Clarke's Third Law

Posted on 5 July 2011

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The Dunning–Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which unskilled people make poor decisions and reach erroneous conclusions, but their incompetence denies them the metacognitive ability to appreciate their mistakes.^[1] The unskilled therefore suffer from illusory superiority, rating their ability as above average, much higher than it actually is, while the highly skilled underrate their own abilities, suffering from illusory inferiority. Actual competence may weaken self-confidence, as competent individuals may falsely assume that others have an equivalent understanding. As Kruger and Dunning conclude, "the miscalibration of the incompetent stems from an error about the self, whereas the miscalibration of the highly competent stems from an error about others" (p. 1127).^[2]

The effect is about paradoxical defects in cognitive ability, in oneself and others.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect

Дивный мир стартапов интервью Аркадия Морейниса

Posted on 26 June 2011 (russian)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76E4A0XsdGk

Фаундер

Вера
Цель $$
Харизма
Адаптивность
-- В этом мире выживает не сильнейший а тот кто умеет адаптироваться

Понимание продукта

Кому и зачем нужно то что вы делаете?
Продукт = ПО + продажи+ marketing
Умение раставлять приоритеты (приоритеты в продуктовых фичах)
-- Без них нельзя обойтись
-- Это полезно
-- То что удобно и красиво

Команда

Не просто набор хороших людей
-- Команда это умение понимать цель, умение разложить на задачи, и понять какие нужны ресурсы, роли, люди
Умение планировать
Умение выполнять планы

Понимание перспектив

Качественный скачек
Понимать рынок
В чем суть - Think big

In any human enterprise, work seeks the lowest hierarchal level

Posted on 16 June 2011

RVM + Monit + Passenger + nginx + multiple rubies

Posted on 14 June 2011

I've spent a lot of time setting up my host, would like to share my experience.

So what we ve got:
VPS box with ssh access
Two websites, both ruby on rails:

Custom website (ruby 1.9.2 + rails 3)
Redmine (ruby 1.8.7 + rails 2)
Passeger - to run websites
Monit - to do monitoring and management of processes

VPS was already preconfigured with Nginx and ruby 1.9.2 as system wide setup, so there are no problems of running the first website, as it will work straight out of the box.

The question is how to setup both web applications with different ruby versions.

As we are hosting applications on different ruby versions, we cannot host them together on the same passenger, so we need to setup proxy on the system wide nginx to run the second website as a standalone application.

The access to the second site will look like that:

Request comes in to the global nginx
The request is proxied to standalone Passenger, which is running on the second instance of nginx

First of all we need to install 1.8.7 ruby on our host. The best way to do that is to use RVM, and install it locally as a current user. I would personally don't recommend to install it system wide. The are many good tutorial how to do that, so i'll skip over that:
http://beginrescueend.com/rvm/install/

After RVM is install and running 1.8.7 ruby version, we need to decide how we will host our second application. For this example I run standalone passenger, which is simply an instance of nginx running passenger with single application. This setup is enough, if there is only one site, otherwise we need to setup a separate second instance of nginx for 1.8.7 ruby.

Because it is only possible to have a single ruby version active at the same time, it could lead into extra problems if we don't do it properly. The best way i've found to do that is to wrap 1.8.7 ruby passenger into separate aplication.

You need to switch rvm to the required ruby version (1.8.7 in our case)
Install passenger gem if its not already installed
Use RVM wrapper to wrap passenger gem, something like:

rvm wrapper 1.8.7@default redmine passenger

That command will create an executable in
where/rvm/installed/.rvm/ruby-1.8.7/bin/

Now you can test it. Navigate to folder with 1.8.7 application and type

redmine_passenger start

This will start passenger server for 1.8.7, and doesn't matter what is the current RVM environment is setup, this will always use 1.8.7 ruby. You should be able to see you application running at localhost:3000 (by default)

So the second passenger is up and running, we need to setup a proxy on the system wide nging to route requests to the second. This is a good information: http://blog.phusion.nl/2010/09/21/phusion-passenger-running-multiple-ruby-versions/

Pretty much we need to add new virtual host to the system wide nginx.

server { listen 80; server_name www.site.com; root /webapps/site.com/public; location / { proxy_pass http://127.0.0.1:3000; proxy_set_header Host $host; }}

After nginx is restarted, all requests should be routed to the second passenger.

At this point, it is all good, you some people can leave it here. The problem with the current implementation, the system wide nginx instance will start automatically after system start, but the second passenger we need to start manually.

Solution is to use Monit.
http://mmonit.com/monit/documentation/monit.html
Monit is simply is a separate process, which monitors other processes and makes sure all of the up and running.

This is my monit configuration file to start and monitor passenger for 1.8.7 as a separate process.

Monit config:

check process redmine_passenger
with pidfile /var/rapp/redmine/passenger.3000.pid
start program = "/bin/su - user -c '/var/rapp/.rvm/bin/redmine_passenger start /var/rapp/redmine/ -a 127.0.0.1 -p 3000 -d -e production' "
stop program = "/bin/su - user -c '/var/rapp/.rvm/bin/redmine_passenger stop /var/rapp/redmine/' "

Replace user with current user. Also notice that there is a space before and after user.

And finally, if you are stuck, here are some good website, which helped me to get my solution.

References:
http://groups.google.com/group/rubyversionmanager/browse_thread/thread/d1a6c1f6396a8bf6/51afece4c8943912?#51afece4c8943912

http://groups.google.com/group/rubyversionmanager/browse_thread/thread/d1a6c1f6396a8bf6/279b6dacdf898d0a?#279b6dacdf898d0a

https://gist.github.com/960540

http://matthew.mceachen.us/blog/howto-make-system-wide-rvm-installations-work-with-cron-monit-delayed_job-and-passenger-1021.html

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/5863815/monit-rvm-thin-on-osx-linux

https://github.com/romanbsd/passenger_monit

http://rushthinking.com/using-monit/

Gate's law

Posted on 14 June 2011

The only important information in a hierarchy is who knows what

Everybody want to go to heaven, but nobody want to die

Posted on 14 June 2011 (the best)

Life is too short to be little

Posted on 13 June 2011 (the best)

Life is too short not to do a little practical joking. Krista Allen
The Span of Life is too short to be trifled away in unconcerning and unprofitable Matters. Mary Astell
Life is too short to spend hoping that the perfectly arched eyebrow or hottest new lip shade will mask an ugly heart. Kevyn Aucoin
Be patient and understanding. Life is too short to be vengeful or malicious. Phillips Brooks
Life is too short to harbor any hostilities towards anybody. Peabo Bryson
Life is too short, and I'm Italian. I'd much rather eat pasta and drink wine than be a size 0. Sophia Bush
Life is too short to stuff a mushroom. Shirley Conran
Life is too short to be little. Man is never so manly as when he feels deeply, acts boldly, and expresses himself with frankness and with fervor. Benjamin Disraeli
Life is too short to be living somebody else's dream. Hugh Hefner
Life is too short to blend in. Paris Hilton
The only rule is don't be boring and dress cute wherever you go. Life is too short to blend in. Paris Hilton
Life is too short not to experiment. Jamelia
Life is too short to work so hard. Vivien Leigh
I don't read such boring things. Life is too short. Gyorgy Ligeti
Do what you love to do and give it your very best. Whether it's business or baseball, or the theater, or any field. If you don't love what you're doing and you can't give it your best, get out of it. Life is too short. You'll be an old man before you know it. Al Lopez
Life is too short for a long story. Mary Wortley Montagu
Life is too short to have anything but delusional notions about yourself. Gene Simmons
Life is too short, and the time we waste in yawning never can be regained. Stendhal
Life is too short to miss out on the beautiful things like a double cheeseburger. Channing Tatum