Blog: December 2004 Archives
All the major metro areas on Yahoo Maps now have an option to show traffic speeds on the highways. This almost makes up for the view I had at Inktomi where I could see the bridge traffic from my window..
The Doom Midi Soundtrack documents all the levels with pictures and the midi files from the game. This was strangely entertaining to go back and see what was all the rage in the early 90's - particularly for those that played it.
If there was ANY doubt that Christmas is upon us..
This is irony. after working from home for the last few months, I get to look at the looming Mt Diablo for half my commute. This is clearly an omen.
I have the need to replicate specific blobs of data across basically the entire organization.. often. In the past we've been doing some fairly smart yet still unicast methods of distributing the data. However, the sheer number of machines is making our current algorythm feel the pain. The obvious answer is multicast, or at least, broadcast, the data.
It seems that multicast tools for file replication are still at a stage of infancy. After digging around, I did find a tool that came close to what I needed - a tool called "udpcast". First, strengths: 1, it seems to work (!). 2, it is simple to implement, and folks know I happen to like simple. 3, license is friendly for my work environment.
It has FEC built in (forward error correction), so we can simply spew it into the broadcast ethernet network and anyone who's listening, can take it. If they mangle or drop a packet, they are still likely to get the entire package, due to the built in redundancy. And, for our purposes, if we don't get it, well, it is not the end of the world. We'll get it next time.
On the downside, it seems to have no security paranoia. It has no resource limits for maximum size of the output file, and handles timing out poorly. It also moves just one blob of data, so you're likely to pass a tarball or something around. Given that there is no authentication and any host on the net can blast packets, one has to add in data validation.
Overall, though, this tool does seem to show promise...
Just to add to that Christmas feeling.. we saw Mannheim Steamroller in concert last night. It was neat to be able to finally see Chip Davis in person, the guy behind Mannheim; and the performers were quite good. The main floor had a large trainset and village that spanned the width of what is normally a basketball court; complete with "toy" soldiers that would march around amongst the crowd around the tree. All that said, this wasn't entirely different than popping in the DVD.. a fairly average concert overall. Branwyn enjoyed it; Josh was totally bored with it.
Oh well - there is still Polar Express in 3d at the IMAX in a couple weeks..
