Amazon Web Services goes down, taking Netflix, Reddit, Pocket and more with it

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Amazon Web Services goes down, taking Netflix, Reddit, Pocket and more with it
// The Next Web - International technology news, business & culture


If you're having trouble accessing several parts of the Web today, it's because Amazon Web Services is having a bit of a glitch this morning. A server issue in Virginia is affecting most of the northeast, killing the infrastructure for many popular products and services including Netflix, Product Hunt, Medium, SocialFlow, Buffer, GroupMe, Pocket, Viber Amazon Echo and more. The outage occurred around 6 AM ET. Amazon DynamoDB goes down. Takes down Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, Nest, Medium, Mediacom, IMDB, and 21 other AWS services. Ouch. — Adrian Jimenez (@AdrianJimenez) September 20, 2015 At The Next Web, we use SocialFlow as our tool…

This story continues at The Next Web

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3 Small Discipline Habits You Can Train

3 Small Discipline Habits You Can Train
// Zen Habits

By Leo Babauta

While I'm not a fan of trying to be disciplined every moment of the day, there's no doubt most of us could use a little more discipline in our lives.
We procrastinate, we waste time with online distractions, we go an entire day without getting done what we really wanted to get done.
How do we overcome this?
With training. Practice small, effective habits, and practice some more. Don't expect yourself to be perfect at skills if you don't repeatedly, deliberately practice.
If you want to get good at these skills, don't worry about not being motivated. Just enjoy the joy of practicing something that you can get good at. It's amazing when you're learning something new, and that wonderful feeling is what can motivate you.
What should you practice? Three simple skills that can be turned into habits with repeated practice.

The 3 Small Discipline Habits

The habits that work for me are all about talking to myself:

1. Tell yourself, "This is what I'm going to do next.". Instead of having a long to-do list of things you want to do today, have just one thing you want to do right now. Instead of saying you're going to do this important task sometime, say you're going to do it right now. Instead of allowing yourself to randomly open websites that give you distraction, deliberately figure out what you want to work on next. Pick one thing. It doesn't matter what it is, but try for things that are important in your life.
2. Ask yourself, "What is the smallest step I can do?". Most of us look at something on our (mental or digital or paper) list and subconsciously think, "That's too hard." So we put it off. But that's because we're thinking about an entire project, which has many tasks. You can't do a project right now, you can only do a task. Instead of saying, "I'm going to write that paper that's due," you should say, "I'm going to write 3 things in the outline of the paper." If the smallest task stills seems too hard, say you're just going to do 5 minutes of that small task right now. Or just two minutes. Make it ridiculously easy.
3. Ask yourself, "What is stopping me from focusing on that small step?. Even if you figured out a task to focus on, and you've broken it into the smallest step, there will still be distractions or resistance. If you're not immediately doing the smallest step of the next task, ask yourself why. What's stopping you? Can you resolve this issue, close all browser tabs, shut off your phone, ask co-workers or roommates or family members to give you 30 minutes of focused time? Can you ask for help, get some accountability? The easiest solution is usually to close all distractions. Then get moving on the smallest step.

Once you've done that, repeat this process two more times, taking a few minutes' break between each round. Then take 20 minutes off as a reward. That's your training session. If you can do several training sessions a day, you'll get good at this in no time. And as you get good, the cost of doing anything will begin to seem miniscule.

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Raising money for cancer research UK by going booze free for a month.

So I have joined the #dryathalon movement where people give up booze for a month and raise money that goes to cancer research UK.

I'm posting this as my own father died of cancer and also suffered from cirrhosis of the liver due to alcohol so it has personal meaning to me but also I am trying to lose weight for health reasons and to get fitter for my boxing training where I am aiming to take part in some white collar boxing again for charity. 

I would appreciate any donations you can afford. If not why not do something similar yourselves.

Do some good and get healthy at the same time.

Thanks for your time.

Cheers!
+John Smith

#boxing #fitness #cancerresearch

Windows 10 will not run on this PC" error due to the issue with Parallels Display Adapter (WDDM)

Not sure if I will upgrade for free yet but here is the article and downloads on how to fix the error

How to upgrade my virtual machine to Windows 10?

Microsoft Certified Professional

Longer than I thought I passed some Microsoft Developer Exams and just received an email to login to keep them valid.

So I thought i would share my qualifications with friends, strangers and colleagues. 

I need to provide my Transcript ID (670391) and the Access Code (microsoftmcp), and direct you to https://mcp.microsoft.com/Anonymous//Transcript/Validate

And here is a the PDF version of the transcript

Apple Developer Program Renewal

So ive just renewed my Xamarin Indie subscription so it was time to do the same with my Apple Developer Program as well.
Not a cheap month software wise but both are for a year and this will be the year I publish a few apps to the store both Mac and iOS.

xamarin-upgrade

Hooked on Xamarin Studio / Monodevelop / ServiceStack

So one year later my indie subscription to the Xamarin Indie product was expiring . An ide to rival Microsoft Visual Studio, uses my language of choice c# and allows me to build web, console, services and apps all cross platform.

It hurts paying for software sure but I am now more comfortable on a Mac in Xamarin building all sorts or cross platform goodness with .NET and just testing on a windows virtual machines.

Add in the well thought out ServiceStack framework and various open source peojects and when my subscription reminder came round it was an easy decision to make.

Compare to an MSDN license for example..

The other thing of note was chatting to a WPF dev the other day and while we both loved MVVM and the language and various other Microsoft tooling, when i explained i was using the same language to deliver cross platform apps from a Mac and still getting a blank stare shows how much more Xamarin can offer.

Big fan. you have my cash again this year as does ServiceStack

Amazon Zocalo

While busy coding away on some API endpoints and refactoring some code and making some schema changes, I realised I had not opened my email client all day and after a quick scan for anything requiring my immediate attention I noticed that Amazon had given me early access to the new Zocalo product.

First thoughts

Initially I thought this is Dropbox with Sharepoint and that with web, mobile apps, Windows and Mac clients with promises of browser plugins this could be pretty cool.
“Amazon Zocalo is a fully managed, secure enterprise storage and sharing service with strong administrative controls and feedback capabilities that improve user productivity.”
Intro Video

Benefits

• typical amazon storage in the cloud
• low cost initially if you are a start up for example
• easy to get started
• most importantly active directory support

Active Directory

Amazon Zocalo can integrate with your existing Active Directory. This means that your users can easily access Amazon Zocalo using their existing Active Directory credentials. This is a big win for the enterprise.

Amazon Workspaces

Not 100 percent sure but when linked to Amazon Workspaces you could have a team all working on a Windows 7 experience with office apps and Zocola.

More later when not as busy!

In the meantime have a read of the docs and look at some screenshots of the iPad app. Ok break over back to the code!
Documentation
Screenshots

CloudCheckr Review

So as I’ve progressed to living in the Visual Studio and Microsoft Windows eco system to using a Mac and Xamarin building cross platform apps to also being a head of devops and using the Amazon Web Services Cloud to setup 3 new start ups now there have been some tools and services that have stayed with me and improved and been a vital part of my toolbox.
CloudCheckr is one such tool and has come on in leaps and bounds since I started using it for a single use case back in the day so I thought I would post about this application and what it did for me then. I went from the free use teir to a paid one I think its that good even though I am just using it to monitor some personal projects.

Best Practices

My first and still an important use case as I was getting to know AWS was best practises. Is my cloud setup secure, available and am I under or over usage?
This was and is still a very useful tool as it’s easy to forget to lock something down or forget that you fire up 1000 servers somewhere as a test.
Have I left ports open? Having a service send you best practises is worth every penny spent.

Spend Optimization

This was next up once I knew things were secure. Getting warning and potential cost savings especially important with start ups was invaluable.

More Features

Since then they have added new features which are explained better on their website so I shall finish by just linking off to them and suggest you give them a free trial you will not be disappointed.


Home Page

Cost Allocation

Resource Reporting

You Tube Video

amazon-workspaces-review

Amazon Workspaces

So during an insomniac night I had a play with Amazon’s new workspaces feature that provides a fully managed virtual desktop experience fully controlled from their web based console.
Being a long term but ex windows guy now I am quite interested in the possibilities of pay as you go and more active directory linked virtualised machines now provided by Amazon for testing and one off tasks but the value for everyone from one man operations to something much larger are clear.
They have a very good Workspaces intro
With more detailed information available
So using the closet data centre to me I created a workspace using the web console by providing a username and email address and about 20 minutes later it was provisioned and I got the intro email with all the information I needed to connect to my instance.

Once I followed the instructions and entered the password I got to download the client from this page

Being on a mac I downloaded and installed the mac installer and was soon connected to a very fast desktop client machine.

A very nice experience indeed Not the most complete test but it is very late and I am very tired right now. More later on this new and shiny feature.