Ben Benner’s Blog

Now anyone who followed the early days of Apple’s iPod, should remember the criticism they faced about the fact that the battery is not replaceable, and that initially they did not even offer you the option to pay them money to replace the battery. Initially you were screwed.

Because of the fact that the batteries are good for about 16 months or so (depending upon how much you use it), the story didn’t break for a while. The fact that you cannot simply replace the battery means that there is a built-in upgrade cycle. For some folks they will want to retain their cherished iPod and simply pay the $69 dollars to get a fresh battery in what is likely not their original iPod.

While I am talking about the non-replaceable battery and how Apple has a built-in replacement cycle, guaranteeing that a chunk of their consumer-base is going to buy a new iPod ever 16 months (or at least shell out another $69). What I am really wanting to write about here tonight is how, Apple, god I can’t believe that I have to write this.

Apple stole my iPod Nano.

Yup, I am relatively certain it was an agent of Apple who stole my iPod Nano from me, whilst I was getting off American Airlines flight 502 from San Jose and landing in Austin around 10:50pm (central). It was there one minute and I could swear that I put it into my laptop bag, but when I looked for it the next day at the office (because it was time to blast my eardrums with some loud and abusive tunes), it was gone.

No where to be found. I thought that maybe I had removed it from my laptop bag and had left it (or dropped it) somewhere in my home office. I even searched the trunk of my car, but to no avail, it has vanished.

In discussing the disappearance of my iPod Nano with Jeremy, he reminded me that Apple had just released a new iPod Nano.

And that is when it hit me. An agent of Apple must have filched my beloved silver iPod Nano (3rd Gen) to ensure that I am forced to buy a new one (4th Gen).

But before, I get a cease-and-desist notice about this blog post. Let me say that, I in no way am accusing Apple or Mr Jobs of stealing my iPod Nano.

For the record I do not think that there is any sort of master list of all the folks out there that have iPods  and Mr Jobs is arranging for them to be, hmmmm, what would be the best term, let’s just say ‘retired from service’. I am sure he has a VP for that. (just kidding)

I was an idiot and left it on the plane. I had been listening to it on the way back an reading More Joel on Software. And I had been using the seat next to me, well as an open seat next to me to store my various ‘carry-on items that I had taken out during the flight’. I remember telling myself to put everything from within the seat into my bag. And I managed to put everything in there, except the black timbuk2 accessory (velcro) pouch that held my Nano.

MORON!!!

It just happens to be a (lucky) coincidence that Apple releases the 4th Gen iPod Nano at the same time I was a moron and left my Nano on the plane.

I had been wanting to write a blog post about how ‘I am an iPod Junkie’, because of the fact that I own(ed) a Nano, a Touch and a Shuffle. Well, if I do end up getting the 4th Gen Nano, maybe I will finally do that post.

The wife has told me that I should use my iPod touch more. I do use it, but usually to surf the web, read email (quickly) and watch movies. It however lacks that scroll wheel, which provides the tactile interface allowing for quick changes in volume and the ability to quickly scroll through your entire music collection.

The topic of how I should just use my Touch while waiting to see if American Airlines happens to find it (or a good Samaritan happens to turn it in), I told him that it didn’t make sense to me that the Touch doesn’t have a speaker in it, so that I can listen to music or movies without headphones or the ability to change the volume without having to ‘wake it up’. I also think it would be better if it had a camera built-in, given the fact that there is a ‘photos’ ‘button’ so prominently placed on the main screen of the Touch.

Guess what else Apple has released, as 2nd Generation iPod touch.

YUP! It has a speaker and external volume controls, maybe the 3rd Generation will have that camera built-in.

Well, I need to get to bed. Maybe Santa will bring me the 4th Gen Nano for X-mas, course my b-day is literally right around the corner.

Laterz

Please note this post is an expressive piece of FICTION, the only real truth in here is that I lost my iPod Nano and that Apple recently launched the 4th Gen iPod Nano and 2nd Gen iPod Touch.

FireFox had an astounding 8.7M downloads in 24 hours.

I am sure that the Guiness Book of World Records folks will award them the record for most downloads in a 24 hour period.

Having been using the Beta releases of FireFox 3, I am pretty familiar with the latest updates to the browser, and I need to point out that FireFox 3 is a HUGE improvement over FireFox 2 (not that FireFox 2 was a bad browser).

Laterz

It looks like someone over at NetCraft had a similar thought about the timing of the posts on Mozilla’s blog in relation to the kick-off of the FireFox 3 download.

My original post.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

Twitter’s problems have even hit the world of InkTank, which is one of the web comics that I read. The artist who draws InkTank used to have a GREAT comic called Angst Technology, I learned a lot and have always wished that we had some IT ninjas (or that I was fast enough to snatch the pebble from master’s hand).

I have to say that the WordPress interface here is pretty boss, it is a bit more intuitive than the Serendipity interface (notably I am running an OLD version of Serendipity, but still I think WordPress wins).

I am likely going to have to try to roll my own header image rotater, which honestly I think will be a fun little project to work on. I tried out a couple of different ones last night, none of which gave me the effect I was looking for.

I have setup the main page of my new domain, Ben.Dominguez-Benner.com, with some temporary links to stuff. I am still not entirely sure what all I am going to post and do with this new domain, but it is going to be about me. I have found that even in the digital world I tend to keep to myself.

My blogging lately has been very sparse, I need to increase that, but I also want to share my thoughts on various topics that aren’t necessarily about what is going on in my life. Believe it or not, I can be quite opinionated, particularly about technology.

I had a great conversation the other night with a buddy of mine in Dallas, Bobby Goodwin, about the .NET and how it has some advantages over PHP.

Let it be known that I have always stated that .NET is a good structure for the Enterprise, for an environment where the users might be accepting of some downtime (do to an upgrade, or a mishap). However, from what Bobby has told me, .NET might just be ready for some real action on the Web.

Those are probably fighting words for the folks out there who the annoited accolytes of .NET. However, the one thing that I have seen time and time again with commercial and even OpenSource frameworks (or even blog packages), there is a certain crossroads when it comes to handling a web app in a multi-server environment.

And as Bobby stated that night, .NET can do all the stuff PHP can (and more apparently). My statements about .NET possibly not handling a multi-server environment (ie the same app running on multiple servers at the same time) is not about the programming language. I made the comment that night that the operating system would be a factor.

I think I have to retract that, because with some proper load balancing schemes (DNS load-balancing appliances, or a DNS service that does the load-balancing), then all the load balancing is done in an agnostic fashion to the operating system.

I think it is a bit of a culture issue, and honestly I am not sure culture is the correct word.

With enough money you can build out as redundant a system using Windows and .NET as you could using Linux and PHP. I think for me the idea of being able to buy a server, load a FREE OS, FREE Database, Free Web Server make me think about the architecture of a system (say like a big micro-blogging service that has been having problems) as merely a need to buy a few more boxes that can handle the particular part of the overall system that is innundated with requests.

In part because the cost of the hardware is very negliable these days. I mean for a small indie project $1,500 for a server is a killer (which really means they should be using $300-$500 cheapo servers vs say DELL), but to a company $1,500 for a server is ultra-cheap. But cheap is relative, back in the early days of my career the most stable UNIX like servers were RISC based, which meant IBM, SUN, and HP were your best bet.

They were also your most expensive as well, costing back in ‘98 easily $100k for something that could handle some load and in 2000 it was more along the lines of $30k-$40k. With cheaper and more powerful x86 servers out there and a stable (FREE) Linux OS you could begin to get POWERFUL servers for about $2000-$10,000 between like 2004-2007.

Today $10k will buy you a VERY POWERFUL server.

However, when you start tacking on Lincensing costs for the Operating System and a Database engine, the nature of your architecture usually changes, I belive you typically look for ways to grow your architecture vertically vs horizontally (ie buying BIGGER boxes instead of MORE boxes).

I have gotten way off topic here and should probably look to follow up this post with seperate posts on these topics.

In closing though, I find it funny that the issues that Twitter has had made it’s way in the InkTank universe, I also thought it was good timing considering that I had just made a post that made fun of the Twitter API stability issues.

Back to the grind.

Laterz

FireFox is trying for a world record in regards to the number of downloads in a 24 hour period of their latest browser, FireFox 3.

I have been running their various FireFox 3 Beta version since they first released it. I had found that FireFox 2 was slow to open, and would ‘bog down’ when I had a couple of dozen tabs open. I also found that web apps that were very JavaScript intensive didn’t run quite as fast I wanted in FireFox 2.

Therefore, when the FireFox 3 Beta release was available I installed it without thinking twice on the subject.

Today at 10am Pacific they kicked-off their efforts to win the world record, or so at least I think they tried to.

Since Noon (here, 10 am Pacific) Jeremy and I have been trying to download FireFox 3. We have not had any luck. Their servers were getting just SLAMMED, presumably because everyone and their brother (and uncle, and cousin, and so on and so forth) have been trying to download the latest version.

The main FireFox.com site was not working, nor was the SpreadFireFox.com site either. However, the Mozilla Blog was still up and running. I checked there for updates, not until about 40 minutes after the noon hour did a post come through, confirming that the FireFox servers were getting slammed and they promised to get them working normally very soon.

OK, ummm… yeah.

I have been party to a few product launches in my day, so I feel safe to say “This ain’t my first rodeo.”

However, I am very surprised that the good folks over at Mozilla didn’t have their sh!t together before going for a world record. I mean spin up a few mirrors (servers) on EC2 @ Amazon or get RackSpace to help you out with a special for the 24 hour period, I mean I am sure RackSpace would have killed to be part of a Promo, something along the lines of “Our servers and network handled the load the world record setting release of FireFox 3.”

For a brief moment there both Jeremy and I were able to get to a very pretty looking screen that said it would let us download FireFox 3 via the SpreadFireFox.com site. However, when we finally downloaded from the ‘Download FireFox 3′ button, it turned out to be FireFox 2, not FireFox 3, suck!

Now when I try to go back to SpreadFireFox.com, I keep getting a screen that looks like the following…

Again don’t get me wrong, I love FireFox it is the best browser I have used in years (notably my default browser for everything I do, sometimes though I end up having to use IE)

Jeremy and I joked that maybe the FireFox guys were using the TwitterAPI and that is why they are down. (In case you didn’t know, the TwitterAPI has had problems recently — article1 – article2.)

Speaking of Twitter, Jeremy was able to find a link to download FireFox 3 that actually worked, because someone posted it on Twitter.

Back to the grind.

Laterz