April 2007

I know, I know. I’ve been bad about blogging more updates on how my homebrewing attempts have panned out.

Well, I was holding out to see how the beer turned out. I was worried I’d messed something up and would be embarassed to find out that it was ruined and my efforts were all for naut. I bottled my first batch about two weeks ago and crossed my fingers.

Well, surprise suprise, it turned out excellent. I’m very satisfied. And not just because I made it myself.

Facebook, the social networking site, has released a critical piece of their infrastructure, code-named “Thrift” as Open Source:

Thrift is a software framework for scalable cross-language services development. It combines a powerful software stack with a code generation engine to build services that work efficiently and seamlessly between C++, Java, Python, PHP, and Ruby. Thrift was developed at Facebook, and we are now releasing it as open source

Those of you who aren’t software engineering nerds like me and haven’t spent the last year and a half elbow-deep inside one of the world’s largest service oriented architectures might not realize how huge that is.

When you set out to build a large distributed system, the first question you have to answer is how you’re going to glue it all together, especially if you don’t want to have to use the same language everywhere. You could use something standard like XML-RPC or SOAP, but XML is slow and sometimes inflexible. And you don’t really care about interoperability with third-party systems - you just want to be able to connect your pieces together. And what about server frameworks? Do you really want to have to implement all those annoying little bits like configuration and logging for every language you want to use?

What you really need is one standard framework for everything. Thrift provides this. Define your service APIs in a common language and the framework automatically creates bindings for every language you’d want to use, along with service code in your chosen language.

Very cool. If I manage to find some free time I’ll be sure to play with it some more.

Browsing through Netflix this morning I made an awesome find:

Under “Special Interest” of all places, Netflix has an excellent selection of movies, documentaries, and instructional videos about sailing and racing. Some good picks that I’ve already added to my queue include:

• Sail Trim
• The Shape of Speed (a classic)
• Alinghi: The Inside Story

They’ve also got all the classics like Wind and great instructional videos. Definitely a good find if you’re a boater.

I just signed into my GMail and saw this announcement about Google’s new “GMail Paper” service:

Intriguing:

Is it free? Yes. The cost of postage is offset with the help of relevant, targeted, unobtrusive advertisements, which will appear on the back of your Gmail Paper prints in red, bold, 36 pt Helvetica. No pop-ups, no flashy animations—these are physically impossible in the paper medium. How about attachments? All part of the deal. Photo attachments are printed on high-quality, glossy photo paper, and secured to your Gmail Paper with a paper clip. MP3 and WAV files will not be printed. We recommend maintaining copies of your non-paper Gmail in these cases. Is there a limit? You can make us print one, one thousand, or one hundred thousand of your emails. It’s whatever seems reasonable to you. But what about the environment? Not a problem. Gmail Paper is made out of 96% post-consumer organic soybean sputum, and thus, actually helps the environment. For every Gmail Paper we produce, the environment gets incrementally healthier.

I love the shot of the guy dropping off the Google box full of printouts.

(Yes, I know it’s April 1st… But can’t a guy want to play along?)