Feed the Animal.

This is counter-intuitive.

If a highway has lots of traffic, the general feeling is that a lane should be added to increase the capacity of the road. It seems to make sense: more cars = more lanes. Totally fine.

Except that’s not what happens. When you add a lane, you actually increase the usage of that road, thereby canceling out whatever “extra” capacity you’ve added. What you end up in is an arms race of sorts- constantly adding capacity only to see usage continually rise to compensate.

And so it goes with bandwidth in an organization. You find that your internet connection speeds are too low, and so you upgrade your ISP service to a higher bandwidth. In our case, we started with a 50Mbps connection, which was woefully slow. So, the choice was clear: upgrade. We moved to a 400Mbps connection, and, for a short time, things were radically improved. But as news of the more robust connection spread, usage increased. It’s not as crippled a connection as we once had to be sure, but with the much larger amount of data we’re pushing around, it’s not as razor sharp as you might think.

Servers

There’s no end in sight either- we’re now up to about 550Mbps, and as we add another 800-900 devices next year, we’ll be lucky if the connection experience we’re able to offer stays static. But this is not one of those problems that benefits from simply throwing resources at it. What needs to be considered is shaping a culture that understands the resource. Just as people once left the lights on and water running as a matter of course (hopefully no longer…), we need to educate and help people be more efficient with their use of bandwidth. A culture not of miserly enforcement, but of thoughtful and considered use.

You’ve got it backwards.

Don’t tell you kid to make their Facebook/Instagram/Vine/Twitter private. All that does is hide the problem.

Instead, insist on them keeping those public. It removes the false security that making those accounts “private” actually prevents bad things from happening. If those accounts are kept public, there’s no illusion: things posted will be seen. By you. By grandparents. By college admissions officers. And that knowledge changes the behavior instead of hiding it.

Glass.

So I’ve now tried Google Glass, and thought I’d share.

It’s not a joke, and it’s not going away. It’s entirely too useful and easy for that. It’s comfortable. It’s reasonably reliable. It’s in some BakN4jXIQAAjThiways WAY slicker than a Beta has any right to be. I want one. I want one more now than I did before, and that’s saying something. The interface to manage the device- a web page currently- is clunky. You have to add contacts one by one from your G+ account. The best way to think of this, I feel, is to compare it to the original iPhone: expensive, without apps, and slightly before it’s time. Still, once I added the WorldLens app and Glass was translating what I was looking at from Spanish to English in real time, it was clear: This is the way forward.

Time to start saving pennies.

Misfit Shine Update

Here’s my update.

It’s gone. The crappy “sports band” that I was wearing it on doesn’t hold on worth a damn, and at some point during a Saturday morning grocery shopping run, my Shine popped out of my bracelet and is gone forever. And I’m angry.

What kind of “sports band” can’t hold onto the device while shopping? How is it supposed to hold on when I’m running or biking or doing anything more vigorous than putting a carton of OJ into a basket?

As much as I liked my Shine, the “loseability” of the device (combined with the price) means I can’t imagine buying another. If/when I get another activity tracker, it’ll be a bracelet for some sort- the new Nike Fuelband looks ok, and the new Jawbone UP is looking even better now. I’m running the Nike Move app on my iPhone 5S, and that’s working for now, but maybe post-holidays I’ll be picking up one of those two.

As far as Shine, it’s a shame to have to write off what could be a great device because of a terrible mount system.

StiRep

Here’s where I’m at (and what’s going on):

  • Finally think I have some of the DNS settings surrounding this site working properly
  • Experimenting with a Sony NEX3 (mostly for video purposes)
  • Figuring out I really, really like pancake lenses
  • New England 1:1 Summit logistics
  • Drawing more comics (a new series here!)
  • Reworking my work gear kit (more on this later)
  • Modified my Cuppow mason jar lid (it was squeaking when I drank, so I radius’d the vent hole)
  • Working on a setup for digital course material management (likely GDrive based)
  • Researching Audio podcasting- hosting and distribution mostly
  • Writing a post about OER (Open Educational Resources)
  • Always, always, always filming more