HTTP Status Cats

500 - Internal Server Error, a photo by GirlieMac on Flickr.

I am not typically a fan of Internet cats, but I found this set on Flickr to be well done.

We have probably all encountered some Internet site malfunction which displayed an HTTP server status code. Those codes have individual meanings, and the label for each numeric code has been associated with a photograph of a cat. Click here to view a slideshow of several of these, created by Bay Area user experience engineer, GirlieMac.

NX-OS Piping Options

Pipe Dream, a photo by s_w_ellis on Flickr.

A friend forwarded to me the options he sees when working on his cisco Nexus 7000. I must say that I am impressed. It surprises me that network gear from all vendors is not like this: processors are fast enough, DRAM is cheap, flash is plentiful and all this software has open source options. Oh, how I wish I had grep, or even just the ability to pipe multiple times, on all this gear I manage. NX-OS seems to have all the commands an administrator would need to easily manage a large configuration from the command line. Running Linux under the hood is not such a bad idea.

Note: The image is simulated, based on copy and paste from an email, just in case it looks different from your Nexus.

SVCCG Workshop in San Jose

Attended this weekend's Silicon Valley Cloud Computing Group meeting. PayPal hosted the event at their town hall, which had ample space for the eight hundred attendees. The schedule called for some tough decisions: I really wanted to hear about cloud work being done at both eBay and Netflix, however those discussions happened simultaneously. So, after weighing the options with Nisheed, who told me about this event in the first place, I decided on what to listen in on.

Driven Before

There was something too familiar about the font used for the movie, Drive. I knew I had seen the same font and coloring used before. You can definitely tell from the letter "i".

Notice the font

Same font and color

But don't tell anyone in Hollywood. Next thing you know, they'll be wanting to make a movie spin-off from the television series, Silk Stalkings.

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes Sing in Japanese

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes released Sing in Japanese earlier this week. The punk band performs only covers, usually in themed releases. For example, Love Their Country covered country music, while Blow in the Wind was music from the 60's. This time, they are turning Japanese with six songs originally from Japanese artists. I shall do my best in this article to provide links for you to hear the original versions of each tune.

White Board Artwork

Not all the artwork at DreamWorks Animation is for the films. Armed with dry erase markers, the artists tag the various white boards with interesting works. I shall share a few I have spotted at the office in this post.

Spider-Man

Note: I do not know who drew any of the items within this post.

Happy Programmers' Day

There are 10 types of people in the world: those who understand binary, and those who do not.

Programmers, evidently, do not. Today is Programmers' Day, the 256th day of the year. The slogan for the date celebration is 1111 1111, binary for 255. Therefore, I believe yesterday should have been the date for celebration, not today. 256 is 100000000 in binary, two to the eighth power. Allow me to illustrate the problem.

# today (September 13, 2011)
#
bandarji > echo "obase=2;`/bin/date +%j`" | bc
100000000

# Yesterday
#
bandarji > echo "obase=2;`/bin/date +%j --date 'September 12, 2011'`" | bc
11111111

It could be this is a bug feature. That makes more sense to me than the claim, "Programmers count starting with zero." Regardless, happy Programmers' Day.

Load Balancing Without a Load Balancer

Application delivery controllers perform a great service to direct traffic to servers which should handle client requests. Decisions on where to send information can be based on a variety of factors. Like their kid brother, the server load balancer, they present a virtual service address, linked to more than one backend system. By monitoring services on individual servers, the ADC or SLB drops unreliable services from pools to ensure high availability. Further, they divvy requests between servers which can answer them, balancing a load which might be higher than one system could accept.

There are times when you don't need the delivery options an ADC can provide, and even an SLB solution might not make sense. A tandem set of appliances for each local area network where servers reside is expensive to purchase and maintain vendor support. They also require power and use precious rack space. If a server load balancer is all you need to ensure service availability while dividing load, perhaps a different solution could do the job.

A Ride Over The Bridge And Back

Wonderful weather last Saturday, so I took the train into San Francisco and decided to ride my bicycle around the city. Starting close to AT&T Park, I rode down the Embarcadero, along the beach, and then over the Golden Gate Bridge. Turning back, I went through the city streets a bit more, through Chinatown and around Russian Hill, before heading back to the Caltrain.

Sir Geoffery of Lebowski

This past weekend, I went to CELLspace to catch a performance by The Primitive Screwheads. This Shakespearean twist on the Coen Brothers film, The Big Lebowski was very well done: quite funny, worked great with audience participation, went through the entire story and balanced incorporation of contemporary and "olde" elements. The production, Much Ado About Lebowski, has only one weekend left, June 24 and 25.

Verily, that rug did tie the room together

Murals and Graffiti on Bryant Street

Went into San Francisco last night and saw some cool spray painted artwork on Bryant Street, around 18th Street. Thought I would share a few photos I took.

Hindi Support For Linux

Ever visited a web site, like the one pictured above, and saw a bunch of (Unicode) blocks instead of the text you expected? Install support for the language you want on your Linux host, just like I did for the above-pictured Punjabi.

Kung Fu Panda 2 Credits

Name in credits of Kung Fu Panda 2, a photo by s_w_ellis on Flickr.

If you have not watched Kung Fu Panda 2, what are you waiting for? Call in sick, remove your kids from school, and get to the theater! This film is an excellent follow-up to the first and you must see it in 3D. Just amazing!

This is the scene in the credits where my name is listed. No, I am not a part of the creative staff, although us geeks must be creative at times to support the artists.

Enjoy the movie...

Linux Host-to-Host IPSEC

Sometimes, you want to encrypt all IP traffic between two Linux hosts. An easy way to do this with Red Hat Linux is to use IPSEC. While there are many applications which are encrypted, such as secure shell or even transport layer security and secure sockets layer over usually-unencrypted applications, IPSEC works at a lower level. IPSEC therefore can work regardless of the application and encrypts all IP communication.

Golden Temple: Then and Now

The Golden Temple, 1859, by Felice Beato