Ideas for blog articles

I've intentionally avoided writing about blogging, but an article from Dosh Dosh caught my attention.

I didn't start a blog with the intention of making money. I do, however, enjoy many of Maki's articles, so I read Dosh Dosh on a regular basis.

Maki recently posted Pattern Your Audience: How Editorial Calendars Can Increase Your Readership. The main idea of the article is that patterns in our blog postings can create expectations that tend to draw people into our blogs.

This article caught my attention for two reasons. First, approximately once a week I post an article with a gadget theme. I haven't received any feedback one way or another, but I enjoy hunting for quirky gadgets.

Second, I've participated in some conversations recently on the topic of whether to blog even if one doesn't have something interesting or unique to say. Perhaps this material will provide inspiration (for myself and others) for some interesting article content.

Here's a reproduction of Maki's list of suggestions with some of my own thoughts relative to this blog.

1. Interviews - Smoothspan's Bob Warfield has some interesting interviews. It's been tempting to do something similar. I might consider something like this in the future.
   
2. Feature Story - I've considered writing some longer articles. This is another one for future consideration.
   
3. Columns - nah
   
4. Reader Quiz/Q and A - Quiz: What's the square root of blue? Hmmm... maybe not...
   
5. User Profile Highlight - I like this idea. If I do it, I might combine it with the interview idea listed earlier.
   
6. Videos/Podcasts - I've contemplated a {pod,vid}cast. My current range of topics is probably not suitable for this type of activity. Feel free to cajole me into action.
   
7. Free Reports - Sorry, this reminds me too much of my day job.
   
8. Industry Roundups - see previous item
   
9. Meme Days - this might be interesting
   
10. Reviews - If you are a vendor, feel free to contact me for information on submitting products for review. ;-)
    
11. Reader/User Polls - It's rude to refer to users as poles. Trust me, I've received correction on this.
    
12. Website Highlight - I generally prefer to post links to interesting sites.
    
13. Application Launch - Hmmm... Do architects code?
    
14. Weekly Comic Strip - Probably not - my preferred artist is somewhat busy.
    
15. Summary of Performance - only if we're talking about merit increases and yearly bonuses...
    
16. User-Submitted Content - getcherownblogdude! :-P
    
17. Monthly Contests/Deals - hmmm... perhaps this might be a way to reduce my spare parts inventory. :-)
    
18. Monthly Post Digest - nah - this brings back memories of mailing lists delivered over uucp...
    
19. Article Series - expect to see a few of these. I've recently started some mini-distro work that will be posted in a series of blog articles.
    

My pithy remarks notwithstanding, many of these are interesting ideas for creating topics for blog articles. Some readers might find some inspiration of their own.

As always, feel free to add your $0.02.

Meme for the day: everyone should have a meme for the day.

Protective Insert for Baseball Cap - because your head might not be hard enough

From Spycatcher of Knightsbridge,

Protective Insert for Baseball Cap

You can't do that on the drums!

A close friend, Michael Petiford, has joined the blogging community.

Like percussion? Have a soft spot for progressive rock?

Here's a link:

Michael's Prog Drum Blog

He's a musician, so he has the obligatory myspace page.

If you like rounds, canons, and whatnot, check out his YouTube page. He has two interesting videos in which he plays a round and a canon on the drum set.

Perl 6 and Parrot Continue to Make Progress

chromatic has posted a Perl 6 on Parrot Roadmap Update.

It's nice to see the Perl and Parrot activity continuing to move forward.

Most people have probably written Perl off as stale and past its prime. I must confess that my perlifcation has dwindled to mere personal use.

I have no interest in language wars, but I predict we'll one day wake up to find Perl once again at the top of the interest stack.

It's not dead, it's sleeping! (and I mean that in a good way)

Five Clouds? I think not...

In One Cloud, Two Clouds, Four Clouds, More?, Bob Warfield chimes in on the topic of horizontal and vertical markets for utility compute clouds.

He references an article from Om Malik in which Om makes the case for a small number of horizontally aligned compute clouds. He also references an article from Nick Carr. Nick postulates that there is still significant value to be found in vertically aligned clouds.

Each of these articles are an interesting read, well worth the time.

I agree with Bob's assessment of the near-term future for cloud computing, namely that vertical markets are still relevant as we see utility computing become an intriguing option for many situations.

There is still significant value in the ability for companies to provide compute clouds tuned to specific industries. Different regulatory landscapes, risk profiles, and preferred architectures are enough to provide differentiation across providers. Current horizontally aligned utility compute environments are not sufficiently evolved to provide simple options for the wide variety of requirements. In addition, the vertically aligned environments are predisposed to understanding the requirements and issues particular to specific industries.

Perhaps we'll see a shift once the horizontal players start to see patterns in the solutions implemented by their vertical customers, and start offering these patterns as value-added services to their vertical customers.

How much of an OS distro is necessary for a Pile of Lamps

The recent conversation on Pile of Lamps rekindled an interest from a previous life - distro engineering.

My current focus has been to select an initial set of workbench tools.

Here's my version 0.5:

• VirtualBox - I could have just as easily chosen VMWAre, but this is a home project, so economy reigns. I do want to work out the process with both products, so I've probably take a look at EasyVMX in the not too distant future. Early results confirm my original suspicions - VMWare is definitely the king of the hill, but VirtualBox does nicely for now.
  
• T2 - This is a recent discovery. It's a fork of Rock Linux. They provide a nice system development environment well suited for building distributions.
  

I can hear it now.

"But we already have gabillions of distros -don't even think about building another one!"

Hurrumph...

Like blogs, there can never be too many distros. :-)

Call it my take on Just Enough OS.

Much of what is contained in most distros is excess baggage, catering to an audience wanting all manner of doodads. Granted, there are minimalist distros, stripped down to a bare bones environment. My primary issue with these is that they tend to be focused on squeezing as much functionality into as small a space as possible. The problem space for Pile of Lamps appears to be different.

For Pile of Lamps, or JeOS, the key design goal should be to remove as much complexity as possible. The dramatic increase in the apparent number of running machines compounds the the problem of system management. Perhaps an appropriate solution is to strip the base installation to a bare minimum. Here's a quick list of the more obvious benefits.

• Less to upgrade
• Less to configure
  
• Smaller security risk footprint
• Faster to transport over the wire

In its most extreme form, the kernel's call to init could reference the end application, but there are several piddly details that make the use of init (or equiv) worth serious consideration. At any rate, these types of design trade-offs are at the heart of my little experiment.

Let me know what you think.

The Blue Monster does not appear to be going home

I just finished reading Nick Malik's Focusing on Customer 2.0. I think I've been lax in reading the material coming out of the Microsoft EA folks.

Nick's article is just shy of being a manifesto for the next generation of IT. He conjures up the compelling need to change in the modern landscape of users unwilling to tolerate the clumsy environments tolerated in the past. The IT community is once again facing an assault at the walls that protect the high priesthood.

The article references a blog posting from Gabriel Morgan enumerating Gabriel's view of Customer 2.0. Gabriel's post provides some interesting insight into how Microsoft EA is trying to frame the next generation of Microsoft, Microsoft IT (and by extension portions of corporate IT).

As I read Gabriel's article, I was struck by a gradual shift from the environmental trends, to the characteristics of Customer 2.0, and finally to the characteristics of a Software+Services business model. The final list appears to be written for Marketing types. This is not an indictment, merely an observation. I hope Gabriel's future posts on this topic speak more to directly to EAs as we collectively work out how to create architectures capable of handling this next wave of change.

Regardless of your religious affiliation, the Blue Monster does not appear to be going home.