iBlog: Nishit Shah

Puppet is an open source configuration management tool. It is written in Ruby. Being a System Administrator, one of the aspects of my job is to find out the tedious tasks which are done frequently and automate them. Automation is usually done using BASH, Perl, Python scripts but they have their limitations. Puppet is a very powerful tool and it is capable of automating nearly every aspect of a system administrator’s job, from user management, to software installation, to even configuring server services such as FTP and LDAP. Pulling Strings with Puppet: Configuration Management Made Easy is the first book to introduce the powerful Puppet system administration tool. Thanks to prompt action by the librarian at office, this book was in my hand in no time! Author James Turnbull guides through Puppet’s key features, installation and configuration of the software, creation of automated Puppet tasks, known as recipes, and even creating reporting solutions and ways to extend Puppet as per our requirements. I have just started with this book and am very impressed with the way the author has explained each and everything about puppet’s installation and configuration. Since Puppet is written in Ruby and its recipes have a Ruby like syntax, I am getting my hands dirty a bit on Ruby first. I am not much of a programmer and do hardly any coding. However, I heard a lot about how cool Ruby is during the recent BarCampPune4 and I was able to understand most of the stuff from the session on Ruby by Sidu Ponnappa. Its been just a day since I have started with it and find it interesting already. So, as one thing leads to another, I hope by March end I am well versed with Ruby and and have implemented Puppet to automate a set of servers

The world is much, much, much more weirder than normal these days. The latest proof comes from the Kiwi haven of New Zealand. Oh, you might want to turn down the volume on your computer as you read this. Okay, here are the facts: The Royal New Zealand Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (RSNZSPCA) has recorded a CD with one song it, titled “A Very Silent Night”. People can buy the CD and the money goes to a worthy non-profit cause. So far so good. “A Very Silent Night” turns out to be just that. The RNZSPCA, you see, says it recorded the entire CD at a frequency heard only by dogs. That’s right, dude, humans can’t hear it. The needle on my Weird-o-Meter just jumped to life, and is bobbing between 20 and 24. If you’re like me — and (trust me on this) pray that you aren’t — you’re probably thinking “WTF?? Why would anyone want to spend good money on CD they can’t hear?” But nooooooooo, the CD “has rocketed to the top of the charts”, according to the Daily Telegraph (presumably the New Zealand edition). Oh, yeah. my Weird-o-Meter just hit the 100 mark, that’s as high a weirdo rating an event can have … well, except a couple of higher ratings for the truly extreme weird (and those, of course, would be the opposite of the falsely extreme weird). Not only has a CD with no sound it that humans can hear become a chart-buster in Kiwi land — you might want to sit down for this — it’s so popular it is going global! As you read this, distributors in Australia and the U.S. are in heated competition for the regional or global distribution rights to “A Very Silent Night”. An accompanying video is a hit on YouTube — I am not sure if this is just New Zealand YouTube or global YouTube, but it has helped boost sales of the CD. And following all this popularity, like a chihuahua nipping at one’s heels, comes controversy. Some dog owners rave about it, and say their dogs wag their tails and even dance to it. “That’s amazing!” said one CD owner. “I cranked my speakers up full volume and played this, and the dog across the road went ballistic!” Others say that not only are there no sounds on the CD a human could hear, there are no sounds on the CD at all. “This is a have (as in “have you on”). I checked it with an oscilloscope and there is nothing there, it’s just muted video.”

PS. I donno wots stopping me from cutting an album by distributing blank CDs !

Its the first time that I am having two posts with exactly the same heading back to back! Had just been to BarCampPune4 @ ThoughtWorks, Pune yesterday and boy what a great camp it was. Since it was a geeks only event, there were no talks on Startups and Entrepreneurship! More focused towards Technology, Web 2.0 and Developers. There were 3 sessions related to Ruby, seems to be the favorite language of the guys at ThoughtWorks ! Met Tarun Chandel, Rohit from ClubHack, Sidu from TW, Vinukumar from PagalGuy, Freeman Murray, Thakkar of smsGupShup.com, Raxit from MyKavita among others. Had a gr8 time. BarCampPune4 was very well organized and the sessions were very good. Hats off to the guys @ ThoughtWorks and organizers. Have uploaded some pics of the event at my Flickr Album.

Off to BarCampPune4 @ ThoughtWorks Technologies. With interesting set of sessions and an opportunity to network with like minded individuals always draws me to BarCamps. This would be my third BarCamp that I’ll be attending as a member of the audience. Have gradually moved to the planning team of BarCampMumbai3 ! Among the list of campers I saw the name of Akshay Dhavle I had a classmate in school by the same name. Was not sure if this is the same guy. But it was gr8 to know that this is the same Akshay. Its been 10 years since I got out of school and in touch with only a bunch of classmates and Akshay is not one of them So it would be great to meet someone after such a long time and that too at an event like BarCamp. Meet u there !