Scattered Mind

Read this interesting post/article on InfoWorld last night about virtualization and it’s role in the enterprise, and if it would be an advantage to your company.

Though perhaps overhyped in some circles as a cure-all, virtualization is worth exploring to free up datacenter space, reduce costs, and maybe even keep your company up and running
Virtualization has been hailed by many as the cure to all our woes. Wouldn’t that be nice? Alas, it has its limitations — though it may do a whole lot more than you imagined it could.

Before we can really center on the benefits, we need to resolve some of the misconceptions. For example, perhaps you think of server virtualization as a great way to create savings by reducing the amount of hardware you need.

[ For the latest virtualization news and views, please check out David Marshall’s Virtualization Report. ]

Now, before you nod your head in agreement, keep in mind that that last statement may not be accurate. Imagine reducing 10 servers down to one. You might think that this results in obvious savings. But placing 10 virtualized systems onto one machine comes with a hefty price tag all its own. To calculate true ROI (return on investment), you have to first consider the cost for that solitary server, which has to be maxed out with processor/RAM/disk features. It should have a solid set of storage virtualization (mirrored drives, RAID, and so forth) and, in true business continuity form, should be replicated with data protection and disaster recovery in mind.

Read more here

My father-in-law is Koos Hailey, who drives alcohol funny cars as a hobby.  In 2006 he had a slight crash when he raced against Michael van Rensburg(son of the owner of Tarlton International Raceway).

Today I finally managed to convert the dvd to upload onto YouTube.  Here’s the video of the accident.  Apparently the tires got cold as they waited too long before actually jumping from the line.

Pair Programming ? What is it ?

Pair programming is a software development technique in which two programmers work together at one keyboard. One types in code while the other reviews each line of code as it’s typed in. The person typing is called the driver. The person reviewing the code is called the observer^[1] or navigator. The two programmers switch roles frequently (possibly every 30 minutes).

While reviewing, the observer also considers the strategic direction of the work, coming up with ideas for improvements and likely future problems to address. This frees the driver to focus all of his or her attention on the “tactical” aspects of completing the current task, using the observer as a safety net and guid

Wikipedia Source

Last week I have truely done my first session of Pair Programming. Yes, previously I’ve done Pair Programming, but in a more casual sense where we find a problem and sit together for a little while and afterwards each developer goes back to his desk.

This time it was different.  We were about a week away from deployment when the Pair Programming was allocated for.  Basically it comes down to going through your current bug/snag list and handling each bug, and squashing it there and then on the spot.  In my situation I sat with our business analyst working on the project and she helped raise some issues on the business rules side which was not that obvious.

We spent almost 4 hours in this session(8 hours together) and the productivity gained from only this one session was astronomical.

Have anyone every work in such a situation of peer review, peer criticism or pair programming ?

Wow, this came to a shock to me!

I should say I was relatively jacked with my knowledge about HTML, Javascript and associated technologies, but you cannot know everything.

So you reckon you want to build your website to strict XHTML standard, and you reckon you know everything, I’ve got news for you, sometimes accept that you were wrong and continue with what you’ve learned.

The past week I persisted to one of my colleagues that the target=”_blank” property for HTML <a>(link) tags is the way to do it, but was terribly wrong, and by a long shot as well, and out by about 6 years!

Basically after some research after my outburst with my colleague I found that target=”_blank” is not compatible with some browsers and could cause incompatibility issues with your sites.

At the end of my research I could derive that if you want to keep your website XHTML compliant, just don’t open up new windows. Let all activity happen inside the window your in.  If you really need the functionality of opening a window the next best bet would be to use a Javascript function to open up a new window.
What have you guys experienced regarding XHTML standard and simple things like the target=”_blank” (deprecated)features
?

Here are some remixes of the famous Achmed the dead Terrorist.

The Dakar Rally just finished and the blood is still pumping in our blood about the excitement and endurance of the sport.
Why don’t you try it yourself.

Egos.co.za have some very nice ‘Experiences’ where you can experience some new adventures, adrenaline rush activities or just pampering packages. You can find more information about this specific Self Drive package here.

It’ s nice to see such nice packages to see and do things around South Africa.

I’ve been using Adgator for about 3 months now, since their inception in December 2008, in a strive to monetize from my blog and pay a chunk of the monthly hosting costs.

My experience so far with the Adgator team has only been positive and community interaction of the guys are very appreciated.

I’ve allocated quite a lot of real estate on my blog for the Adgator ads, but the results has not been so good for the last 3 weeks.  I’ve even started to think someone is discriminating against me 😉

At work we have a couple of bloggers using the Adgator network, and all of them are making money or some money, except me, and my blog traffic is in most cases 400% to 500% more than their blogs do.  As I understand ads are delivered based on Geographical location as well, and currently will display banners to local South African users and not International. I do have a lot of international traffic, but also a fair share of local traffic.

As you can see for the last week I’ve had no income whatsoever, although the Cricket and IBM campaigns are running, and I’m just unlucky that it does not fall under my vertical, or could that be the reason ?

As a result of this, I’ve decided to only place a smaller banner on the site that takes up less of the real estate, and have replaced the original Adgator banner with a new banner where I’m seeing what type of feedback one will get with Offerforge’s campaigns.

Again, I’m not putting down Adgator, it is still a very good program, and I’m keeping space for their ads, but somehow I’m just unlucky being classified in the wrong categories and not see an advantage dedicating bigger space on my blog at this point, until new advertisers join which I hopefully fall under.

If Adgator do come out with an Affiliate or Referal program I’ll definitely promote that to maybe make money from other people 😉 .

Microsoft is delighted to announce the SharePoint Conference 2009 – the premier worldwide conference dedicated to SharePoint and related technologies.There’s an exciting mix in the plans for this year. This year’s conference will be looking towards the future with a broad array of deep content centered on the next version of SharePoint, codenamed SharePoint “14” and at the same time be firmly planted in the present, sharing real world experience and guidance to help you maximize your investment in SharePoint Server 2007.

SharePoint Conference 2009 will be the conference to learn about SharePoint “14”. Be the first to learn about the improvements we’ve made to the platform and how many of those investments can be quickly implemented to add value to your organization and businesses.

If you’re an IT Professional, an IT Decision Maker, an Architect or a Developer you’ll find a deep set of technical content to give you a kick start for SharePoint “14” and further your skills and knowledge with SharePoint Server 2007.

There has been speculation for the last couple of month that Monty Widenius (can you see the “Wild Genius”) has resigned from Sun Microsystems.  And unfortunately the rumours are true.

After a fallout over the status of MySQL 5.1 Monty has finally left the company.

Extract from Monty’s personal blog :

In this case, the rumors had some elements of truth to them. I had told management that I thus would be submitting my resignation immediately as I strongly believed that the 5.1 release was not ready and that those problems needed to be fixed before it went GA. This action, together with other peoples´ efforts, did have the wanted effect and I made an agreement with Sun´s upper management to not initiate my resignation but instead stay around for three more months to help Sun work out things in MySQL Development and also give Sun a chance to create an optimal role for me within Sun.

This just makes me wonder if MySQL as a product is starting to slip a bit, and that the quality of the product may be in danger.

You can read more about Monty’s resignation on his blog here.

Last night I checked my Afrigator ranking, and found that my blog is now ranked 100th in South Africa.

This is the first time it has gone under 100, and has been hovering just above 100 for the last two weeks.

The target ?  Top 25 by July …