Category Archives: Off-Topic

OT – Blog Enhancement – Sunday Afternoon Vinyl

Posted on by

Who Owns The Content?

If you’re a longtime reader of the weblog, you may have noticed the content has slowed down to something of a trickle. There are numerous reasons for this, none of which are really worth going into here. In any case, I’ve been thinking about how I use various social media platforms to post different bits and pieces, and how I don’t necessarily want those platforms to be the keepers of my content. To wit, if you follow me on Instagram or we’re friends on Facebook, you’ll see that I post photos of records I’m listening to. I’ve been thinking for a while I’d like to post those on my own site as well / instead of on those platforms. This is in part because I have more control over what I post on this site, and partly because I don’t imagine those platforms will be around forever. At least, I kind of hope they’ll go away one day. And the services hosting this blog still cost me a chunk of change to keep running, so I may as well use it for something.

 

A Blog Enhancement

So I’m making an “enhancement” to the weblog: taking the Sunday Afternoon Vinyl series and turning it into a series of posts. I’ve created a bunch of galleries and imported the photos across. I’ve done this by year to try keep the galleries from becoming too unwieldy. For each piece of media, I’ve tried to link to the Discogs URL for the particular pressing that I own. I’m also trying to write 250 – 300 words about each album. Yes, I’ve posted well over 1000 photos of albums, so this would have been a lot smarter if I’d started this project a while ago, but here we are. In any case, with each post I’ll try and give some insight into why I like the record (or cassette or whatever) and how I discovered the artist. Usually it will come back to me growing up in a small town with limited access to music that wasn’t being played on AM radio. Or something to do with a late night Rage viewing. Or how I found it because I spent too much time at Chandlers. But hopefully it’s somewhat interesting. It’s not going to be anywhere near the calibre of what Henry Rollins has done with his magnificent Fanatic series. I could only dream of being that insightful. I’m not a music critic, and I’m not really trying to be with this. And not every album will get a review, because they can’t all be zingers. And some of them need nothing else written about them. But hopefully you’ll get to read my thoughts on some albums you know, and some you don’t, and some albums you love, and some you don’t.

 

But I’m Here For The Tech Stuff

That’s fine. My wife had the same concern. Perhaps I could post this content on another site? I thought about it, but to be honest, I’d rather not deal with the admin. I’ll still be posting the tech stuff when I can. I’m not getting rid of that – I’m not going to stop writing about that kind of thing. But there’ve been somewhat limited opportunities recently to write about the tech that I’m passionate about, so I’m adding to it with something else I’m passionate about. We’ll see how it goes, but I’m aiming to publish 1 – 2 posts in the Sunday Afternoon Vinyl series per week. Probably on Friday my time, so you’ve got something to listen to on the weekend if you’re feeling so inclined. There’re quite a few albums to get through, particularly as my leisure time has increased in the last few years as other commitments have tailed off.

Time-based Media Art Conservation – A Few Thoughts …

Posted on by

Disclaimer

This post is a little bit off-piste from what I normally cover, but I figured if the ABC can pump out an article on all of the properties owned by politicians in Australia (with much hand-wringing prompted by the Prime Minister buying himself a nice house during a cost of living crisis), then I can write about stuff that isn’t directly related to data centres or my day job.

TL;DR I’ve gotten older and realised that things don’t last forever. A random podcast episode and some dying machinery reminded me of that this week.

 

What is Time-based Media Art?

I recently came across a podcast from The Met called Immaterial: 5,000 Years of Art, One Material at a Time. I follow a few different “retro” technology accounts on the Internet, and someone posted a link to this particular episode. You can find it on Apple Podcasts here. The reason I listened to this one in particular was that it covered some of the challenges associated with time-based media art conservation. So what’s that exactly? To quote the National Gallery of Australia, it’s “works of art that are dependent on time, duration, or function. This includes: video, film and audio artworks that have a duration; installation artworks; and artworks that function only for the duration of their time on display, such as computer-based and mechanical works of art.” In one of the examples used in the Immaterial episode, the artists had used VideoCD as the primary medium for a piece of art based on Starsky and Hutch episodes. I’m as big a fan of Starsky and Hutch as anyone, but I’m probably not qualified to decide whether something like that is art or not. But the point is more that they’ve used a format to display their art that is now, ostensibly, obsolete. Does that mean it still qualifies as the original art piece? At what point does it fundamentally change?

 

Is It a Problem?

The thing that struck me most about podcast episode and subsequent reading I did on the impermanence of various art media was the way we consume art (in galleries and at home) is changing as well. To wit,  one of my MiniDisc recorders had recently stopped working and it was such a strange coincidence and strong reminder of the way our enjoyment of art can be directly impacted by technology progression (or the lack thereof). Fortunately, I have a small, portable unit as a backup, but what happens when that one gives up the ghost? I have boxes of LaserDiscs that I can no longer view because both of my players have stopped working. And countless video tapes in a variety of form factors that can’t be viewed anymore because the playback mechanisms are no longer manufactured and getting people who can fix them is becoming more and more difficult. Thankfully my Zip drive still works but I can tell you that SCSI to USB adapters are pretty hard to find so my Jaz drive is all but useless now. At least in my household. It’s become such a problem in the art world that the Met has put together a “Time-Based Media Working Group” to look into ways of dealing with it. And it’s not just hardware that can impact an artwork’s existence, software can have a big impact on its ability to continue into the future as well. Remember all of those early music services with special encryption that relied on the service being around and contactable over the Internet forever?

 

Is It an Easy Fix?

Not really (and there are plenty of people who know a lot more about this than I do). There are a few different approaches you can take to combat time-based media obsolescence (and I’m thinking more about this in terms of the everyday consumer’s relationship with media rather than media as a piece of art). One approach is to migrate the content from one platform to another. For example, I’ve spent years helping folks progress through various iterations of media lifecycle management by helping them migrate bits and bytes from one storage array to another without losing the data that they treasure so much. From a software / content perspective, some of this is a simple and well understood process, but there are plenty of organisations struggling with moving from one version of critical software to something more modern, particularly when what they had probably worked just fine. And it’s a problem at home too. Thankfully, vinyl records have experienced something of a resurgence, and so there are turntables to be had and the technology is understood and easy enough to procure. I anticipate I’ll be able to play my records for some years to come. The same can’t be said for MiniDisc players, cassette decks (although they’re starting to appear again), and even Blu-ray players and DVD players are becoming harder to come by. Is it the same experience consuming the content on a different format? Does a movie you love from your childhood need to be played back on a video tape? Or is it fine as a digital file on your laptop or consumed via a streaming service? It’s arguably better to watch upgraded versions of content, particularly when it comes to major Hollywood films. Listening to music on cassette sucked, but some of the compressed dross that Spotify serves up is even worse. I have a rack full of Sony Playstation consoles in my home office because I’d rather play the games on the original machines than use emulators. But eventually those consoles will stop working, and then I’ll just be stuck with shelves of dead media after I’ve exhausted my repair options and the secondhand marketplaces. And that can be a tough thing to deal with – the loss of something that you’ve been using for years.  I still have people contact me on this weblog to try and help them resurrect or revive dying EMC CLARiiON and VNX arrays because EMC is no longer interested in helping to keep them alive. Why not just get some cheaper, more efficient storage or put your stuff in the cloud? Is “Every Shot, Every Episode” going to look different if it’s not on Video CD? Not so much, because nowadays it’s running with a different media player and the original Video CD player is purely cosmetic. But there’s something about the particular piece of equipment on display that puts that piece of art in a certain time period. And the same might be said for everyday technology too.

 

Final Thoughts

Can you count on things being around forever? Probably not, particularly when it comes to media playback technology, and particularly when media studios are pushing for more and more content to be controlled by them, rather than existing free in the world for punters to consume as they see fit. That doesn’t mean that there aren’t thousands of people focussed on conserving not only digital art, but also everyday digital items that might otherwise get lost forever. I sometimes think we’re in a better position than ever to conserve media in its original format and be able to do meaningful things with it years after it was useful. At the same time I think there’s a chance that much of the content getting generated this century may not be retrievable in the next one if we’re not more careful with how we store it. If Keeping Up With the Kardashians disappears it’s probably not a bad thing, but I’m sure there’s a lot of art and media out there that is worthy of our attention.

Random Short Take #98

Posted on by

Welcome to Random Short Take #98. Some of these links have been in my queue for a little while, so apologies if it’s not as fresh as it could be. Let’s get random.

  • Let’s start off with a brilliant article from JB “Going tharn“. We build all these systems to get stuff done, and when it goes wrong it can go ever so wrong. To quote the article, “[t]hat is the terrible power of modern systems, I think. They make us alone, atomise us, and disconnect us from each other. They turn us tharn. They replace those human connections with a User-Platform relationship that feels remarkably similar to the old master-servant relationship in its power imbalance.” I haven’t read something that resonated with me as much as that in quite some time.
  • My friend Damo is heading off on esCarpade later this week, raising money for Camp Quality. If you have some of the folding stuff lying around I urge you to support him.
  • Which disk format? Howard Oakley asks (and answers) the question so I don’t have to ask it anymore.
  • Here are some of the announcements from NetApp Insight 2024.
  • I enjoyed Tom’s article “Semper Gumby“. It’s important to try and be as flexible as possible, even when you get old and crotchety like I am.
  • Preston has started “Preston’s Assorted musings (Episode 1?)” and I believe it’s already a series. Worth checking out if only for the fact that he puts some thought into it rather than just spraying links to random articles everywhere like I do.
  • Paolo put together a handy article on how to configure the Object First VSA as a Veeam Repository if you’re into that kind of thing.
  • Over at El Reg there’s an article on how your Smart TV sucks. And it’s tracking you. No surprises there, but look into blocking yours with a pi-hole if you can (or however you like to restrict access to things that shouldn’t be talking to the big, wide world).

Random Short Take #96

Posted on by

Welcome to Random Short Take #96. I’m pouring one out for Geordie Guy this week. Let’s get random.

Finally, and I’m a little late to the party, I just wanted to call out Jetpack for being a bunch of pumpkins and wanting me to upgrade my stats plan because I run a “commercial” site. If you think I want to pay $12.99 a month to see different numbers from those that Google and my hosting provider give me you’re wildly mistaken. And sod knows how I qualify as commercial (unless it’s for posting GoFundMe links for people who are dead or dying) but you can seriously get fucked. Sorry for swearing Mum.

Music – Support Lou Koller If You Can

Posted on by

This is a quick post, and something I don’t normally put on the weblog, but here we are. Lou Koller, lead vocalist of Sick Of It All (by all objective measures the greatest hardcore band to ever exist), has announced he has adenocarcinoma cancer. Which is a fancy way of saying he has a cancerous tumour in his oesophagus. It’s not great, but his bandmates and family have setup a fundraising appeal to help with medical costs. If you have some of the folding stuff available, you can donate to it here. And if you’re in the right part of the world, or happy to pay a little extra for shipping, various bands are also putting out t-shirts with profits going to help Lou. In Australia, Artist First has the NOFX shirt available.

It’s hard to say just how important Lou and SOIA have been to me over the years in terms of having a group of positive punk rock role models, but I have a difficult time imagining a world where Lou isn’t present. I’d seen advertisements in Thrasher magazine when I was in primary school for SOIA albums, but didn’t have the opportunity to hear them until I managed to get hold of a copy of Scratch The Surface when I moved to the big city. The band sounds scary, but is relentlessly upbeat, and has provided a positive influence to thousands and thousands people since they first started playing in 1986. And I’m sure he’ll be able to beat this and get back out there to do what he loves to do. I had the good fortune to get along to see SOIA in Brisbane earlier this year. It had been a few years since I saw them, but they were excellent. Here’s a video of Sick Of It All playing two of my favourite tracks (Scratch The Surface and Step Down) at Area4 Festival 2012. Here’s hoping that Lou beats this and they can get back out on the road soon.

Random Short Take #95

Posted on by

Welcome to Random Short Take #95. Let’s get random.

  • Chris M. Evans put together an editorial on why centralised storage refuses to go away. I thought the point about ransomware was an interesting one, although some of the systems I’ve seen out there haven’t been secured terribly well.
  • Speaking of storage and ransomware, there’s an excellent article over at Backblaze on Object Lock. Worth checking out as I think a lot of people like to talk about Object Lock without understanding what it is (and isn’t).
  • Speaking of storage, Mellor covered a recent presentation by Tom Lyon – eminent Sun alumnus says NFS must die. I came from the block side of things, so NFS was always a little quirky but gee whiz you can do some good (and dumb) stuff with it.
  • I’ve followed Frances for some time, and really enjoyed this article on her experiences in the transition from VMware to Broadcom. I think everyone’s journey has been different, and it’s invariably a little more nuanced than The Register would have us believe. But as I’m an employee that’s probably all I’ll say about that publicly.
  • Speaking of Broadcom, Tony put together this excellent article on Cloud Director Tenancy Container Applications. It’s very thorough, and he’s promised me he’ll be doing more soon.
  • In press release news, Hammerspace are dong stuff with GPU data orchestration capabilities to accelerate access to S3 data. If you haven’t looked into Hammerspace, you really should.
  • In other PR news, Datadobi has unveiled StorageMAP 7.0. I tried to catch up with the Datadobi folks before I went on leave but it didn’t work out. Hopefully I can get hold of them to dive in a little deeper on this in the near future.
  • Finally, JB published a great piece entitled Existential Having. If you follow me on the photos social media you’ll know that I have a lot of records. And basketball jerseys. And sneakers. I don’t know why I have these things, but they bring me comfort. For a period of time. And then I Marie Kondo that crap and start all over.

Random Short Take #94

Posted on by

Welcome to Random Short Take #94. Let’s get random.

Random Short Take #91

Posted on by

Squeezing this one in before the end of the year. It’s shorter than normal but we all have other things to do. Let’s get random.

  • Like the capacity and power consumption of tape but still want it on disk? Check out this coverage of the Disk Archive Corporation over at Blocks and Files.
  • This was a great series of posts on the RFC process. It doesn’t just happen by magic.
  • Jeff Geerling ran into some issues accessing media recently. It’s a stupid problem to have, and one of the reasons I’m still such a sucker for physical copies of things. I did giggle a bit when I first read the post though. These kind of issues come up frequently for folks outside the US thanks to content licensing challenges and studios just wanting us to keep paying for the same thing over and over again and not have any control over how we consume content.
  • My house was broken into recently. It’s a jarring experience at best. I never wanted to put cameras around my house, but now I have. If you do this in Queensland you can let the coppers know and they can ask for your help if there’s a crime in the area. I know it’s not very punk rock to surveil people but fuck those kids.
  • You didn’t think I’d get to 91 and not mention Dennis Rodman, did you? One of my top 5 favourite players of all time. Did everything on the court that I didn’t: played defence, grabbed rebounds, and gave many a high energy performance. So here’s some highlights on YouTube.

That’s it for this year. Stay safe, and see you in the future.

Random Short Take #90

Posted on by

Welcome to Random Short Take #90. I remain somewhat preoccupied with the day job and acquisitions. It’s definitely Summer here now. Let’s get random.

  • You do something for long enough, and invariably you assume that everyone else knows how to do that thing too. That’s why this article from Danny on data protection basics is so useful.
  • Speaking of data protection, Preston has a book on recovery for busy people coming soon. Read more about it here.
  • Still using a PDP-11 at home? Here’s a simple stack buffer overflow attack you can try.
  • I hate it when the machines shout at me, and so do a lot of other people it seems. JB has a nice write-up on the failure of self-service in the modern retail environment. The sooner we throw those things in the sea, the better.
  • In press release news, Hammerspace picked up an award at SC2023. One to keep an eye on.
  • In news from the day job, VMware Cloud on AWS SDDC Version 1.24 was just made generally available. You can read more about some of the new features (like Express Storage Architecture support – yay!) here. I hope to cover off some of that in more detail soon.
  • You like newsletters? Sign up for Justin’s weekly newsletter here. He does thinky stuff, and funny stuff too. It’s Justin, why would you not?
  • Speaking of newsletters, Anthony’s looking to get more subscribers to his daily newsletter, The Sizzle. To that end, he’s running a “Sizzlethon”. I know, it’s a pretty cool name. If you sign up using this link you also get a 90-day free trial. And the price of an annual subscription is very reasonable. There’s only a few days left, so get amongst it and let’s help content creators to keep creating content.

Random Short Take #88

Posted on by

Welcome to Random Short Take #88. This one’s been sitting in my drafts folder for a while. Let’s get random.