First, their web site was down for a couple of hours. Okay, I figured there was something going on with their host or something. Sure enough, it was back up later. Again, I’m not complaining about that since nothing can be perfectly reliable. I only mention it because it contributes to my overall annoyance today.

When I finally got to the site and got the correct showtime at the correct theatre selected (my own ineptitude with a mouse at work there), I got on with the checkout process. It went perfectly smoothly until the step where you fill in your payment information. At that point, the site insisted I did not have cookies enabled and helpfully provided instructions on how to enable them. (The instructions were wrong but that’s not the annoying part.) When that message came up, I had a major WTF moment. I never turned cookies off in the first place!

I poked and prodded at things for a bit and finally discovered that I had to allow third party cookies. I enabled that and sure enough suddenly things worked. Now why did I need third party cookies to check out, I wonder? Especially since it has never been required previously. If I wasn’t as technically savvy as I am, I would have just said “Fuck it” and not bothered with a movie.

The moral of this, if either one of my readers is involved with ecommerce in any way, is as follows. Make sure you test everything carefully before you deploy a change to the a site. And don’t, for the love of all that is good and decent, do not require third party cookies! They are disabled by default in any reasonable browser! And if you do require third party cookies, fess up about it on your error pages!

Eventually, you pitch management on hiring an assistant. They grudgingly accept that an assistant is needed simply to handle things when you take your annual legally required vacation, but instead of giving you a full time assistant, they tell you to train one of the in house software development grunts. You choose which one. You leave the board room dejected. How are you supposed to get anything beyond firefighting done without a properly trained assistant?

Sullenly, you set about documenting every problem that occurs along with the solution you employ. You make notes about causes, underlying problems with the systems in use, and so on. It takes more time than you have but you know the only way your part time assistant has any hope of handling anything during your vacation (which you are not eligible for until next year some time) is if he can refer to a tome containing everything he will ever need to know. You also know that such a tome is impossible to create, but you reason that even incomplete information is better than none at all.

As the weeks pass, you start to see patterns to the failures you encounter. A certain brand of ethernet switch fails in a certain way under specific conditions. A particular activity report causes the entire intranet server to freeze solid for three hours once every month. The computers on the eighteenth floor keep losing the network but no others do. And so on. You also realize that it is taking you less time to handle each fire as you become more and more familiar with the infrastructure. You have reached the break over point where you now know intuitively how much of the system operates. You start finding it easier and easier to slot new information into your growing understanding of the mess you have inherited. And it is, for certain, a mess, having evolved organically over the decades of Acme Widgets Inc’s history. You even begin to understand management’s reluctance to provide a full time assistant, though you still believe such a person is important.

Now, several months into your stint at Acme Widgets, you face a problem. You desire to improve the infrastructure. The motivation is purely selfish, of course. You are sick of having to put out fires continually and you know that improved infrastructure will reduce the time you spend doing so. But how do you proceed? You know that management will not accept a large expenditure all at once to forklift upgrade the entire infrastructure. You also realize that doing so is a bad idea since it will likely all fail at the same time in that case. Instead, you need a different plan, one that fits within your departmental pittance of a budget.

You start by referring to your painstakingly created documentation, looking for gaps and patterns. You spend every free moment crawling all over the company offices, tracing wires and taking inventory of components ranging from 10Base2 tees and GigE switches to telephones and cable runs. It takes months to make sense of it all, during which time company employees have come to refer to you as The Inspector. Finally, you feel you understand the mess sufficiently and begin to form a plan.

You start with the ever problematic eighteenth floor which, you have learned, still has a great deal of 10Base2 wiring linking switches of various vendors using media converters of various quality all over the floor. You blow two months capital budget on a shiny new GigE switch and install it in the wiring closet. You wire it into the overall network and marvel at the fact that nothing crashes or fails when you do so. Then you painstakingly replace every network connection on the floor with a new cat6 cable run back to the wiring closet and, to avoid confusion later, carefully pull out every old wire that is decommissioned. The denizens of the floor snigger about the Inspector crawling all over the floor and spending hours climbing up and down ladders. But slowly, you complete your task and the regular calls to the eighteenth floor stop. One day you receive a call from one of the denizens of the floor wondering where you have been for they have missed the entertainment of watching you at your task. None of them notice that their work has been more efficient with fewer interruptions waiting on IT since you started your project.

With the first upgrade project complete, you realize just how much of your time had been taken up by the eighteenth floor. Now you have time to examine other problems so you tackle the next most obvious problem using the same methodical approach. Again, you are amazed at the time saving once that problem is sorted out. Re-energized, you continue incrementally replacing or otherwise updating problematic infrastructure, each time tackling the item that causes the highest call volume.

Suddenly, after several years of diligent work upgrading, replacing, and otherwise fixing the creaking IT mess you inherited, you find yourself spending the better part of every day sitting at your desk idly clicking around your fancy new infrastructure monitoring system while you wait for new workstation installations to complete. You no longer spend every minute of the day fighting fires. Sure, the occasional problem pops up and you handle it efficiently. The old nickname from your early days has stuck around but nobody remembers why. Management begins to question even your part time assistant. In your quest for laziness, you have demonstrated that the company only needs one person to manage the whole IT infrastructure. Oops.

With management rumbling about downsizing your department to just you, you wonder what you can do to make them see the light. Suddenly, you remember you have not taken a vacation in far too long. You schedule your vacation time and the bean counters are ecstatic to have that liability off the books. You leave all technology behind and set off for the back country where you will be unreachable for three weeks. During that time, your part time assistant will have to hold the fort.

Upon your return, you step into a hornet’s nest of activity but it cannot touch the serenity acquired through weeks away from it all. Your assistant strolls up to you and casually notes that the primary server is down, the failover didn’t, and the vendors are pointing fingers at each other. You casually ask why the failover failed and your assistant shrugs. Cleaning staff pulled the power cord out of the power socket and promptly fried the UPS. Why were the cleaning staff in the server room? Management. What is the ETR? Your assistant glances at his watch and smiles. Everything is sorted out now. You raise your eyebrow. It is all a prank, it seems.

In the calm of your office, your assistant briefs you on your absence. It seems an unusually high number of problems materialized while you were away but your assistant has everything well in hand. You check over his work and are mostly pleased – he has not messed up any more than expected, or, indeed, any more than you would have. And he has kept a detailed log, bless him. Armed with that information, you confront management and they happily agree that your assistant should be full time. You smile and set to work planning for the expansion you know management will spring on you without notice eventually.

In case it was not obvious, the preceding is a fairy tale. Very seldom will an IT job progress in that manner. Still, the goal of the unnamed IT person in the tale should be the goal of any IT manager, and the path taken to achieve that goal is sensible. Rather than try to sell a wholesale replacement of everything all at once, which is usually expensive and causes sticker shock for bean counters and management alike, incremental updates often disappear into the noise. And by strategically picking what to upgrade, a substantial impact may be seen for a relatively minor investment. Rather than develop a rube goldberg plan of action and then slavishly sticking to it, our hero tackled one existing source of annoyance and corrected it before moving on to the next. Instead of treating the mess as a single problem, it was broken into smaller pieces that were more easily identifiable and fixable.

In case you are wondering how practical such a plan of attack much be, consider that, though the details were substantially different and the scale smaller, my own day job progressed in much the same manner. Over the space of years, I slowly moved a production network through dozens of minor steps from a disaster waiting to happen if anyone merely tripped on a network cable to the fairly resilient network that is in place today, and I did it on what would be considered a shoestring budget.

First of all, let me define what I mean by “shakycam”. That is the technique of shaking a camera as though it is hand held. That is, the image shakes side to side as though the cameraman is walking or it jitters rapidly as though the cameraman cannot hold it steady as he alternates between focus points. Like anything, there are degrees varying between mild swaying and violent shaking.

Now, let’s examine cases where such a technique might be used. The most obvious is when the image is supposed to be one shot by an amateur. For instance, when an investigator is viewing “witness video”. In this case, the footage is supposed to have been shot by an amateur with a hand held camera. The degree of shakiness will, of course, depend on the shooter’s circumstances. If he is running toward the action, the image will probably move around violently. If he is walking, it will probably be a gentle sway. If he is standing still, it might even approach tripod stability.

Sometimes, the shakycam effect is used to make a shot feel more dynamic. In this case, the camera motion is meant to suggest that we are physically there, following the subjects around, even when such a situation would be patently absurd. However, used judiciously, this trick can engage audience members in a scene more than a series of static steady shots can. Used to excess, it can cause the audience to reach for anti-nausea medication (or simply close their eyes).

Neither of the preceding uses of shakycam are particularly annoying unless used to excess. However, there is another use which is particularly notable. Fights or other high action scenes. By using a rapidly shaking, swaying, panning, etc., camera angle, one leaves the viewer in significant doubt about exactly what is or was going on during the scene. This is because we can only compensate so rapidly for changing camera angles and, thus, we are rapidly confused by the motion overload. In case you’re wondering why such motion is so much more confusing on the screen than when you are dashing toward a fight on the street, it is because we have other physical cues to our own motion while running and those cues allow our brains to filter that motion out more effectively. We do not have those cues when watching a movie.

So why are film makers moving toward shakycam fights and high action scenes? It’s partly because it adds more dynamicity to the scene, but mostly it disguises errors and even allows prolonging a fight scene by editing together various angles of the same three punches/kicks in sequence. With the unstable view, no viewer is going to be able to pick that out, or at least is going to have some level of doubt. This is particularly effective when combined with the rapid cut technique where you do not stay with any particular shot for more than a second or so.

Another reason for shakycam techniques is to disguise poor backgrounds, poor effects shots, and even disguise the use of stunt doubles. While the last can be excused to some extent, the others are inexcusable. If your backgrounds or effects are bad enough that you feel you must disguise them, use some other technique that does not leave the audience motion sick, including blurring the background, using similar stylistic techniques to those of animé (minimal or no backgrounds during high action sequences), etc.

All of the above is bad enough in a 2D film. But it gets particularly problematic when combined with the assaultive 3D so common in modern cinema. Not only do you have the 3D effects causing eye strain and potential nausea, you have the vomit-inducing rapid cut shakycam scenes doing the same. Come on, people, I go to movies to be entertained, not to feel ill for an hour afterward!

I have not touched on digital effects combined with shakycam. I assume exactly how a shot is acquired is not relevant to the use of any particular camera technique.

Now, what is the solution to all this annoying shakycam fight scene stuff? It’s simple. Go back to choreographing fight sequences longer than three punches. Film them with steady cameras. Resist the temptation to cut to different angles continually during editing – stick with an angle for a while. Allow the audience to marvel at the execution of the fight sequence rather than leaving them baffled about just what happened. If you must show different angles, only do so when it adds something to the action, like showing a particularly nice facial expression on one of the combatants.

If, instead of trying to hide lack of choreography during fight scenes, you are disguising poor sets, backgrounds, etc., instead try to make the action compelling enough that the set fades into the background where it should be anyway. Use the “blurred background sharp focus” technique. Do anything that does not make the audience nauseated by the process. Or better yet, get better sets, or use strategic camera angles (which works for disguising stunt doubles, too).

In all, I long to see skilled cinematography replace low-brow trickery in the motion picture business (and that includes television).

I will leave aside the question of whether human activity has or can have any appreciable impact on the global climate. For the sake of this discussion, I will assume that through action or inaction we can, in fact, effect real change in the global climate.

Now, let’s examine what the Kyoto Protocol really does. Signatories commit to targets for total emissions of certain chemicals into the atmosphere. It is not entirely about carbon dioxide though that is a major component. Some signatories commit to reductions in emissions while others are granted room for growth.

Aside from the fact that measuring emissions is something that cannot be done accurately, there is also the problem of enforcement. How do you enforce something on a sovereign nation? Well, clearly you cannot unless you have sufficient support from other sovereign nations. Even then, if pressure does not work, you have to be willing to take punitive measures. The problem with such measures is that the ultimate end result of such measures is war. If the nation in question chooses to call the bluff, then the others must be willing to follow through. The problem with the follow-through is that it often hurts the enforcers as much or even more than the one being punished.

Even if enforcement is not an issue, the issue under Kyoto is how these targets can be met. Kyoto allows for trading “carbon credits”. Under this scheme, a nation who is not using all its emissions space can sell that unused space to a nation which needs headroom. While this seems like a good idea on paper, a few seconds thought should reveal the problems with it. In particular, it does nothing to actually reduce emissions! All it does is transfer wealth from one nation to another. The nation buying the credits has no incentive to put resources into reducing emissions and the nation selling the credits has no incentive to industrialize since doing so means that nation cannot sell as many credits.

Furthermore, under Kyoto, “developing” nations are largely exempted from emissions targets on the theory that they need to develop in order to reduce emissions or that the cost of emission reduction would be ruinous to their economic advancement. This is, of course, absurd. The same costs apply to the so-called developed nations and the developing nations are under no obligation to use the same high polluting technologies that the developed nations have deployed en masse. Indeed, it should be easier for the developing nations to move forward with cleaner technologies than it is for the developed nations because they have so much less infrastructure already in place.

Leaving aside the fairness of the developing/developed nation divide under the protocol (there are conflicting yet valid arguments), let us consider the inherent problem with the scheme. The whole point of the Kyoto Protocol is, ostensibly, to reduce emissions and it is supposedly needed because we are facing imminent ecological collapse. Yet allowing developing nations to continue increasing emissions can only hasten said collapse. Ecological realities do not care about fairness. Either emissions must be reduced or they need not be. One cannot have it both ways. The global climate affects everybody, after all. So if emission reduction is necessary but only some actors are required to take action while others are not, this will hardly accomplish the goal.

Let us consider one final point. The current state of various nation economies makes adherence to any expensive measure dangerous. Leaving aside issues arising from greed, consider what happens if the economy in a region collapses. Under such a situation, the population is struggling to simply survive. There are no spare resources to dedicate to even the most desirable moral obligations. Indeed, resources are likely insufficient to even subsist! Now, consider an economy teetering on the edge of collapse. Add an additional burden that has no payoff for a very long time. Even if the net long term result is immensely positive, the teetering economy cannot absorb the cost and then collapses. Once it collapses, the desirable actions can no longer be sustained and will be abandoned. Put another way, when faced with starvation and exposure, a population will abandon every activity that does not provide an immediate payoff in terms of survival.

Anyone who has bothered to read this far will have divined that I consider Canada pulling out of Kyoto to be a good thing. I believe the Kyoto Protocol is fundamentally flawed and at odds with reality. In fact, I believe that it is unlikely that any international accord will not be fundamentally flawed in similar ways. This is an indictment of human nature as much as anything.

Of course, nothing prevents Canada (or any nation) from pursuing emissions reduction in the absence of an international agreement. In fact, it is likely that Canada will do so. After all, there are long term benefits to doing so, ranging from cleaner air in cities to reducing the likelihood of catastrophic climate change. But in the absence of Kyoto, Canada will be free to choose achievable goals using methods that do not bankrupt its economy.

First, what does “doom” really mean? At least one dictionary defines “doom” as “fate or destiny, especially adverse fate; unavoidable ill fortune”. Common usage exclusively refers to ill fortune, the cool quote from the council of Elrond notwithstanding. It can also be used as a verb with a like meaning. But how does this apply to a planet?

The obvious definition of planetary doom is the destruction of the planet. This would include such events as the planet exploding or otherwise disintegrating, being split apart by an impact with another object in space, being ripped apart by tidal forces, or falling into a black hole. However, as long as the planet itself exists, it cannot really be said to have attained doom. Any event leading to such devastation is unpredictable or in the far distant future as measured geologically.

Clearly, then, this is not what is meant by those proclaiming the Earth’s imminent doom. Instead, a much more selfish view is implied. This selfishness is not unjustified, however. If the near term fate of the Earth renders it unsuitable for human habitation, then what does it matter to the silly humans currently inhabiting it if the planet itself continues basically unharmed? Perhaps the doomsayers really mean “The Earth as we know it is doomed!” But even that is too generic for all it takes is a major meteorological shift and the Earth as we know it is no more though said shift need not be inimical to our continued existence.

At last, we are zeroing in on the precise meaning of the statement. Let us substitute “Human life” for “The Earth”. Or, for a more friendly statement, use “We”. That means the statement really is, “ZOMG! We are doomed!”. Aha! Now that makes sense.

There are so many possible ways that humans can be doomed. We could be wiped out by a particularly virulent disease. Or perhaps a massive asteroid impact. Or maybe we will manage it ourselves with war. Perhaps we will exceed the carrying capacity of the planet. Or maybe an unfortunate genetic shift will doom us. Perhaps we will poison our own environment? None of these options are particularly far fetched. War is ever present and genocide is not unheard of. Some diseases are nearly perfectly fatal. Sterile or otherwise non-viable mutations occur all the time. Pollution is just a fancy term for poison and famine is a natural outgrowth of exceeding carrying capacity.

So are humans doomed to destruction in the near term? Perhaps. As human actions and natural variation cause changes in Earth’s ecosystem, the carrying capacity of various regions changes, and even the overall carrying capacity of the whole planet changes. As human technological capability changes, so, too, do our needs from the surrounding environment. And we also have the capability to analyze the ongoing changes and take actions to directly affect the ecosystem in both positive and negative ways. Thus, humans as a species will probably survive the apparently looming ecological crisis, but possibly with a vastly reduced population. Massive population collapse would be considered “doom” by those that do not survive, of course, but in general, this might actually be the anti-doom (or salvation if you prefer) of the human species!

Even if humans do not survive such an ecological apocalypse, it is unlikely that life on Earth will cease to exist. Indeed, it is unlikely that humans will manage to damage the entire ecosystem to the point that it cannot recover in some form. I will grant that it is, at least, possible, however. There is a precedent for life surviving such a calamity: consider the bad day that the dinosaurs had some tens of millions of years ago. Had that bad day not occurred, it is unlikely humans would have evolved to be apex predators in the first place (though it is conceivable that we would have, and even conceivable that we could have out-competed the dinosaurs for resources).

So, back to the original question. Is the Earth really doomed? On geological times scales, yes. On time scales that matter to us, probably not. On the other hand, we might be doomed. Through our economic and environmental practices may well cause our own doom. Still, even if we do not straighten out our act, it does not mean we, as a species, are actually doomed, even if we do cause the doom of countless others or even drastically change the ecology of the planet through our actions or lack thereof. So it’s not certain that we are doomed, but it’s also not certain that we are not doomed.

In summary, neither the Earth nor terrestrial life nor humans themselves are facing certain doom, but neither is the future necessarily bright. Doom, prosperity, or mediocrity, none are certain.

Let me start by saying that I do not change desktop environments for no reason. First, when Ubuntu started shipping with Unity by default, I was annoyed but I gave it a shot for a few hours before I got thoroughly pissed off with it. I mean, really, taking the menu bar out of the application is great and all, but what if I have a dozen windows open. How do I know which one has the focus? And how to I get to that menu bar all the way up there if there are other windows between and the focus is following the mouse? And there were other problems, too, such as a total lack of compatibility with applications that expect a system tray.

I didn’t try the Gnome shell scheme because it is decidedly similar to the Unity scheme. Both of them are designed for small screens. Whichever genius decided that an interface designed for small screens must also be the ultimate interface for my 24 inch wide screen 1920×1200 monitor must have been smoking something really good (where can I get some?). Also, the interface assumes single tasking using a single application. That may, indeed, be what most people do. But anyone doing serious work on a computer will tend to have several windows open all at once and have them overlapped so that the important parts of each are visible. For those people, the classic desktop metaphor works very well (and for a reason: that metaphor was designed by such people for such people). Some of us even enjoy knowing exactly what programs are open and what programs are merely available to open.

It was clear I needed to try one of the competing environments so some half year past, I set upon a quest.

First, I tried out Xfce as present in Xubuntu. It worked well enough and was similar enough to an old school desktop for an old codger like me. However, over time I ran into a great many minor niggles and missing features. It was a death by a thousand paper cuts. Eventually, I decided I couldn’t stand those little bugs and missing features. If there was another environment that did not suffer from such problems and was readily available, and which did not annoy me, these problems with Xfce would be sufficient reason to switch. So, even though I gave Xfce half a year and was able to mostly get along with it, I decided my quest had to continue.

With the advent of Oneiric Ocelot, otherwise known as Ubuntu 11.10, I decided it was a prime time to try KDE again. Folks who know me have heard me complain about KDE at length. And, with KDE 3, my complaints were valid. The default environment provided far too many cryptic choices in any install I saw. And when I say cryptic, I don’t just mean newbie level cryptic. I’m not a neophyte with computers by any stretch. I’ve been around the block a few hundred times. But I just couldn’t get along with KDE 3. Still, since then, KDE 4 has been released so I thought I might take a swipe at it.

At first, I was annoyed by a few things, but I expected that and persevered. I was able to discover the settings I needed to make the KDE system work with me instead of against me, such gems as “focus follows mouse”, “double-click to activate icons”, “turn off useless pretty effects” and so on. Now, after a week or so, I find it is actually usable. I still have a few issues finding some of my preferred applications but that is probably partly due to Kubuntu’s packaging rather than KDE.

Now, don’t get me wrong. I haven’t adopted the entire KDE koolaid scheme. I still use Firefox and Thunderbird for now. There’s no reason I can’t switch email clients since all my email is on an IMAP server but I only want to deal with so much change at a time. And Firefox has been an old friend for so long, it’s just comforting to see that dragon logo. And I’m using a raft of other applications that have nothing to do with KDE. But then, I used a raft of applications that had nothing to do with Gnome when I was using that environment, and the same under Xfce. I am pleased to note that these applications behave well regardless of whether their “preferred” environment is present.

One thing that I find somewhat weird with KDE 4 is the lack of desktop icons. More precisely, I can’t just dump files in the classic “Desktop” folder and have them appear all over the desktop. I am actually reminded of the old Windows 3.1 days when desktop icons were merely minimized programs, except now minimized programs go on the task bar (which is better). Still, this is not a major handicap even though I’ve become accustomed to cluttering up the desktop with files over the years (a close analogue to how I work in meat space, incidentally). Now, I just have a special widget open to the desktop folder and have that occupy a portion of the desktop. It works just as well, which is to say it is precisely as inconvenient as the cluttered full screen desktop is.

Are there things I don’t like about KDE4? Sure. But there are many more things I don’t like about Xfce and a boatload more that I don’t like about the current Gnome and Unity nonsense. For now, I’ll stick with KDE and see how that goes. Probably as long as it doesn’t get in my way too much, I’ll continue with it. That is, after all, my most important criterion for choosing a desktop environment. It must not get in my way when I’m trying to do stuff. Unity and the Gnome shell both fail that criterion by doing surprising things or obfuscating what’s really going on. Xfce fails simply by being just a bit too unpolished (for example, the desktop rendering program crashing randomly and icons rearranging on the desktop randomly).

Assuming you have a domain name for your web site, you have some sort of hosting service for it. For many people, it makes little difference who hosts the site. However, if you have any technical inclination, you are likely to want to tinker with it. In that particular case, you really want to have a hosting provider who is willing to talk to you, and possibly help you out with server configuration issues. This is where the cheapest solution from a gigantic company does not truly serve. Try talking to a knowledgeable technical support person at any large company and you’ll immediately realize what I mean.

The solution for that problem is to find a fairly small hosting operation who will be willing to talk to you if you have questions or problems. The company I use is Lexicom who also handle my domain registrations. Over the years, I have had excellent service from them.

There are a few things you should think carefully about when selecting a hosting company, especially related to your criteria for selecting a company.

The biggest thing a lot of people worry about when they select a hosting provider is support. Many people think they need 24/7 support. In actual fact, you don’t need it. Response during a business day is enough for your web site. Nothing about your blog is critical to your life. If it happens to be down for a few hours, or even a few days in a rare circumstance, it is not going to destroy your life. Neither will it destroy your business. Consider that even the likes of Google or Amazon have downtime. How about the recent multi-day outage for Blackberry? And face it, your site is not even remotely in the same league as them. Instead of a 24/7 support phone line, what you should be looking for is knowledgeable and competent support staff. After all, waiting through the weekend until Monday morning and then having the problem actually fixed is better than playing the telephone referral dance for several days and still having no resolution.

Another thing to consider is what you are going to do with your site. If you are just going to put up a wordpress blog, you do not need a “hosting control panel”, DNS management, five MySQL databases, extensive web site statistics, SSL certificates, mod_perl, the cloud, or any other buzzword the hosting providers like to throw around. You just need a basic hosting package that provides the minimal requirements for your site. Almost all support PHP and a MySQL database, which is probably all you need.

Also, when considering the included storage and traffic in each package, think about it realistically. Most web sites have hardly any real traffic. Very few exceed 1GB of traffic in a month on a regular basis. Even fewer exceed 5GB. Additionally, very few need more than a few dozen MB of actual storage space. There is no benefit to selecting a hosting provider that allows 50GB of traffic monthly over one that allows 5GB monthly if your web site is only ever going to do 1GB monthly. A similar consideration applies for storage.

Finally, does it really make sense to choose the hosting provider that is $1/month cheaper simply to save $12/year? That’s less than 2 designer coffees. Is your time to switch providers to save $12/year worth less than that $12? I know mine isn’t. (The same goes for domain registration fees, by the way.)

My hosting provider, Lexicom, charges $60/year for a basic hosting package that includes everything needed to run wordpress, or most any other reasonable content management system. Add that to my domain registration fee of about $20/year, I pay about $80/year for my web site. The domain itself would be cheaper if I renewed for more than one year at a time. Sure, I might be able to get the same thing for $30/year from one of the huge companies out there, but I value the time it would take to switch (more than an hour probably) considerably higher than $50. Also, I have the satisfaction of knowing that the company I deal with is Canadian and is not subject to foreign legal systems. I know my data is in Canada and not sitting on some random virtual server in, say, the United States.

So if you’re looking for a hosting arrangement for a domain, or even to transfer an existing one to a nicer provider, go ahead an give Lexicom a call. They’ll be happy to talk to you.

First, what is summer anyway? Generally, it is the warmest time of year with, on average, the longest days. In areas with cold winters, it is usually the bulk of the growing season. In other areas, summer might actually be the time with the least growth, sometimes being the dry season. In short, the specific definition of what summer is depends on where one is located on the Earth. It has historically been a fairly informal distinction.

Things might be clearer in the context of the other seasons. Winter is obviously the coldest time of year, usually associated with the shortest days and, in many parts of the world, snow or storms. In colder climates, little or no plant growth occurs either due to lack of light or the fact that the ground is too cold. Summer is the opposite time of year. Spring is merely the transition from winter to summer and autumn is merely the transition from summer to winter.

Depending where one is located, the relative lengths of the various seasons vary. Further from the equator tends to experience longer winters while closer to the equator experiences longer summers. At the equator, the weather tends to stay fairly consistent year round and one can consider the equator to be essentially seasonless. (That is not truly the case, but the important distinctions have little to do with summer or winter.)

Again, depending on latitude, spring and autumn may be longer or shorter. In more extreme latitudes, the sun moves more significantly between equinox and solstice than at lower latitudes. This means that the increase in daylight intensity and length is more marked. This tends to lead to more marked season shifts.

So what does this all mean? Well, where I am in southern Alberta, winter can arrive as early as October and last as late as May. Yes, that is nearly nine months. That is the extreme case, however. Usually, it is closer to late November through early April. Spring starts as soon as the weather breaks, the temperature increases above freezing most nights, and it usually comes with rain or wet snow (snow earlier with rain later). Summer arrives usually around mid to late May and lasts until some time in September at which point autumn begins. Autumn is usually fairly dry and comes with trees going dormant. Depending on the tree, it may start to show its “fall colours” as early as early August but most native species do not do so until September, often not until the first “killing frost”. In other words, spring is often quite short, summer fairly long, autumn variable, and winter quite long.

Now, what I have described is approximately correct for my area. Move several hundred kilometres north and the timing changes. Move several hundred kilometres east and things change. Move up in altitude and things change. Place an ocean with a warm current beside land and things change (such as the gulf stream and Europe). In some parts of the world, the four seasons are roughly equal lengths. In many others, there are no real seasons. In yet others, one or two seasons dominate.

Our modern world, however, has decided that seasons must each be one quarter of the year for everyone. These calendar seasons might make sense for small parts of the world where the seasons approximately agree. However, trying to apply the same definition across a large geographic area, say Canada or Europe or what have you is insane. In doing so, one must pick a dividing line and stick with it whether it makes sense across the whole area or not.

To further complicate matters, there are also seasons defined in circumstances other than common usage. Meteorological seasons are fairly reasonable in many areas, taking into account the lag between change in day length and the actual change in temperature. Astronomers like to define things in precise terms using the solstices and equinoxes as the centre points for the seasons. And then there are bureaucratic situations which often assign even quarters to the seasons with the dividing line often being somewhat arbitrary.

The practical upshot of all this is that the debate about “the one true start of summer” and related nonsense is just that. Nonsense. First, the specific context in which the question is asked will change the answer. Second, most people couldn’t care less what some scientist somewhere thinks should be the start of summer and they care only marginally more about some bureaucrat. What most people care about is what the weather is doing outside their door at any given time. It is that weather that defines what the season is. And the changing weather is variable, as we all know. That is, the changes don’t always happen at the same time every year. So picking a fixed date on a calendar for the start of any season is nuts.

So the next time someone starts the debate about when summer start or ends (or any other season, for that matter), ask them about the context of their assertion. Ask them to define the characteristics of the seasons and then ask them when those characteristics are often met in the local area. Either or both of you might be surprised at what you discover.

For the past week or so, the big “D” word has been bandied about. Is the US Treasury going to default? Is it going to miss interest payments on bonds? Or is it going to do something else? Or is it simply going to be business as usual because Congress raises the debt ceiling?

First, let’s consider if the debt ceiling is raised. That will obviously stave off immediate consequences. However, unless spending comes under control, the whole drama will repeat itself in a few years. The US nation debt will continue to grow at an alarming pace and that growth will likely accelerate as the US population continues to age. So raising the debt ceiling is a temporary measure at best. At least one commentator has suggested that by 2015, things will be looking quite bleak, even in this scenario.

Now, suppose the US Treasury defaults on its obligations, or part of them. This would, of course, have far reaching consequences. The precise magnitude and reach of those consequences is difficult to predict, however. It will certainly cause a major shakeup in the world financial markets as the lemmings who have bought into the USD as a reserve currency flock to another currency to use as such (the Euro? Something else?). It could even touch off another round of “depression” (the other “D” word).

So, it seems that defaulting is not a good option in the short term though it might turn out better in the very long term. It also seems that raising the debt ceiling without changing the status quo is only a very short term solution. Is there another option?

Well, there is. The US Treasury could actually issue more money. That’s right. I said “print money”. Now I can hear everyone screaming at me. That’s bad. It will lead to runaway inflation leading to bread costing $25000 per loaf. There is no way printing more money is going to help! But if you will bear with me long enough to explain, you may find the result interesting.

What is the purpose of the US Treasury borrowing money? You may think it is to meat its obligations when it is short. And, on the surface, that would be correct. However, the net effect of the Treasury borrowing money is to increase the amount of money in circulation. This happens through the magic of fractional reserve lending, which I will not explain in detail here as there are many sites which expend a great deal of effort explaining it. Think about what I just said. The US Treasury is actually adding money to circulation by borrowing money. (See www.positivemoney.org.uk for an explanation of the mechanics and why this is a bad idea.)

Now that we’ve established that the US Treasury borrowing money is actually increasing the circulating money supply, let’s consider the option. Printing money also increases the money supply, but it does so directly. No magic is required. No fractional reserve lending. And, best of all, no hidden interest costs to cover later. (Borrowing to create money using fractional reserve magic requires continual inflation to simply stave off collapse.) And here’s the best part. There is no need to increase the debt ceiling because this new money would not be borrowed from anywhere.

To answer the runaway inflation concerns, this is easily handled by limiting government spending to something reasonable. If the current level of spending is not causing runaway inflation, then financing it by printing money instead of borrowing money will not either. And printing money instead of issuing bonds will have the net beneficial effect of reducing annual operation costs by eliminating interest payments over time. While these interest payments may be a fairly small fraction of the overall budget, when you are facing a debt crisis, every cut matters. You do not solve personal financial woes by eliminating your biggest expense (housing probably), but by cutting a bit here and a bit there until it adds up to enough to balance the books. The same applies to a government. Reduce debt service costs as part of an overall strategy to reduce the deficit. Every dollar saved by reducing debt servicing is one less dollar that needs to be cut from social security or health care or which has to be raised through additional taxes.

I’ll leave with one final note about printing money as a solution. It is critical that printing money not become the primary mechanism by which governments fund operation for that way leads to runaway inflation. Instead, the government must fund its operations at a level that keeps new money creation at a level that maintains inflation at an approximately neutral level. That is, enough to keep the economy liquid and no more. Thus, balanced budgets are still needed and are, in fact, critical.

The positive money site I mentioned above talks about much of this from the perspective of the United Kingdom, and without reference to debt ceilings. However, the basic concepts still apply, regardless of the specific implementation referenced. In this particular case, the United States and the United Kingdom have similar enough structures that the same problems and solutions generally apply.

In the latest version of Bacula, it is possible to have multiple jobs operating on the same volume  pool at the same time, even if that volume pool is a collection of disk files. This is particularly useful when utilizing the “Virtual Full Backup” functionality which needs to read one volume and write another simultaneously. However, the documentation is sorely lacking in just how to do this. Furthermore, even google-fu failed to turn up a useful answer, instead turning up only people who ran into the deadlock problem and if there were suggested solutions, it was always “use more than one pool” which doesn’t actually solve the problem.

The deadlock problem arises because Bacula treats file volumes the same as tapes and, thus, requires a “drive” to read or write them. In the classic configuration of such, there is a single drive which can be either reading or writing a single volume at any given time. Thus, one deadlocks with a virtual backup and one can only do one real job at a time (leaving aside interleaving blocks on the volume which is less than ideal in most circumstances).

The solution to this problem is both elegant and simple, but it is not obvious. The solution is to use an autochanger. This is the only way to have multiple devices associated with the same volume pool. However, one cannot simply specify “use an autochanger for these file volumes”. It requires some additional futzing around, including creating a changer script/program to actually handle the changing. It also imposes a slightly different scheme on accessing file volumes. That is, instead of Bacula selecting the correct file from a directory somewhere, and pointing the storage definition at that directory, the changer now has to handle all that and the storage definition has to be pointed at a filename.

All this is best described by example. I will not provide the actual code for the changer program but rather describe what it must do. Suppose you have a set of volumes in a directory /backups/. Suppose you have ten volumes labelled VOL001 thorugh VOL010. These volumes are all in the default volume pool.

First, you would set up the virtual changer. One could, for instance, set up the changer to use a directory structure, which is what will be described here. Suppose that structure is all under the directory /changer/. You will need a means of tracking the contents of the virtual slots and also tracking what is currently mounted in each virtual drive. So lets create /changer/drives/ and /changer/slots/. Under the drives directory, we’ll create a folder for each virtual drive, say “0″ and “1″ for two drives. In each of those, we’ll create an empty “info” file which will store the name of the mounted volume. Empty means nothing mounted.

In the slot directory, we’ll create a text file for each slot in the changer that is filled. The file will contain the volume file name, not including the path name. Any empty slot will simply not have a file for it. The name of each slot file is simply the slot number. Slots are numbered starting at one. So in this case, we might create a file “1″ which contains “VOL001″ and “2″ which contains “VOL002″ and so on.

Now a changer script needs to be created. This can be a simple shell script or it can be written in any programming language you prefer. In this instance, it will accept three parameters. The first is the command from bacula. The second will be the drive number. The third will be the slot number. How these parameters get there is defined in the bacula configuration files which are discussed later.

There are several comands bacula will issue. The first is “list” which provides a list of all slots with media in them in the form of “<number>:<volume>”. The documentation for bacula defines the second field as “barcode” but for our purpose, the volume name will do. This is one reason we store the volume name in the slot files. The output should be silent for slots that do not contain anything.

Another important command is “slots” which simply prints out the number of slots in the changer. This can be an arbitrary number larger than the number of volumes you are using. Even numbers like 500 or 1000 are fine here. It is harmless to set this higher than the number of volumes you have.

The meat of the changer, however, is the “load” and “unload” commands. The unload command can simply remove the “tape” symbolic link for the specified drive and empty the “info” file for it. The “load” command will need to work out the full path name of the volume file for the specified slot and point the “tape” symbolic link at it. It will also need to update the “info” file accordingly. Finally, the “loaded” command simply returns the slot number which is currently loaded into the specified drive, or “0″ if none is.

As you can see, the changer program need not be terribly complex though it will need to know something about the volume storage location and so on. It should be easy enough to work out how to code one based on the above description. A word of advice, however: make the program fail clean. Bacula will notice failure exits and handle them accordingly so make sure that you explicitly exit with success if you have a failure that is non-fatal.

Now that we have the infrastructure worked out, it’s time to teach Bacula about it. This is actually the easy part, and believe it or not, can be done with an existing configuration with existing volumes!

First, in the storage director configuration, comment out your existing Device resource. Now add on, using the existing resource as a template (assuming it was already a File type resource). You wil need to add “AutoChanger = yes” and “DriveIndex = N” to it. N is the drive number in the changer. So if you have two drives in the changer, 0 is the first drive and 1 is the second drive. This is important. You will need to add an equivalent Device entry for each drive in the changer.

Also in the storage director configuration, you will need to add an “AutoChanger” resource. Give it a name distinct from the Device resources. In this case, we’ll call it “DiskGroup”. Add a “Device =” entry for each drive in the changer. You can specify any old junk for the required option “ChangerDevice” since we will not be using it. The really important part is the specification for changer command. Assuming you put your program in “/changer/script.sh”, you would add ‘ChangerCommand = “/changer/script.sh %o %d %S”‘. The “%o” is the command bacula wants to do. “%d” is the drive index from the Device configuration. “%S” (note the capital “S”!) is the slot number to operate on, starting at 1. This is where the parameters for the changer program come from.

Now, in the director configuration file, update your storage definition to refer to the device name for the changer (“DiskGroup” in this case). Also, add “AutoChanger = yes” to the definition. You may also wish to set “MaximumConcurrentJobs” to the number of virtual drives (2 in this case) in the changer.

Now you can restart bacula to make sure the configuration changes are noticed. Once done, bring up the console and run “update slots scan”. This will cause bacula to automatically query the changer program to find out what volumes are in what slots and update the catalog appropriately. This is a critical step as it avoids having to manually update the information for each volume which would be tedious and error prone in the case of hundreds of volumes.

Now that’s everything. You can now do multiple jobs onto separate volumes in the same pool. Nothing else needs modification, which is a testament to bacula’s design.

However, if you wish to do virtual backups with both the source and destination in the same pool, you will, of course, need to configure the pool correctly. If the pool is called “Default”, set “NextPool = Default”. If your storage entry is called “Default”, then you would set “Storage = Default”. Both of those in the Pool resource for “Default”. That’s it. There’s nothing more you need to do to make this work.

I’ll leave you with one final note: make sure to test your changer script manually before letting bacula loose on it. Then, once you’re sure it works, run a few small jobs in bacula to make sure it really is working. Run them manually in case intervention is required. You may need to fix your changer program or manually clean up a mess in the changer directory. Once that is working, keep an eye on the automatic stuff for a while to make sure it really is working!