The 6th incarnation of Elmer's blog
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Usually I might not be too keen to lose some of my job responsibilities, but in this case I couldn’t be happier. CALI is adding a systems administrator to wrangle all our servers, more than 20 at last count, on a full time basis. Since I started working at CALI 9 years ago my time has been split between web/database/cool project development and administering CALI’s servers and systems.
Back in 2003 that meant riding herd on an aging Windows NT server, a Win2K server handling some video streaming, and a couple of dark servers whose futures where not yet set. Of course the servers where in Chicago and I was in Atlanta. Things changed rapidly. The dark servers where brought online running Linux and our production web and storage systems where built out on the LAMP stack. Within a couple of years I added 3 servers at Emory in Atlanta to handle the increased demand for CALI services and resources online.
It wasn’t very long before we were struggling with large spikes in demand that were taxing our servers and we needed a better solution. Simply increasing the amount of hardware we owned wasn’t really an option since we were borrowing space and bandwidth from the law schools at Kent and Emory. At just the right time, Amazon Web Services came along and CALI jumped into the cloud.
Moving our web infrastructure to the AWS cloud gave us tremendous flexibility at a reasonable cost. After some trial and error I was able to configure a load-balanced web cluster that could be scaled up and down as demand for CALI resources and services flowed over the course of an academic year. Using the cloud meant that I could provision some services on their own servers so that things like Apache Solr and Asterisk could stand alone. As a result of the move to the cloud, by the beginning of 2011 I found myself administering 15 to 20 servers in the cloud alone (exact numbers depended on the time of year) plus another half dozen physical servers in 2 geographically dispersed locations.
All that sounds like a full time job itself, but that was only half the job. While all that infrastructure was being built out I was also developing 3 different versions of the CALI website, the Classcaster phone-to-blog system, a couple of iterations of eLangdell, the Free Law Reporter, and dealing with various other projects. Working on these development projects is what I really enjoy, but they often get pushed aside since I need to keep the servers running as a priority.
Now CALI is hiring a systems administrator to take over (or clean up) the running of our infrastructure. I’m looking forward to handing the keys of the cloud over to someone else so I can focus on all of the great projects that are in the pipeline. When can you start?
Details on the CALI sys admin job, which is located in our Chicago office, are at http://cca.li/6J.
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“Tap here to begin writing”. That is the very simple instruction given in the WordPress app on the iPad when you hit the new post button. If it were only that simple. Writing is hard for me. I know people who write every day, and they often make it look simple. For me writing is a bit of a struggle. Not that I don’t have things to say, I do, but sitting down to put my thoughts on “paper” does not come easy for me.
I’ve had a blog for over 10 years now and it has served mostly as a sort of digital scrapbook, a place for me to stash links and snippets of sites that caught my attention. Mixed in there is some actual writing, but I’ve probably thrown away more than I’ve posted. Weirdly the blog has often acted like a sort of deterrent to writing, a looming presence were I should be writing, but I don’t. It pushes out the possibility of writing in another medium or venue.
When asked how they write, writers often say that they just sit down and write for a certain amount of time, at a certain time. They seem to be citing a particular discipline that creates the right environment for writing. This notion also fosters the idea that writing can be a skill that is developed with regular practice. I’m going to put that idea to the test.
I work at home, and as a developer of webby things I spend a lot of time sitting in my chair in front of a bank of computers. This is not a recipe for a healthy lifestyle. And I’ll be turning 50 in less than a month. I’m not a complete couch potato though. I walk a 3 mile circuit regularly, alternating with exercise program that works my upper body. I’ve made time in my day to get this exercise in and it really gets my day off to a good start. Now I’m thinking that I’ll expand this exercise program to include a daily dose of writing.
The plan is to spend 30 minutes a day writing, probably in the morning while I have a cup of coffee and before exercising. The goal is to regularly kick out 500 – 600 words during the 30 minutes. As far as topics go, I’m not too sure of that yet. Probably some mix of tech stuff and free form verse, I’ll just have to see where this goes.
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In February I wrote that every book is a website and we need to embrace the webiness of books. This led to some good discussion about the nature of books generally and casebooks in particular and about the nature of websites. The discussion helped clarify a couple of things in my mind.
First, though every book is a website not every website is a book. As I mentioned in the previous article, once a book is in an electronic form such as EPUB the process to make the book into a website is straight forward. That is not to say that it is easy, but that the path from EPUB to website is clearly marked. The reverse is not true. Moving a website to a book format such as EPUB is not straight forward and may even be impossible.
A website is a often a complex and carefully organized store of information. It may be fairly static, with a single information store arranged and hyperlinked for readers to discover. It may be interactive, drawing the the reader/visitor deeper into the site primarily through the use of hyperlinks to reveal or explain things. It may not even contain any text at all. The design of a website holds clues as to whether or not it can survive the transformation into a book.
Simple static websites are the best candidates for books. Information, often mostly text, is arranged in some sort of linear fashion. Links to outside sites are minimal. A single author or a small group of collaborators gives the site a particular voice. A blog is a good example of the sort of site that lends itself to being bookified.
Contrast this to a more complex and interactive site where the community contributes to the site or games are played or movies are watched. Information is arranged in a non-linear fashion. Links, both internal and external, abound. A multitude of authors, editors, and contributors all bring their voices to the site. Wrangling this into a book could not be done without destroying the value of the site.
This brings me to my second point, a book is a book. It does not matter if the medium is paper or bits, the form and structure of a book is still the same. Books have covers, title pages, tables of contents, chapters, notes (foot or end). The structure of a book is a known thing and the structure carries through all mediums. This is something that makes books unique. A book is a book in hard cover, paperback, on the Kindle, Nook and iPad, in the PDF file on your PC, and ultimately on the web.
Moving a book from print to electronic is not magic and it does not make the book better. The change in format just changes how readers access the book. If you want to make a “better” book, then build a website. Adding interaction and multimedia to a book are often valuable ways to enhance the information that is provided, but adding these enhancements are better done as website than a book.
Transforming a book into a website is the way to make a better book and destroy the book at the same time. Rather than spending time trying to shoehorn elements of a website into a book, we should let go of the book and embrace the web as the book of the future.
So, I’ve added a little bluetooth keyboard to the iPad with the idea that I will use it more if I can actually use it. One of the first thing I noticed after getting it all paired up is that the chunky keyboard that fills the bottom of the screen is pleasingly gone. I like that.
I wonder if I can get a mouse?
The keyboard is certainly seems like it will be a useful feature. I still need to reach up and touch the screen to navigate, but typing is a lot more enjoyable.
In case anyone is wondering I went with a separate keyboard and a small carry case for the iPad rather than one of those portfolio style keyboard+case things. After looking at a few of those I just didn’t think they would work so well when using the iPad mainly as a reader, which is what I do. After a few minutes, that seems like the right choice.
I’m wondering how running the bluetooth radio is going to effect battery life on the iPad. I’ve been paired and typing for about 15 minutes so far and the battery indicator says I’ve run off 5% of the charge. I plan on turning off bluetooth and the keyboard when I’m not writing,so that should help.
Well, I’ll update this later after I’ve had more time with the keyboard.