One of the many ways I put myself through college was as a bartender. At the time I perfected my Bloody Mary recipe but as time has gone on I have forgotten the exact recipe so I have been trying to figure out the right proportions. This still isn’t quite right but it’s getting close.

Spicy Bloody Mary Recipe

I usually just buy a 64 ounce bottle of tomato juice and pour out the eight ounces so I can use the bottle for the mix.

• 56 ounces tomato juice (I go for the low sodium Campbell’s but use what you like)
• 2 TBSP Horseradish (if you grate your own that works, otherwise buy some good german horseradish)
• 1 TBSP Old Bay Seasoning (crab seasoning if you can’t find the original)
• 2 TBSP Worcestershire Sauce
• 4 ounces Clam Juice (if you like clams you can skip this and substitute Clamato for the tomato juice) if you don’t like clams then just start with 60 ounces of tomato juice.
• 1/2 TSP Celery Salt
• 1 TSP Hungarian Hot Paprika
• 1/2 TSP Tabasco
• 1/2 TSP Sea Salt
• 1 TSP Black Pepper

Obviously you can mix an 1 1/2 ounces of your favorite vodka. Then garnish with celery, or if you got one a cocktail shrimp. I have toyed with substituting Wasabi for the German Horseradish but I think that would really change the taste.

If you are going to operate a cloud at scale then you most certainly need to use some ways to automate the configuration and other tasks like provisioning when you spin up cloud infrastructure. One of my favorite open source projects for doing this is Puppet sponsored by Puppetlabs.

Puppet is a client-server application that allows you define roles and configurations for infrastructure in puppet manifests then deploy those manifests across numerous servers simultaneously. In addition Puppet has another project, the Marionette Collective (MCollective), which allows you to automate common tasks and works in conjunction with puppet.

One of the best ways to get up to speed on using puppet is to attend a Puppet Camp. The next one will be hosted inAtlanta on February 3rd.

“Puppet Camp is a community oriented gathering of Puppet users and developers. You’ll have the opportunity to network with a diverse group of Puppet users, benefit from insightful lectures delivered by prominent community members, and be able to share experiences and discuss potential implementations of Puppet during our attendee generated breakout sessions.”

If you can’t attend this session there are many other Puppet Camps being held worldwide listed on the PuppetLabs website.

This is a presentation originally given at SCALE 9x and revised for the  Indiana Linuxfest 3/26/2011.

My slides from my Crash Course in Cloud Computing talk from SCALE 9x, it was my first talk on the subject and based on some feedback I think I am going to add some additional information. On the open source tools I think I am going to add RunDeck and MCollective for orchestration.

This Friday at SCaLE 9x in Los Angeles, CA there will be a special build an open source cloud day teaching users how to use technologies from Cloud.com, OpenStack, Opscode and Zenoss to deploy, configure, manage and monitor infrastructure-as-a-service using open source software.

Here’s an overview of the program:

“Build a Cloud Day” will be dedicated to teaching users how to build and manage a cloud computing environment using free and open source software. The program is designed to expose attendees to the concepts and best practices around deploying cloud computing infrastructure. Attendees should expect to learn how to deploy a cloud computing environment using Cloudstack CE. In addition Build a Cloud Day attendees will learn about tools( Opscode Chef and Zenoss Core) that can be used to handle the dynamics of a cloud computing environment including automatic provisioning and configuration and monitoring.

9:00 – 9:15: Welcome – Mark Hinkle, VP of Community, Cloud.com

We’ll kick off the day reviewing the program with attendees and gathering information so we can tailor the program to best address the needs and experience level of the audience.

9:15 – 11:15: Build Your Private Cloud – Cloud.com

Using CloudStack Community Edition (CE), free and open source cloud computing software to build a private cloud. During the training attendees will be instructed on how to install Cloudstack CE to manage virtual infrastructure in a private cloud computing configuration. At the conclusion of the Build a Private section users will have the knowledge needed to create a simple private cloud network.

Cloudstack CE is an open source Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) software platform available under the GPLv3 license, which enables users to build, manage and deploy compute cloud environments. The community edition is based on the latest, leading edge features and bits that the Cloud.com team of engineers are working on and is supported by both our engineers and our open source community.

11:15-11:45: Openstack – Rackspace

OpenStack Deployment and Integration Engineer Jordan Rinke will give a brief overview of the Openstack project.

OpenStack is a collection of open source technologies delivering a
massively scalable cloud operating system. OpenStack is currently
developing two interrelated projects: OpenStack Compute and OpenStack Object Storage.
OpenStack Compute is software to provision and manage large groups of
virtual private servers, and OpenStack Object Storage is software for
creating redundant, scalable object storage using clusters of commodity
servers to store terabytes or even petabytes of data. OpenStack is sponsored by Rackspace, a leader in web hosting and managed infrastructure.

11:45 – 12:45: Lunch – Catered

We will bring in a simple catered lunch (We’ll do our best to accomadate all dietary restrictions).

12:45 – 2:45: Automatic Configuration of Your Cloud – Opscode

This training section will cover deploying cloud infrastructure automatically using Opscode Chef. We will be cover installation basics of Chef clients and working with a Chef server. Other topics will include: creating Chef repositories, writing cookbooks and advanced uses of the command line utility Knife.

Chef is a systems integration framework, built to bring the benefits of automated configuration management to your entire infrastructure. With Chef you can:

• Manage your servers by writing code, not by running commands.
• Dynamically integrate your applications, databases and other infrastructure.
• Easily configure applications that require knowledge about your entire infrastructure (“What systems are running my application?”, “What is the current master database server?”)

3:00 – 5:00: Monitoring Your Cloud – Zenoss

A representative from the Zenoss Core project will provide training on how to monitor a cloud computing environment. The presentation will give an overview of the Zenoss Core management platform. Attendees will also learn how to install Zenoss Core, add devices and send alerts based on conditions within your cloud computing infrastructure.

Zenoss Core is an open source IT monitoring product that delivers the functionality to effectively manage the configuration, health, performance of networks, servers and applications through a single, integrated software package.

All devices in the environment can be modeled – networks, servers, software, and applications – as well as custom devices such as power supplies and temperature sensors. The model provides logical and physical grouping allowing you to map devices to business systems, locations, and responsible people. The model is populated by the auto-discovery process, supplemented by the web services API, XML import/export, or manual user input.Collections of monitoring templates are called ZenPacks, and more than 100 are available.

5:00 -5:10 Special Guest – Arista Networks

Cloud architectures have changed the design requirements for high-performance networking infrastructure and a 100% Linux based, fully extensible networking solution can bring your Cloud to the next level. Arista Networks gives a 10-minute overview of the EOS Extensible Operating Systems and reviews some of the tricks of the trade that can make deploying, managing and maintaining a best-in-class network infrastructure easier than ever before.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, cloud.com, opensource, OpenStack, Opscode

When the iPad came out I wasn’t convinced that I wanted/needed one but as the days progressed and my co-worker flashed his cool new toy around, I decided to buy a 64GB Wi-fi model. After nearly five months, I am not advocating it as a laptop replacement or the must have gadget for everyone but I am convinced it’s the connected traveler’s best friend. As someone who has traveled over 150,000 miles this year and taken over 100 flights the iPad has been my most valued travel possession.

If you travel a lot you know that pulling out your laptop is a hassle in the airport and the plane. Nothing’s more frustrating when the person in front of you reclines and you need to tilt your screen at an unreadable angle. However, the smaller form factor of the iPad allows you to still use the device, and effectively process email, edit documents, read books and watch movies. Ironically, when I am home I don’t use it as much, I mainly use it to read electronic books (it’s awesome since the backlit screen allows me to keep reading after my spouse turns out the lights).

A number of my friends are buying iPad’s and asking me for tips, so I thought I would pull this together for them, unfortunately I have been keeping notes for the last few months so their might be some updates I am not aware of.

Hardware

Here are the accessories I am using including my iPad model I use though I am sure there will be many more.

iPad Model: 64 GB Wi-Fi

I chose the 64 GB model because I like to bring along movies on long trips and wanted the extra storage space. Though if you don’t have  a lot of multimedia like songs and movies you can probably get away with a 16GB or 32GB model. I guess the 3G model would be fine too but more on the connectivity below. (Cost $699)

The Case: Griffin Elan Passport Folio

There are tons of iPad cases out there but one of my requirements was to have a pocket and ideally a business card holder in my iPad case. The Griffin Elan Passport though not made of the finest leather is still nice enough. It provides a couple of business card size slots and a pocket that’s just big enough to hold my airline boarding passes. The folio also has a nice closure to keep things from falling out.  On top of that you can leave the folio part of the way open and stand it up in landscape view to watch movies on the plane or in your hotel room (Cost $49.99). If you really want a bluetooth keyboard with your iPad so you can use it as a true laptop replacement than I would probably recommend looking at the AidaCase which I don’t own but have been looking at seriously. The case includes a silicon bluetooth keyboard and case combo turning the iPad into the same form factor as a notebook PC. ($99.99)

Connectivity: Verizon Mifi 2200 Intelligent Mobile Hotspot

I originally was going to wait for the iPad 3G to come out but that’s one more data bill to pay per month. I already had a USB modem through Verizon but that was only good for my laptop, the solution was to convert to a Verizon MiFi 2200 so I could use it with my laptop, iPhone and my laptop at will. I also highly recommend the clear snap-on case ($14.99) that you can buy for the Mifi with a carabiner to snap it onto you bag or belt loop. ($269.00 or $49.99 with two-year contract)

The Stand: Umbra Facile Easel

When I get back from my trips set my iPad on my desk I don’t want it falling over so rather than dropping a bundle on a special iPad stand, I found this cool Umbra Facile Easel that allows me to rest my iPad in either portrait or landscape mode without taking it out of my case. ($16.00)

The Stylus: Pogo Sketch

One of my problems using the iPad is that I have big fingers and sometimes tap the wrong key. However, by using a stylus I can hold the iPad in one hand and type or navigate menus with the greater precision using the stylus. That’s why I chose to use the Pogo Sketch capacitive stylus. Ideally I would like something that has more of a pen point but the stylus seems to work well enough. The stylus itself works well with the the iPad but the stylus itself is pretty lightweight and I would prefer something with a little more heft. Also, the clip on the Sketch is plastic and tends to break rather easily.  ($14.95) If you are a little more enterprising you might want to make your own, which is what I eventually did, see my do-it-yourself stylus howto using a lead holder and some capacitive foam.

iPad Apps for Travel and More

Here’s my list of applications that help me stay connected when I am on the road. You’ll see from the list that I have a number of applications I depend on. By virtue of having the maps application already iPad is very helpful when you are in a strange city, and just having a portable web access point is helpful.

While not necessarily an  application TripIt is an excellent tool for any travel. TripIt gives you the ability to track all your travel plans in an easy to use portal. The free service allows you to forward confirmation emails from your lodging, flight, car rental and other travel vendors and then consolidates them into a neatly organized travel calendar. You also can create a network of fellow travelers so you can arrange meetings or have a meal with a friend or colleague when in the same city.

Travel Tools

• Flight Aware – This application lets you track the status of a flight. (Free)
• FlightTrack Pro – I like Flight track Pro to interact with my TripIt account. it will give me not only the status of my flight but an interactive map that shows the status of my flights in the air. ($4.99)
• AroundMe – This is an iPhone application but it allows you to locate local stores, restaurants and the a coffee shop. (Free)
• Yelp for iPhone – There is no Yelp app for iPad but when you are in a strange city the Yelp application is a nice quick application to get a restaurant review.
• 1000 Ultimate Experiences – This Lonely Planet application has some nice pictures and some tips on places to go but isn’t a very useful guide for traveling, just mainly eye candy so probably not worth what I paid. ($3.99)
• TripDeck – Another free application from Mobiata (they make FlightTrackPro) that gives you a neatly organized list of your itinerary as listed on TripIt. Also this is a application is only designed for iPhone so you’ll need to  (Free)
• Accuweather – There isn’t a native weather application on the iPad like there is on the iPhone so you need to add one or search via the web. The Accuweather application for iPad is beautiful allows you to add multiple cities, you can look-up the 15 day forecast, weather maps and tons of other content from the Accuweather website.  (Free ad-supported version, paid ad-free version available for $.99.)
• CoPilot - One of the more useful features of the Ipad is the GPS, and the Maps application works pretty well but CoPilot is a step avoe and really a good value at the price, there are also many in app upgrades that can be made (E.g. maps of Canada) to extend its capabilities. Still at this price you can hardly go wrong.($4.99)
• TripIt for iPhone – No iPad optimized application but another application that pulls your TripIt information into a cleanly formatted (Free)

Utilities

• Dropbox – Dropbox is a file sharing service that allows you to share files and folders across computers and mobile devices. The easiest way I have found for sharing documents between your desktop and your iPad and other devices. I work on documents on my iPad all the time then save them to my Dropbox on the iPad. (Free, requires free Dropbox account)
• MiFi (iTunes Store link) – If you go the way of the Mi-Fi for providing connectivity to your iPad this app (iPhone native) gives you a reading of the battery life and network signal. (Free)
• LogMeIn Ignition – Probably the most expensive of any application you might by for your iPad but it does give you access to your PC. I find performance to be slow but if you need remote access it’s decent. ($29.99)

Readers

• Amazon Kindle for iPad – As a former Kindle user I really loved bringing a whole library along on a trip without taking up a ton of space, that experience has informed my use of the iPad as a book reader.  I haven’t tried Apple’s iBooks yet other than the included Winnie the Pooh book but it seems to be a decently simple to use application.
• Instapaper – One of my favorite bookmarking applications is Instapaper, you can bookmark a page and Instapaper will store it for later reading. I use this all the time on my laptop. However, it seems like I get the most time to catch up on the plane. So having it sync’d and catch up on articles on the plane. Also the app keeps getting better and better. (Free, Instapaper free account required)
• NetNewsWire – Newsgator’s popular news reader for Mac, now runs on iPad you can use NetNewsWire to read your Google Reader RSS feeds and sync them to Google when you are connected. ($9.99 but soon going to $14.99)
• Pulse News – Since being featured in Steve Jobs keynote at the Apple World Wide Developers Conference Pulse has been a media favorite as a visual news reader which allows you to read either clean text or click-through to the original content. You can also sync with Google Reader and Instpaper. I am not sold on this one yet, I am a NetNewsWire guy but this definitely takes the cake for eye candy. ($3.99)
• Flipbook – Yet another eye-candy app which takes your social media feeds and turns them into a eMagazine, ideally this would function offline so you can read RSS and other content offline but that functionality is limited.

Productivity

Notice that I include the Pages and Numbers applications from the iWork suite, but don’t include the Keynote application. I simply don’t edit Keynote or PowerPoint applications on the iPad so I just don’t know. You should be able to view Powerpoint presentations in Goodreader.

• Pages – The Apple iWork equivalent of Word is the best word processor for iPad but if you are going between Word and iWork formatting is going to be a little off. ($9.99)
• Numbers – The Apple iWork equivalent to Excel works fine on the iPad, if you need to edit spreadsheets it’s a must have for editing spreadsheets offline. ($9.99)
• Goodreader – Goodreader is the swiss army knife of document readers, that does everything from read large PDFs and TXT files, Office documents, high-res images, even audio and video. (Free)
• Evernote – One of my favorite applications, Evernote is a note taking application that syncs to a hosted service. You can then access Evernote from your computer or mobile device. The client for the PC has a better formatting editor but overall Evernote does a good job on the iPad. (Free, requires Evernote subscription which is free for the first 2GB of storage)
• Alarm Clock Pro – I have a hard time figuring out all the alarm clocks in the various hotels that I stay but with this app, you can turn your iPad into an alarm clock easily and choose to play a sound or music when you wake. I leave my iPad in landscape mode to make the numbers very readable. ($.99)

Entertainment

It’s nice to have a diversion on the plan or in my hotel after a long day, these are some of my favorites.

• NetFlix – Probably one of my most used applications on the road. I like to stand up my iPad and watch an episode of 24 or a movie on demand while working on my laptop. (The application is free but you will need a Netflix account to view content)
• Plants Versus Zombies – I wasn’t keen on trying this game due to the goofy name but after reading a few reviews I caved in. The premise is that zombies are attacking your house and your defense is to plant organic defenses around your house to prevent them from eating your brains. It turns out that the game is really well done and you get a ton of game play with progressive levels and other challenges. ($9.99)
• Field Runners – Field Runners is a “tower defense” style game where you create mazes of weapons to waylay invading soldiers and prevent them from reaching your base. Though originally developed for the iPhone this game is awesome on the iPad with numerous improvements to take advantage of the iPad platform. Fieldrunners sports incredibly good graphics and many game boards.  This game will give you hours and hours of game play and their are multiple skill levels so you can ratchet up the difficulty as you get better at protecting your base. I think this is one of the most entertaining  ($7.99)
• Scrabble – Just like the Hasbro board game, Scrabble works on the iPad in single player (against the computer ) or multi-player mode(you can also play with your Facebook friends). There are very few deviations from the board game other than the “Best Word” feature which will suggest the best scoring word with the tiles in your rack (you have up to four times to use this helper per game). ($9.99)
• Conquist – What can I say I loved to play risk as a kid, I like this knock-off, the graphics are nice and the game play is a bit easy but good and the price is right. ($0.99)

I am sure there are plenty of other applications that are helpful to travelers and I will probably update this post as I discover them. Feel free to leave me a note on other applications you find helpful.

Related Articles

• Trying to make iPad run my Road Trip (news.cnet.com)
• Apple iPad (64GB) (cnet.com)
• iPad Hacked with Verizon Mifi Innards (tauw.com)
• Stylus recommendations? (blogs.adobe.com)
• Project Guttenberg Will Work on iPad (tuaw.com)
• Yelp for iPhone Updated! (yelp.com)
• Ten Stellar Apps that Will Blow You Away (wired.com)
• Why e-Readers are a Worthy Investment (washingtonpost.com)
• An In-Depth Look at How People Are Using the iPad (mashable.com)
• 10 Useful Apple iPad Tips and Tricks (mashable.com)

Technorati Tags: applications, iPad, MiFi, Travel, wifi

Here are my slides from today’s talk at LinuxCon on “Open Source Toolchains for Cloud Computing“. The talk focused on what open source tools could be used to create automation for managing cloud computing. I really enjoyed giving the talk and the discussion afterward, it seems that the reality among attendees was that they did very little to automate management but all had a great interest in doing so. I also enjoyed hearing from a Big 4 systems management user who said clearly that their multi-million dollar system didn’t appear to have the same capabilities as the free software solutions I mentioned.

Technorati Tags: agile IT, automation, cloud computing, devops, Open Source

I like my iPad for traveling as it gives me easy access to read and reply to email. However, I don’t like to type on it the same way I would on a regular keyboard, I prefer to use a stylus to hunt and peck rather than my fingers. I also like to draw and take notes that way too. In addition, since the iPad is prone to smudging the stylus keeps the amount of fingerprints to a minimum.

I have been using the Pogo Sketch stylus by Ten One Design which works well but it’s rather small, and the plastic clip breaks very easily.  What I really want is a full-size writing instrument. So I have been trying to make my own stylus, and have come up with a couple of solutions.

I am of the firm belief that for the stylus to be responsive the tip needs to be made of conductive foam not conductive hard plastic/rubber like is used on some styli. In my experience the hard plastic/rubber doesn’t slide well on the iPad, and you need to press extra hard to type.  So here are some of the styli I made on my own.

Writing Instrument Modifications

First you need to understand that you need to be able to conduct a small electric current from your body to the capacitive touch screen on the iPad, an important consideration when choosing what kind of instrument you modify.

Pen Modification

Modified Pen Stylus next to Pogo and generic styli

If you have a favorite metal barreled pen you can remove the ink cartridge and spring and insert a piece of conductive foam through the tip. I used a cool pen (pictured at the bottom) with a metal tube. Look at the top of the pen and you can see it is black plastic. If you wanted to hold the stylus that way it wouldn’t work.

To modify the pen below I took about a 1/2 inch long piece of foam trimmed down to about a 1/4 in diameter and the pulled it through the empty pen tip.   This gave me a pretty small point but was pretty effective for drawing. If your pen has a very narrow opening for the point you can cut the end with a rotary tool and expand the opening. The advantages of this approach is that if you like a clip on your pen or want a familiar pen, you can choose the type of writing instrument you prefer. The downside is that if the hole is small it will probably cause the tip to be deformed. I actually got a sort of fan effect from mine but it works very well. You can always trim the tip with scissors or a finger nail clipper to get the shape you want.

Lead Holder

Alvin Pro-Matic Lead Holder Converted to a Stylus

This is my favorite approach to making a iPad stylus, it uses a 2mm lead holder (used for drafting) and some conductive foam. I used an Alvin Pro-Matic Lead Holder that I picked up at a craft supply store for $6.79 ($8.48 with a 20% off coupon). The key was that this model had a metal barrel and a four way vise grip point that could grab my conductive foam point. I then went to Radio Shack and bought an inexpensive IC (about $.80) that was packed in high-density conductive phone. I trimmed a small piece of foam and then put it in the jaws of the lead holder. With this approach I feel like you can really control the size and shape of the point since you don’t have to squish the foam to get it through another opening. Additionally, you can leave the lead in the pencil and remove the foam if you need an antiquated paper writing instrument. the only downside to this approach is that if you click the top of the lead holder the jaws open the foam can fall out.

Lead Holder Styli with Conductive Foam Tip

These DIY styli are both superior in weight and length to the other styli you can buy, plus they are both much cheaper.  I  like writing with both of them but ideally I would like to figure out how to attach a 3.5-mm stereo jack and string  to the stylus so I could affix it to my iPad’s headphone port. Maybe that’s the next project.

Stylus Friendly iPad Apps

Once you have the stylus you want you I recommend two of my favorite programs that are particularly suited to using a stylus.

• Autodesk’ SketchBook Pro – SketchBook Pro is similar to the Adobe suite of desktopproducts as it lets you draw on multiple layers using various types of brushes. There are also templates for the backgrounds that resemble notepaper and other documents.  If you like to sketch this is a pretty decent app. I hear that Brushes is pretty popular too, but haven’t use it.
• WritePad for iPad - This application is an excellent handwriting recognition application and allows you to author documents or emails using a stylus. I find I can write faster than I can type on the iPad and it allows me to hold the iPad in the crook of my arm while I write with the other, perfect when I am a plane or sitting in the airport.

Other DIY iPad Stylus Ideas

There are quite a few other DIY Stylus projects out there if you aren’t keen on my idea you can have a go at these.

• Static Sock and an Ink Pen – I had lousy results with this one, it could have been the sock I used but it was pretty laggy and performance was inconsistent
• Plastic pen, conductive foam and wire – I prefer using a metal barrel pen as I like the weight but this will work too.
• Sausage Stylus – This is just plain ridiculous, but funny
• Review: Ozaki iStroke M+L Stylus – I was tempted to give this a try but it’s a little on the expensive side, iLounge has a decent review

[Note: I guess I am not as clever as I though as I was adding this blog post I found Crabfu's DIY iPad Stylus video with the same idea to use a lead holder with capacitive foam though he has some different caveats like gluing the foam to a cotton swab stick to allow the lead holder to grip it, not sure if you really need that step.]

Technorati Tags: apple, DIY, iPad, lead holder, modifications, pen, Pogo Sketch, styli, stylus, Ten One Design, Touchscreen

In celebration of System Administrator Appreciation Day I published a story at Linux.com called Open Source Toolchains for Systems Administrators, here is an excerpt:

“Software developers are very familiar with toolchains, series of programs where the output of one program forms the input for the next. A free software example would be using the GNU Emacs editor, the GNU bin-utils and the GNU Compiler Collection (GCC) to write a program. Software developers frequently create programs and subroutines that are used in other programs rather than recoding the same process over and over again.

Just as software developers have different task-specific tools to make up software tool chains (e.g. editors, compilers, build scripts), systems administrators can use tool chains made up of tools used to automate management functions and maintenance of Linux servers.”

I think it’s a good description of how to automate Linux server administration, read it and let me know.

Linux.com: Open Source Toolchains for Systems Administrators

Technorati Tags: automation, Cfengine, Chef, Linux, Monitoring, opensource, Opscode, provisioning, Puppet, Systems Management, Zabbix, Zenoss

Here are my slides from today’s talk at today’s OSCON, Open Source Tool Chains for Cloud Computing presented with John Willis (VP of Services at Opscode) and Alex Honor (Founder of DTO Solutions and Leader of the Control Tier Project).  The idea we hoped to convey is that integration between open source tools can help automate and make your infrastructure more fault tolerant.

After talking to some attendees it became apparent that perhaps a paper that supports the talk would be helpful. I’ll try to work on that over the upcoming weeks.

Technorati Tags: cloud computing, control tier, Open Source, Opscode, Zenoss