Paul D. Ouderkirk » Collected Wisdom

Laws of Transcoding Video*

admin — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 14:56:58 +0000

Never delete the original.
Transcoding always wants more CPU cores than you have.
Never transcode when you can remux.

*They’re more like guidelines…

Server Burn-in

admin — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 23:42:08 +0000

I used to burn-in new servers by having them compile MySQL from source in a loop for 24-48 hours, but let’s face it, that’s not much of a challenge for today’s servers.

You know what is? Building OpenOffice.org.

On Debian Lenny, here’s the shortest path:
# apt-get install build-essential dpkg-dev pbuilder # apt-get source openoffice.org # apt-get build-dep openoffice.org # cd openoffice.org-2.4.1 # debuild -us -uc

On a Sun x4100 with dual Opteron 275s and 8GB RAM, this takes about 5.5 hours, and uses way more disk I/O and memory than a mere MySQL compile.

Run this 4-5 times and you can probably feel pretty safe that your server won’t burst into flames at 3AM the day after you deploy it in production.

UNIX Truism

admin — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 14:06:21 +0000

If you’re a UNIX user, all UNIX are pretty much the same.
If you’re a UNIX programmer, all UNIX are a little bit different.
If you’re a UNIX system admin, all UNIX are completely different!

— Bob Koehler
Hubble Space Telescope
Payload Flight Software Team

The Mentat Handbook

admin — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 20:30:08 +0000

Above all else, the Mentat must be a generalist, not a

specialist. It is wise to have decisions of great moment

monitored by generalists. Experts and specialists lead you

quickly into chaos. They are a source of useless nit

picking, the ferocious quibble over a comma. The Mentat-

generalist, on the other hand, should bring to decision-

making a healthy common sense. He must not cut himself off

from the broad sweep of what is happening in this universe.

He must remain capable of saying: “There’s no real mystery

about this at the moment. This is what we want now. It may

prove wrong later, but we’ll correct that when we come to

it.” The Mentat-generalist must understand that anything

which we can identify as our universe is merely part of

larger phenomena. But the expert looks backward; he looks

into the narrow standards of his own specialty. The

generalist looks outward; he looks for living principles,

knowing full well that such principles change, that they

develop. It is to the characteristics of change itself that

the Mentat-generalist must look. There can be no permanent

catalogue of such change, no handbook or manual. You must

look at it with as few preconceptions as possible, asking

yourself: “Now what is this thing doing?”

-The Mentat Handbook