Unrest in Turkey

 Me & my ramblings  No Responses »
Jun 082013
 

It has been interesting to watch the ongoing strife and turmoil that has been shaking Turkey. We were there for two weeks in March & April and had a chance to speak with a number of people in different locations. To a certain extent it has been hard to reconcile the strength of reaction given our conversations and the views shared, though some of the seeds of the reaction were easily visible.  Our time in Turkey was marked by three main themes when we spoke with people:

Ongoing tensions between secular & traditional Turks - Due to reforms driven by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, Turkey has a modern history of being open to different forms of religious worship, or no worship at all compared to the rest of the region.  The majority of the people we spoke with (bias of English speakers) identified as Muslim, but not devout and in many cases, non-practicing.  They had plenty of scorn for the clerics and traditionalists and dismissed their political power as buy-outs & giveaways to segments of the population. They felt that their options & lifestyles were under threat to a certain extent.

The Turkish economy is (or was) great - We saw a lot of new development and construction as we navigated the country.  In general all of the folks that we spoke with said things were good and life was getting better for everyone.  Despite Turkey’s run of growth there is increasing worry that the economic growth and stability in Turkey has been fueled unsustainable by outside lending. Sound familiar?

Turks are happy to be separate from the Euro - Without prompting people would mention how proud they were that they were doing better than the Euro zone, and that they were very happy to have not joined the Euro.  The financial crisis appears to have given confidence to going it alone.  Perhaps the growth experienced in the last five years was amplified by the troubles in Europe and investors looking for (and paying more for) opportunities in Turkey.

Time will tell how far the current unrest will last, both sides don’t appear to be backing down and are further instigating the other.  I wouldn’t give up hope soon - Even now it is very common to see Atatürk bumper stickers and tributes.  Turks are proud of their country and consider it unique and a model for other countries to follow.

Backing up data on AWS EC2 Micro instances using the CrashPlan headless Linux client

 Me & my ramblings  No Responses »
May 272013
 

I’ve been using a combination of scripts to do local backups on my Amazon EC2 micro instance I use to serve this website – AutoMySQL Backup and some cron jobs which ran rsync for various paths on a rotation. For example:

#!/bin/sh
rsync -a /var/www/html /mnt/backup/filebackup/weekly
rsync -a /var/lib/g2data /mnt/backup/filebackup/weekly

This is frankly a pretty lazy way to do it. I’m not protected at all if something wipes out the backup destinations or the EBS drive goes bad, and this method uses up a lot of EBS space because there are multiple sets of the files. I could use the AWS EC2 framework to script out EBS snapshots, but that’s just going to further increase my monthly Amazon bill without any ability to be very specific about point in time restores for files. Instead, I thought I should make use of something that I’m already paying for: CrashPlan.

As noted in a previous post, I’m using CrashPlan to backup our desktop & laptop computers, as well as my file server (Synology NAS). I have a CrashPlan+ Family Unlimited plan which means I can add up to 10 computers and store unlimited backups from them to the CrashPlan cloud included in the plan (local backups, or peer to peer Crashplan backups are always free and don’t require a plan).

Install CrashPlan to a Amazon Linux AMI

CrashPlan offers a number different clients, including a headless java client for Linux. This is perfectly suited to the micro instance I’m using in EC2 – the Amazon Linux AMI which is based on RedHat/Centos. I installed the headless client using the following options – note that I’m using the latest version at the time of this post (3.5.3) in my commands below, but you can see the latest download link on their page. I’m also using sudo in my commands, you can remove pr ignore that if it is isn’t needed in your Linux configuration.

sudo yum install grep sed cpio gzip coreutils
wget http://download.crashplan.com/installs/linux/install/CrashPlan/CrashPlan_3.5.3_Linux.tgz
sudo tar -xzf CrashPlan_3.5.3_Linux.tgz
cd CrashPlan-install/
sudo install.sh

At this point the installer launches and will ask questions about where the files should go. Their suggestions are reasonable for my configuration and I was able to simply follow the defaults, hitting enter the whole way through the install. Once the install finishes, it will start the CrashPlan service automatically.

 

Connect to the headless CrashPlan Linux server with a remote client

Now that the service has been started, a remote client needs to connect to the server in order to further configure backup options. The easiest and most secure way to do that is by making use of SSH’s ability to tunnel to the server. The following instructions are for Windows, but similar steps can be performed on other operating systems. First, install the CrashPlan client if it is not already installed on your computer, but don’t start the program. Next, locate and edit the ui.properties file using a text editor. This file is typically located here: C:\Program Files\CrashPlan\conf\ui.properties for Windows systems. As shown below, remove the # to uncomment the line, and change the port to 4200. When done, save the file and exit.

Edit servicePort for ui.properties

Next the SSH tunnel needs to be enabled for the client to connect to the server via SSH. Open PuTTY and create a new connection to your Linux server. Under the configuration menu, navigate to Connection, SSH, then click the Tunnels option in the menu. On that page, enter “4200″ as Source port, enter “localhost:4243″ as the Destination, and click the Add button. Once completed, connect to the server as normal via the configured SSH session and leave the terminal window open.

putty tunnel add

putty tunnel added

At this point the CrashPlan client can be started. It will first ask for CrashPlan credentials, then display the usual interface. Note that the compression and dedupe options can be resource heavy – which means during the first backups for the server it will likely consume a lot of CPU, particularly for EC2 micro instances which have low CPU throughput (bursting) to start with. This CPU usage should reduce over time as the backup deltas get smaller.

crashplan ui linux remote

Configure CrashPlan Linux to backup /var or other hidden directories (if needed)

Note that by default, several directories and file structures are hidden in the CrashPlan client for Linux. In my case I want to backup files under /var, as that is where my gallery2 files reside, as well as my web content. In order to expose that folder structure for CrashPlan the my.service.xml configuration file should be edited, and the “pattern regex=”/var/” line under the Linux area should be removed. First stop the CrashPlan service and edit the config file (assuming you installed using default file paths):

sudo service crashplan stop
sudo vi /usr/local/crashplan/conf/my.service.xml

Next, look for a line like this under the Linux area and remove the following data from the file (e.g. dd in vi):

<pattern regex="/var/"></pattern>

Save the file (Esc, :wq + enter in vi) and then start the service back up. After connecting again using the client, the /var folder should now be visible.

sudo service crashplan start

crashplan ui linux remote file selection

Facebook’s suggested gifts algorithm needs some work

 Me & my ramblings  No Responses »
May 252013
 

Some good friends of ours recently had their first child and posted photos on Facebook. When viewing that post on the desktop version of Facebook it had a little ad which suggested giving a gift to them:

facebook gifts

I don’t think their suggested gifts algorithm is doing a good job of suggesting Fast & Furious 6 for a newborn, but perhaps I’m just a traditionalist and out of touch.

Content providers still haven’t figured out physical vs digital pricing

 Me & my ramblings  No Responses »
May 232013
 

iTunes and Amazon MP3 have been dominating music sales for years now, but there is plenty of evidence that providers have wildly different strategies when it comes to pricing. This is made all the more absurd by Amazon’s AutoRip functionality, where the lines between a digital & physical purchase are even more blurry.

Exhibit A is Vampire Weekend’s Modern Vampires of the City album. As one might expect given the lower productions costs the digital version is dramatically cheaper than the physical CD:
Vampire Weekend prices on Amazon

Exhibit B is Daft Punk’s new Random Access Memories album. The incredible thing is this example is that you can get a digital copy of the album cheaper by buying the physical CD – Amazon gives you instant access to the digital versions as well via AutoRip:
Daft Punk RAM on Amazon

Both of these are new albums from popular acts, released a week apart. There are those that argue that the digital instances should be priced at the same or higher than physical, since the user gets the benefit of instant gratification. However, in the case of Amazon purchases this logic no longer applies. One could certainly argue that the Daft Punk offering has much more drive given their advertising blitz, but I find it curious that these two examples are so different.

My backup solution – CrashPlan & Synology

 Me & my ramblings  No Responses »
May 192013
 

I’ve got a lot of data. I’ve been been shooting RAW photos for a decade (almost 200 GB at this point), have a large (legit!) music collection (74 GB), and have a lot of other files from various projects over the years I want to hang onto. In total, I’ve got about 330 GB I want to keep. This used to be a very expensive proposition – stuffing it all in Amazon S3 or using backup services that charge by file size was tough to swallow. That landscape has changed recently. I’ve been using CrashPlan+ Family Unlimited for my home backups for about a year and couldn’t be happier. Unlimited cloud backups for up to 10 computers for $9-14 per month (depending on subscription length) is an amazing deal.

More than being a good deal I’ve also been very impressed with the CrashPlan software as well. It does the typical things you want to see in backup software – good performance, ability to set transfer rates/time of day, data deduplication, compression, and encryption. However it’s hidden strength is its great flexibility for backup targets while maintaining security. In addition to the unlimited cloud storage you can also have local encrypted backups, encrypted backups to another one of your computers running CrashPlan (p2p using the same account), or even send your encrypted backups to a friend (p2p with different CrashPlan accounts). These options create a perfect backup scenario for me – I know I have a local copy of files which I can get at quickly (compared with downloading them all) but they are also stored in the cloud to protect against catastrophic loss (e.g. a house fire).

CrashPlan destination options

Their software is available for multiple platforms, and they support a headless java client on Linux. This means the software can be installed on a lot of different machine types and opens up a lot of different options. The most important one for me is support in Synology. I’ve been using Synology NASs as my file server for many years as they are very customizable and powerful. With some hard work invested, patters was able to get the headless client running on a wide range of newer Synology devices. Using his packages and instructions I’ve got all of the files on my Synology file server backing up locally, as well as to the cloud:

Desktop/laptops

  • Backup to local Synology NAS Crashplan target (Vol2)
  • Backup to Crashplan cloud

Synology NAS (Vol1)

  • Backup Vol1 to local Synology NAS Crashplan target (Vol2)
  • Backup to Crashplan cloud

Some screen shots of what this looks like:

synology package center

crashplan ui synology remote

If you find the post at pcloadletter.co.uk hard to follow, Scott Hanselman has a great guide on his site on how to setup CrashPlan on Synology.

Other than having to restart the Synology CrashPlan package after updates, everything has worked amazingly well together. I was able to customize everything the way I needed to but still feel like I’m well protected. If you aren’t using a backup solution you like, I highly recommend giving CrashPlan a try – the following link will save you 20% off their prices: http://www.crashplan.com/ff20

The Open Road London (1927 in colour)

 External & links  No Responses »
May 102013
 

I came across a video on Vimeo which contained some lovely images of London in 1927 using an early prototype of color video. I was interested to know more and found that the video only covered a small part of the overall series named The Open Road created by Claude Friese-Greene. While the full video on youtube doesn’t have the addition of music, it is double the length and includes other areas not in the vimeo video:

It was particularly interesting to notice the ordinary – the early doubledecker buses, barges on the River Thames, flowers at the war monument, Petticoat Lane, and tourists watching the changing of the guard.

Travel in Scotland

 Me & my ramblings, My photos  No Responses »
Apr 212013
 

Scotland Scotland Scotland
Photos of Scotland

We spent a little less than week in Scotland in the summer of 2012 as an “add-on” from a another trip to London and Scandinavia. I wasn’t terribly well planned but was very enjoyable; funny how that works sometimes. The country is small but the winding roads off main routes mean distances are generally slow to cover. Even so, it worked well that we stayed in Edinburgh as our base and took day trips and tours around the country.

Edinburgh is a lovely mixture of a city – lots new, lots old. The most popular point of the city is arguably the Edinburgh castle, and with good reason as it is well preserved and serves as the focal point of the city. I highly recommend walking through Holyrood Park and Arthur’s Seat to catch a sunset or sunrise. Not only because the view of Edinburgh castle is incredible, but also because we ran into some entertainment. Two bagpipers had setup on one of the paths and were practicing in the rain and enjoying the acoustics of the rocks. Few things have ever been as special for me than watching the city glow under a pink sunset in the rain while accompanied by a local soundtrack.

It is easy to get around by Edinburgh black cab, bus, or walking. As with most European cities the train station is located in the center of the city and it is easy to travel to major destination points that way (more on that later). To get a full taste of the country though you need to either rent a car or use touring companies. We took several small group tours to explore the highlands while visiting castles, lochs, distilleries, and towns. Though we encountered wet weather most of the trip all of our excursions were very enjoyable.

We also took the commuter train to explore Glasgow by day trip. The trip by train was fast and relatively inexpensive as the cities are not terribly far apart. Anna and I both enjoy Charles Rennie Mackintosh‘s work (Art Nouveau) so it was a must visit for us, including lunch at one of his tearooms. Despite the relatively close distance between Glasgow and Edinburgh they each have very distinct attitude. The cliche adage is that Edinburghers say Glaswegians are rough about the edges, and Glaswegians see the Edinburghers as snobs. I can’t remark too much on that as it was such a relatively short visit but I found that Glasgow felt much more like a vibrant new-world city than Edinburgh, which felt a bit more like a well curated museum piece in places.

It was a short but very packed and enjoyable trip. Scotland very easy and relatively cheap to visit if you are in London already, so consider it if you are already going to be spending any time in the UK.

The shocking increase in federal disability payments

 External & links  No Responses »
Apr 202013
 

This American Life in coordination with Planet Money created a show which dives deep into structural issues related to employment which have been dogging the US (and frankly other wealthy western nations) for decades. As usual they do an excellent job crafting a riveting story about what can be a very dry subject.

The number of Americans receiving federal disability payments has nearly doubled over the last 15 years. There are towns and counties around the nation where almost 1/4 of adults are on disability. Planet Money’s Chana Joffe-Walt spent 6 months exploring the disability program, and emerges with a story of the U.S. economy quite different than the one we’ve been hearing.

Myelin regrown in multiple sclerosis models

 External & links  No Responses »
Apr 172013
 

Per the UT:

“Ordinary skin cells have been directly converted into the myelinating cells destroyed in multiple sclerosis, according to two new papers in Nature Biotechnology.

This has huge potential and I really hope the research progresses well – MS is one of those diseases where there haven’t been a lot of breakthroughs yet. It seems like we are getting close and closer to true medical breakthroughs, like printed or grown/reseeded replacement parts and direct mapping of pharmaceuticals to an individuals genes.

 Older Entries