Shanti’s Dispatches

Or — as I like to say (quoting some Zen dudes) — Eat when hungry, sleep when tired.

Several months ago, there was a huge linkfest on the lifehack/43folders blogs about Polyphasic sleep.

While I had never really heard of this term before, it sounded an awful lot like a sleep pattern I found myself drifting into when I was doing my own thing for about 6 months, back a year++ ago. (No regular 9-5 gig or any set work schedule to speak of.)

The Edisonian Sleep Schedule

Basically, I found myself drifting into a very Edisonian sleep schedule consisting of lots of little naps combined with a longer rest every 30 hours or so.

Some people’s biological clocks, I believe, are just not hard-wired for the 24-hour daily cycle that your typical 9-5 work environment demands. (I’ve written about this before but just wanted to revisit upon it… since running “virtual companies” via telecommuting & more flexible schedules is a topic I feel passionately about.)

People who do seem to be hard-wired for a set 9-5 schedule, or have possibly just conditioned themselves for this environment, cannot seem to understand the fact that maybe other people only need 4-5 hours of sleep at night, but might require some downtime naps (like Edison) of 20-30 min. throughout the day.

Out of Whack

The problem for Zen/Polyphasic sleepers occurs when you get out of whack with everyone else… and are waking up from your longer rest at 2am. Well, even if you try and get a nap in before the 9-5 rush… you’re still going to be dragging when 5pm rolls around. Especially if the possibility of a quick mental defrag by laying down to rest is not an option.

If you’re in NYC or Tokyo, you might be able to rent a sleep pod.

Of course, that’s not exactly the same as walking fifteen feet into the other room and crashing, but I guess it could do in a pinch.

Steve Pavlina’s Polyphasic Experiment

Steve Pavlina has reported back on his Polyphasic sleep experiment after 60 days. He seems like an incredibly disciplined guy, so I had no doubt, if it was working out for him, that’d he’d be able to pull it off. (unlike many others who reported that they tried and “failed”)

Like Steve, I’ve found that once you get used to this schedule, It’s tough to go back. In the future I’ll have to try his suggestions of cutting down on the meat & caffeine. The biggest problem I’ve found is having the discipline and ability to time your schedule so that you can workout / attend classes if that’s a goal of yours.

Sure, you can go for a jog 24 hours a day in many neighborhoods, but you’ll have to be up at the right time to hit that Yoga class.

Postscript

While googling for the funny T-Shirt slogan, Alarm Clocks Kill Dreams to end this post with, I discovered that the once funny catch-phrase has been co-opted by the humorless Work Less Party.

It’s not about the work, silly rabbit, it’s about pursuing the kind of work you love … in the way that you love to work.

[+] My review of Peopleware on All Consuming

Backstory: As part of a recent system administration task I needed help with, one of my requirements was that the individual document how they performed the task. Nothing simple, just a few key steps or especially complicated compilation strings, whatever.

Enough for someone moderately skilled in *nix administration to repeat the task w/o reinvinting the wheel.

I do this all the time on my own system, say, when I’m compiling php or apache. Or even simple one-liners like Subversion checkout/import/etc. commands.

First I’ll type the commands into a notes.txt file, run them, fix any errors, and keep the notes.txt up to date with how I performed the task so its there as an easy reference in the future. It adds maybe 15-20% of time to the process but saves an incredible amount of time in the long run.

For tasks that other people I’m working with might have to use… I’ll post them to a wiki like Backpack. (Here’s an example that I wrote for a buddy new to Rails: Rails Newbie Getting Started Guide)

So, I was a bit taken aback when I got this response back from a system administrator:

I have done the easyapache thing and had compiled so. But if you are asking for a step by step description of how to go about compiling, then I guess no sys-admin will be willing to give you the details.

This frankly boggles my mind.

I know there are people in Office Space environments who hoard their knowledge and try to build up their fiefdoms.

But for those of us lucky to work (or also work) in Web 2.0 environments … this kind of attitude is unacceptable.

Welcome, knowledge hoarders, to the era of blogs, wikis, open source and distributed web collaboration –
     Your value to my organization is inversely proportional to the amount of knowledge you hoard, not the other way around. Goodbye.

A few updates to my How to Setup and Configure a Linux Media Server post.

Mental note: don’t start posting random how-tos at 4am and then go over to digg and submit them, before you’ve even finished testing out your setup!

There was one huge flaw with the default Fedora Core 4 setup — Samba shares don’t work properly with OS X. A pretty huge problem for a ‘media server’ to have if you are rockin’ the mac anywhere in your household.

Uh oh, Browsing the Samba Share Doesn’t Work on My OS X Box!

I thought it was too good to be true!

The Samba version installed with Fedora Core 4 is not the very latest.

You’ll need to download and install the latest version of Samba if you need to access your linux media server from OS X. (unless you’re lucky and you can mount your share from OSX without a problem - maybe Apple’s fixed this bug in the latest build)

But if it isn’t working for ya, there are also configuration settings you’ll need to setup on OSX, and even possibly a simple AppleScript startup launcher which will perform the mount of the network share upon startup each time. (this should work in OS X but is broken on some systems, including mine)

If you’re having OS X samba connection woes, I’ll just have to point you to this thread at macworld.com. It contains most of the information needed to configure your new Linux Samba installation (this was the trickiest part), as well as a few minor settings you need to configure in your OS X “/etc/smb.conf” file.

Next, you may have problems getting your network share to auto-mount under OS X at startup time. Never fear, here’s a recipe for ya:

Auto-Mounting Your Network Share Under OS X on Startup

There isn’t really the concept of a “Mapped Network Drive” under OS X like there is in Windows (there’s mounted volumes, instead). However, you can do basically the same thing but it can be a bit tricky to do so w/o using some AppleScript-fu.

Open Script Editor and make a script like:

tell application "Finder"
	open location "smb://username:password@ipaddress/the/path"
end tell

For example, mine was:

tell application "Finder"
	open location "smb://sbraford@192.168.1.97/media"
end tell

From user Virtual1 on the thread:

Select to save as “Application”, and make sure “startup screen” and “stay running” are NOT checked.

Save the application script somewhere. Next open up your OS X User profiles / settings / configurations.

Click over to Startup Items, then drag your new auto-mounter AppleScript file onto it & make sure it’s enabled and that your settings get saved (may have to click on the Lock icon).

Next, logout and log back on to see if your new network share gets auto-mounted on startup! If so, w00t, you’re in business.

An update for those who prefer not to use FAT32 partitions on your *nix drives: You may want to format using Ext2, if FAT32 is not to your liking. The Ext2 filesystem is accessible under windows by adding some basic drivers. Thanks Pete and Blue Rowlf for the constructive feedback/comments!

And, last but not least… my version of ‘Media Server’ I guess differs greatly from other’s. Doh!

For me, the biggest thing a Media Server has to do is sit there and serve files. But for other people, it has to be a full-fledged PVR. So, here are my thoughts on adding additional functionality to your network file/media Linux server:

Regularly Scheduled Media Downloads

You have two options here. If you have cable/satellite television, you can use Myth TV as a PVR.

OR, if you only have one big fat Internet connection like yours truly, Broadcatching via RSS + BitTorrent is your answer.

Update: After playing with Azureus and its various RSS plugins for a while on Gnome/Linux, I was still unable to get it to even download torrents properly.

This could be a Linux/Firewall/Router issue, who knows. But debugging it was getting way beyond what I was trying to achieve for the common user (including myself).

Instead, the simplest approach was to mount the Linux Media Server share as a mapped network drive, and configure a Win32 BitTorrent client to do the downloading and just use the server as a file store. (not ideal, but does the job in a pinch.) uTorrent is an excellent C++ based BitTorrent client that has added RSS feed import support in its latest version.

One thing that might be cool as well in the future is setting up a web-based, ajax-powered streaming mp3 server like mp3act.

Hope these updates might appease some of the Digg playa haters out there. Though, despite the “no digg! all he did was mount a blah blah configure a blah blah shell script I can do that in my sleep” posts on digg, the article has been bookmarked 57 times on del.icio.us (at the time of this writing) at least, so hopefully lots of people found it useful!

Please let me know if you have any more tips / updates on setting up a Linux Media Server.

Update: There was a bug with Yahoo Results (the pear class ‘Services_Yahoo’ seemed to have not been loaded). Please let me know if you find any more bugs!

I’d like to thank Tom from Admin-ahead.com for helping out with some php5 migration fun on WHM/cPanel for the new WhoLinksToMe.com server.

I thought we would have to also use Apache2, but it turns out this is one thing cPanel servers do not get along well with at the moment.

However, Apache 1.x is a much better choice for us now anyway I do believe, as it mitigates any other problems that would have sprung up due to PHP5 and Apache 2.

Server History

For the past year and a half, WhoLinksToMe.com has been hosted on a server running over a DSL connection at my dad’s house in St. Louis.

I was able to remotely administer it via SSH, etc. Even VNC’ing into the local network there if ever a problem should arise.

Popdex was also scaled this way, growing to eventually 8,000+ daily pageviews / visitors before being migrated to a professional dedicated server.

Eventually I’d like to write a short guide on how you can start a small web-based business easily these days for $100 per month. Even less, if you’re so inclined.

Traffic Trajectory

Yearly traffic report for WhoLinksToMe.com (2005):

Traffic for the site averages about 1,400 daily unique visitors with over 3,000 daily pageviews.

It’s also been linked to:
- More than 81,000 times according to Google
- 267,853 times according to Yahoo
- 793, 676 times according to MSN Search

Many sites put the link in their template so the link is counted multiple times per site, but still… not bad for a couple of long weekends worth of work back in October ‘04.

If you are a total Linux power user, this article is not for you. It is for total Linux newbs who’d like to setup a spare box to serve mp3s, videos, etc.

I don’t subscribe to cable TV so that’s why there’s no PVR/MythTV details.

TODO: add how-tos for broadcatching via RSS + BitTorrent to download your favorite shows auto-magically.

Now, back to the regularly scheduled broadcasting…

This is a guide explaining what was involved in setting up a Linux box to be used as a shared network media server, although I also include my experiences in trying to setup Windows XP. (I didn’t get very far on the XP front)

The Box

So, the girlfriend hooked me up recently with an old Dell P4 2.0Ghz box that she got from work. (I’m gonna help her out w/ a laptop for her new pad up in N. Scottsdale)

The Tools

Tools:
- an old PC you have lying around somewhere
- one or two large hard-drives (newegg.com rocks for this)
- Fedora Core 4 installation disks (torrents available here)

The Operating Systems

1) Windows XP Professional SP2

2) Red Hat Fedora Core 4 Linux

My XP Experience

I figured everything would be peachy with the XP install. Hardly. It didn’t detect a video card or monitor. The display looked like crap. 8 colors, maybe 16. Very pixelated and ugly. From my experience w/ Red Hat, I knew this wouldn’t be a problem on the other side of the fence.

Then, lo and behold, I go to configure networking under the XP install. Looky looky, no network card identified! It’s an onboard Dell ethernet card! How can you not find the drivers for that?! There are probably millions of these babies out in the wild and the boys from MS can’t figure out how to detect it!

My Red Hat Linux Experience

Within a minute or two, Red Hat’s anaconda installer program had already identified my onboard video card *and* monitor!

It booted up a nice GUI that looked awesome. I knew good things were to come.

Next, it easily detected my network card. The only problem I ran into (user error) was not manually configuring the partitions.

I would *highly* recommend this. For some reason, the auto-partitioning feature didn’t work quite right since the previous dell OS install had left some nasties in the partition table.

Here’s all you need to know
/boot - 100mb
a swap partition - 2x your RAM
/ - the rest

Easy!

Two programs came in handy on the linux box for configuring new media server drives. I had installed a new 250 GB hard drive that I wanted to configure as FAT32. This would make it easier to transfer to a new media server, regardless of OS. (FAT32 is supported by win98, XP, linux, most of the *nixes I believe)

Update: You may want to format using Ext2, if FAT32 is not to your liking. The Ext2 filesystem is accessible under windows by adding some basic drivers. Thanks Pete and Blue Rowlf for the constructive feedback/comments!

Configuring a New FAT32 Drive Under Linux

The mkdosfs command came in handy. But first, be sure to format the new drive using Fdisk or a similar utility.

Steps to configure a brand-spankin’ new drive as FAT32 under Fedora Core 4 (and probably most linuxes):

1. Partition the drive using Fdsik. I recommend creating one big monster partition for the whole drive.

2. Format the new drive as FAT32 using mkdosfs.

Command to list your drives/partitions:

> fdisk -l

Command to format your new drive (assuming its at /dev/hdd1):

> mkdosfs -v -F 32 -n media /dev/hdd1

3. Make a new directory for the mount location

For example, if you want to mount your new drive at “/mnt/media”, do the following:

> mkdir /mnt/media

4. Edit your fstab file so the drive always gets mounted at boot-time.

> vi /etc/fstab

Add the following line to the end of the file and save:

/dev/hdd1   /mnt/media  vfat    users,owner,rw,umask=000    0   0

Mount all the drives (as directed by the fstab config file, I believe):

> mount -a

Your new drive should now be accessible at /mnt/media!

Try copying a few files over and make sure it works alright. Next, configure Samba and you’ve got yourself a new media server. w00t!

Configuring Samba on Fedora Core 4 (Without OS X Samba Client Support)

This guide goes over the process in detail.

There is a caveat in the title of this section because the version of Samba bundled with Fedora Core 4 does not work with Finder (out of the box) on many OSX setups. See this thread for details.

But all in all, setting up Samba was a snap if you just want to access the drive from your PC.

I cruised over to my regular windows box, browsed the network, entered my credentials, and bam! I was copying over files to my new media server!

Uh oh, Browsing the Samba Share Doesn’t Work on My OS X Box!

I thought it was too good to be true!

The Samba version installed with Fedora Core 4 is not the very latest.

You’ll need to download and install the latest version of Samba if you need to access your linux media server from OS X. (unless you’re lucky and you can mount your share from OSX without a problem - maybe Apple’s fixed this bug in the latest build)

But if it isn’t working for ya, there are also configuration settings you’ll need to setup on OSX, and even possibly a simple AppleScript startup launcher which will perform the mount of the network share upon startup each time. (this should work in OS X but is broken on some systems, including mine)

If you’re having OS X samba connection woes, I’ll just have to point you to this thread at macworld.com. It contains most of the information needed to configure your new Linux Samba installation (this was the trickiest part), as well as a few minor settings you need to configure in your OS X “/etc/smb.conf” file.

Auto-Mounting Your Network Share Under OS X on Startup

There isn’t really the concept of a “Mapped Network Drive” under OS X like there is in Windows (there’s mounted volumes, instead). However, you can do basically the same thing but it can be a bit tricky to do so w/o using some AppleScript kung fu.

Open Script Editor and make a script like:

	tell application "Finder"
		open location "smb://myusername:mypassword@myserveraddress/the/path"
	end tell

For example, mine was:

	tell application "Finder"
		open location "smb://sbraford@192.168.1.97/media"
	end tell

From user ‘Virtual1′ on the thread:

Select to save as “Application”, and make sure “startup screen” and “stay running” are NOT checked.

Save the application script somewhere. Next open up your OS X User profiles / settings / configurations.

Click over to Startup Items, then drag your new auto-mounter AppleScript file onto it & make sure it’s enabled and that your settings get saved (may have to click on the Lock icon).

Next, logout and log back on to see if your new network share gets auto-mounted on startup! If so, w00t, you’re in business.

Regularly Scheduled Media Downloads

You have two options here. If you have cable/satellite television, you can use Myth TV as a PVR.

OR, if you only have one big fat Internet connection like yours truly, Broadcatching via RSS + BitTorrent is your answer.

Update: After playing with Azureus and its various RSS plugins for a while, I was still unable to get it to download torrents properly.

Instead, the simplest approach was to mount the Linux Media Server share as a mapped network drive, and configure a Win32 BitTorrent client to do the downloading and just use the server as a file store. (not ideal, but does the job in a pinch.) uTorrent is an excellent C++ based BitTorrent client that has added RSS feed import support in its latest version.

In Part Deux of this guide, I hope to more fully flush out this ‘media server’ setup to include the RSS + BitTorrent auto-downloading feature of your favorite shows.

Recommended Links

Personal Fedora Core 4 Installation Guide
Fedora Project
How to Skip Product Activation in XP (if your OS will not even detect your video card, monitor, network card, etc. etc…. it doesn’t make much sense to buy a full license just to take it for a test drive.)
mkdosfs info
How to Configure a REAL Media Server on FC4
Broadcatching via RSS + BitTorrent

If you use linux, you obviously need a dedicated hosting for your website needs.  If you spend a lot of time online, consider getting a Exchange Server Hosting that will meet all of your requirements!  If you want a credibility in hosting, make sure you do your research.  No matter what type of computer web hosting you need, there is a host to meet your requirements!

So, my little baby wholinkstome (well, now that Gabe has helped out with the design its ‘our’ little baby), has reached the point where she needs a new server.

We’ve got some decent ad sales going on there, enough to afford a dedicated server at least.

But, lo and behold… she requires good ol’ PHP 5 due to some libraries / etc. we’re using.

That wouldn’t be such a problem, except that we went ahead and loaded WHM/cPanel on the server to make it easier to manage multiple domains/hosts on the server.

Of course, WHM/cPanel uses Apache 1.x and PHP 4 by default.

If you know of a good ’server guy’ who might be able to help us upgrade our cPanel to use PHP5, plz give a holler.

We can pay by the job, as the box is a totally unmanaged server, hosted by the fine folks at Layered Tech.

My main man Gabriel has knocked out an incredible design for WhoLinksToMe.com.

Gabriel and I have been working together on Niner Niner this past year.

Now we’ve teamed up to bring you lots of web 2.0 goodness, from WhoLinksToMe.com to a few other fun little sites we’ve got in the oven.

Hint: the project involves tags - you know, everyone’s favorite web 2.0 buzzword.

Massimo Curatella, Italian CG animation expert, programmer, etc, points me to:

Tip of the Day, 3D Animated TV-Series by Dreamlike Visions

Be sure to check out the trailer.

This is incredible stuff from just a few guys in Italy on a shoestring budget. (No Pixar hundred-million dollar budget here)

It’d be interesting to see the machines they used to do the rendering.

I don’t think any high-powered Hollywood execs read this blog, but the guys are looking for a little exposure or an experienced producer to help them out. If you know of anyone, definitely get in touch with Massimo or the guys.

Anyway, very cool stuff!

Aside:

I met Massimo back when we were recruiting for Menlo Park 2.0. Even though it was just 5-6 months ago, it seems like an eternity. I’ve learned so much from just going for it as an entrepreneur.

The original idea with Menlo Park 2.0 is that various people with diverse skills and talents could come together to form ventures. We’d all be starting different companies, and MP2 would act like a sort of investment vehicle (a traditional VC or angel investor).

Only, MP2 members would invest their time, rather than their capital.

Well, at the time… I was long on time, short on cash. The idea seemed perfect.

I still like the idea, but since then I’ve had to get a full-time job until the kettle boils over with revenue.

When you can make a good $25 - 40 per hour as a programmer, it sure takes an awesome, revenue-generating venture to be able to replace that kind of dough.

The second “problem” of the original MP2 concept was that I believed people would just start coming together and coding away, like they do on open source projects.

I reasoned: “Give them a tool (a platform) they can use, and they will use it.”

Or something like that.

The problem, I realized, is that most open source and almost any kind of project will begin with a lone or a few lone coders.

There is so much effort to be exerted before getting to a next (any) stage, that until this is done… it really makes little sense to form a marketing team or crack-squad sales force.

Trust is a huge issue as well. I’m naturally idealistic (to a fault?). I have tremendous faith in human nature. But it really takes some “live-fire” experience working with someone before you’ll know what it’s like. (i.e. you want to code a lot, but for whatever reasons, all very justifiable, they can’t nearly contribute as much)

This isn’t nearly as big a problem when you’re in your dorm rooms, but when you’re spread out by a thousand miles or so (heck, even 50), you don’t have this option.

You basically have to trust that the other guy will get his or her stuff done… (this only becomes a problem of course if you are are actually busting your ass)

Major caveat: you will almost always feel like you are contributing more, no matter what.

The optimal situation (I’m paraphrasing Paul Graham here) - everyone feels like they are contributing just a little more than everyone else (or the other guy).

That’s probably the best you can hope for…

Recently, I’ve been the guilty party when it comes to not contributing as much to a new project. (Ankur - forgive me?)

We are so close with Niner Niner and Text Link Media, that I just want to get some momentum building before jumping off into another project with full force.

That being said, I would love to rock out this new project using Ruby on Rails. If we can get the eBay API working with Rails, it just might be a go!

/end shanti’s wax poetic on starting a human capital investment group/

PS: Anyone know any angel investors?

I’ve been trying to bait Jason Calacanis into responding for a few days now.

He’s just so high and mighty in his #2 position in the nascient Weblog Network market, that it’s tempting to try and get a rise out of him.

Looks like this post finally did the trick.

If you missed it, here goes:

Calacanis Makes $1,000 per day from AdSense, reveals CTR & CPM, violates AdSense ToS

It’s pretty obvious that Jason Calacanis was unaware of the AdSense ToS when he posted this entry, originally detailing his CTR and CPM.

Of course, once it’s out there, it’s out there.

A few feedster searches later revealed this article.

I’m not sure what the terms of service says about revealing other people’s CTRs and eCPMs, but I won’t even do that here, since AdSense is what’s keeping the lights on around here for the time being. The link above, however, reveals the CTRs and CPMs that Weblogs Inc is getting. Quite frankly, I’m not impressed.

I know several companies, that you would have never heard of, with networks much larger than Weblogs Inc (in breadth) and are making several times more than Calacanis and Co.

Their secret? They write content for the Long Tail of niche high PPC keywords.

——————

Jason’s response:

yeah, we could do more asbestos-based blogs… but i think that is a bad publishing model. great for short term revenue boost, so not a bad idea.

My response back to him:

We’re profitable. Are you?

There are really only a few key rules (23 to be exact) that you need to know in order to create a Rockstar Startup - you know, one that kicks mega-ass, like Ludicorp, 37 Signals or Google.

A few of these are:

1. Always start with a great idea.

   If you don’t have one, no problem.

   You can find these by flipping through a copy of Fast Company, or an old issue of The Industry Standard.

2. Never use version control software. Quite frankly, it’s overrated.
3. The key in starting a business lies in picking a great name.

   That’s probably 50% of the work, right there.

4. Outsource critical aspects of your business to offshore development firms, especially if you received an unsolicited email from one, advertising their services.

   Of course, only do so after having first learned about the benefits of this trend from a Delta Airlines in-flight magazine.

5. Use Java. Always use Java. No matter what the project.

For the full 23 rules, visit 23 Rules for Rockstar Startups.