Debian: Synchronizing server time with NTP
Posted on 14 March 2010 | No responses
It’s a good practice to have all the servers synchronized with the same date & time, no matter what servers you’re using (windows, linux, mac, aix, etc). It’s a quite simple configuration to avoid any kind of problems related with time, some applications specify this requirement other don’t so please don’t wait until you have problems to apply this simple config.
Configuring Debian GNU/LiNUX to use a public NTP Server is simple, just do this:
$ sudo aptitude install ntpdate
The ntpdate package includes the file /etc/if-up.d/ntpdate that runs /usr/bin/ntpdate-debian after an interface (eth0, eth1, etc.) is up so you won’t have to worry about configuring this synchronizing process to run automatically. Let’s run it manually so we apply the time from the NTP Server right now:
$ sudo ntpdate-debian 14 Mar 21:41:50 ntpdate[10808]: step time server 146.164.48.5 offset -0.589987 sec
That’s it! This is the simple way but if you want to try a more advance config just read /usr/share/doc/ntpdate/README.Debian and /etc/default/ntpdate files in your server.
Posted on 13 March 2010 | No responses
I’m a huge fun of TED, great so great conferences, topics, etc. This time, I’m want to share the most interesting videos about dance for me.
The LXD: In the Internet age, dance evolves …
Dan Pink on the surprising science of motivation
Posted on 3 March 2010 | No responses
This is the first video where I saw Daniel Pink talking about motivation (The candle problems is a really interesting experiment). This video is highly recommended for managers that want to motivate their company, team, etc.
Posted on 2 March 2010 | No responses
This is not a fake! it’s a real Window Explorer error in my PC at work, it’s weird, isn’t it?
Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale
Posted on 28 February 2010 | No responses
This video is from World Science Festival 2009. I’ve found it in TED as Bobby McFerrin hacks your brain with music.
Bobby McFerrin Demonstrates the Power of the Pentatonic Scale
Posted on 23 February 2010 | 1 response
The migraine affects different aspects of your life: work and productivity, social relationship as result it affects the quality of living. I wrote about my migraine in a previous post, in short I have migraine with aura accompanied by vertigo for 15 to 30 minutes and after that a headache for 6 to 24 hour. The migraine trigger for me is little or too much sleeping and stress makes it happens more frequently.
I’ve got that information by taking notes for three months. The solution could be just trying to sleep eight hours but sometimes it’s inevitable because of the crunch time at work or personal project, going to a social event, etc. etc. I want to avoid any dependence of pharmacological drugs so what can I do? I tried different ways (founded in internet) to solve this problem: going to the gym, eating an ice cream after the aura, etc, etc. and nothing works for me.
In 2008, when I was thinking about my migraine problem I read Pragmatic Thinking & Learning by Andy Hunt. It’s a really good book and I like the way Andy explains how our mind works using computer metaphors. So I got an idea,… I’ve been involved in software development since I was ten years old so maybe if I thinking about the migraine as a software problem (bug) could help me to find a solution.
I spent a whole week thinking about the migraine as a bug. I used the trial and error method to verify my ideas for some months until I got this:
The migraine starts with 15 to 30 minutes with an aura, the problem is the amount of wrong information between the systems involved (brain and eyes) because I see something (aura) that doesn’t exist and my brain knows that so maybe it requests again and again information to the eyes. That could explain why after the aura disappears the headache is worse just behind the eyes because both systems were overloaded.
I can’t upgrade those systems (sadly) so I tried to find a way to filter the wrong information: closing my eyes, going to lightly room, etc, etc,… and one day I had a headache attack while I was reading a book and what I used to do is stop reading because reading with a little vertigo is quite complicated but this time I decided to continue and tried to concentrate in the reading and not paying attention to the aura. When the aura disappears I don’t have a headache!!!!
I was surprised about this event so I took my notes and write about it. Then every time I had an aura, I started to read anything and after the aura disappear most of the time I didn’t have a headache. My conclusion was:
To filter the wrong information I have to force my brain to pay attention to other thing (reading a book) instead of the aura.
The next month I tried to find other ways beside reading a book for avoiding the headache so with practice now when I have an aura I can pay attention to other things like the street, the computer, colors, etc. and don’t have headache. I have 15-30 minutes with the aura but I don’t have headaches for 6-24 hours and that’s improved dramatically my quality of living.
I hope to have time to write other post about this technique in detail. If you have the same type of migraine you could tried what I write here, maybe it could work maybe not but it could help you to find a solution for your case.
Posted on 23 February 2010 | No responses
My first migraine occurs during a soccer game, I was the goalkeeper and suddenly I started to have a perceptual disturbance. It started with a little tiny brightly point and transformed to a long long brightly zigzag lines so I can’t be sure of what I was seeing because everything was like a dream.
I don’t know why we won the game with a blind goalkeeper but that’s another story. When the game finished, I was feeling better because I can see normally but a terrible headache started. I felt like dying because it was so painful and lasted until the next day. I had two more migraines after that day with the same symptoms but I didn’t go to see a doctor because that was a headache and nothing more. My mother told me that she had something similar several years ago and she thoughts it was migraine.
When that happened, I was 15 years old and over the next years I had that terrible headaches only once a year so I forgot to think about it and try to find a solution. Sadly when I was 25 years old and I was working in a software development company when the headaches started again but this time they occur once a day during a week so I thought that something terrible is going to happen to me. I went to see a doctor and he ordered a lot of exams to find if something unusual was happening in my brain but he can’t find anything wrong so he told me: “You have migraine and you have to find what is the trigger“.
The doctor told me that pharmacological drugs can help me to avoid the terrible headaches but they are addictive so my body will need more and more to avoid the pain. I didn’t like that so I decided to find the trigger, I read a lot of information in internet and I started to take notes of what I ate, drank, weather, stress level, etc. After that terrible week, I have migraines more frequently from one to six times a month so after a few months I had enough data to see that my migraine trigger was little sleep or too much sleep and also the stress is an important factor.
I can try to sleep enough but work, my personal projects and also social events from time to time won’t let me sleep eight hours so what can I do? The migraine affects not only my productive time, it also affects my personal life so I decided to find a solution and in the next post I will share how I find a solution for my migraines.
Reading:What should I Do with My Life?
Posted on 19 February 2010 | No responses
The book The Whole New Mind by Daniel Pink gave me a long list of new books to read and one of them was What Should I Do with My Life by Po Bronson. The title is quite impressive, isn’t it? What kind of information this book can have? was my first question and after reading more about the author and the book itself I’ve found that it’s a list of experiences of different people who answers that question.
From time to time, we ask ourselves if we feel good doing what we’re doing and I know that it’s quite complicated to answer when you feel comfortable with the daily routine (sleep -> work -> go out with friends/partner/wife -> go home -> sleep). How our lives can change if we do something that we love and do with passion? I believe that it will change dramatically.
Over all my professional work in software development, I saw a few programmers/project managers/software architects/software testers/etc. that work with passion and you can do great things with them but it’s quite complicated to do anything if you don’t do it with passion.
I love my career but sometimes you fall in the routine and it gets boring. This kind of books are really good pulling you forward and I really recommend you this book if you want to think about what should you do with your life.
Posted on 19 February 2010 | No responses
Ya han pasado varias semanas desde que compré un Kindle Wireless Global y creo que ya es tiempo para escribir un post sobre este interesante e-book reader.
Primero debo confesar que me llamó mucho la atención el Amazon Kindle desde que salió al mercado y entró a mi lista de posibles compras desde aquel entonces, pero ¿qué me desanimó? El costo, que aparentemente las versiones electrónicas de los libros no me resultaban muy baratas, habían pocos libros técnicos y creo que la principal fue que no podía usar las características wireless en Perú.
Con el tiempo fue mejorando la cantidad de libros técnicos disponibles y con la versión Kindle 2 Wireless Global me sorprendió ver que Perú estaba en la lista de países disponibles, así que ahora si podría comprar libros desde el Kindle usando el wireless. Estas características hicieron que aumente su prioridad en mi lista de compras pero antes hice un poco de análisis iterativo por algunos días.
Estos son los factores que me motivaron a comprarlo:
- Ya cuento con una colección de libros entre técnicos y no técnicos de aproximadamente 70 libros. Con el ritmo de comprar de 3 a 4 libros por mes esa cantidad iba a aumentar con el tiempo y lamentablemente esa información estaba ahí en mi biblioteca y que no puedo llevarla conmigo.
- No hay una diferencia dramática entre el costo de un libro electrónico vs. uno físico pero si a eso le sumas el costo de envío a Perú y las compras mensuales que hago,… números por ahí y por allá dieron como resultado que si era económicamente saludable.
- Las características importantes del Kindle: búsquedas, notas, diccionario incluido y aún mas interesante que te pueda leer algunos libros.
Y estas son desventajas que decidí asumir:
- Iba a continuar comprando libros físicos ya que no todos los libros que quiero leer tiene formato electrónico, especialmente los que no son tan populares.
- Libros donde los colores sean importantes definitivamente no van por el Kindle a pesar de que existan versiones electrónicas.
Finalmente, debo decir (ya con varios libros que he leído desde el Kindle) que este gadget me gusta mucho y que definitivamente a cumplido con las expectativas que tenía. Si alguien piensa invertir en un e-reader, ¡le recomendaría un Kindle!
Happy reading!
Los libros que más me han influenciado
Posted on 22 January 2010 | No responses
Acabo de terminar de leer por segunda vez Pragmatic Thinking & Learning uno de los libros más impactantes que he leido. Pensando sobre este libro me dí cuenta que nunca escribí un post sobre la lista – de la cual siempre hablo – de libros que me han influenciado y/o cambiado mi forma de ver el mundo, la programación, etc.
Por eso aquí les comparto solo un pequeño resumen ya que cada uno de estos libros ameritarían varios posts:
- Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code by Martin Fowler, el primer capítulo de este libro tuvo gran impacto en mi estilo de programación, a tal nivel que sin dudar podría decir que mi vida como programador se divide antes y después de leer este libro.
- Test Driven Development: By Example by Kent Beck, es uno de los libros que no pude soltar hasta terminar de leerlo porque aprender TDD con un ejemplo, con los comentarios, recomendaciones y patrones que Kent Beck comparte es tener una lluvia de nuevas ideas que te sumerge tanto en esta técnica que no puedes dejarla hasta ver el resultado final.
- Pragmatic Thinking and Learning: Refactor Your Wetware by Andy Hunt, debo confesar que antes de leer este libro no me preocupaba mucho por aprender sobre el funcionamiento del cerebro y como aplicar ese conocimiento para ser mas productivo. Algunas de las técnicas (mindmaps, wikis, etc.) que se menciona ya las venia usando y al leerlo pude comprender porque funcionaban tan bien; otras técnicas fueron nuevas para mi pero rápidamente se convirtieron en parte importante de mis hábitos y rutinas (molesking, podcast, contexts, gtd)
- Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery by Garr Reynolds, me gusta hacer presentaciones y siempre he probado nuevas técnicas como solo usar imágenes o usar mapas mentales. Este libro me brindó un nueva base para hacer presentaciones y despertó uno de los hobbies dormidos que tenía (la fotografía). Lo que más me impacto en este libro es que no solo es sobre presentaciones sino que tiene mas cosas que se pueden aplicar en cada contexto de tu vida.
- A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future by Daniel Pink, me intrigaba leer este libro por referencias de Andy Hunt y Garr Reynolds así que la compré (mi primera adquisición para el Kindle Global) y no quedé decepcionado, la propuesta, los ejercicios, los sustentos, etc. me impactaron y afianzó más mi interés por aprender sobre el cerebro humano y potenciar el lado “derecho” del cerebro.
- Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen, por varias fuentes ya había escuchado sobre esta técnica y decidí comprar el libro luego de ver la presentación de David en Google. La técnica es muy pero muy buena y llevo aplicándola en el trabajo con mucho éxito pero aun necesito llevarla a otros contextos como el personal y en mis consultorías.
Esta es la lista hasta ahora y creo que aumentará rápidamente porque he pedido varios libros que recomiendan estos autores. Lo más emocionante de todo esto es aplicar las técnicas que enseñan y ver que funcionen no solo contigo sino con las personas a las que compartes este conocimiento.
