One of the big things we are doing is making it so anyone can sell OpenSky products from anywhere online. In the spirit of eating my own dogfood, I’ve become an OpenSky seller. These are products that I have and use in my home. I won’t recommend anything I don’t use and can personally vouch for. Peridocally, I’ll be posting great products I find here to share with my readers. See my first set of products for sale after the fold.

Vita-Mix Blender

I used to call this the blender for people that can’t do math. It’s a $400 blender that’s worth every penny.

We bought this blender about a year ago when we learned it’s also a grain mill. We’ve used it to make smoothies, juice, soup and even bread dough, all only using the blender from the raw ingredients.

It’s 2 HP and can crush ice on the lowest setting without blinking.

Melissa and Doug Pirate Puzzle

Melissa and Doug make quality products. We got this puzzle a few weeks ago for the kids. It’s 100 large pieces made of heavy cardboard, super durable and perfect for kids.

My kids really enjoyed putting this together. It was a bit challenging for the younger ones, but each was able to contribute.

Disclaimer: I’m not a lawyer, I am not qualified to nor am I imparting sound legal advice.

BSD & MIT

Both licenses are very similar. They are very liberal and allow for sub-licensing meaning that any derived works may be released under a different (commercial or otherwise) license.

What they primarily accomplish is mandating that the copyright notice remains in place and the disclaimer that the software is without warranty.

The BSD license is a bit more specific on how the copyright notice needs to be displayed.

GPL

This is the most popular Open Source license. Without a full description of what the GPL does, as there are many places to find this, the GPL is a true Open Source license in the sense that it enforces that derivitave works must retain same license. In doing so it ensures that Open Sourced items remain open source. It does this by enforcing this based on distribution of binaries.

LGPL

The LGPL is substantly the same as the GPL with one major difference. It permits for inclusion within other projects with different (including propriatary) licenses. A good read explaining when to use this vs the GPL is located here.  http://www.gnu.org/licenses/why-not-lgpl.html

AGPL

The AGPL is again substantly the same as the GPL but addressing the fact that today distributing binaries is becoming less common, falling to providing access on a server. The AGPL address this by requiring enforcement based on if it is accessible from a network (ala a web site).

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• A CIO’s Quick Guide To Open Source Licenses (itexpertvoice.com)

This is a different kind of open source. OpenStack isn’t just a single product, but rather a platform. The intent here is not to compete with Xen or similar solutions, but rather provide completely open standards and code so that anyone can 1. conform to the existing implementation and 2. so any provider can offer their own (fully compatible) cloud hosting offering. Additionally everyone will benefit from the contributions of everyone else. Zimbra is a similar solution, also a platform built on many existing Open Source solutions like postfix.

Sounds like WebKit. In a similar way, Apple took webkit from the KDE project, added features and functionality and released it as Safari. Then google took the same webkit engine and built Chrome around it. The core webkit engine now powers most browsers (except IE and Firefox) and nearly all mobile platforms.  Everyone benefits from the contributions of everyone else.

RackSpace has graciously determined that interoperatibility and openness was better for everyone (including them) than the existing lock in approach offered by Amazon, Microsoft and others.

Wide adoption of an open-source, open-standards cloud should be huge for everyone. It means customers won’t have to fear lock-in and technology companies can participate in a growing market that spans cloud providers.

The open source software model has been proven to promote the standards and interoperability critical to the success of our industry. The explosive growth of the internet can be attributed to open, universal standards like HTTP and HTML.

The early Cloud offerings, however, have bucked this trend and are largely proprietary. No one benefits from a fractured landscape of closed, incompatible clouds where migration is difficult and true transparency is impossible.

This isn’t a small play. It will dramatically change the landscape of cloud offerings and will serve to propel cloud computing into the future. In time it will ensure better security, performance and  interoperatibility between providers.

• Rackspace, NASA launch OpenStack: Can it prevent cloud lock-in? (zdnet.com)
• OpenStack.org: RackSpace Open Sources Their Cloud Services Platform, And Gets NASA On Board (techcrunch.com)
• Rackspace Launches OpenStack – Open Source Cloud Computing Software (openstack.org)
• OpenStack: An Open Source Cloud Project Emerges (gigaom.com)
• Rackspace Releases Cloud Stack As Open Source (news.slashdot.org)
• OpenStack – Open Source Cloud Computing Software (webappers.com)

I came across an article today titled “Help! My boss is on twitter“. Allow me to share a secret with you, if you current boss isn’t on twitter yet, I can guarantee that your next one will be. Social media has caught on like wildfire. In all the excitement too often people forget that everything that you say on twitter / facebook and others is being published and recorded. This isn’t a private conversation you are having. Just because it’s not at the top of your feed doesn’t mean that it’s not there.

Even if your current employeer isn’t savvy to social media yet, your next employer will more than likely due some due diligence (as simple as a google search) and will be hiring or not hiring based on what he/she finds. You can tell more about an individual from their tweets than a job interview. Even if you nail an interview (assuming you get that far) a few misguided tweets could blow it for you. Here’s some general good advice.

1. Nobody want’s to hire someone that has a bad attitude.

It negatively affects everyone and lowers productivity faster than you could imagine. If you are complaining, epecially about your job, boss, position, etc in your tweets (in a very public way) imagine how much more damage you are doing in private.

2. Loose lips shink ships.

If your the type of person that is isn’t smart enough to keep private matters private, why would anyone trust you with any information or responsibilities.

3. An image is worth 1000 words.

Be especially careful about what images you post. Your appearance and conduct can say a lot about who you are and nothing reveals that better than a photo or video.

Related articles by Zemanta

• 50 Crucial Rules – Social Media Etiquette for Students (sociableblog.com)
• Another Reason to Watch Your Ps and Qs on Social Media (chrisabraham.com)
• Tweet for a Job (jobsearchingblog.com)

Regardless of your title or degree of experience, any misstep could result in a failed project. It’s a good habit to review the following two slide shows, if nothing else to provide a good confirmation that you are on the right track.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Why Software Projects Fail (ribomation.com)
• Dilbert Knows How to Save Failed IT Projects (cloudave.com)

The Ultimate VIM Configuration

Find it on GitHub

This configuration makes use of pathogen to have a well organized vim directory.

Most of the bundles are git submodules facilitating easy updating and configuration.

The vimrc is quite clean and provides easy configuration of the following plugins.

Plugins

• PIV (PHP Integration for VIM)
• Snipmate
• NerdCommenter
• NerdTree
• SuperTab
• Fugitive
• DelimitMate
• Matchit
• CheckSyntax
• Surrounding
• AutoCloseTag

The Ultimate .vimrc file

This is the ultimate .vimrc configuration.

It has grouping and folding built in for a clean organized config file.

" Modeline and Notes {
" vim: set foldmarker={,} foldlevel=0 foldmethod=marker spell:
"
" 	This is the personal .vimrc file of Steve Francia.
" 	While much of it is beneficial for general use, I would
" 	recommend picking out the parts you want and understand.
"
" 	You can find me at http://spf13.com
" }

" Windows Compatible {
	" On Windows, also use '.vim' instead of 'vimfiles'; this makes synchronization
	" across (heterogeneous) systems easier.
	if has('win32') || has('win64')
	  set runtimepath=$HOME/.vim,$VIM/vimfiles,$VIMRUNTIME,$VIM/vimfiles/after,$HOME/.vim/after
	endif
" }

" Setup Bundle Support {
" The next two lines ensure that the ~/.vim/bundle/ system works
	runtime! autoload/pathogen.vim
	silent! call pathogen#runtime_append_all_bundles()
" }

" Basics {
	set nocompatible 		" must be first line
	set background=dark     " Assume a dark background
" }

" General {
	filetype plugin indent on  	" Automatically detect file types.
	syntax on 					" syntax highlighting
	set mouse=a					" automatically enable mouse usage
	"set autochdir 				" always switch to the current file directory..
	" not every vim is compiled with this, use the following line instead
     "autocmd BufEnter * if bufname("") !~ "^\[A-Za-z0-9\]*://" | lcd %:p:h | endif
	scriptencoding utf-8
	set autowrite
	set shortmess+=filmnrxoOtT     	" abbrev. of messages (avoids 'hit enter')
	set viewoptions=folds,options,cursor,unix,slash " better unix / windows compatibility
	set virtualedit=onemore 	   	" allow for cursor beyond last character
	set history=1000  				" Store a ton of history (default is 20)
	" set spell 		 	     	" spell checking on

	" Setting up the directories {
		set backup 						" backups are nice ...
        " Moved to function at bottom of the file
		set backupdir=$HOME/.vimbackup//  " but not when they clog .
		set directory=$HOME/.vimswap// 	" Same for swap files
		set viewdir=$HOME/.vimviews// 	" same but for view files

		"" Creating directories if they don't exist
		silent execute '!mkdir -p $HOME/.vimbackup'
		silent execute '!mkdir -p $HOME/.vimswap'
		silent execute '!mkdir -p $HOME/.vimviews'
		au BufWinLeave * silent! mkview  "make vim save view (state) (folds, cursor, etc)
		au BufWinEnter * silent! loadview "make vim load view (state) (folds, cursor, etc)
	" }
" }

" Vim UI {
	color ir_black     	       		" load a colorscheme
	set tabpagemax=15 				" only show 15 tabs
	set showmode                   	" display the current mode

	set cursorline  				" highlight current line
	hi cursorline guibg=#333333 	" highlight bg color of current line
	hi CursorColumn guibg=#333333   " highlight cursor

	if has('cmdline_info')
		set ruler                  	" show the ruler
		set rulerformat=%30(%=\:b%n%y%m%r%w\ %l,%c%V\ %P%) " a ruler on steroids
		set showcmd                	" show partial commands in status line and
									" selected characters/lines in visual mode
	endif

	if has('statusline')
		set laststatus=1           	" show statusline only if there are > 1 windows
		" Use the commented line if fugitive isn't installed
		"set statusline=%<%f\ %=\:\b%n%y%m%r%w\ %l,%c%V\ %P " a statusline, also on steroids
		set statusline=%<%f\ %h%m%r%{fugitive#statusline()}%=%-14.(%l,%c%V%)\ %P
	endif

	set backspace=indent,eol,start 	" backspace for dummys
	set linespace=0 				" No extra spaces between rows
	set nu 							" Line numbers on
	set showmatch                  	" show matching brackets/parenthesis
	set incsearch 					" find as you type search
	set hlsearch 					" highlight search terms
	set winminheight=0 				" windows can be 0 line high
	set ignorecase 					" case insensitive search
	set smartcase 					" case sensitive when uc present
	set wildmenu 					" show list instead of just completing
	set wildmode=list:longest,full 	" comand <Tab> completion, list matches, then longest common part, then all.
	set whichwrap=b,s,h,l,<,>,[,]	" backspace and cursor keys wrap to
	set scrolljump=5 				" lines to scroll when cursor leaves screen
	set scrolloff=3 				" minimum lines to keep above and below cursor
	set foldenable  				" auto fold code
	set gdefault					" the /g flag on :s substitutions by default

" }

" Formatting {
	set nowrap                     	" wrap long lines
	set autoindent                 	" indent at the same level of the previous line
	set shiftwidth=4               	" use indents of 4 spaces
	set noexpandtab 	       		" tabs are tabs, not spaces
	set tabstop=4 					" an indentation every four columns
	"set matchpairs+=<:>            	" match, to be used with %
	set pastetoggle=<F12>          	" pastetoggle (sane indentation on pastes)
	"set comments=sl:/*,mb:*,elx:*/  " auto format comment blocks
" }

" Key Mappings {

	" Easier moving in tabs and windows
	map <C-J> <C-W>j<C-W>_
	map <C-K> <C-W>k<C-W>_
	map <C-L> <C-W>l<C-W>_
	map <C-H> <C-W>h<C-W>_
	map <C-K> <C-W>k<C-W>_
	map <S-H> gT
	map <S-L> gt

	" Stupid shift key fixes
	cmap W w
	cmap WQ wq
	cmap wQ wq
	cmap Q q
	cmap Tabe tabe

	" Yank from the cursor to the end of the line, to be consistent with C and D.
	nnoremap Y y$

	" Shortcuts
	" Change Working Directory to that of the current file
    cmap cwd lcd %:p:h
" }

" Plugins {

	" VCSCommand {
		let b:VCSCommandMapPrefix=',v'
		let b:VCSCommandVCSType='git'
		""let mapleader = "-"
	" } 

	" PIV {
		let g:DisableAutoPHPFolding = 0
	" }

	" Supertab {
		"let g:SuperTabDefaultCompletionType = "context"
		let g:SuperTabContextDefaultCompletionType = "<c-x><c-o>"
	" }

	" Misc {
		:map <C-F10> <Esc>:vsp<CR>:VTree<CR>
		" map Control + F10 to Vtree

		let g:checksyntax_auto = 0

		"comment out line(s) in visual mode
		vmap  o  :call NERDComment(1, 'toggle')<CR>
		let g:NERDShutUp=1

		let b:match_ignorecase = 1
	" }

	" ShowMarks {
		let showmarks_include = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ"
		" Don't leave on by default, use :ShowMarksOn to enable
		let g:showmarks_enable = 0
		" For marks a-z
		highlight ShowMarksHLl gui=bold guibg=LightBlue guifg=Blue
		" For marks A-Z
		highlight ShowMarksHLu gui=bold guibg=LightRed guifg=DarkRed
		" For all other marks
		highlight ShowMarksHLo gui=bold guibg=LightYellow guifg=DarkYellow
		" For multiple marks on the same line.
		highlight ShowMarksHLm gui=bold guibg=LightGreen guifg=DarkGreen
	" }

	" OmniComplete {
		"if has("autocmd") && exists("+omnifunc")
			"autocmd Filetype *
				"\if &omnifunc == "" |
				"\setlocal omnifunc=syntaxcomplete#Complete |
				"\endif
		"endif

		" Popup menu hightLight Group
		"highlight Pmenu 	ctermbg=13 	guibg=DarkBlue
		highlight PmenuSel 	ctermbg=7 	guibg=DarkBlue 		guifg=LightBlue
		"highlight PmenuSbar ctermbg=7 	guibg=DarkGray
		"highlight PmenuThumb 			guibg=Black

		hi Pmenu  guifg=#000000 guibg=#F8F8F8 ctermfg=black ctermbg=Lightgray
		hi PmenuSbar  guifg=#8A95A7 guibg=#F8F8F8 gui=NONE ctermfg=darkcyan ctermbg=lightgray cterm=NONE
		hi PmenuThumb  guifg=#F8F8F8 guibg=#8A95A7 gui=NONE ctermfg=lightgray ctermbg=darkcyan cterm=NONE

		" some convenient mappings
		inoremap <expr> <Esc>      pumvisible() ? "\<C-e>" : "\<Esc>"
		inoremap <expr> <CR>       pumvisible() ? "\<C-y>" : "\<CR>"
		inoremap <expr> <Down>     pumvisible() ? "\<C-n>" : "\<Down>"
		inoremap <expr> <Up>       pumvisible() ? "\<C-p>" : "\<Up>"
		inoremap <expr> <C-d> 	   pumvisible() ? "\<PageDown>\<C-p>\<C-n>" : "\<C-d>"
		inoremap <expr> <C-u>      pumvisible() ? "\<PageUp>\<C-p>\<C-n>" : "\<C-u>"

		" automatically open and close the popup menu / preview window
		au CursorMovedI,InsertLeave * if pumvisible() == 0|silent! pclose|endif
		set completeopt=menu,longest,preview
	" }

	" Ctags {
		set tags=./tags;/,~/.vimtags
	" }

	" EasyTags {
		let g:easytags_cmd = '/usr/local/bin/ctags'
	" }

	" Delimitmate {
		au FileType * let b:delimitMate_autoclose = 1

		" If using html auto complete (complete closing tag)
        au FileType xml,html,xhtml let b:delimitMate_matchpairs = "(:),[:],{:}"
	" }

	" AutoCloseTag {
		" Make it so AutoCloseTag works for xml and xhtml files as well
		au FileType xhtml,xml ru ftplugin/html/autoclosetag.vim
	" }

	" SnipMate {
		" Setting the author var
		let g:snips_author = 'Steve Francia <steve.francia@gmail.com>'
		" Shortcut for reloading snippets, useful when developing
		nnoremap ,smr <esc>:exec ReloadAllSnippets()<cr>
	" }
" }

" GUI Settings {
	" GVIM- (here instead of .gvimrc)
	if has('gui_running')
		set guioptions-=T          	" remove the toolbar
		set lines=40               	" 40 lines of text instead of 24,
	endif
" }
"

" Not quite working yet
"function InitializeDirectories()
  "let separator = "."
  "let parent = $HOME
  "let prefix = '.vim'
  "let dir_list = {
			  "\ 'backup': 'backupdir',
			  "\ 'views': 'viewdir',
			  "\ 'swap': 'directory' }

  "for [dirname, settingname] in items(dir_list)
	  "let directory = parent . '/' . prefix . dirname . "/"
	  "if exists("*mkdir")
		  "if !isdirectory(directory)
			  "call mkdir(directory)
		  "endif
	  "endif
	  "if !isdirectory(directory)
		  "echo "Warning: Unable to create backup directory: " . directory
		  "echo "Try: mkdir -p " . directory
	  "else
		  "" Adding an extra trailing slash so it stores the path and not just the
		  "" filename so there aren't collisions for backups
		  "" Windows Vista / 7 has UAC issues, so setting $temp as fallback
		  "exec "set " . settingname . "='" . directory . "/'," . $temp
	  "endif
  "endfor
"endfunction
"call InitializeDirectories() 

I’ve used Drupal to power my blog since I started it over 2 years ago. It has been a bitter sweet relationship, but in general I’ve been pleased. In those two years, WordPress as a product has rocketed past Drupal, and feels much more mature. While Drupal 7 should level the field a bit, it’s a ways away and WordPress 3.0 is already here.

Every so often a “new” technology catches on. RIght now it’s nosql databases. A couple years ago it was Ruby, before that it was java. Each arise because they propose a solution to an existing problem, or in other words a better way of doing something.. something, but not everything.

Unfortunately knowing when to use the technology requires actual experience with it, which never seems to catch up to the hype engine quickly enough, so consequently the technology transforms into a “golden hammer”. Better at everything and ready to displace everything that existed before. Of course this nearly never happens because it’s not rarely true. Current technologies exist because they do something well. when a new technology emerges it will likely be good at a different thing meaning the two will co-exist.

The second stage of the hype factory is when it spills into the business world. Last week I had a VC ask me if we were using Hadoop. DId he really care if we were using Hadoop? Of course not. He didn’t know enough about our needs or architecture to even know if Hadoop would be appropriate. He just knows that Hadoop is an emerging technology that a bunch of people are talking about. Really what he wanted to know was are we keeping up with the latest technologies.

The current situation due the popularity of the LAMP stack, which is a victim of it’s own success. While Linux is virtually universal in application today, Apache, MySQL and PHP each have their own niches. The LAMP became so easy to use together that people began to use MySQL for things that relational databases aren’t good at and are unnecessary for. NoSQL isn’t remotely new technology, though until recently open source implementations either didn’t exist or went unnoticed.

As Facebook, Twitter and others saw them as solutions to their massive scalability solutions (and because they were using relational databases for things they shouldn’t have) people began to see NoSQL as a golden hammer, big enough to solve Facebook’s problems.NoSQL is a good solution to the right problem, though unfortunately the gain in popularity now largely exists because well intentioned, though seriously misinformed people believe it’s the next golden hammer.

Amazon, Digg, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter all started on sql databases (all but Amazon on MySQL) and have transitioned to incorporated nosql databases into their infrastructure, though many utilize both relational databases as well as non-relational ones.

I’ve compiled a few resources to help bring you up to speed on nosql databases.

Major sites using NoSQL

• Amazon : (Dynamo) http://www.allthingsdistributed.com/2007/10/amazons_dynamo.html
• LinkedIn : (Voldemort) http://blog.linkedin.com/2009/03/20/project-voldemort-scaling-simple-storage-at-linkedin/
• Digg : (Cassandra) http://about.digg.com/blog/saying-yes-nosql-going-steady-cassandra
• Facebook : (Cassandra) http://cassandra.apache.org/
• Twitter : (Cassandra) http://nosql.mypopescu.com/post/407159447/cassandra-twitter-an-interview-with-ryan-king

Key articles to read..

• http://adamblog.heroku.com/past/2009/7/6/sql_databases_dont_scale/
• http://adamblog.heroku.com/past/2009/7/8/sql_databases_are_an_overapplied_solution_and_what_to_use_instead/
• https://www.cloudkick.com/blog/2010/mar/02/4_months_with_cassandra/
• http://cattell.net/datastores/Datastores.pdf <- Best overview
• http://ria101.wordpress.com/2010/02/24/hbase-vs-cassandra-why-we-moved/

Some Slides

Image via Wikipedia

With the release of PHP 5.3, PHP released the most significant capabilities in years. Specifically the addition of Late Static Bindings, Lambda Functions and Closures, and Namespaces has changed everything. These new features open new doors for solutions previously impossible. As a result in recent months there has been a flood of new frameworks and libraries taking advantage of these new features. Effectively we are approaching the third wave of PHP frameworks.

The first wave included Seagull and Zoop Frameworks back before frameworks became a buzz word.

The second wave followed the massive buzz factory Ruby on Rails generated. CakePHP,Symfony, Zend and a slew of others followed. These frameworks were developed after PHP 5 became standard and took advantage of the new OO features provided.

This third wave is largely due to the release of PHP 5.3 and all the new languages features and structures that accompanied it.

The space is really heating up. Here’s what’s happening…

Zend Framework just announced a fork for ZF 2.0 strictly 5.3 and above.

The former lead developer of Cake PHP has started a new framework for 5.3 and above calledLithium.

Doctrine 2.0 is in the works and is 5.3+. It is a significant upgrade from the 1.0 branch and takes advantage of the features provided in PHP 5.3.

Zoop Framework has a stable but not feature complete 2.0 branch which is 5.3 and above.

Symfony just announced their 2.0 alpha release which you guessed it, only runs on 5.3 and above.

Fat-Free Framework is a brand new framework which, as the name indicates, is very VERY light. It is further along in development than all the other frameworks listed (read stable), but also far less ambitious in scope. If you are developing a small application FFF would be a solid choice, though I have doubts that without a lot of external development it would make sense for a large application.

While all these frameworks/libraries are rather early in their development process, many are quite usable and show really smart design. It’s great that the community has embraced this and is willing to re-engineer existing solutions to utilize the benefits of PHP 5.3.

Related articles by Zemanta

• PHP 5.3 in practice (slideshare.net)
• Symfony 2.0 revealed (slideshare.net)

Since I began at Open Sky a few weeks ago I have been tasked with building out a great team. Over the course of my career I have interviewed hundreds of people (mostly developers) and hired dozens. At OpenSky I was able to find and hire 6 fantastic employees in my first 6 weeks and wanted to share some of the tips and techniques I have learned over the years and found successful.

Make connections

Most of my best hires came through referrals. Get out and network with people in the community and the space your needs are. There are so many tools available today to do this includingLinkedIn and Twitter. These tools are not to replace personal connections, but to assist in making and keeping them. There really isn’t any excuse for not having a solid and reliable network.

Interview well

The whole purpose of an interview is to determine if the candidate is a good fit for your company and a good fit for the given role. Also it’s important to ensure that your company is a good fit for them. Something they will be passionate about and will help their career. I usually know within the first 10 minutes if the candidate is the right fit.. If not I’ll let them know why and end the interview right there. There are many good different approaches to interviewing. Figure out what works for you.

Don’t compromise

If the candidate isn’t the right person, don’t hire them. The right person is out there. Ever time I have compromised I have regretted it. Only bad results have come from it. Nobody is better than the wrong body.

Hire well and fire better

Success comes from having the right person in the right job. The interview process is supposed to determine this, but even the best interviewers aren’t perfect. If the candidate isn’t the right fit move on quickly. The right candidate is out there, go out and find them. The damage the wrong employee has an organization is huge. Help them find the right opportunity where they can be the most successful.

Image by steve.francia via Flickr

I couldn’t be more excited to announce that I have accepted a position at The Open Sky Project. I am leading the architecture, development and technology.

It’s rare in life that one has the opportunity to do what they love to do and be paid to do it. Even rarer is to do something great with people you love working with. At OpenSky I have found this and more. There is an energy and excitement at OpenSky; come spend 10 minutes in our office and you will feel it. The team is passionate about what they are doing and the passion is growing.

OpenSky has assembled the strongest team I have ever seen at an early stage startup. Each member of the management team has excelled in their particular domain and exhibits youthful passion for doing it. This level of deep experience allows us to focus on building the business, which is hard enough without the distraction of trying to learn how to do your job as well.

The more time I spend at OpenSky, the more impressed I am. There isn’t a weak link in the chain, and when you combine this with a great idea, good things are bound to happen. I couldn’t be more excited to be a part of this team working together to build the next great e-commerce revolution.

We are at a really good place right now. All startups begin with an idea, turn it into an experiment, and if that goes well, build a business around it. We are at the exciting stage where the experiment was not only successful but exceeded all possible expectations. Now we get to go full speed ahead building a great business and all the technology and systems to power it.

We have the challenge and opportunity to build a modern scalable e-commerce system using the best open source software, libraries and technologies.

I am looking for the best and brightest to come and join our great team of all star engineers. If you’re interested give me a shout out on twitter @spf13 or check out our jobs page.

If you want to find out more about OpenSky, come check out our blog!

Most developers know the basics of VIM, enough to edit a conf file, but most stay there, unaware of the power and beauty of vim. One of my developers has expressed desire to abandon the bloated GUI ways of eclipse and discover VIM. I have been using VIM for such a long time I forgot how difficult that transition is. Here are some resources and approaches to help you learn vim.

The easiest place to start is by using a tutor. Did you know that Vim comes with it’s own tutor? Simply type vimtutor in your shell (outside of vim). If you prefer the gui version, type gvimtutor. On MS-Windows you can find it in the Program/Vim menu. The tutor is a 30 minute interactive tutorial that will walk you through the basics of editing with vim. Once you have completed the tutor it’s critical that you understand how to move around (the tutor covers these).

Practice Practice Practice.

h j k l ... e b w f t * / ? % $ ^

These are your bread and butter and most everything that follows builds on these. Vim also comes with a very comprehensive user manual. Launch vim and type “:help user-manual” (without quotes) in command mode.

Most important is that the first couple days trying to use vim instead of a gui based editor will be frustrating and hard. Stick with it. Within a week or two you things with flip on you and you will begin to be frustrated that every program doesn’t work like vim, and be shocked how often you go to the mouse or arrow keys.

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Every self respecting linux, mac os X or *nix user should have a solid handle on managing jobs in unix. The following will explain how to run tasks in the background, bring tasks to the foreground, background already running tasks and keeping a task running while logged out.

Run a task in the background

All you need to to is follow a command with the ‘&’ character. Pretty simple. What this does is start the command and background it. It will keep running and when it is finished it will present the results to the foreground.

$ cp -av stuff /mnt/backup &

[1] 21394

The response indicates that the job is now backgrounded and the job id is 1 and the process id is 21394.

A backgrounded process is still attached to your session. This means that if you logout it will also stop, though it will warn you that a process is running in the background when you ‘exit’.

Listing jobs (processes running in the background)

In this example I ran ‘sleep 100 &’. It is also in the background. To see backgrounded jobs, simply type jobs.

$ jobs

[1]-  Running                 cp -av stuff /mnt/backup &
[2]+  Stopped                 sleep 100 &

Bring a backgrounded app to the foreground

I want to see how my backup is going so I’ll bring it back to the foreground to view it. To do this you need to know the job id which is the number in the [] above.

There are couple ways to do this… The first works everywhere, where the latter is specific to bash (though it may also exist in your preferred shell).

$ %1

or

$ fg 1

Suspending a task.

Satisfied that the backup is going well, you now want to backgroud it again. type -z to suspend it. This will temporarily stop the process from running and bring you to a shell prompt again. From there just ‘bg‘ it.

hit <ctrl>-z

[1]+  Stopped               cp -av stuff /mnt/backup &
$

$ bg 1
[1]+ cp -av stuff /mnt/backup &amp;

Running a process and logging out

There are three different approaches to doing this. Screen, nohup and disown. Screen seems like the most versile, though you technically aren’t logging out, but you can disconnect completely without worrying that it will stop. Both nohup and screen require you to do something prior to or during starting the process so neither can work if the process is already going. For these circumstances their is disown.

Screen

Screen is a versitile tool and a must use for any system admin. I could easily devote a full blog post on screen, in fact I did. Be more productive using gnu screen

nohup

nohup is a POSIX command to ignore the HUP (hangup) signal, enabling the command to keep running after the user who issues the command has logged out. The HUP (hangup) signal is by convention the way a terminal warns depending processes of logout.

nohup is most often used to run commands in the background as daemons. Output that would normally go to the terminal goes to a file called nohup.out if it has not already been redirected. This command is very helpful when there is a need to run numerous batch jobs which are inter-dependent.

If you redirect the streams you can avoid filling up your filesystem with nohup.out files as follows…

$ nohup tar czf /backup/home.tgz . > /dev/null 2>&1 &

Some shells (bash) provide a similar function called disown which can be run after the command is already running. If you are using bash, there really isn’t a reason to use nohup, use disown instead.

disown

Disown is easy enough to use, background a job (bg 1 for example) then type disown.

    $ bg 1
    $ disown

Alternatives

Use ‘setsid’ which will run a program in a new session.

It is also possible to use “dislocate” for this.

Under Debian, it is possible to use /sbin/start-stop-daemon to daemonise a process.

Another way to avoid the process being bound to a terminal is to have the at daemon run it, as for example with echo command | at now.

Warning

Once a job is disowned (or run using nohup) you can no longer bring it to the foreground and you no longer own it. It will not be listed in jobs. Only do this if you won’t need to access it again. Your only option to stop it is to kill it.

Notes

bg defaults to the last suspended job, so it isn’t necessary to provide the job id.

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du is the *nix command for disk usage. It tells you how much space everything in the given directory is taking up. GNU du introduced a handy option -h making it human readable, or showing sizes using K, M, G rather than bytes. Unfortunately this makes it not sortable numerically. Here’s how to sort du by size and keep it as human readable.

Insert the following function into your .profile or .bash_profile file.

 function duf {
     du -k "$@" | sort -n | while read size fname; do for unit in k M G T P E Z Y; do if [ $size -lt 1024 ]; then echo -e "${size}${unit}\t${fname}"; break; fi; size=$((size/1024)); done; done
 }

By writing this as a function, it enables you to pass along parameters to the newly created duf command just as you would du.

For convenience, I also create the following aliases which you can also place in your .profile or .bash_profile file.

alias du1='duf --max-depth=1'
alias du2='duf --max-depth=2'
alias du0='duf --max-depth=0'

Once you have added these lines, remember to source .profile to use it without logging out.