Ben Benner’s Blog

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