A very tightly written thriller about a fictional 1963 plot to assassinate Frnch President Charles de Gaulle. Fast moving, detailed and captivating 5/5
Memoir from the first officer in charge of the US Navy’s Top Gun school. A mix of his life & career, the school and US Navy air history (especially during Vietnam). Excellent 4/5
75% about Big-wave Tow-Surfers with chapters on Scientists and Shipping industry people mixed in. Competent but author’s heart seemed mostly in the surfing. 3/5
I did a big twitter thread of the YouTube channels I am following. Below is a copy of the tweets. They are a quick description of the channel and a link to a sample video.
Lots of pop-Science and TV/Movie analysis channels plus a few on other topics.
I should mention that I watch the majority of YouTube videos at speed 1.5x since they usually speak quite slowly. To Speed up videos click on the settings “cog” and then select “Playback Speed” . YouTube lets you go up to 2x
Chris Stuckmann reviews movies. During normal times he does a couple per week. Mostly currently releases with some old ones. His reviews are low-spoiler although sometimes he’ll do an extra “Spoiler Review”. Usually around 6 minutes long. Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – Movie Review
Wendover Productions does explainer videos. Air & Sea travel are quite common topics. Usually a bit better researched than some of the other channels and a little longer at around 12 minutes. Around 1 video per week. The Logistics of the US Census
City Beautiful is a channel about cities and City planning. 1-2 videos per month. Usually around 10 minutes. Pitched for the amateur city and planning enthusiast Where did the rules of the road come from?
PBS Eons does videos about the history of life on Earth. Lots of Dinosaurs, early humans and the like. Run and advised by experts so info is great quality. Links to refs! Accessible but dives into the detail. Around 1 video/week. About 10 minutes each. How the Egg Came First
Pitch Meetings are a writer pitching a real (usually recent) movie or show to a studio exec. Both a played by Ryan George. Very funny. Part of the Screen Rant channel but I don’t watch their other stuff Playlist Netflix’s Tiger King Pitch Meeting
MrMobile [Michael Fisher] reviews Phones, Laptops, Smart Watches & other tech gadgets. Usually about one video/week. I like the descriptive style and good production values, Not too much spec flooding. A Stunning Smartwatch With A Familiar Failing – New Moto 360 Review
Verge Science does professional level stories about a range of Science topics. They usually are out in the field with Engineers and scientists. Why urban coyote sightings are on the rise
Alt Shift X do detailed explainer videos about Books & TV Shows like Game of Thrones, Watchmen & Westworld. Huge amounts of detail and a great style with a wall of pictures. Weekly videos when shows are on plus subscriber extras. Watchmen Explained (original comic)
The B1M talks about building and construction projects. Many videos are done with cooperation of the architects or building companies so a bit fluffy at times. But good production values and interesting topics. The World’s Tallest Modular Hotel
CineFix doesn’t a variety of Movie-related videos. Over the last year only putting about one or two per month and mostly high quality. A few years ago they were at higher volume and had more throw-aways Jojo Rabbit – What’s the Difference?
Marques Brownlee (MKBHD) does tech reviews. Mainly phones but also other gear and the odd special. His videos are extremely high quality and well researched. Averaging 2 videos per week. Samsung Galaxy S20 Ultra Review: Attack of the Numbers!
How it Should have Ended does cartoons of funny alternative endings for movies. Plus some other long running series. Usually only a few minutes long. Avengers Endgame Alternate HISHE
Screen Junkies does stuff about movies. I mostly watch their “Honest Trailers” but they sometimes do ‘Serious Questions” which are good too. Honest Trailers | Terminator: Dark Fate
Half as Interesting is an offshoot of Wendover Productions (see above). It does shorter 3-5 minutes weekly videos on a quick amusing fact or happening (that doesn’t justify a longer video) United Airlines’ Men-Only Flights
Red Team Review is another movie and TV review channel. I was mostly watching them when Game of Thrones was on and since then they have had a bit less content. They are making some Game of Thrones videos narrated by the TV actors though Game of Thrones Histories & Lore – The Rains of Castamere
Signum University do online classes about Fantasy (especially Tolkien) and related literature. Their channel features their classes and related videos. I mainly follow “Exploring The Lord of the Rings”. Often sounds better at 2x or 3x speed. A Wizard of Earthsea: Session 01 – Mageborn
The Nerdwriter does approx monthly videos. Usually about a specific type of art, a painting or film making technique. Very high quality How Walter Murch Worldized Film Sound
Real Life Lore does infotainment videos. “Answers to questions that you’ve never asked. Mostly over topics like history, geography, economics and science”. This Was the World’s Most Dangerous Amusement Park
Real Engineering is a bit more technical than the average popsci channel. The especially like doing videos covering flight dynamics. but they cover lots of other topics How The Ford Model T Took Over The World
CGP Grey makes high quality explainer videos. Around one every month. High quality and usually with lots of animation. The Trouble With Tumbleweed
Lessons from the Screenplay are “videos that analyze movie scripts to examine exactly how and why they are so good at telling their stories” Casino Royale — How Action Reveals Character
Lindsay Ellis does videos mostly about pop culture, Usually movies. These days she only does a few a year but they are usually 20+ minutes. The Hobbit: A Long-Expected Autopsy (Part 1/2)
A memoir of a senior White House staffer, Speechwriter & Presidential adviser. Lots of interesting accounts with and behind the scenes information. 4/5
A Star Trek parody from the POV of five ensigns who realise something is very strange on their ship. Plot moves steadily and the humour and action mostly work. 3/5
The book covers less than a year as the Ingalls family build a cabin in Indian territory on the Kansas Prairie. Dangerous incidents and adventures throughout. 3/5
A book about the post-Challenger Shuttle missions. An overview of most of the missions and the astronauts on them. Lots of quotes mainly from the astronauts. Good for Spaceflight fans. 3/5
Ways that people, organisations and governments can start looking ahead at the long term rather than just the short and why they don’t already. Some good stuff 4/5
Some interesting insights although everything being about New York and very left-wing politics of the author muddle the message. Worth a read if you are into the topic. 3/5
The story of the 1949 Mann Gulch fire that killed 13 smoke jumpers. Misses a point due to lots of talking to maps/photographs but still a gripping story. 3/5
The secret British operation to bug German POWs to obtain military intelligence. Only declassified in the late 1990s so very few personal recollections, but an interesting story. 3/5
A year in a life of a 9 year old boy on a farm in 1860s New Year State. Lots of hard work and chores. His family is richer than Laura’s from the previous book. 3/5 Astrophysics for People in a Hurry by Neil DeGrasse Tyson
A quick (4h) overview and introduction of our current understanding of the universe. A nice little introduction to the big stuff. 3/5
The Story of five of the first settlers of Marietta, Ohio from 1788 and the early history of the town. Not a big book or wide scope but works okay within it’s limits. 4/5
Distribution was not all free software (had bin blobs)
Sun port relied on SunView kernel API
Digital provided binary rendering code
IBM PC/RT Support completed in source form
Why X11 ?
X10 had warts
rendering model was pretty terrible
External Windows manager without borders
Other vendors wanted to get involved
Jim Gettys and Smokey Wallace
Write X11, release under liberal terms
Working against Sun
Displace Sunview
“Reset the market”
Digital management agreed
X11 Development 1986-87
Protocol designed as croos-org team
Sample implementation done mostly at DEC WRL, collaboration with people at MIT
Internet not functional enough to property collaborate, done via mail
Thus most of it happened at MIT
MIT X Consortium
Hired dev team at MIT
Funded by consortium
Members also voted on standards
Members stopped their on develoment
Stopped collaboration with non-members
We knew Richard too well – The GPL’s worst sponsor
Corp sponsors dedicated to non-free software
X Consortium Standards
XIE – X Imaging Extensions
PIX – Phigs Extension for X
LBX – Low Bandwidth X
Xinput (version 1)
The workstation vendors were trying to differentiate. They wanted a minimal base to built their stuff on. Standard was frozen for around 15 years. That is why X fell behind other envs as hardware changed.
X11 , NeWs and Postscript
NeWS – Very slow but cool
Adobe adapted PostScript interpreter for windows systems – Closed Source
Merged X11/NeWS server – Closed Source
The Free Unix Desktop
All the toolkits were closed source
Sunview -> XView
OpenView – Xt based toolkit
X Stagnates – ~1992
Core protocol not allowed to change
non-members pushed out
market fragments
Collapse of Unix
The Decade of Windows
Opening a treasure trove: The Historical Aerial Photography project by Paul Haesler
Geoscience Australia has inherated an extensive archive of hisorical photography
1.2 million images from 1920 – 1990s
Full coverage of Aus and more (some places more than others)
Historical Archive Projects
Canonical source of truth is pieces of paper
Multiple attempts at scanning/transscription. Duplication and compounding of errors
Some errors in original data
“Historian” role to sift through and collate into a machine-readable form – usually spreadsheets
Data Model typically evolves over time – implementation must be flexible and open-minded
What we get
Flight Line Diagrams (metadata)
Imagery (data)
Lots scanned in early 1990s, but low resolution and missing data, some missed
Digitization Pipeline
Flight line diagram pipeline
High resolution scans
Georeferences
Film pipeline
Filmstock
High Resolution scans
Georeference images
Georectified images
Stitched mosaics + Elevation models
Only about 20% of film scanned. Lacking funding and film deteriorating
Other states have similar smaller archives (and other countries)
Many significantly more mature but may be locked in propitiatory platforms
Wanted to go to a tools like dockers, kubernetes that were not well supported by microsoft tools
Gen 3 – Docker Services
Linux
Java / Go
Lots of ways to do stuff
3 different ways of doing everything
Confusing and big tax on developers
Losing knowledge about how the older Reckless stuff worked
A Crazy Idea
Run all the Reckless services in docker
Get rid of one whole generation
What does it take?
Move from .NET Framework to .NET Core
Framework very Windows specific – runtime installed at OS level
Core more open and cross-platform – self contained executable apps
But what about Mono? (Open Source .NET Framework) .
Probably not worth the effort since Framework is the way forward
But a lot of .NET Framework APIs not ported over to .NET Core. Some replaced by new APIs
.Net Standard libraries support on both though, which is lots of them
What Doesn’t port to Core?
Libraries moved/renamed
Some libs dropped
IIS, ASP.NET replaced with ASP.NET Core + MVC
WCF Server communication
Old unmaintained libraries
Luckily Reckless not using ASP.NET so shouldn’t to too hard to do. Maybe not sure a crazy idea.
But most companies don’t let people spend lots of time on Tech Debt.
Asked for something small – 2 weeks of 3 people.
1 week: Hacky proof of concept (getting 1 service to run in .NET Core)
2nd week: Document and investigate what full project would require and have to do
Last Day: Time estimates
Found that Windows ec2 instance were 45%
Cost saving alone of moving from Windows to Linux justied the project
Pitching:
Demo
Detailed time estimates
Proposal with multiple options
Concrete benifits, cost savings, problems with rusty old infra
Microsoft Portability Analyzer
Just run across app and gives very detailed output
icanhasdot.net
Good for external dependencies
Web Hosting differences
OWIN Hosting vs Kestrel
ASP.NET Core DI
Libraries that Do support .NET Standard
Had to upgrade all our code to support the new versions
Major changes in places
OS Differences
case-sensitive filenames
Windows services, event logging
Libararies that did not support .net Standard
Magnum – unmaintained
Topshelf
.NET Framework Libraries can be run under .NET Core using compatibility shim. Sometimes works but not really a good idea. Use with extreme caution
Overall Result
Took 6-8 months of 2-3 people
Everything migrated over.
Around 100 services
78 actually running
43 really needed to be migrated
31 actually needed in the end
Estimated old hosting cost $145k/year
Estimated new hosting costing $70k/year
Actual hosting cost $15k/year
Got rid of almost all the extra infrastructure that was used to support reckless. another $25k/year saved
Advice for cleanup projects
Ask for something small
Test the idea
Demonstrate the business case
Build detailed time estimates
Collecting information with care by Opel Symes
The Problem
People build systems for people without checking our assumptions about people are valid
Be aware of my assumptions, this doesn’t cover all areas
Names
Form “First Name” and “Last Name” -> “Dear John Smith”
Fields Required – should be optional
Should not do character checks ( blocking accents etc )
Check production support emoji.. everywhere
MySQL Character Encodings. Only since 5.5 , default in MySQL 8
Every Database, table and text cloumn and defaults need to be changed to the new character set. Set connection options so things don’t get lost in transfer.
