About Puppet:

Following a client-server model, and with its own declarative language, Puppet tries to solve one of the challenges of server systems administration: how to reliably automate server configuration management and distribution, an essential requirement in large datacenter deployments.

Puppet approaches configuration management from an angle that is different from the traditional script-and-automate model:

• It provides a Domain Specific Language (DSL) to model the relationship between servers, services, and service objects
• It brings systems administration automation closer to the realm of software development, expressing an infrastructure in functional, repeatable lines of code
• Its level of abstraction provides a flexibility that is increasingly relevant as systems administrators are required to manage more heterogeneous configurations for server farms, may them be hosted in-house, at a hosting facility, or a cloud provider

Read more on InfoQ

1. Distributed and Highly Available Search Engine.
   • Each index is fully sharded with a configurable number of shards.
   • Each shard can have zero or more replicas.
   • Read / Search operations performed on either replica shard.
2. Multi Tenant with Multi Types.
   • Support for more than one index.
   • Support for more than one type per index.
   • Index level configuration (number of shards, index storage, …).
3. Various set of APIs.
   • HTTP RESTful API.
   • Native Java API.
   • All APIs perform automatic node operation rerouting.
4. Document oriented.
   • No need for upfront schema definition.
   • Schema can be defined per type for customization of the indexing process.
5. Reliable, Asynchronous Write Behind for long term persistency.
6. (Near) Real Time Search.
7. Built on top of Lucene.
   • Each shard is a fully functional Lucene index.
   • All the power of Lucene easily exposed through simple configuration / plugins.
8. Per operation consistency.
   • Single document level operations are atomic, consistent, isolated and durable.
9. Open Source under Apache 2 License.

Firebug is an extension for Firefox, but what happens when you need to test your pages in Internet Explorer, Opera, and Safari?

The solution is Firebug Lite, a JavaScript file you can insert into your pages to simulate some Firebug features in browsers that are not named “Firefox”.

Sumopaint is a fast, easy, simple but powerful image editing software.

Try it out here: http://www.sumo.fi/products/sumopaint

Windows only: Mount more than one Gmail account as a remote disk drive with free utility Gmail Drive Config.

- thanks to lifehacker

Yes, it could all disappear but this has now replaced my old WebDAV solution…

Wow. I was impressed.

I grabbed their Reporting Evaluation tool and had it up and running in no time. I hooked up a MySQL datasource and produce reports almost immediately (well if you discount a few distractions and user errors).

A good thing about this, is that I can now slot Pentaho into my next project.

1. Firstly access the settings file of SVN through the Tortoise context menu (right-click).

2. Enable automatic properties in the miscellany section.

[miscellany]
enable-auto-props = yes


3. Add the file extensions and keywords you want to be activated.

[auto-props]
*.html = svn:keywords=Date Id Rev Author URL
*.js = svn:keywords=Date Id Rev Author URL
*.css = svn:keywords=Date Id Rev Author URL
*.php = svn:keywords=Date Id Rev Author URL


Tip: This works only on new files added to your repository after the configuration has been modified.

1. Run puttygen.exe
2. In the “Parameters” section select your encryption standard, I use SSH2 DSA. Press Generate.
3. Move your mouse randomly in the small screen in order to generate the key pairs.
4. Enter a key comment, which will serve to identify the key you are generating.
5. Type in the passphrase and confirm it. The passphrase is a password and is used to protect your key. MAke sure oyu remember this password as you will be asked for it when you connect via SSH.
6. Click “Save private key” to save your private key.
7. Click “Save public key” to save your public key.

After a bit of a hunt around I went with Gmail – it was free, supports POP/IMAP/Web, had user documentation etc and as it was Google it was likely to be more stable than my $3k server sitting in a cupboard at home.

But to cut a long story short, I have now enabled calendar sharing between some of my Gmail domains and wanted to sync my Outlook calendar with my Gmail calendar. I end up by using this great little tool: Google Calendar Sync. It only supports Microsoft Outlook versions 2003 and 2007, and operating systems Windows XP and Windows Vista.

How long will I be using Windows instead of a Linux desktop? I am not sure but the time is getting closer…

What you need to do is to install each version of Firefox into it’s own folder with a different profile for execution.

On Windows, create shortcuts like this:

“C:\Program files\Firefox\Firefox-1.5\firefox.exe” -p Firefox-1.5 -no-remote
“C:\Program files\Firefox\Firefox-2.0\firefox.exe” -p Firefox-2.0 -no-remote
“C:\Program files\Firefox\Firefox-3.0\firefox.exe” -p Firefox-3.0 -no-remote

Away you go…