Blogger vs WordPress - a comparison of great products

This blog is written on Blogger - I am a big Google fan and I love a lot of their products. Blogger dovetails nicely with the other Google Apps I use and so it's a handy piece of kit. The interface hasn't really changed much in quite a while - it's simple yet user friendly. If you're looking for a blogging tool, it's really quite good.

I started to play with WordPress a short while ago for a client. They are using it to power their website and the more I've played with it the more I like it. There's a great interface - and I really like the new posting experience on it. Here is a comparison of the three different ways you can create a post with Blogger, old WordPress and new WordPress:

How meta! A blog post in a blog post - this is the Blogger interface

The old interface for WordPress - it has some nice features indeed.

The new posting experience in WordPress. Takes a bit to get used to.

I like the stark simplicity of Blogger - I've created about 165 posts (some of which never made the light of day) here at www.ryv.id.au. On the WordPress sites I manage - and there are a few - I've created about the same number of posts. For quick updates and slamming on a short bit of information, the new WordPress is really great.... actually they're all pretty good for that. Where WordPress shines is the management of images and files. It does a great job importing the files and then laying them out. Check out on the Dejero website some of the picture groups - http://dejero.wordpress.com . Periodically I think I'll migrate this site to WordPress but Blogger has been a solid platform for a long time.

All are free and both Blogger and WordPress are backed by great companies. You can set your own custom URL for them - see www.awpd.org or www.northshockey.org - these are WordPress sites hosted by WordPress. It's easy to set up, apply the domain and off you go. And it's easy in Blogger too!

In a world of content I think that you have to be comfortable with how you are delivering it. These three options (WordPress does count as 2) are top of the line for this sort of thing. Taking nothing away from Joomla or Drupal - they are much more complex and fancy content management systems - and are out of the scope for simple blog posting. It's not as hard as it used to be to get information out there - no more html coding for me!

OK so the major things that I find differentiate between the two products:

• tags and categories are way better than labels - you can do so much more with them
• WordPress handles image presentation on screen better
• Blogger has been better when copy/pasting Word documents (which doesn't happen on this site, but does on others)
• Blogger's minimalist interface gets out of the way of the posting - I find Wordpress to be a bit too fancy at times and it can be distracting
• I'm actually running the middle WordPress on a tiny VM at home - can't do that with Blogger!

Back end stuff is a lot different. WordPress has a multitude of plugins - Blogger none. Blogger's stats are much better than WordPress's (much better). Ad integration is better on Blogger too (not that I really use Ads a lot but occasionally it's very nice when people click on stuff). 

From my comparison of the two I've just been delighted to have the opportunity to use them both in a meaningful way. Pick one, play with it - if you want to move then jump or simply create a couple of sites and mess with it. Both are free and both are great in their own way.

Conversations about the cloud in Australia

Another day and another chat with a client about cloud computing options. There are some absolute turkeys out there peddling cloud this and cloud that to people. Stop it! ADSL2+ doesn't provide enough bandwidth for your plans - in the war between reality and expectation, reality wins. This particular client is fortunately on the ball enough to realise that pushing all their key applications off their local server and into the cloud isn't a brilliant plan.

So what else do we do for these clients? What clever options can we provide?

It comes down to the application of course. If they're doing scanning or uploading large files to an offsite location it's not hard to use a Raspberry Pi or similar to get the data trickling out, or bulk upload it over night with a script.

If it's email or something like that - then get it into the cloud. Just let 'em know the limitations that their server currently manages - i.e. sending a large email out will take time. Your server used to plod along getting it out the door, but now you have to wait while Chrome sends it to Gmail. 

Remote Desktop Services aren't something people like, so what about a microserver with 2012 on it, AD replication and file replication using DFS? Under the right circumstances this will work over ADSL and people in both sites will see updated information reasonably quickly - depending of course on how DFS is configured. 

There are options - we just have to be smart about how it's presented and show a path forward if NBN does ever arrive. Today I showed a router upgrade to a client, then talked about how it's plug and play (almost) for NBN and how it can leverage great access for VPNs etc. We IT people are typically poor salesman - we either get excited over the trivialities of a solution or the technicalities of a solution and we lose our audience.

The biggest lesson I can give you is simple - use analogies to explain why cloud computing is a challenge. I always show an ADSL connection as a 4 lane highway in and a goat track out to represent the data path. People understand that - it's easy. Get yourself a few of these analogies and put them together to form a coherent image to bring your clients along with you in the discussion. Remember - a client can be a business client, friend, colleague or even your boss. With a little bit of education we can help our clients avoid big mistakes and avoid some of the bullshit around the cloud. 

The cloud can be great. We just have to be smart about it and make sure the shyster, bullshit artists out there don't screw up our client's networks because then we've failed in our jobs. 

In closing - please give us decent NBN! Australia needs it to grow and for businesses to be more agile (and I totally need it at home so I can download movies faster!)

Google Keep and Apple Notes

This isn't so much a comparison, more of a discussion with myself about which one to focus on. First, the environment that you are in will determine this question much of the time - if you're on Apple, then the notes thing is built into their OS on desktops/laptops and into the iOS on your mobile devices. It has some nice features - encryption in transit, password protection, pictures and built into your iCloud experience. Here is where Keep has an advantage - it's available on nearly all platforms via the web browser. And it does most of those other things too.

Both companies are very clever. The interfaces, while different, share the same characteristics of note taking - different options for getting ideas down and into writing, while trying to make it all as straightforward as possible. They have in the main, quite slick interfaces too and very user friendly. We are truly spoiled for choice and this is part of the problem.

I use Macs, and PCs with Linux Mint and Microsoft Windows (in various flavours). I really like them all, but I prefer the Mac interface and hardware. Call me flash as a rat with a gold tooth, but it's a nice, neat and well put together combination. My main problem is - my personal phone is a Samsung S7 and work phone is an iPhone 6S so my personal notes are on the wrong device... but I like Apple Notes! I quite like Keep too, but it's too fancy for my liking. Yep - too many options and colours and other shit. I just need a piece of paper replacement and while both applications do that, I think Notes is tidier.

I like the sync across all devices I get from both apps - it's great and most helpful for keeping life in order, but this is where Keep shines - I can share amongst my accounts. That's pretty handy stuff that is. And Keep is in the cloud all the time - access via the web browser, apps on iPhone and Android now...

So which to use? I have a lot of data in both and the problem is, I know I've got something written down - like a username, but I'm buggered if I know where the damn thing is! 5 minutes of searching and I can find it. Pick one and stick with it I think. Keep seems the logical option - full sync across everything. But I prefer the interface to Apple Notes.

Which do you use?

Misgivings about the Internet of Things and hyper-interconnectedness

Last night I heard a lecture delivered by a chap from HPE - HP Enterprise for those of you who forget about their big breakup. He is in charge of innovation in the Asia Pacific region and he spoke a lot about the Internet of Things (IoT), drones, driverless cars etc. Sure, we really are moving towards a world where human interaction becomes far less of a factor when driving, delivering packages or even turning on the lights at home...

It really got me thinking about the impact to humanity and whether the pros will outweigh the cons. The hyper-interconnectedness of the world has it's upside but I think it's darker downside needs light shone on it. If your whole house is wired with sensors, motors and control units, then is it a stretch to muse on when the first house is compromised? If an attacker took control of your home just what could he do with it? Annoy you with the lights going on or off, tracking your movements throughout the place, knowing when you're asleep and therefore vulnerable or good old fashioned voyeurism. These options just popped into my head in the last 30 seconds and I'm a reasonable good, respectful and law abiding person. Imagine if I was a naughty ne'er do well?!

Quite apart from the issues inherent in being completely trackable and giving away any semblance of privacy is the issue that arises when the power goes out. Can one still open the doors, the blinds or the windows if it's all automated? And I have concerns over what might happen when the power comes back on and the house receives a power surge that damages the systems controlling all these components. There is a level of complexity to a house with IoT than there ever was before and the delicacy of these systems is not to be underrated.

Moving away from IoT to driverless cars and drones. The HPE chap (Roger something...) spoke at length about these too. While I've watched the whole notion of autonomous vehicles with some interest over time, I quite like driving and I'm not really prepared to give that up. I completely understand why some people hate it, why it would be a great thing for the elderly for example or infirm to help them get around, but I heard some absurd claims about reduction in parking spaces or some other nonsense. Autonomous vehicles still have to stop somewhere while you go and do stuff. How do you reduce the number of carparks exactly? I can also foresee more of these vehicles on the road than now, with more traffic as people who haven't got licenses or who can no longer drive take advantage of a car that will drive them anywhere. The limiting factors on road users will change, and some of these that move people off the roads (rightly or wrongly) will potentially disappear. Thinking about this from the transport and logistics perspective it's possibly an awesome thing to have trucks that can drive endlessly in a non-stop cycle with none of the pesky driver considerations we have now... but I can't help but think of the cost to human jobs. I worked in transport for a while and there are guys who genuinely enjoy getting out and about in the trucks, driving line haul or pottering around town. These guys (mostly) have a great skill set and will not be required after the introduction of an autonomous trucks. On to the sidelines for you - and then we have killer trucks chasing us like in the movie "Fortress".

Drones are becoming a big thing and will continue to get bigger over time. With many companies hoping to use them for deliveries - especially medicine or aid into remote areas - I think they're great. The potential for help is enormous... as is the balanced potential for harm. Drones already kill a fair number of people day to day in war torn areas as the US or other countries deploy them to blow shit up. Spy drones are already about looking into things they shouldn't be so privacy is going to take yet another hit, and the risk of some idiot flying their stupid drone into a plane or helicopter - yeah that will happen. We have the guys flying their drones over fires and things - which is a great tool for seeing what's happening (don't get me wrong - they have some amazing uses that preserve human life) but also restrict what other aerial vehicles can do (because they are in the flight space).  We have had water bombers diverted from fires with real concerns about them hitting drones. I think the issue there is more of command and control than the actual drone being a problem - coordinating a fire response is no trivial issue and someone with a drone in the way is a problem.

The end result of all this extra computer stuff floating around is a far more cluttered Internet and let's be honest - security is a massive issue. Complex software in complex hardware = mucho issues with security. Anyone who has done some programming knows that as complexity goes up, so does risk of an issue arising in the code. The reliance on the Internets infrastructure will increase and although the 'net is a most distributed system there are definitely ways to greatly impact a country. Imagine for example if someone attacked the Internet systems of a country and took down it's ability to manage routing - all those data packets with nowhere to go. How would it affect daily human life? I can't get my IoT coffee machine to work or I can't get my medical aid system to work because both of them connect back to a central management system located either at home or somewhere else. Uh oh. Can we get the 'net back up? We've already seen hospitals compromised because of holes in code or heaven forefend - people have no clue and use shite passwords or it's set up in a way that might be more user friendly and is far less secure than it could be.

Before we as a civilisation dive head first into the pond of hyper-interconnectedness I really think we need to slow down and understand the ramifications of what is going to happen. Big companies are not going to care - they have to make money and look after their shareholders and screw anyone else. The government needs to be across this and understanding it with techno-geeks involved to get through the heavy nerd stuff and legislate to improve protections and procedures around the IoT and associated systems. For example - drones are great, until they kill someone through stupidity or neglect. So let's try to legislate it and get it out there what you can and can't do. Something is better than nothing and attempting to get something in place is better than sitting back saying "I'm not sure - it seems like techno-babble to me!".

I for one welcome our new robot overlords when they arrive. I'd prefer the future to be a mix of humanity assisted by robots and IoT and not this:

I tried but I really couldn't resist putting up one of these pics. Ah pop culture. I hope that in some small way I've opened your mind to some of the other side of the issues I've talked about. I'm very excited about all these new gizmos and things - I can't help it - I'm a geek too. I just have a pessimistic side that impels me to consider the impact of new technology.

Service Delivery in bandwidth poor locations

Being in the country presents some interesting challenges and one I find that I come up against frequently at the moment is, as the title suggests, getting needed services into various remote sites. Although ADSL is quite widespread, and where not available various wireless services (NextG and the like) are able to cover the connectivity issues. But in the case where one is attempting to link sites via a VPN, 512/512Kbps is really not enough for modern applications, particularly if you're pushing internet as well as mail and remote desktop connections over that particular link. Even an ADSL2+ link with speeds up to 24Mbps/1Mbps is not really adequate for the task at hand.

So how to get around this? I'm thinking along the lines of a division of service, decentralising where possible and using cloud technologies to take the burden off the VPN links, that is, push email out to the cloud and whatever other services available out to the internet, thereby reducing the outgoing bandwidth requirements at the central site. Hopefully this will free up more bandwidth for RDP and the like. Additional ADSL services can further reduce the burden if I push http traffic out that way (using a Netgear dual WAN router or the like).

I have recently had to put this theory into practice and it seems to be working out, but it's not entirely solving the problems. Perhaps a packet caching device at either end, such as the ones produced by Riverbed, might be the answer. It's a difficult question and it gets worse when people want to put voice over it as well. You can use clever calling plans to get cheap inter-office calls more easily than implementing a whole other VPN simply for voice. And at the end of the day, let's not forget that ADSL is provided in a "best effort" scenario and no provider in the country guarantees bandwidth availability.

Tricky tricky tricky....

Flexibility, with Dell and Ubuntu

I know I wax rhapsodic about Ubuntu and the general power and wonderfulness that is Linux but I've just had an experience that adds another ingredient to the mix. I have a bit of penchant for older hardware - I maintain a gaming system that is generally no more than a year old before I upgrade it's innards but apart from that system, all my hardware is old stuff. Why bother to buy a new machine to run Linux on it, when a two or three year old box will do exactly what I want it to?

I recently picked up a Dell Precision 380 and an Optiplex GX280. Sweet machines - I'm particularly impressed with the Precision and it makes me wonder what a brand new one would be like. Perhaps I'll have to break with tradition and invest in a new one :-) The Optiplex was purchased on a bit of a whim - only $100 and it's a P4 3.2GHz box with DDR2 RAM etc (I'm using it right now actually). Not bad and it's also a mini desktop (or whatever you call them). Very small, quiet and easy to tuck away. It's the same as the two GX240's I've got. The only bad thing I've found is the CDROM appears to be faulty in some fashion. At any rate, installing Ubuntu 8.10 wasn't happening - disk errors abounded and although the CD itself checked out, it was failing on this system. Rather than piss and moan about it, I pulled the 160GB SATA disk out and popped it into the Precision - all the disk mounting stuff is the same, the cables reached perfectly etc etc and after a short interval I shut the box down, retrieved the disk and threw it into the GX280 again. An hour and a half later, I've customised the hell out of my Ubuntu install (mmm pretty) and it's going great guns - no hardware issues nothing. Sweet!

This is kind of a review of Ubuntu 8.10 too - I really like the new DarkRoom theme and as usual the upgrade process (that I performed on another box) went very smoothly. It runs quite nicely and although I've read elsewhere that 8.10 is slower than other iterations of Ubuntu it appears to run quite snappily for me. Earlier I transferred about 10GB of data over my gigabit network and that gave it a real push - the load hit about 8 at one point :-) But the old hardware and the new operating system pushed on quite happily - although I do hear the fan complaining a bit. With the ambient air temperature around the 28 degrees C plus the work it's doing, it's no wonder really.

Back to the Dell PCs I've got now - I have 6 and many of the parts are interchangeable. Naturally there are exceptions to the rule - the power supplies vary somewhat between the little PCs and the Precision has almost unique innards compared to the others. This is quite alright. I'm very pleased with all of them. I've actually got a reasonably good working installation of Windows Server 2008 Standard on the Precision - Microsoft's TechNet Direct is a terrific resource if you want to stay on top of all the Microsoft software out there. The Precision runs it quite happily and it's gratifying to note that nVidia even has drivers for the Quadro network card that work happily under 64 bit Server 2008. It's a happy little family of Dell PCs, Ubuntu Linux, Windows Server 2008 and my lone Windows Vista/XP gaming box. The cousins in the lounge room - the Xbox (modded naturally) and it's younger brother the 360 talk happily to these machines too and combined it forms a nice little network. If only my power bill wasn't quite so large.....

Waiting for Windows 7

OK, so we're starting to see some peeks at Windows 7. Check this out at ars technica: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20081028-first-look-at-windows-7.html The first screen shots of Windows 7. I'm not particularly interested in it at the moment, I'm more interested in the whole "What do I do with my 8 year old Windows XP now?"

There are several options and as a Sys Admin I get more than a few questions about what to do as Windows XP ages gracefully into oblivion. Obviously the wonderful Windows Vista is an option, as is the various distributions provided by the gifted GNU/Linux community. With Windows 7 slated for a late 2009 (probably 2010) release should users be holding out for it as their hardware ages and their PC's become due for renewal? And for businesses that have laboriously got themselves into a nice 3 year PC replacement cycle, what do they go for?

Honestly at this point I'd point them at Novell's Linux Enterprise Desktop 10. There is no way I'd suggest Windows Vista at this point. It is such a massive resource hog, plays poorly with legacy applications and just seems to be a slapped together and rushed out the door operating system. It should be noted I run Vista on several machines, and have a couple of machines out there with regular users running Vista and honestly, they give me no positive feedback on it. On the other hand, I've put Ubuntu and OpenSuSE on people's desktops and they have really liked them - especially on older machines where the processor is only a P4 with a 1GB of RAM.

So the question really is - wait for Windows 7 and hope for the best OR deploy Vista to the desktop? It's not a nice question at all. I'll admit to feeling burnt by Vista - sure it has some nice features but by crikey it can be frustrating to get it going in the right direction at times. I've rarely had issues with the various Linux dizzies I've installed and Windows XP, for all it's faults, has been a good OS from both a systems view and a users view. Obviously security is paramount with XP, but at least it works - and it works on a lower hardware spec than Vista. With the economy going spastic and the Australian dollar declining versus the US Dollar (and how does that happen when the greenback is in such turmoil with obvious poor management and leadership???) PCs are getting more expensive again. Boo hiss.

If Windows 7 requires even more grunt than Vista I see it being out of reach for a lot of users for at least a year past it's release date. As to Vista I'm going to try and pretend it never happened and keep it out of the workplaces I'm involved in. What are you going to do?

Firefly and Serenity

Over the course of the weekend I watched the entire (short) season of Firefly and then the movie Serenity. I cannot for the life of me understand why Firefly was cancelled. The characters were awesome, the environment they were set in was great and there was so much scope for different stories. I love watching it.

Possibly the thing I like most about Firefly is the characters and how there seems to be a nice balance amongst them. No single character takes all the limelight, although Malcolm Reynolds is fairly central to most of it, he is not the focus. Joss Whedon and Tim Minear have done a fantastic job of writing the series and the movie. No wonder it has such a following.

It raised another point that I've been pondering a little bit. The people we admire most have qualities that are reflected in us. I've heard this said before and I see in Firefly how the mix of characters allows so many people to find something in the characters that they can relate to, admire and connect with. Be it the strength of Simon's love for River, Kaylee's love of engines and food, or Jayne's role as the tough, but dumb guy. It may be in the funny nature of Wash or in his wife's tenacity and loyalty. Truly a diverse cast and one that has so many strengths.... and also so many frailties.

It is our faults that make us human. To have heroes that are without fault is totally unrealistic. A character with a real, identifiable hubris is a character that we can relate to and empathise with. Bravo to the writers and directors of Firefly and Serenity for creating characters we can identify with so closely.

A damn shame it was cancelled. I curse the greedy money making mofo's who did it.

Musings on System Administration

I was reading an article discussing forensic preparation for computer systems. Some of the
stuff in there I knew the general theory of, but not the specifics of how to perform. As I
thought about it, it occurred to me that Systems Administration is such a vast field. There
is no way I can know all of this stuff. I made a list of the software and operating systems

I currently manage. They include:
- Windows Server 2003, Standard and Enterprise
- Exchange 2003
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- Windows 2000
- Ubuntu Linux
- OpenSuSE Linux
- Mac OSX (10.3 and 10.4)
- Solaris 8
- SQL 2005
- Various specialised software for the transport industry

I have specific knowledge on some of this, broad knowledge on all of it, and always think "There's so much I *don't* know". It gets a bit down heartening sometimes. For one thing - I
have no clue about SQL 2005 and I need to make it work with another bit of software. All
complicated and nothing straightforward. Irritating doesn't begin to explain it. As to the
Microsoft Software - because of it's prevalence throughout the world, there is a lot of
online information available. Likewise with Linux - it's incredibly rare to encounter a problem someone else hasn't already come up against.

So how to function within such an environment? Understanding I think is the key. The more
you understand about the process, the easier it is to figure things out. To my reckoning, understanding the "why" of how things work makes the job of learning new things fast to fix
problems much easier. For beginning sysadmins it's probably the most important thing. That
and curiosity. I'm always interested in learning about new things and trying new stuff out. Having sufficient hardware to indulge in this obsession doesn't hurt either. If you can't have all new stuff - second hand stuff is a good way to play.

Thoughts - Means of Problem Solving

I'm not sure how other people really think - I have a degree in Psychology but I'm still not entirely convinced by the ideas on theory of mind. I have a few observations that I'd like to share. For one thing, and this is kind of strange, when there is a problem I need to solve I can't "think" through it. If I try to reason my way through it, my conscious mind wanders off to God knows where and I get nowhere. But if I relax, clear my mind and just allow some internal process to work, all of a sudden the answer appears. This is the gap in the internal monologue to which I refer. This does *not* work with mathematical problems. I have always struggled with those sorts of problems. I refer more to the interpersonal problems or even IT problems of which I encounter on a daily basis. Even the lead up to writing this was only a vaguely conceived idea until I started typing and the right words appear on the screen.

I wonder how other people "think" their way through problems? Do they have a specific process they go through to find the answers? In a movie I saw once, one of the characters is telling another about finding the B's and C's. His boss was able to skip from A to D, but a normal person needed to find those B's and C's. I certainly do not subscribe to the idea my thought methods are unique or special, but I merely wonder at the other types of thoughts. Is it possible to learn how to think in the opposite way. I wonder at the efficacy of intuitive problem solving against a more step-wise approach.

I think that these are innate means of thinking and we are born that way. As hard as I've tried to learn a more structured means of thinking it escapes me. Trying to be organised and have everything planned out doesn't work. I can maintain it over the short term, but I get tired of the effort and go back to a more messy/non-linear style of thinking. I wonder how many others experience this?

Hmm I want a MacBook Pro too while I'm rambling. They are very sexy.

Oh and in case you're wondering at the nature of this post - remember the name of the blog is "somewhat" thoughtful thoughts. Sometimes I haven't worked them all the way through :)