I find that the work I do unbelievably intellectually stimulating! I work with clients and customers across a range of verticals – helping them improve the way in which they work and thereby driving success. My portfolio of products are calmly pervasive to the human experience and is changing the very face of technology as we know it. Most of my work is sensitive to competitive differentiators and strategically important to my clients and my interaction with technology is cloaked in intellectual property that is highly sensitive to exchange.

What this means is that it is quite likely I shall not be updating this blog for quite sometime and quite possibly infrequently.

But I shall still be unashamedly updating my

• Twitter posts
• Tumblr stream

Word of warning … the content there is not checked for factual accuracy or sanity and please absorb with a sense of wonder !

Over time, as we now know, data stored on the most ubiquitiost of artifacts – the humble paper , was soon being captured and manipulated by software applications. Now a genaralist class of users were generating data which fell outside of the the boundries of well defined strucuted data. This unstructured data growing at a rapid rate – various analysts quote figures which read that 80% of information is in an unstructured form – was soon containing valuable, critical information. As a civilisation, we are dealing with rapid growth of unstructured information volumes beyond traditional capabilities. And more importantly, the information in its unstructured form contains valuable tacit knowledge that is highly valuable.

In many way to me, it becomes quite plain that at all levels of our civilisation (from personal, government to businesses) the information agenda is now that much more imperative!

[Michael Shermer]

Science is the best tool ever devised

For understanding how the world works

[Jacob Bronowski]

Science is a very human form of knowledge

We are always at the brink of the known

[Carl Sagan]

Science is a collaborative enterprise

Spanning the generations

We remember those who prepared the way

Seeing for them also

[Neil deGrasse Tyson]

If you’re scientifically literate,

The world looks very different to you

And that understanding empowers you

Refrain:

[Richard Dawkins]

There’s real poetry in the real world

Science is the poetry of reality

[Sagan]

We can do science

And with it, we can improve our lives

[Jill Tarter]

The story of humans is the story of ideas

That shine light into dark corners

[Lawrence Krauss]

Scientists love mysteries

They love not knowing

[Richard Feynman]

I don’t feel frightened by not knowing things

I think it’s much more interesting

[Brian Greene]

There’s a larger universal reality

of which we are all a part

[Stephen Hawking]

The further we probe into the universe

The more remarkable are the discoveries we make

[Carolyn Porco]

The quest for the truth, in and of itself,

Is a story that’s filled with insights

(Refrain)

[Greene]

From our lonely point in the cosmos

We have through the power of thought

Been able to peer back to a brief moment

After the beginning of the universe

[PZ Myers]

I think that science changes the way your mind works

To think a little more deeply about things

[Dawkins]

Science replaces private predjudice

With publicly verifiable evidence

(Refrain)

This script creates a new logical drive using the create logicalDrive command in the free space of a array. Now shucks, I dont know the original author of this script so cant give credit, do appriciate if anyone is able to point me to the original source

Show “Create RAID 5 Logical Drive WIN_7 on existing Array 1”;
//Create logicalDrive on array created by the create logicalDrive drives command
//Note: For arrays that use all available capacity, the last logicalDrive on the group is created using all remaining capacity by omitting the capacity=logicalDrive creation parameter
create logicalDrive array=1 RAIDLevel=5 userLabel=”7” owner=A segmentSize=16 readAheadMulitiplier=256 capacity=2GB;
show “Setting additional attributes for logicalDrive WIN_7”; //Configuration settings that cannot be set during logicalDrive creation
set logicalDrive[“WIN_7”] cacheFlushModifier=10;
set logicalDrive[“WIN_7”] cacheWithoutBatteryEnabled=false;
set logicalDrive[“WIN_7”] mirrorEnabled=true; set logicalDrive[“WIN_7”] readCacheEnabled=true;
set logicalDrive[“WIN_7”] writeCacheEnabled=true;
set logicalDrive[“WIN_7”] mediaScanEnabled=false;
set logicalDrive[“WIN_7”] redundancyCheckEnabled=false;
set logicalDrive[“WIN_7”] modificationPriority=high;


Remember as with anything- staging envrionment before production

The more I explore the more I like the Storage management application for IBM’s DS 3000/4000/5000

family of products. Not only is it feature rich – it is straight forward and no nonsense … giving good visuals of the storage subsystem, right down to the individual spindles themselves. (Installing the software package etc is a straightforward affair and there are several howtos online) What I want to bring to attention is the CommandLine Interface (and Script Editor) support. Its brilliant!

The basic syntax is straightforward
command parameter;

So a basic command would take the form:

show allDriveChannels stats;
This is the equvalent of performing Advanced -> Troubleshooting -> Drive Channels on the GUI.

So as in most scripting approaches, there are two modes:
1) an interactive mode of execution
2) batch file mode of execution

How to run interactively
1) Before running a command, you need to establish a connection to the subsystems. This is done by
SMcli <IP of controller 1> <IP of controller 2>
If you are managing in-band then you will need to enter the IP address of the ‘managing host’. The command is pretty flexible and will accept a ‘user-supplied name’ or hostname or the WWN of the subsystem
2) Script away
3) no really, there’s no step 3

Note that hitting Ctrl-C will exit interactive mode and take you back to your prompt.

If you want to run a single line, without entering and breaking out of interactive mode then inovking a command  using the -c switch allows a command to execute immediately – that is, executes the specified command and returns to the OS command prompt. For example:

SMcli <IP of controller 1> <IP of controller 2> -c "<command>;"

Note the quotes around the command, and the semicolon.

Creating Batch Files
Storage manager comes with its own script editor, that you can launch by navigating to Tools -> Execute Script. However you can use any editor that you are familiar with to create a batchfile. My editor of choice is vim (i wonder if its worth it writing a syntax highlighter).

SMcli <IP of controller 1> <IP of controller 2> -f script.scr

So here, SMCli verifies the filelocation and the syntax of the commands. Commands in the batch file are executed one at a time and SMCli returns to the prompt after all commands are executed. If you are under windows then ensure that SMclient path is in the system envrionment settings.

Error reporting
Description of errors are written directly to the commandline buffer with a set return code. Syntax errors are quite helpful with additional information being echo’ed.
An exception however is captured and dumped to a file (located in client\data\excprpt.txt) usually before the end of execution.

Verification
Whats quite neat when using the script editor is that it allows you to run in a mode to simply verify syntax of the batch file without executing the script itself. Select Tools ->Verify Syntax. Here the script editor engine simply parses the statements in the scriptfile and simply verifies that the correct syntax is used. Syntax errors are reported with line numbers on the ‘output view’.

Well there are several arguments for both using a GUI and CLI … the good thing with the DS Storage Manager is that you have the option for either, depending on how workflows and change management are formalised in your organisation. Perhaps I should look at writing a few scripts and posting them up for public consumption.

The event ran roughly over the first week of August and incorporated sessions from all parts of the IBM technology spectrum.  Sessions ran from early morning till late afternoon and the demonstration area incorporated concepts along the lines of ‘i-was-mucking-around-and look-what-i-discovered-to-have-real-value’. On a personal level I found it refreshing to see how the Corporation encourages innovation ranging from the ‘small and quirky’ to the ‘theres a better way to do something we’ve always been doing’. I also enjoyed thoroughly, the very candid sessions we had with senior WorldWide technology leaders and Distinguished Engineers.

All in all, this conference was of a different nature to IBM internal conferences I have previously attended. While it didnt quite have the glam of larger conferences, it was very rich in content and community – exactly what a purist technical conference should be On the flight back home to New Zealand, I was bright eyed and wondering if in 2009 I would be sufficiently established in a subject with considerable susbtance to present to my peers.

The six PODs that im helping in are still being assembled and not wanting to get in the way at this stage, ive tucked myself near where the IBM technologies are stored for the moment and writing. There is a high expectation of quality from guests at any IBM event so fingers crossed the software/hardware setup for the demonstrations will go smoothly without any scratching of my head with exclamations of ‘it worked beautifully in the lab’.

Visit the published agenda for IBM Forum this year. There are some world class speakers (both from NZ businesses and from the IBM worldwide team) and some scintillating topics. I could go on, but best that you visit at either Welligton [11/08], Auckland [14/08] or Christchurch [19/08].

I shall try to keep my tweets updated and will publish the SecondLife SURL shortly. Right now I think I should go and lend a hand!

Those of you eager for a post from my experience at the IBM internal ‘Technical Leadership Exchange’ I apologise but you will have to wait as there is a mountain of work for me to climb before I am able to do some writing.

The Sunrise program was part of a story about a CEO study conducted by Unlimited magazine. Im told that the magazine will be on news stands this week! The Breakfast show I find interesting at it debuted IBM NZ’s new Business Insight feature. Here’s an excerpt from the IBM website on what Business Insight is all about:

Business Insight will bring you the stories of innovative companies, innovative solutions and innovative examples to inspire you to reach further, to take on the world and then to share your stories of success.
Innovation is the key to growth and prosperity. Business Insight provides real examples of real New Zealand companies that have prospered through innovation. Find out from the people at the top what drove them, what they did and why it worked. Updated regularly with new examples of the many forms of innovation. Read the articles, view the video and learn from the innovations and the innovators.

If you missed these screenings, not to worry IBM will be on TV again!

6:50am Wednesday (30th July) on TV1 and again at 10:50pm (31st July) on TV1.You could always sign up for updates if you’d like.

Lights. Camera. Action!

I wonder how DB2 integrated in Visual Studio will look’and’feel.

Those of you on my mailing list (I do plan on depreciating the mailing list at some point) were notified when Hyper-V was made RTM. Reading the Hardware Software requirements for SQL 2008 on TechNet we can see that SQL2008 is officially supported on Hyper-V. ‘Click to Run’. Microsoft is also making available the “Introducing SQL Server 2008” book by the Microsoft Press, as a free eBook.

Ooh Intellisense for writing T-SQL yes my simple mind is rotted!

Textile formatting for some tacit reason has been my favorite for some time. (Several wikis and online publishing systems use varying methods of text formatting … if you are not familiar with using text formatting to generate html, have a play with the online textile tool).

Textile also seems to be the preferred text formatting syntax in the Ruby world. The beautiful module for Ruby – RedCloth perhaps is a large reason for the popularity of Textile. RedCloth is simply a Ruby library for converting Textile into HTML.

Not so long ago RedCloth 4.0 was released!

You can read all about the enhancements and added functionality in the changelog, what has me excited is that this is the first major release for sometime. Let me clarify that. Rubyforge shows the 4.0.0 update released with a timestamp 2008-07-21 16:38. The previous version 3.0.4 has a timestamp of 2005-09-15 13:23. That’s approximately three years!

This means that over the last three years, several Ruby applications have been using RedCloth with minimal changes to the RedCloth module. How fantastic! Yes my fellow codes, that is indeed pretty fantastic.

RedCloth is available as a RubyGem so you can simply run

sudo gem install RedCloth

Note that the above syntax requires RedCloth to be typed in CamelCase, not lowercase.

Or if you are not using RubyGems then you can download the tarball and install it as such:

ruby install.rb config
ruby install.rb setup
sudo ruby install.rb install

You could also compile from source although I have not attempted this myself you are able to from the git repository.

git clone git://github.com/jgarber/redcloth.git
cd redcloth
rake install

Looking at the changelog three things stoodout for me:
Markdown support has been removed.
x40 times faster than the previous version.
But what I am most excited about is the line ‘Rudimentary support for LaTeX is built in’. This just keeps getting better!

Really there is simply nothing better than LaTeX when it comes to separating content from presentation.