Feb

12

Someone please tell me there’s something like this for the iPhone

By mike

My Tracks for Google Android phonesClick for larger image

’cause I’m dead-set on an iPhone, and I’m dead-set against T-Mobile. But how cool of a feature is My Tracks?

Many GPS receivers require you to plug a separate device into a computer, install software, transfer, convert and upload your track to the web. With My Tracks, this has become a whole lot simpler. I no longer need to carry multiple devices when I go out for a ride, and I can easily share my rides on the spot with anyone I’d like by recording and uploading my track right from my phone and then sharing it out via email or even Twitter.

Granted, I think that Twitter is utterly stupid, but how useful would this be for motorbike rides, 4-wheeling, mountain biking, proving just how many tracks you got in last weekend at Mary Jane? So cool…

EDIT: The folks at TheAdventureLife.org have posted up their top 25 outdoor iPhone apps. Maybe “Trails”?

Jan

27

A “Multivendor Post” to help our mutual iSCSI customers using VMware

By mike

esxiscsi

Click for larger, more confusing view

Virtual Geek has an amazingly insightful post combining multiple presentations and points from representatives from EMC, MVWare, NetApp, Dell/Equalogic, HP/Lefthand, and some other folks in the business. As you can see by the names involved, we’re talking about most every major virtualization storage player in the industry today - and they’re here to help us make heads or tails of iSCSI storage. You’ll even be able to make sense of that diagram above after reading:

As discussed earlier, the ESX 3.x software initiator really only works on a single TCP connection for each target – so all traffic to a single iSCSI Target will use a single logical interface. Without extra design measures, it does limit the amount of IO available to each iSCSI target to roughly 120 – 160 MBs of read and write access.

This design does not limit the total amount of I/O bandwidth available to an ESX host configured with multiple GbE links for iSCSI traffic (or more generally VMKernel traffic) connecting to multiple datastores across multiple iSCSI targets, but does for a single iSCSI target without taking extra steps.

Here are the questions that customers usually ask themselves:

Question 1: How do I configure MPIO (in this case, VMware NMP) and my iSCSI targets and LUNs to get the most optimal use of my network infrastructure? How do I scale that up?

Question 2: If I have a single LUN that needs really high bandwidth – more than 160MBps and I can’t wait for the next major ESX version, how do I do that?

Question 3: Do I use the Software Initiator or the Hardware Initiator?

Question 4: Do I use Link Aggregation and if so, how?

Here are the answers you seek…

Jan

9

Pretty cool tilt-shift web tool

By mike

Tilt-shift photography is the process by which an ordinary photo is manipulated to look more like photographs of models. And I have no idea how to do it. But using TiltShiftMaker.com,you can simply upload one of your photos to their website, adjust some things like the area of focus and color enhancement, and then download your (voila!) tilt-shifted photo. Cool stuff:

View of Ouray, CO from my birthday trip last year (click for larger version):

img_0242

Tilt-shifted version (click for larger version):

img_0242-tiltshift2

via BoingBoing.net

May

7

Still one of the best gifts I’ve ever gotten…

By mike

…and imagine finding it pop up on Toolmonger!

Some Toolmongers can open a bottle with practically anything: this Appalachian Trail pocket knife, for instance, or the edge of a bar. For myself, the choice of tool is critical — so I opt for a pope bottle opener, which makes a great conversation piece as well as a functional answer to my need for refreshment. If you want a popener for yourself or for your favorite beer drinker, you can find at least one online.

Our friend Justin brought me back one from Rome in 2002 or so. Since then, it’s become indispensible around the house, holding it’s own little place in our silverware drawer.