go to a site like www.remotewakeup.com, enter your IP address and MAC Address, send the Magic Packet to your computer to take it out of sleep mode (or power it on).
• Do the work you needed to do remotely
• Put the computer back to sleep

Say your computer used 100W when fully on and 10W when asleep.  If your computer is on 24x7, that's 16.8kWh per week.  If your computer is only on during business hours and asleep the rest of the time, that's 5.7kWh per week, a savings of 66%!  If you shut your computer off at night, you can bump that savings up to 75%.

Congratulations; you just saved the planet.

Will you try to configure Wake-On-LAN and invoke the Magic Packet?  Hit the comments with your experience!

How do you go from piddling to 5.5/4.8Mb Up/Down in less than 12 hours?

You call this dude, Mark (links below are from the Original MajorNelson blog post).

From the 1 Gbps feed on the rooftop of an apartment building across the freeway we used a custom 2.4 Ghz mesh radio to get from one part of the roof to another.  One of these devices also acted as the NAT router/firewall.  From the corner of the apartment building roof to you we used Ligowave 5 Ghz point to point radios that are built into the panel antennas.  All of the traffic from the Hotel to the 1 Gbps feed was encrypted by using a VPN which the radios do naturally.  The apartment roof is part of a 1 Gbps ring around downtown Los Angeles using Freespace optics (ie lasers) which terminates in a building which houses the largest carrier hotel/interconnect point in Southern California.  Their normal use is to provide internet and VOIP to tenants in the apartment buildings.

Now that's what I call Guerilla Networking!  Why not recruit this guy to configure the networking for "that really big MBA simulational thingie"?

Awesome.

First thing I noticed, very little documentation provided in-box.  I thought that was peculiar considering that it was such a big shift in the way I thought about a lowly pen.  Then I realized, the documentation, itself, was populated with microdots, and you were "forced" to start using the Pen right away.

Tap here, write there, and the tutorial was a snap (including, smartly, a right-hand/left-hand orientation setup option as step 1).

I realized this as I write, no software to install to start using it. Brilliant!  Since the focus is on the pen/paper relationship, and the pen/computer relationship is just adding functionality/value, why start the process with a software install?

The desktop software, though, did harbor the "Most Impressive Moment".  Install the Livescribe Desktop software (downloadable from their website; no CDs to press <green nod>) and synchronizing my Pulse Pen to the LiveScribe library.  Guess what?  I was immediately able to search my handwritten notes.  Killer feature.

If anyone's interested, stop by my desk and I'll do a quick demo for you; if there's enough interest, maybe we can do a presentation.

Do I smell Future Friday?  Who wants to get in touch with the LiveScribe CEO?  I'm telling you, put this in the hands of the incoming class of MBAs and get the Faculty to annotate their lectures using this thing and we've got teaching gold!

*** Masses = 4 people in Core Systems

Here's a couple of pictures of previous articles about Link Aggregation and Dell Blade unboxing, as rendered by wordle.net.  Pretty cool, huh? 

wordle.net via LifeHacker.

Makes so much sense.  Read more at reCAPTCHA's site.

But we got this.  I think we're going to have to return what we got to get the right product.  Boy it's going to be tough returning that 400 pound monstrosity.

UPDATE: There was some confusion about this post.  We got the right equipment, only Dell's picture on their support web site is wrong.  Some people just don't get sarcasm.

First, and we knew this was coming, the Dell chassis shipped in one box.  Think about that.  We ordered sixteen blades, which makes for a fully populated chassis.  Sixteen servers with 16 cores and 32GB of RAM apiece.  Shipped.  In one box.  That just blows IBM out of the water (and really all of Dell's other server equipment, too, if you think about it).  Good job, Dell, on keeping the delivery "debris" to an absolute minimum.

We received the box 2pm, and by 4pm, it was racked and cabled for power.  All we have to do is figure out the networking configuration, and we're off to the races!

Well, obviously there was more to it.  A fully-populated chassis apparently weighs 400 pounds (look at the yellow warning sticker pic after the break).  We had to gingerly remove all of the blades, power supplies, and fans, which probably brought it closer to 70 or 80 pounds, which is perfect for your average IT team to lift and rack into place.  Thoughtfully, Dell included a few sheets of bubble wrap to lay the sensitive blade equipment upon while moving the chassis into place.

I was pretty familiar with the product, but there was one thing that caught me by surprise.  There's a pull-out-drop-down LCD panel with a little thumb-pad that allows you to browse the various components of the chassis and do some basic configuration and monitoring.  Total hotness.

We've got some reading to do, but by my estimation, we are 12 network connections away from being fully up and operational.  Well, that and actually installing OSes on the blades, but that's cake.

Many many more pictures of our Unboxing Ritual after the break.

So, we've recently received a ton of iSCSI storage for Project Bubblewrap, the Exchange 2007 implementation and deployment project at the School.  One of the main considerations when moving to iSCSI is that, for all but the most expensive iSCSI products, only 1-Gigabit line-speed is available.  This is in stark contrast to the readily available (albeit more expensive) 4Gps fiber-channel connectivity with more traditional SAN storage.

Cheaper is sort of the operative word when it comes to iSCSI.  Ethernet switches are significantly cheaper.  Ethernet interface cards (also known as Network cards) are cheap.  Ethernet cabling (e.g. copper) is cheaper than optical fiber.  All these things play a hand in iSCSI's tremendous popularity with smaller business.

So, 4Gps default line speed per port with Fiber Channel.  1Gps line speed for Ethernet, with 10Gbps available but astronomically more expensive.  Why can't you just use more than one gigabit networking port and somehow bundle that aggregate throughput?

Enter Link Aggregation, also known as 802.3ad Link Aggregation, which almost all modern managed switches support.

We want to duplicate the 4Gbps line speed of Fiber-Channel (FC) with Ethernet (IP).  You need four ports, four cables (CAT6 or CAT5e if you please), and a little bit of configuration.

NOTE: For all you networking experts out there, bear with me.  I'm learning as I'm going.

First, a couple of things to note.  Link Aggregate Groups, or LAGs, are treated as a separate, single logical link.  So all the settings (like spanning-tree protection from bridge loops and VLANs) are configured for each LAG, independent of the configuration each member port in the LAG.  For example, the LAG can be up and operational, even though the member ports are configured to be shutdown.  Crazy huh?

Because spanning-tree settings are per-LAG, if you are configuring a inter-switch uplink, it's important that you have the appropriate spanning-tree settings configured for your LAG before you bring it online.

So here's the nitty gritty.

From a console or telnet session to the Dell PowerConnect switch:

• console# configure
• console(config-if)# interface range port-channel all
• console(config-if)# shutdown
• console(config-if)# interface range ethernet g(1-4)
• console(config-if)# channel-group 1 mode auto (add those ports to LAG 1 (of 8), and use the LACP protocol to configure the LAG)
• console(config-if)# int range port-channel 1
• console(config-if)# no spanning-tree disable
• console(config-if)# flowcontrol on
• repeat the above on the partner switch and it's LAG ports
• console(config-if)# no shutdown

In plain-spoken English:

• Enter configuration mode
• Select all port-channel interfaces; remember, a LAG is treated as a logical port, hence the "interface" command
• Just to protect yourself from bringing down a switch or subnet, make sure the LAG is off before configuring.  Not that this happened to me before or anything...definitely not twice,either.
• Select the ports that you are going to use in the LAG
• Add those ports to LAG 1, of the 8 available, and use the LACP protocol to configure the LAG (auto)
• Choose the port-channel interface you just created
• Enable spanning-tree
• Enable Flow Control, which is a specific iSCSI recommendation
• This is already in English so no translation necessary
• The port-channel 1 interface is still the active interface, so just bring up the LAG.

There you have it.  4Gbps uplink between the two switches!  The legwork for this particular implementation sort of opens up the door for other networking bandwidth aggregation options, especially because as we get into really dense blade-based servers and Virtual Machine infrastructures.  The next step is to try and configure a LAG or NIC-team from the actual servers themselves up to the switches, but one thing at a time, people!

I started out supporting users in The Lauder Institute and Reprographics, moved on to become a Programmer under Bob Z, where we started out with Cold Fusion and Oracle (shudder), then ultimately tagged along when he took over Core Systems (what seems like) eons ago.

Thanks to everyone out there in WCIT-land for making this place a such a rewarding, dynamic, and energizing place to stick around for this long.

Where does the time go?