I use the amazon metadata for creating /etc/hosts and do this on a cron schedule. This does everything I need. Instead of fancy DynDNS tricks or having to run and manage an internal DNS server I just have a ruby script that looks at the metadata ec2 to build /etc/hosts. It’s easy. To set it up yourself and try it all you need are 3 easy steps.

Tim Dysinger » Using Amazon EC2 Metadata as a Simple DNS

Running Synergy

Synergy lets you use one keyboard and mouse across multiple computers. To do so it requires that all the computers are connected to each other via TCP/IP networking. Most systems come with this installed.

Got this working in 15 minutes. Neat!

Synergy - Share Keyboard/Mouse Across Multiple Comptuers

The quality of the initial open source package is certainly a huge decision factor. In healthcare, not many comprehensive open source packages are available. The Veteran's Administration (VA), however, did release with OpenVistA a very comprehensive EMR product, used in the daily operation of over 130 VA hospitals and clinics across the nation. OpenVistA was registered with SourceForge in 2003 and receives about 100 downloads a day, which is considerable for a specialized EMR system. OpenVistA has been translated into several languages and implemented in many hospitals outside the U.S., which shows the potential of open source for global cooperation. Currently, it is based on MUMPs and C#, but since it is open source, a potential user could re-write the front end, for example, in Java, to make it platform independent. Another emerging open source package comes from Tolven, which is more focused on the needs of primary care physicians and personal health records.

Example by @StephenFleming of a successful FOSS software project by the VA, they created an EMR system and open sourced it.

Open Source in Healthcare: Cui bono? - Healthcare Information Technology

The straight dope

Our nameservers are 208.67.222.222 and 208.67.220.220.

OpenDNS - Small/Medium Business - Use OpenDNS

In essence, you can do almost anything to a single record* — that’s a map step. But you are sharply limited in how you combine information about multiple (often intermediate) records – that’s a reduce step. Still, reduce steps let you do counts, sums, or other aggregations. That, plus the general power of map steps, makes MapReduce useful for at least three major classes of applications:

1. Text tokenization, indexing, and search
2. Creation of other kinds of data structures (e.g., graphs)
3. Data mining and machine learning

Except for the building of entire search engines, these are all application areas that data warehouse users should and do care about. And they all still could benefit from large performance increases, as is evidenced by the routine compromises analysts make in areas such as data reduction, sampling, over-simplified models and the like.

Why MapReduce matters to SQL data warehousing | DBMS2 -- DataBase Management System Services

Everything back then took work and time. In rural America, it wasn't unusual to walk five miles to a friend's house to play a few games of checkers. Life was monotonous and physically challenging. In the countryside there was no plumbing and electricity hadn't been invented yet. You spent a lot of time hauling around water, chopping firewood, planting and tending crops. It took nearly continuous physical activity. Leisure was no different: it took time, work, and active minds.

Want to socialize, hang out with the buds? It was a big deal, a special day. You'd either walk a ways or get on your horse and ride. If it were a really big day, like election, you'd hitch the wagon up to the plow team. It was a lot of work and hassle, but eventually you'd end up at the dance, the election, the church, the pub, or wherever. There would be drinking and story-telling ugoing on for hours on end. Hey -- these were your friends and it took a lot of hassle to spend time with them. For instance, when the American Colonies were formed, Ben Franklin and a few other delegates threw a kegger before everybody else arrived that went on for several days.

...

Technology is Heroin.

It's still very early. We're still in the phase of expecting some even better technology to come along and save us from this problem. Programmers are creating "no procrastinate" options for their web sites in order to help users not spend so much time there. Programs are being written to track online time to show users where they are spending all of their energy. The new addictive program will eliminate the ills of the old one.

Meanwhile, people get fatter and fatter, unable to get around or physically accomplish normal chores from a 100 years ago. Intelligence is going down as fewer and fewer books are being read (news flash: the printed book industry is on the way out unless this trend stops), and social organizations like churches and civic clubs see fewer and fewer members attend their meetings. The skills that are increasing? Reflex time. Ability to solve abstract, short-timespan problems. Basically the skills we need to interact with our entertainment. More and more, Indians and Chinese -- people coming from cultures who have been shut out of the technical world until recently -- are writing software for hardcore western appetites to consume.

Technology is Heroin - What To Fix

In this talk from RubyFringe, Damien Katz explains what drove him to create CouchDB, why he chose Erlang and more.

InfoQ: CouchDB and Me

Processing is an open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions. It is used by students, artists, designers, researchers, and hobbyists for learning, prototyping, and production. It is created to teach fundamentals of computer programming within a visual context and to serve as a software sketchbook and professional production tool. Processing is an alternative to proprietary software tools in the same domain.

Wow, neat!

Processing 1.0

In this talk from RubyFringe, Damien Katz explains what drove him to create CouchDB, why he chose Erlang and more.

InfoQ: CouchDB and Me

Ok I’ve just converted a second machine to use the NAS for networked Time Machine backups, and this time things went straight through without any mistakes. Here’s the run-down:

How to use any shared drive on your machine as a time capsule.

NETGEAR ReadyNAS Community » Blog Archive » Making Time Machine work with the ReadyNAS