Journal of Post-Ralphaelite Thought

PaaS stands for "Platform as a Service;" it's one of several classes of cloud computing services. Compare this to Iaas (Infrastructure as a Service), SaaS (Software as a Service), DBaas (Database as a Service) and CFaaS (cluster...well you get the idea). Here's an update on some PaaS services that have free (as in no money) tiers. I've left off any that are free trial periods. It's annoying to have to keep checking the calendar.  I'm also averse to listing any that require a credit card to get into the door. This list was thrown together quickly, mostly so I didn't have to bookmark all these and remember the details. I went over some of these when I wrote about cloud services in general  last year.  And now, in no particular order.... https://www.openshift.com My current favorite. You can run up to 3 small applications (they call them "gears") for nothing, nada, zip. You can even set up a custom domain. How cool is that?  T...

When it came time to  upgrade my old iPhone 3GS a couple of years ago, I wavered between the new iPhone 5 and some flavor of Android phone. For a variety of reasons, not all very well thought out, I ended up with the iPhone 5. I had an iPad, and a small investment in apps, so it seemed the way to go. About 9 months ago, around the time of one of the iOS 7 updates, I found my phone would often (as in "constantly") turn itself off and show it needed to be charged when the meter showed about 30% charge remaining. A quick Google showed I was not alone in this annoying behavior. I'd plug the phone in to charge it and it would instantly show as having 35%+ charge remaining. Sometimes doing a hard reset by pressing and holding both the Sleep and Home button would temporarily remind my phone it did indeed have juice, but not always. "Miscalibration," was the term I saw bandied about. I tried backing up my phone and restoring it. No dice. This got worse and worse...

These days, The Cloud is all the rage in the computer world. Cloud storage is probably as far as most folks want (or need) to go - think Box.com, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive/Docs...the list goes on. You can collect quite a bit of free off-site storage if you're of a mind to.  These are all examples of  SaaS - Software as a Service . PaaS - Platform as a Service - gives you a specific pre-configured platform to build applications or services. Finally there is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which is virtualized hardware: CPUs, hard drives, networking, firewalls and the like. A little background:  at my day job at Sisyphean Corp, I manage hosting for a couple dozen big websites (I lose count sometimes).When I first took this on, we were on physical hardware. Trouble with this is once you make your decisions about the hardware, you're sort of stuck with it for a while. If you've predicted your needs poorly, or they change, well... I migrated one o...

There are basically two reasons for viewing a remote desktop: attending online meetings and running applications on (and/or administering) a remote machine. There's a little crossover since some meeting-type software will allow remote control of the presenting machine. As part of my daily grind, I frequently either host or attend online meetings, and assist end users. My employer, Sisyphean Corp, uses Webex for external meetings (with vendors, consultants or other folks not on our network, and - of late - Microsoft Lynx for internal meetings. There's always Windows Remote Desktop, but it's not well-suited to connecting to machines behind firewalls across the internet, and while it's fine at controlling, it's not designed for presentations. So, what do you do if you are not part of a huge, monolithic corporation? I was curious and found the following free alternatives in no particular order (you can thank me later).  Webex - I was slightly surprised to discov...

Tired of hearing relatives and old high school acquaintances that tracked you down now bitching, pissing and moaning on Facebook about the outcome this week's election? Things like " We're doomed," and " R.I.P. America, you just died," and " Another 4 years of O and the 1st Hoe with her big Ass." I don't know about you, but I'm freaking sick of it. However good Unfriending your cousin's father-in-law in a fit of righteous indignation may feel right now, it could make for awkward conversation at the next family reunion after memories of the election fade away. Take heart - there's another way to keep from having to listen to Uncle Fred's FoxNews-fueled rants on Facebook.  Just Unsubscribe. The advantage of Unsubscribing vs. Unfriending is that he'll never know you've chosen to silence him. He'll still see your posts and be able to comment, but you'll never see another of his postings about Obama's Ke...

Okay - Apple's Tim Cook is in the process of announcing shiny new consumer goods. The Applenistas have been waiting for this for some time now. Finally - the iPad Mini (yes, that's what Apple is calling  it, apparently). Specs: dual-core A5 chip, Facetime HD camera, 5MP iSight camera on the back. Lightning connector (of course). Screen resolution is 1024 x 768,  7.9 inches (diagonal measure). Cost: $329 for a 16 GB model. Not that you or I care, but they also announced some new iMac / notebook models as well. Okay, time to move on; nothing more to see here.

I've been following, on and off, the efforts to surpass Joe Kittinger's 52 year record for highest balloon ascent / highest parachute jump by Austrian Felix Baumgartner . After a delayed launch for wind, today Baumgartner did it: jumped out of a capsule lifted by balloon to 128,000 feet (that's around 24 miles) and plunging earthward, broke the sound barrier (and quite a few records) without benefit of aircraft. During his freefall he achieved speeds of Mach 1.24. The ride up took about 2 1/2 hours; the trip down, 11 minutes. The whole thing reminded me a little of watching the NASA launches of Mercury back in the early 1960's. Here's the trip down. Incidently, the gentleman talking is Joe Kittinger , the previous record holder, who acted as Baumgartner's mentor and was part of the team who pulled this feat off. You can read more about this on Wikipedia ; this was done with the corporate sponsorship of Red Bull energy drink. It was a stunt, but that...

Okay, not long after my rant about Amazon dropping support for Linux in their MP3 market place, I cooled down and did a second look. I'd rather fix my problem than bitch - here's what I figured out. In case you missed it, here's what prompted my outrage: to download albums from Amazon, you download an AMZ file, which is essentially an encoded list of URLs to the MP3s in the album. After supporting this functionality for Linux for a number of years, they suddenly dropped it. If you are a Linux user, they now inform you that you will need to download your MP3s from their Cloud Player, one file at a time . Click, download, click, download (repeat ad nauseum). If you purchase much music, this is a completely unacceptable solution. First rule of computer troubleshooting: no matter how outlandish or obscure the problem, somebody has experienced it before you. I did what any self-respecting geek did: I Googled. Breaking this down, there are actually 2 problems to solve. O...

I confess - even though I have an iPad, I've really been wanting a 7 inch Android tablet. And I'm sort of a cheapskate. So when earlier this spring I read about the upcoming Google tablet, I was consumed by gadget lust. Alas, when it was finally rolled out I did a double take and then said, "No thanks." I had the same experience earlier in the year when Amazon introduced their Fire tablet. The Google device has a lot going for it - fairly decently powered CPU, good screen resolution, access to lots of apps (not like the bastardized Nook Color and Nook Tablet), good battery life; even had a front facing camera. It kicks the Amazon Fire's ass, and the Fire is not too shabby a product either. The deal breaker for both? Only 8 GB of internal storage (a 16 GB Google model is now on the market) and no expansion capacity. Google and Amazon want you to use the cloud - more specifically, their clouds - to store everything. Buy music, buy movies, buy books, and ins...

"Cloud computing" has been getting a lot of buzz the last couple of years. Quite a few companies have jumped in and started offering various cloud-based services to consumers. These have included applications ( Google Docs and Microsoft Office 365) , collaboration ( Zoho ), storage/file-sharing ( Dropbox , Box and SugarSync ), music streaming ( Amazon Cloud Player and Google Play ), and video streaming (NetFlix and Blockbuster). On paper, these are great products. You can access your documents, photos, or music from anywhere, you can share stuff between devices and other people -- anywhere where you have a internet connection. Use your computer, use your smartphone: it's all the same. There's just one sticking point: your internet provider. The problem:  bandwidth capping. Once upon a time, we were told that broadband was the future - we'd all be connected, all the time. That was back in the day when your internet service provider sold you unlimited us...

I downloaded the Windows 8 Consumer Preview today and just spent the last several hours playing around with it. It's ....interesting. Now, granted, Microsoft has taken pains to emphasize this is a Beta release (they have a cute lil' "Beta" fish on the start up screen to remind us), and also is careful to point out much could change between now and whenever they end up releasing this thing.  And having messed about with it, I'd bet money they will, since its current iteration will not win it many fans. It's ....interesting. And "interesting" is not the same as good. If you don't believe me, next time your significant other makes dinner and asks how you like it, say, "It's ....interesting." You'll find it scores you no points. For whatever reason, Microsoft has decided to drag out it's clunky, horsey-looking Windows Mobile interface (now apparently re-name "Metro") and attempt yet again to sell it to the ...

Perhaps you went to look up something on Wikipedia today, or Google, or any of a number of other sites, only to find them dark. "What the hell is SOPA?" you may be asking. What the hell indeed. SOPA stands for Stop Online Piracy Act (HR3261); PIPA is its lesser known bastard sibling: Protect Intellectual Property Act. Both were drafted at the behest of the Big Media cartels who own the rights to most movies, audio recordings, television shows, and print media. Note I did not say they created these things: they merely own the "rights" to them (whatever that means). Because their business model is broken, they've decided to break the Internet. In it's original form, SOPA criminalizes certain web technologies, whether there are legitimate uses or not. It allow the Justice Department to order the takedown of websites, without any type of due process, and make sites criminally liable for user-created content. A Big Company, irked by a website criti...

Dennis Ritchie passed away on October 8, at age 70. Most people will say "huh," upon hearing his name. I'd argue he had a much greater influence on modern computing than the late Steve Jobs. He developed C , the most widely used programming language in the world, while working at Bell Laboratories in the late 60's. He still has a home page at Bell Labs . While originally written to be used to create the Unix operating system (which Ritchie also developed, along with Ken Thompson), C is now used for writing software for computers, embedded devices, smart appliances, cellphones, consumer goods - everything from operating systems to applications to device drivers to...well, you name it. The beauty of C is that it can be compiled for any number of different platforms. C gave rise to an number of variations and spin offs - C+, C++ (I'm not making this up) as well as directly and indirectly influencing the structure and syntax of a host of other modern programm...

Since I worked from home yesterday I ended up deciding it would be a good idea to upgrade my iDevices to iOS 5 the very first day it was available . Remind me to never do that again. Not surprisingly, everybody on this side of the space-time continuum made the same foolish choice. My first attempt to download the upgrade started by helpfully informing me it would take around 23 minute to download...then 29...then 38...  Which was bad enough except when it finished, iTunes gave me a terse little error message that said, "there was a problem downloading" blah, blah. Son of a bitch ! After several failed attempts (each longer than the last) I Googled the error message and speculated my anti-virus software was not playing nice with iTunes. Thank you Kaspersky. After disabling it I started the download process again, (it took about 90 minutes) and finally got my iPad updated. The whole process, with backing up, restoring, etc, took roughly 2 and a half to 3 hours. Note ...

So Apple finally announced the iPhone du jour yesterday. Am I the only one out there who feels slightly underwhelmed? Okay - these are the features most prominently displayed on the Apple website: Faster processer - nice, but I never felt my 3GS was cripplingly slow. Meh. Better camera - nice, but it's still a camera in a phone, with all the limitations that come with that. Slightly more compelling but still - meh. Siri - voice commands. I tried Siri before Apple bought it and never found it all that useful. A gimmick. Note to Apple: I'm saying "meh," now - is there a command for that? iOS5 - this is actually the most interesting thing being trumpeted as part of the new phone. Oh wait - I can get it as a free upgrade to my current phone in a few days. More on that below. iCloud - sounds like this is an iOS5 thing. See above comment. So I'm not seeing any reason to rush right out and replace my old 3GS. The biggest complaint I have with it is that battery...

I got a Google Plus invite a little while ago. In case you ignore some of the chatter in Geek Land, it's Google's latest attempt at Social Media. After trying it for a couple of weeks. my verdict: thumbs up. It's still in "Field Testing," which means you can't just go and sign up - you need an invite from someone who's already in. Which is easier than it sounds. There are numerous sites that will send you an invite just for asking (just Google " Google Plus Invites ."). Heck - even I will. Why would you want to get Google Plus (or G+ as it is sometimes referred to)? Let me list a few reasons I see. Biggest reason you'll like Google+ : "Circles." Circles are how you organize the subtle balance that exists within your relationships. They allow a high degree of granularity in what you choose to show. By putting someone in a Circle, you define what you want to share with them. When you post something you choose who to ...

I've been writing HTML for about 17 years now, hard as that is to believe. I'm not a fan of WYSIWYG editors - I prefer to use text-based editors. It's how I learned, and as far as I'm concerned, usually easier. After graduating from Notepad, the first editor I bought was something called WebEdit Pro, by Luckman. It had a clean, well-organized interface and I used it for several years before I discovered HomeSite. HomeSite , originally developed by Nick Bradbury (who later went on to create TopStyle, still my favorite CSS editor) was acquired by Allaire, who sold it as a standalone editor, and as a repackaged editor for their flagship ColdFusion software. Incidently, the original freeware version, Homesite 1.2 (written for Windows 95), is still out there on the web, though it's gotten harder to find. Its feature set is pretty basic, but it's still usable, and still has fans. Google it if you're curious. I used various versions of HomeSite for a perio...

Not to yet again brand myself as an ancient, but when I got my first computer (a Tandy Color Computer) the connected world was a much simpler place. I had a 300 baud modem and a CompuServe account which cost me an arm and a leg. This was around 1981. I soon discovered BBS's and saved a bunch of money. This thing called the internet ran on leased 56K phone lines and one had to be at a research or defense facility or employed by the government or military to gain access to it. The "world wide web" wouldn't appear for another 10 years. If you knew someone, you might have access to something a bit more connected than just a BBS. Around the time my oldest was born I had a sibling who worked at a local university and he gave me the dial in number for the library computer. With a little judicious poking around all sorts of interesting things could be found. Telehack.com has put together a blast from the past - a javascript based emulator for that yesteryear of comput...

By now, if you keep up with all things geekish, you may have heard about Amazon's big outage yesterday . No - this wasn't their online store: this was their other business --  selling their excess capacity as "cloud computing" services. So-called "cloud computing" (also known as utility computing) is all the rage today, and like a lot of things, it's not an entirely new thing. It works by setting up virtual machines in Amazon's massive datacenter. Usually everything works just dandy. But not yesterday . I got a call from one of my internal customers in the UK at 3:00 AM (my employer, the Sisyphean Corp is a global operation) who, in a panicky voice, informed me his Amazon-hosted site was gone. I spent the next 15 hours working to recover it. Amazon has not yet offered a detailed explanation of exactly what happened. My sources, however, have found the reason for all the trouble:

I'm in Toronto visiting eldest son for Canadian Thanksgiving. The Globe and Mail had a great piece by Canadian author Douglas Coupland, entitled " A Radical Pessimist's Guide to the Next Ten Years. " Some highlights: It's going to get worse The future is going to happen no matter what we do. The future will feel even faster than it does now In the same way you can never go backward to a slower computer, you can never go backward to a lessened state of connectedness Expect less People who shun new technologies will be viewed as passive-aggressive control freaks trying to rope people into their world, much like vegetarian teenage girls in the early 1980s The future of politics is the careful and effective implanting into the minds of voters images that can never be removed We will accept the obvious truth that we brought this upon ourselves Believe me, you owe it to yourself to read the entire piece . Douglas Coupland has written numerous works of fi...