We’re preventing new registrations for the time being as we implement some changes.
We’re not happy with the performance of Ruby with our database queries even on the new server and so we’re going to be doing some extensive back-end changes.
We’ve also extended our free registrations until the end of December 2006 while we work on things.
James asks Can the virtual office ever emulate a shared physical space?
As a card carrying proponent of Bedouin workspaces, I’d have to say yes.
James mentions Alan O’Rourke who seems to be missing the fag breaks and water cooler chats of the pre-Web 2.0 world.
I’m not a smoker and the last thing I would have done back in the day was join my confederates in the “stinky room of death” allocated to the smokers. By all accounts (thanks to the flunky that I sent to his death several times a day), this was not only where the important decisions were made but it was also where the various PAs were loudly indiscreet.
This problem, of course, is with teleworking and this has nothing to do with Bedouin working (unless you’re unfortunate enough to be Bedouin AND alone). I worked from home for 2 years when I was with Nortel. I cheated perhaps because I could pop into the local site when I was needed but my team were all over Europe. We used IP Softphones, Yahoo Instant Messenger and email. Being on-site all the time wouldn’t have helped me because I didn’t go to the smoke room anyway and to be fair I was never one for smalltalk at the water cooler/photocopier anyway.
Alan’s issue is that these 5 minute scenery changes would often provide the best brainstorming breakthroughs. Bernie Goldbach in James’ comments agrees that “Half of the best thinkers on the staff where I’m assigned smoke and share some of their best ideas while outside in the rain.”
If I was their employer I’d wonder why they can’t have these great thoughts in the workspace I’m paying for by the square metre. And if the great thoughts are out in the smoke room, what the hell are they doing working in the office? They’d be perfect for homeworking.
Obviously we can’t condone a smoking workplace but does it reflect on the workplace or the workers when they can’t “work” effectively in the workplace? I’m inclined to think it’s the workplace and then wonder whether a dedicated Bedouin workspace is going to be better or worse than a normal workspace. It’s going to be non-smoking too…
I don’t know what the answer is. I know I resent the smoke breaks taken by co-workers because frankly every smoker I know has taken the piss[1] with them. I most definitely resent the filth they leave behind in the form of ash piles and discarded butts and I’m not a big fan of the smell of dry, powdery tobacco either.
[1] yeah yeah, I know, you’re the exception yadda yadda….
Man, that was a tough couple of days but SyncBridge is now in it’s new home and the performance load on is soooo much more comfortable. DNS is moved, certificates done and email is receiving and sending fine!
The new hardware, Juggernaut, was so quick that when building the environment we were complaining about the speed of the broadband because compile times were blazingly quick (the main server has 4 bloody-quick processors after all!).
We will be scheduling a bit more downtime in the next month or so to beef up the RAM on the beast but other than that I’ve been running the machine ragged even under load and it’s been hopping, skipping and jumping…
In this article Bill Gates says the Bubble is Back.
Um. Heck, Bill, you late in catching up on your feeds?
“Asked to name the next YouTube , the free video exchange Web site that is being acquired by Google for US$1.65 billion, Gates said that he was cautious.”
Of course he was. He hasn’t a clue. Microsoft and Bill don’t have any sort of special scrying glass to divine the future of the internet. They just build mediocre products and use their massive cash reserves to kill competitors. This much has been proven.
Sad thing is that the answer is obvious. The next YouTube is the current Youtube. Now, pick a different market and identify the major players. Some of the emerging markets (like BaseCamp) are just not mainstream yet. Post-chasm people are still finding out about Myspace and Bebo so it’ll be a while before it’s ubquitous. This weekend, a friend of mine got her family onto Skype, including some friends in New Zealand. That sort of stuff is paradigm shifting (though I’ve ben harping on about it for months and months and really prefer non-proprietary protocols).
Asking Bill Gates about the future is sort of an oxymoron. I can’t think of a single market where they (Microsoft) were the pioneer.
We’ve moved hosts for infurious as well as for syncbridge (the latter to complete next week possibly). I know the SyncBridge server has been slow recently due to load, but we’ll get stuck into fixing that very soon with this host move.
We’re working on a couple of things:
It’s certainly managing to keep us busy!
Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software tells us to forget the shortest path to an objective as it is often a distraction and other times a mirage.
His example of sailing reads like an existential philosophy and something I can really relate to.
The cool lesson from this fact of sailing life is that by merely changing your position in any direction you may alter the viability of your goal from the impossible to the possible.
I guess you have to read the article to appreciate what he’s saying but in essence, there’s more than one way to skin a cat and it’s not about whether you can choose the shortest path but about choosing the shortest possible path and being able to recognise the difference. In Networking, this is how I always thought of the OSPF protocol. Through creative use of path weights (the price a network packet has to pay to move through the network along a certain path), you could force packets down one route or another.
Using a million tons of dynamite to brute-force your way through the mountain to get to your destination may actually be the worst possible approach.
