Blog

All of the blog posts contained within The Tech Teapot with the most recent at the top.

Selecting a content management system

One of the great discoveries I made whilst writing this blog has been the ease with which I can create posts using Wordpress as the content management system (CMS). It started good and it just keeps on getting better. I’d love to be able to update content on the rest of the site just as easily. Unfortunately, as things stand at the moment, updating the site means wading waste deep in PHP.

Elastic clouds with elastic bills

I mentioned this in a comment over on John M Willis ESM Blog. I thought it deserved a post all to itself because I think it’s important. One anxiety I have with hosting my websites is the bill I need to pay each month. There are many many hosting options out there, all with their own particular risk characteristics. With the advent of on-demand cloud offerings like Amazon EC2 there are lot of new options.

May you live in interesting times...

…I’m not sure whether I should be pleased or scared by today’s 1.5% cut in UK interest rates. After all, the Monetary Policy Committee don’t normally go around lopping 1.5% off interest rates. Things were pretty boring there on the economic front for a decade or so, it is surprising just how fast things can turn around.

Screams as systems administration alert method

According to a recent survey carried out by Fluke Networks, 29% of IT managers say they have been alerted to business critical problems by screams. Doesn’t sound like they have pro-active monitoring then? 😉

When open source goes wrong...

… things ain’t too pretty. My favourite quote: “Clearly, their VC people have no picture of the situation other than their own return of investment.” Well, yeah duh! Why anybody would be surprised that VCs are money focused is a mystery. VCs are managing other people’s money so their focus is bound to be primarily money focused. Your retirement fund isn’t going to give two figs about open source, it just wants a decent return on investment given the risks it is taking.

DEC answers year 2000 leap year bug report

Digital Equipment answers a user’s bug report that the year 2000 is not a leap year. Various system services, such as SYS$ASCTIM assume that the year 2000 will be a leap year. Although one can never be sure of what will happen at some future time, there is strong historical precedent for presuming that the present Gregorian calendar will still be in affect by the year 2000. Since we also hope that VMS will still be around by then, we have chosen to adhere to these precedents.