Current Goings on — PyCon, Sprints, Other

October 14th, 2010 § 2 comments § permalink

Why is it, that when­ever I think things will calm down, they do the exact opposite?

Well — you should know by now that the PyCon 2011 Call for Pro­pos­als is up — we’re accept­ing main con­fer­ence talks, poster ses­sions and tuto­ri­als, all at once. The main con­fer­ence pro­pos­als are due by Novem­ber 1st — so I’d rec­om­mend get­ting those talks in! Also, you should know that we’ve announced our first keynote speaker — Hilary Mason! Really, really look­ing for­ward to that.

Over on the sprints side — Brian Curtin has done sev­eral blog posts — the first details the “get­ting started with Python-Dev” guide he’s been shep­herd­ing for the project. I’d rec­om­mend tak­ing a look — you can send feed­back to sprints@python.org. The sec­ond is a note on the fact we have our first com­pany donat­ing actual funds to the project (via the PSF) — Trad­ing Tech­nolo­gies. This is awe­some news.

If you want to do a sprint — and you want some money to help out, please, please, please send an appli­ca­tion to sprints@python.org — we cur­rently do not have any sprints lined up in the near future (We are spon­sor­ing the ?http://www.pymntos.com/ sprint occur­ring tonight — they’re port­ing Mute­gen to python 3). If you need help, or want help send­ing out a call for a sprint, con­tact us too. Our goal is to help every­one get sprints up and off the ground.

Also, if you want to help out with the sprints project — please let me know. We need blog­gers, writ­ers and other peo­ple to help fur­ther “the cause”.

Finally, I’ve been spend­ing the major­ity of my time once again blog­ging for my employer (Nasuni) — if you’re inter­ested, I recently did a series on “The Cloud” (focus­ing on Pri­vate vs. Pub­lic clouds), while Rob (my boss) did a fan­tas­tic post on the real cost of a giga­byte in the cloud:

Say Hello — Nasuni Launches Today!

February 9th, 2010 § 10 comments § permalink

nasuni_final.png The com­pany I’ve worked for since July of last year — Nasuni Cor­po­ra­tion (a startup in Mass­a­chu­setts) has gone live! This is the cul­mi­na­tion of a lot of hard, but exceed­ingly fun and excit­ing work over the past months.

The Nasuni team is an excel­lent one — and one I am very, very proud to be a part of. Our prod­uct is called the Nasuni Filer — a simple-to-use, ver­sioned, encrypted and cloud-storage backed vir­tual NAS (net­work attached stor­age) server (click here for more information).

With­out going into all of the fea­tures, our goal in mak­ing this was to make cloud stor­age sim­ple, acces­si­ble and secure — and I know we’ve accom­plished all three. All you do is down­load it, boot it and start using it — once you do so you have access to truly unlim­ited stor­age. It’s an unlim­ited filesys­tem for the cloud. Here’s the ele­va­tor pitch:

Nasuni has devel­oped a vir­tual file server, called the Nasuni Filer, that deliv­ers unlim­ited file stor­age and com­plete file pro­tec­tion for busi­nesses. Work­ing in part­ner­ship with lead­ing cloud stor­age ven­dors, the Nasuni Filer lever­ages the vast capac­ity of the cloud to store and pro­tect com­pany files off­site, while retain­ing the local func­tion­al­ity and per­for­mance of a tra­di­tional NAS.

This tech­nol­ogy allows busi­nesses to use the cloud provider of their choice as a replace­ment for tra­di­tional pri­mary stor­age. Snap­shots, file ver­sion­ing, and off­site stor­age are inte­grated into the file server itself — ensur­ing busi­ness file are safe and secure at all times. No need to man­age com­plex backup and DR schemes — if the file server is run­ning, files are protected.

We’ve launched the Beta of the prod­uct today — any­one can sign up, down­load and use it. Any­one can give us feed­back and sug­ges­tions — I encour­age all of you who might need some­thing like this to down­load and give it a try. If you want — go check out the videos we’ve put together show­cas­ing the Filer (and bet­ter yet — check out the awe­some ani­mated car­toon we have on the front page).

Most of you know that my blog is mainly Python ori­ented. Suf­fice it to say, Nasuni — and the Nasuni Filer make use of Python for a wide range of tasks. We use Python, Django and as much of the Python ecosys­tem as we can to drive every­thing from the web­site, to the GUI on the appli­ance itself — Python is part of the DNA of the com­pany, and it has served us well. With­out Open Source and Python — I don’t think it would have been pos­si­ble to build what we have built in as lit­tle time as we have.

We have a strong ded­i­ca­tion to not just Python, but open source in gen­eral (and a fair num­ber of us will be at PyCon this month). As time pro­gresses, now that we’re exit­ing stealth mode we plan on pos­si­bly open sourc­ing stuff we feel would ben­e­fit the com­mu­nity. Some of us already push patches back where and when we can, but as I said — as time pro­gresses this involve­ment will only increase.

So not only am I proud to announce the prod­uct, be part of this team and to see what we’ve made, I’m also happy to thank so many peo­ple in the Python and OSS com­mu­nity which have helped us reach this point.

So go — check it out, let us know what you think.

Hooray, retirement!

October 10th, 2008 § 5 comments § permalink

IMG_1702I don’t talk pol­i­tics or cur­rent events here — mainly because I’d come off a a Lol­ber­tar­ian whack-job, but I just had a seri­ous “what in the crap?! moment when I checked my 401k:

Per­sonal Rate of Return from 01/01/2008 to 10/09/2008 is –41.9%

This is one of the moments I look at my daugh­ter and think about the future and get really sullen, so instead, I’m going to go back to solv­ing tech­ni­cal prob­lems as I can’t even ratio­nally dis­cuss this in my own head.

Welcome to Parenthood, here’s your germs

July 19th, 2008 § 10 comments § permalink

Learn_About_Germs.jpg For the past year I’ve had the excit­ing oppor­tu­nity to be a father — it really is fan­tas­tic, espe­cially now that new parts of her per­son­al­ity is com­ing through and she’s in the “crazy abo­rig­i­nal where are your pants” stage.

How­ever, on the flip side, it’s a lot of work — tir­ing work. It also comes with a side-effect. Dis­ease. I’ve been sicker the past year than I ever have been in my life. I think I end up with a cold or some­thing else every month. I’ve had sinus infec­tions, colds, Hand-Foot-and-Mouth and lack-of-sleep induced insanity.

Good times. At least I got to see the new bat­man movie, which was amaz­ing. I’m going to go blow my nose again.

Abby is walking!

May 10th, 2008 § 6 comments § permalink

In addi­tion to the Python sprint day work I am doing (as well as pymag stuff) I’ve been edit­ing the oblig­a­tory “zomg baby is walk­ing” video, which is below.

It’s funny — she’s been close, and doing short spurts, but last night it was like her walk­ing switch just “came on”.

Breaking up is hard to do (because I got a new job)

April 11th, 2008 § 5 comments § permalink

Ear­lier this week — I made the rather dif­fi­cult deci­sion and resigned from my cur­rent job. Yes — I have a new one in the bag.

The job I resigned from has been one of the best, most reward­ing jobs in my career. I’ve had the lux­ury of work­ing with some of the best engi­neers I have ever met, on a problem/solution that is, by far, the best in it’s class.

I’ve been work­ing with what I count as my sec­ond fam­ily for close to five years. You don’t walk away from some­thing like that lightly, or with­out good reason.

My rea­son was sim­ple: I enjoy star­tups. I love blaz­ing trails, explor­ing tech­nol­ogy. I love push­ing bound­aries and mak­ing some­thing tan­gi­ble and new where there was noth­ing before. It’s why I love software.

Some peo­ple would say that soft­ware is not a paint­ing — and to an extent, they are right. But the pride you feel when you see your soft­ware come alive, get adopted and grow day after day is much the same feel­ing of accom­plish­ment and pride you get when you do fin­ish a work of art.

Per­son­ally, I feel that star­tups engen­der the wild west — all ideas are open and ready to be explored, much of the ter­ri­tory is uncharted, and you remain (in many cases) unen­cum­bered by processes, bureau­cracy and history.

That all being said — it’s not with­out an aching heart that I say good bye to my friends, col­leagues and the prod­uct I helped usher into the world. Both the prod­uct, and the peo­ple remain best-in-class, and I wish both the com­pany, and the peo­ple the best in the future.

The great (and some­times bad) thing about star­tups though, is the fact that if you live in a place where star­tups are always com­ing and going (i.e: Boston) then sooner or later, you’re going to end up work­ing with many of the same peo­ple again. Due to this, I’m ulti­mately OK with say­ing good bye to many of the cowork­ers I have today, because I will see them again in due time.

That all being said — I have a new job (obvi­ously). Later this month I will begin work­ing for an Acton, MA startup called Black­wave. I’ve had the plea­sure of meet­ing the peo­ple there and explor­ing the tech­nol­ogy, and I have to say I got that old spark back in my head. The spark that keeps you up at night think­ing about how to solve The Prob­lem and how to test The Prob­lem. The one that makes you get up early to write notes down to your­self like “if we sim­ply change x here and here, then in the­ory we can cut our test­ing to y…” and so on. It’s the spark of inspiration.

In speak­ing with them — I wanted to solid­ify some­thing that’s been chew­ing at me for a lit­tle bit — and that’s hav­ing some amount of free­dom to con­tribute to open source — in my case, Python-Core and python-related projects. I’m happy to say, Black­wave was more than will­ing to express their sup­port and open­ness to con­tribut­ing to the com­mu­nity. I can’t go into details — but with any luck, I should be able to be a lot more open with much of my work, and also give a lot back.

Again — with that all being said — I will take this one oppor­tu­nity to say — yes, Black­wave is hir­ing. If you’re a python/java/c/c++ per­son, or you just love doing QA and test­ing and are look­ing for a small, fast mov­ing team — and live in the Boston/Metrowest area (south­ern New Hamp­shire is OK) — go ahead and drop me an email. I’m def­i­nitely putting feel­ers out for any Python­istas in the area who are look­ing around. I’m dou­bly inter­ested in Python­istas with a QA back­ground to help focus on test engineering/automation.

Send your resumes to me (jnoller at gmail dot com)!

I’m look­ing for­ward to the upcom­ing months with excitement.

Dear Previous House Owner.

March 8th, 2008 § 14 comments § permalink

Dear Pre­vi­ous House Owner,

The least you could have done is told me that any­time it rains, the nicely fin­ished tiled base­ment area, the one hold­ing my com­put­ers and liveli­hood floods. I real­ize, that had I known that the nicely fin­ished base­ment with the tiled floor gets flooded every time it rains because of the half-assed code vio­lat­ing instal­la­tion of the sewage pump in the garage allow­ing water into the house, I would not have bought the house.

In addi­tion to the hid­den plumb­ing issues, the veneer you added to the area (which floods any­time it rains for more than 10 min­utes) to hide the fact there is a flood­ing issue was a nice touch.

I under­stand I have only myself to blame — after all, I should have torn up the floor and pulled apart every­thing to find out the fact it floods (every time it rains) and that the upstairs bath­room has a rot­ted floor, a bum toi­let and issues with the sheet rock (rotted).

I have no recourse against you, the inspec­tor, or any­one. Instead, you, a cou­ple with a small child sad­dled another cou­ple (with a small infant child like yours) with this house.

When I started the pur­chas­ing process, I began it with excite­ment. Now I sit in a house I have lived in for less than a month, but spent most of my money on, with my feet in a stand­ing pool of water as I type this — the gen­tly splish splish of my feet in the ice cold water remind­ing me of how much I wish you were here so you could help me mop, for the fourth fifth sixth time.

Oh, but mop­ping doesn’t help — but you knew that. You knew that the rea­son there were tiled floors in this part of the house is so that there was “no long term dam­age” to the area (which floods every time it rains).

So thank you for not telling us the house floods every time it rains. You’ve helped us build up so much char­ac­ter know­ing never to trust any­one, even if they are another young cou­ple with a small child — just like us.

Unlike you, I’m hon­est and respon­si­ble, and I’m going to fix this mess you’ve left me with, so my wife, daugh­ter and I can live hap­pily here in our first house which floods every time it rains.

I’m quite cross with you right now.

–Jesse

Doth Thou twitterith or jaiku-inate?

March 7th, 2008 § 6 comments § permalink

I love mak­ing up words.

A recent post on the pycon blog has me rethink­ing using Twit­ter or Jaiku for “micro blog­ging” (espe­cially dur­ing a con). I’ve per­son­ally not used either one of them, but my pref­er­ence would be to try out the now-not-accepting-new-users Jaiku.

How many peo­ple out there in the #python­web are using these?

Edit: I’ve signed up for both twit­ter (user­name: jessenoller) and Jaiku (user­name: jessenoller). Now I have to write a python app that dual-posts to both. Who knew social sites would be such a pain? :)

Edit2: I signed up for pownce too. God. That’s face­book, linkedin, pownce, jaiku, twit­ter, and a blog.

Well that was fun.

March 5th, 2008 § 0 comments § permalink

IMG_1284It’s been a nutty last few weeks. The work in the salt mines has been espe­cially busy, and well — overly salty. Some would say it was too salty for consumption.

Wife, Baby and I are set­tled into the new place — yes, the var­i­ous sundry prob­lems includ­ing flood­ing, floor­ing, bath­rooms and other cruft was resolved post-haste and sat­is­fac­to­rily, albeit expensively.

In other news, things should hope­fully start calm­ing down — so I can pick up on the non-salt-mine-or-parenting work (i.e: more deli­cious Python goodness).

In addi­tion to all the crazi­ness — Abby is crawl­ing, and climb­ing now. Both of these new devel­op­ments in addi­tion to the new digs means “lots of stuff to get into” — you know you’re going to have a prob­lem when you see her make a bee­line for a power cord.

Lots of changes: I’m look­ing for PyCon as a chance to meet some peo­ple I’ve met before (although briefly) and meet a lot of new peo­ple. Hope­fully, while I’m there I’ll be able to jump start a few “non salt mine” projects that have been sit­ting in the queue, and get some more arti­cle fod­der over to Doug and Brian.

Of course, I can’t wait for sum­mer. I think there’s going to be some­thing inspi­ra­tional about cod­ing from a hammock.

In other ran­dom thoughts — in his note about the Sun+Jython announce­ment Tim Bray had a choice quote:

Quick Python trivia ques­tion: Near as I can tell, Guido works half-time on Python over at Google. Is there any­one in the world, aside from Frank and Ted, get­ting paid to work full-time on Python?

As a guy who gets obsessed about the ham­mer he uses to build a house — I won­der what it would be like to design ham­mers for a living?

Welcome to home ownership.

January 28th, 2008 § 9 comments § permalink

I’ve men­tioned this before — on Jan 4th, I ended up clos­ing on my first house. The pri­mary dri­ving force of course being my now nearly seven month old daugh­ter, the sec­ondary dri­ving force is well — own­ing a house.

Both my wife and I were excited, ecsta­tic even. I mean, it’s not a pala­tial man­sion by any stretch — but it was ours.

Then, things went side­ways. After clos­ing, after we start paint­ing — we find a prob­lem. A big, glar­ing prob­lem. That prob­lem hap­pens to be a leak­ing toi­let — that has appar­ently been leak­ing for some time (mea­sured in poten­tially years) into the sub floor­ing. This means all the wood beneath the tile floor under the toi­let it rot­ten and moldy, and that damp­ness and mold may have spread to the rest of the floor­ing and areas.

We found this pulling the toi­let to put in a new one — now, instead of a cheap plop-in-a-new-toilet, we’re star­ing down the bar­rel of a much larger “strip to the walls due to rot and mold” deal. We can’t move in, and we didn’t even imag­ine this would happen.

Rot­ten wood, mold. The works. And no, it’s not cov­ered, and it is no ones respon­si­bil­ity (or rather, no one is liable). Nope, we just get left hold­ing the bag. The inspec­tor found a tan­gen­tal issue: but not the pri­mary issue, so no one was tech­ni­cally the wiser.

Stu­pid toi­lets. From now on I’m only buy­ing houses with­out run­ning water, in non-flood plains in areas with no ter­mites. Also the house will be made of stone.

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