Rubenerd

The promise of OpenStack was a best–of–breed, open source, full stack cloud solution for easily provisioning virtual machines, networking and storage.

It may very well realise this dream at some point, but for the time being we have increasingly typical messages like this, from Morgan Ross Egging on Ask OpenStack:

The quick install guide is 150 pages and doesn’t work. What other software requires the person installing it to do so much work? Is there any other software in the whole world that requires so much work to install?

I have 15 years of full time admin experience, 9 years of VM experience, 5 years linux experience, and 4 years of AWS experience. I have over 100 fully documented attempts at installing Openstack. Devstack, Packstack, Mirantis Fuel, Ubuntu Cloud, …..

Most fail on first or second command due to extremely poor documentation without comments or discussion sections.

When I ask “why does packstack fail” Don’t ask for the log. Its not me. Its Openstack. If you can find the solution in the log I’ll bet a computer could have as well.

Packstack requires multiple docs to install, the official doc linking to a youtube video with no posted commands. It requires CLI and GUI and ANOTHER doc to get it working on your network, cuse who would want that?

This echos my experience. It’s the responses that get me though. First, we have “everything is complex”:

OpenStack is very complex to install. It has improved over time, but there is still a lot to do. However, we are talking about an product with a very large number of moving parts here, it won’t ever be as simple to install as Linux, for instance.

Or the don’t do it yourself, followed by a non–sequitur:

If you want Openstack in production you need a vendor to do it for you. Plain and simple. There are many vendors that can help.

If you want to do it yourself then you will need to spend the time to learn it, fail, and do it again.

And the bandaid:

It would be nice. I agree. Many operators who have learned their way around the complexities have automates the installs using puppet, chef or Ansible. Those automations are available on the net if you want to try those.

All of these arguably have technical merit, but sidestep the core issue (as commenters are wont to do).

I’m lying down in bed doing the worst thing you can do: staring at my smartphone. Such is my love for this new thing, I jeopardise my potential sleep to tell you about it.

Lately, I’ve been waking up with a pain in my neck, and for once it’s not Tony Abbott (oh, burn). My ancient pillow had lost much of its supportive plumpness, but putting a second pillow underneath cricked my neck far too high.

So I decided to get a new one. I was at IKEA over the weekend, like a gentleman, and noticed they had a huge selection of them. Of interest, was a firm, ergonomic-shaped RÖLLEKA. It was only $25, so I figured what’s the harm?

It’s amazing. I lie on my side, and the valley in the centre of the pillow cradles my head perfectly. Where the pillow arches back up again, it supports my neck without being uncomfortable.

My only gripe would be the size; compared to my previous pillows it’s barely two-thirds the width. It means if I roll over in the middle of the night, I have to adjust the pillow to compensate for my new position. A larger pillow with the same shape would be magical.

Still, for the price and shape, I would recommend this pillow. I would highly recommend it. And hey, you could get some Swedish meatballs while you’re picking one up.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to sleep.

Clara and I are finally forcing ourselves to finish Kill la Kill, the 2014 breakout anime from the Gainax spinoff Trigger studios. We’re down to the last few episodes, and boy it’s a slog.

Much like Gurren Lagann, Kill la Kill wove quite the universe and premise. We immediately empathised with the characters, and wanted them out of their seemingly intractable situation. Mako, her wonderful family and her Hallelujah! moments are especially delightful and heart warming.

Then, the second act/arc/half came around, and the story has devolved into a mindless parade of explosions and long–winded bluster. To each their own, but I’m finding it duller than watching grass dry. Look at that, it’s making me mix metaphors.

Our friends tell us the ending twist makes it worth the wait, but for now I can tell you I’m close to dropping this series again with three more episodes to go. It’d be a shame, because I otherwise love the characters. Someone give me strength!

During a heated speech to the Australian Press Club on Monday, Prime Minister Tony Abbott attempted to assuage the concerns of the voting public, and to let his back benchers know why wasn’t going anywhere.

By all accounts, he failed to do both. But at least he admitted (finally) to breaking promises, albeit with a hypocritical waiver:

I accept that there are some commitments that we gave in the campaign that we have not been able to keep. But I also say – and I think the public understands this – that the situation that we thought we were facing at the time of the election turned out to be different.

Every justification he’s made to back peddle on promises have been justified on the basis that circumstances have changed. Yet when Labor had to break or modify their promises over changed circumstances (forming a minority government with the Greens, the GFC), they were so mercilessly and tastelessly attacked by this very same person.

In fact, the public understands Tony Abbott is a hypocrite. If Julia Gillard or Kevin Rudd had said what he did, we wouldn’t hear the end of it.

Mr Abbott promised to fix the “debt and deficit” of Labor; then proceeded to double it. He killed two huge revenue sources (the carbon price and mining tax) to justify cutting medical, research and broadcast funding, to say nothing of his latest facial distractions over knighthoods. The depths he’s been willing to plumb are embarrassing, and have cost us dearly.

To quote the man himself:

“[..] but in the end government is not a popularity contest it’s a competence contest”

Well, it seems the electorate don’t judge him well on either. Amy McNeilage writing for the Sydney Morning Herald:

Tony Abbott’s approval rating dropped from 38 per cent to just 29 per cent between December and January, a Fairfax-Ipsos poll published on Monday showed.

I’d expect a NewsCorp commissioned survey would be somewhat more favourable, given what must now be a painfully embarrassing cover from The Telegraph in 2013:

But his woes don’t stop at the federal level. He’s been blamed, at least in part, for the crushing defeat of the LNP during this week’s Queensland state election, and caused an “unhelpful distraction” for the NSW premier Mike Baird less than 8 weeks out of our state election.

Still, Tony Abbott has a glimmer of hope. While he was in opposition, his largest attacks surrounded Labor’s repeated leadership changes. For him to be changed, it would generate a vortex of hypocrisy so powerful, it would consume much of the Southern Hemisphere. By that point we’d all be dead, and who’s in charge wouldn’t matter.

I hadn’t posted a music video for at least a week, and that’s apparently something I do now. So have this AKB48 song that looks as though Kyary was in charge of directing and costumes!

It came out last year, and was the ED for Wreck it Ralph. Still, I had never seen it until Clara showed it to me over the weekend.

The Sydney Morning Herald’s Health Editor Amy Corderoy:

A large study of people suffering from chronic problems such as back pain, migraine and arthritis has discovered many are turning to cannabis to relieve their symptoms, despite already being prescribed heavy-duty opioid medications such as morphine and oxycodone.

Appreciate that for a second. For all those people claiming marijuana is dangerous and should be banned, the best legal alternatives are opioids. You know, the ones from the same family as that infamous drug that killed millions.

But they’re legal, so it’s okay, right?

Millions of Australians suffer from chronic pain – a problem set to increase as the population ages. Yet there are few effective and safe long-term treatments, and accidental overdose deaths from prescribed pain drugs are now more common than deaths from heroin.

For most of my childhood, my mum Debra was on some form of chemotherapy. It ruined her appetite, which caused her all manner of mental and physical health problems. She wasn’t alone; and treatment for those side effects and pain is available.

The good news is we may slowly be winning. The Premier of New South Wales, the Australian state where I live, is open to the idea of the government growing it and allowing for limited medical use. Other states are also wising up.

Let’s keep making progress.

When trying to update a category description in WordPress 4.1, I got this cheerful message in green:

Category not updated

In my case, I had a category and tag with the same slug. Changing to a unique slug allowed the form to be submitted successfully, and the category updated.

WordPress stores categories and tags in databases the same way, likely due to the fact tags were an afterthought. WordPress will generally try to prevent such unique ID clashes from occurring, but they must still slip through the cracks.

Interesting though that WordPress doesn’t enforce slug uniqueness at the database level.

Grammar is one issue, but it blows my mind that spammers can’t even spell their target companies half the time. You’d think it’d be in their best interests to get it right.

Case in point, some fake Westpac spam that came through support this morning:

WestPac Survey.
In the hope of achieving this goal we are ready to implement the latest upgrades to our online services. For this reason you are required to click on the link below and follow the survey steps. click here for customer survey

Or some from Apppppple:

Your Appple ID was used to sign into an unauthorzed device. You must log in here.

It’s as though CAN–SPAM (and similar legislation) have added the following to its exemptions:

• religious messages
• political messages
• content that complies with marketing mechanisms specified in law
• national security messages
• messages specifically crafted to be unbelievable

This post brought to you by HSBSee Bank.

Clara and I saw this music video in a coffee shop on Australia day. They’re from Adelaide, my old university stomping ground.

I… can’t get it out of my head.

Just in case Sydneysiders think I’m being unfair with my criticism of Sydney Trains, here’s a story of delays back home. It even comes with a human interest story.

SINGAPORE – A track fault caused MRT train service on the North-South line towards Jurong East to halt for at least 10 minutes on Thursday.

Ms Sarah Ng, in her 30s, boarded a train at Braddell MRT station at around 12.45pm. “The doors didn’t close and we waited for five minutes,” the designer said.

She added that an announcement was made saying that there was a track fault on the line towards Jurong East, although it was unclear where the fault happened.

Ms Ng then sought a refund from the station master, who said that train service would be down for 10 minutes. A screen at the station also indicated that train service was delayed due to a track fault from Ang Mo Kio to Jurong East.

In Australia, we’d call this a good day.