So what on earth am I up to these days? I just spent two days learning about Amazon EC2 and deciding how I’m going to run a web server on it. I’m using a public AMI (Amazon Machine Image) that’s EBS (Elastic Block Store) backed.

To run what you would think of as a web server, you really need an Instance whose Root Device is an Elastic Block Store. Otherwise, all data persisted to your Instance is lost if your Instance is Terminated. You can leave it running forever… if you want to pay 8.5 cents per hour. To be able to stop an Instance, so you don’t have to pay for it while you’re sleeping, it has to be EBS backed. An EBS costs 10 cents per GB per month. Far less than 8.5 cents per hour.

The public AMI I used as my base is ami-0efc1467. It’s a Ubuntu Linux 10.10 Maverick Meerkat image.

I installed the LAMP stack.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install lamp-server^

I installed PhpMyAdmin

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin
(got a 404 Not Found until I ran:)
sudo ln -s /usr/share/phpmyadmin /var/www
(but I think that all I needed to do was restart apache:)
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

I’m spending the rest of my day deciding if I ought to use simpleDB instead of MySQL, and learning how to forward HTTP requests to the right places so that the right code handles them. And I still need to decide what language to write my server code in. Thinking PHP.

After I take care of those decisions, and handle any installation/configuration of tools, I’ll create my own AMI so I can have an easy way to start from scratch.

I broke in my Vibram FiveFinger Bikila’s today with a quick 3.8 mile run on this route. I got them from Marathon Sports by Copley Square on Boylston Ave. There were three pairs of Vibrams in the store. One of them was exactly what I was looking for. Size 43 (10.5 - 11), white and red Bikilas. They were even returns, and a touch scuffed, so I got them for 85% of retail: $85 USD.

Eighty-five dollars will be an absolute bargain if they last as long as people say they do. I got about 285 out of my Vomero 4’s, 375 out of my Mizuno Mushas, and they cost $140 and $90 respectively. I’ve heard, although no one’s had the Bikilas for long enough to know for this line, that people got over 1000 miles out of the old ones. If I get 500 I’ll feel well served.

That leads me to my first run. I’ll tentatively say that I love these things. It’s NOT barefoot running. Let’s get that out in the open. I ran 2.8 miles barefoot yesterday, and 3.8 in my new Bikilas today. And it’s not, not, not the same. The Bikila has 7 millimeters of sole at its thickest point under the ball. And the sole, while flexible, is still one piece. If you think about your foot, it moves as if the ball were independent from the heel. Add a sole on the bottom, and it’s harder for your foot to control the downward pressure from the impact.

Nonetheless, if going from Vomero 4’s (the Cadillac of running shoes, big floaty, like running on clouds) to Mizuno Mushas (“minimalist” runwear or “light weight trainers” where “light weight” refers to the thin sole) is a big step, then going from Mushas to Bikilas is a step similar in magnitude. It’s like the most light weight shoe I’ve ever worn.

This is a very good thing. I’ve been running barefoot a lot, and I think it’s good for me. The issue I have with it though is that my goal is not to be a barefoot runner, and building up my foot toughness to match my endurance and the condition of the muscles in the rest of my legs. I’m trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon, not trying to qualify for the Boston Marathon barefoot. So my goal is to get value from running barefoot with as little disruption to my training as possible.

It feels like Bikilas are going to help me do that.

• I really like that the Bikilas make me feel a lot closer to running barefoot. If not perfectly like barefoot, close enough for my purposes.
• My feet didn’t hurt at all. The general wear on my foot didn’t build up at all throughout the run. Usually as I run barefoot the pain builds and builds until I have to put my shoes on.
• I didn’t have to pay attention to rocks. I could feel rocks, but not enough that they hurt. so I didn’t have to spend large amounts of my precious little brain power avoiding rocks.
• Since I have a sole, I can increase my inches covered per stride. When I run barefoot the ground is like sand paper, and so to reduce friction, instead of striding, and pulling pavement under me, I have to move fewer inches per stride. My Bikilas don’t limit my inches per stride, and so I can run much faster.
• No laces. Ahhh.
• When I got back from running, I was feeling the strain right on my calves. That’s exactly what I was hoping for.
• Bikilas: 6 oz. each.
• Mushas: 7.8 oz. each.
• Vomero 4’s: 12.4 oz. each.

I played around a bit with Docs.com. So happy that MSFT is going in this direction, but there’s still a ways to go.

http://docs.com/12FO

Here’s a copy of my thoughts. The originals (feel free to edit the document to add your own thoughts) are in the document.

• Feels like Word. Cool!  

• Click on Spell Check. Looks like it only checks the word the cursor’s on. Lame. Is this some attempt to make docs.com not as great as the full version? Boo. When a feature is F-R-E-E in your gmail, you expect it to be free in something like this. Not doable? Yeah right. 

• No track changes. OK, maybe this isn’t an expected feature, but it would have been nice. 

• No simultaneous editing. You have to click “Finish Editing” at the top you won’t be able to open the doc on another device. 

• As I just learned the hard way, “Finish Editing” doesn’t mean “Save and Finish Editing”. Two separate actions. Who reads the warning boxes anyway? Feels like instead of having the “Are you sure you want to navigate away from this page” thing with OK and Cancel, which looks like it’s from your browser (Looks just like when you hit Back and your browser warns you that you’re going to resend data to the server.), it should be a box that’s clearly from the docs app that says “What do you want to do with your unsaved changes?” and then have buttons that say “Discard and Close”, “Save and Close”, and “Cancel and continue working”. 

• Docs app crashes iPad Safari solid. Totally unusable in iPad Safari.

Steve and I took an important step toward friendship today.

Jaadu VNC (I think they changed the name of their app to iTeleport or something.) released an iPad update, and now I can nicely VNC to other machines. The picture is a screen shot of Excel 2010, on Windows 7, VNC’ed to from Steve. It’s almost a viable solution.

So if Jaadu VNC did all the work, why am I better friends with Steve? Well, because this is an example of the vision coming to fruition. I think there is an industry of apps out there that will make the iPad worth $299 (The other $200 will always be hype).

I first VNC’ed to my OSX laptop from my iPhone a year ago. That was anticlimactic bec the screen was so small that it was really painful to use. and bec the VNC server crashed on my laptop at home, rendering it useless. I got burned a couple of times and quit using it.

I wish there were an actual keyboard on the iPad, complete with tab, shift, arrows, numbers, and the rest. All this clicking from screen to screen is fine on the iPhone, but the iPad feels like it should be different.

This Win7 install runs on a server in my closet. I installed VMware’s ESX 4.0 on it last fall. I have half a dozen vm’s, one of which is running Win7. That’s where I have VS2010 and Office 2010. Thanks to MIT I have four static IP addresses. Currently thinking about what I’m going to do when I leave this mini Garden of Eden. EC2?

My dream is to be able to use my iPad (Steve) as just a UI for all of my vm’s. Maybe the solution includes a real keyboard that I carry around with Steve. Don’t know.

That reminds me that I need to search for a shell application for the iPad. Hmmm.

I entered the 21st century today. Or maybe the 21st century dragged me in, in spite of myself.

I purchased 20GB of storage from Google for five dollars per year.

My resistance has never been about security, privacy, or ownership. It’s been about the subscription. It’s always bugged me that online services want me to pay into perpetuity for something static.

But I was chatting with my old friend Benjamino McMurry last night, and he told me he stores all of his pictures on Picasaweb. He said he purchased 20GB, he stores all his photos online in full size, and he’s happy about it.

I felt something change in my brain. I instantaneously decided to do this same.

Believe it or not this is a pressing issue. I need to back up my system (pictures, mainly) bec I need to upgrade to Snow Leopard bec I need to install Xcode bec I need to learn how on earth Apple development works bec development is my business now and bec my RAC guy is almost done with my MVP which I will surely have to maintain/extend.

All of this has been swimming around in my head for a two weeks, poking at the soft spots. So when Ben told me he bought 20GB, my brain just said, “Yes.”

It’s interesting that no amount or manner of marketing has swayed me in the slightest for years.

This is what Crossing the Chasm/The Four Steps to the Epiphany /Purple Cow are about. Mass marketing is pointless as an influencial tool. It’s good for awareness, which may build credibility. But if ur ever going to scale, you have to find people like Benjamino and make them really happy. Those people are the key.

http://picasaweb.google.com/alexanderm

Things that I don’t like:

I keep finding myself wanting something to prop it up so I don’t have to hold it up. What if it could be attached to a bottom part, connected at a hinge that you could adjust perfectly to how youre sitting at the time. Wait, I have one of those in my bag too…

The first thing I did was fire up the browser. After just a minute realized that it’s an ok experience, at best. First of all, the forward/back buttons, and the other buttons you know and love on your iPhone browser, like to toggle to a different open page and add a link to your desktop, are all at the top of the browser. This is a problem since you have to hold up the device. So you have to reposition your hands to hit any of that. I wished I could move the whole navigation bar to the bottom, or to split it in half and put half on either side.

I can’t edit my google docs. Spreadsheets are editable, sort of. But docs are just out. Boo.

No flash. Don’t tell me HTML5 is going to kill flash. Just get me flash and deprecate it when the world turns.

When I browse the web, I’m often looking for something. Ctl-F/Cmd-F is one of my best friends. For those of you who don’t know this bit of magic, you hit control-f (windows)/command-f (mac), and your browser sends control to a search box. So you hit ctl-f, and then immediately type whatever word you’re looking for. The browser will find the first one, and then you can hit next to find the next occurrence of that word. Well, <deep breath>, on your Giant iPod, there is no way to do this. Boo.

Things I love:

Potential for apps that will be really useful. Enter Everauthor, but that’s another story. iBooks is really nice, and I can see myself reading on this device.

My mouth is watering for an iPad update of my VNC client. I have a Windows 7 desktop running as a VM on VMware’s ESX (a free hypervisor that is rock solid and can host dozens of VMs) on a machine in my closet. A good implementation of this could bridge the gap between the iPad and my laptop, and I could finally leave my laptop at home every day. I dreamed of this when I got my iPhone, and got it working, but the iPhone is just too small.

Google Reader, except that most videos linked to from blogs are flash. No flash.

All the new friends. People want to see it and touch it. I’m so much more popular now. I bought early enough to be part of the club!

Doctor Cialdini, professor of influence, lists Scarcity as one of the seven principles of influence. Is anyone surprised that my Apple store “can’t keep iPads in stock?” I had to put my name on a list to be notified when my iPad had arrived. After the notification, I would have 24 hours to claim my iPad. Lo and behold, my notification came one day after I put my name on the list. Call me a nonbeliever, but I think this is Dr Cialdini’s principles well learned by Apple employees with fancy degrees.

As the girl swiped my card in the store i said to her, “You know what I’m most excited about is the experience of opening it.” This is usually the best part of buying an Apple product.

My sister sat next to me as I opened it to experience it with me. She’s a long time Apple user. We waited until the kids were in bed and the dishes were done. We sat next to each other on my orange Ikea futon. We took a deep breath and held hands. The experience was bad. Bad job guys.

First, the iPad doesn’t come with ear buds. Witten on the box? Probably, but it’s an expectation with a device like this. I guess Steve thinks we should all tighten our belts a little, what with the recession and all. Besides, I only paid $500.

It does use the same cable as my iPhone does, so that was an expectation met. And the little envelope that comes with the device is pretty sexy. There’s an instruction manual in it, which consists of one small sheet of paper. It points out the power button, volume buttons, and rotation lock. That was really pretty. An expectation exceeded, but that was just a piece of paper.

Then we turned it on. Can’t use it until you plug it into iTunes. Lame. I wanted to finally get a separate account from Molly, so we tried to go through that process. It was messy, confusing, and we ultimately failed. Oh well. Using my existing account isn’t so bad, because I synched all my apps from my phone.

I named the device Steve, and I’m posting this with him. I give the acquisition/opening experience a B or B-.

Yesterday I did my whole run barefoot. 5.2 miles around the Boston Museum of Science.

http://bit.ly/a27MLC

I’m proud of myself. Last week I ran my whole run around Longfellow Bridge barefoot. That’s 4.3 miles.

In February I started going out barefoot with my shoes and socks on my hands. I’d run until my feet hurt, and then put my shoes on. I’ve learned a few things about barefoot running:

1. If the temperature is below 40F, it’s really cold you your feet.

2. The pavement ripping your skin is not what stops you. It hurts under your skin. It’s like your bones have to toughen up.

3. You don’t realize with your shoes on how much torque you put on your feet to pull the pavement under you. With shoes on, you’re not just picking up your feet and putting them down again. You’re putting your foot down and pulling the pavement underneath you. Without your shoes on, you can’t do this, and you’re forced to pick up your feet and put them down again.

4. The roughest part of the run from Westgate around the MoS is the first .6 miles down to Mass Ave. After that it gets substantially easier because there’s a lot of smooth cement.

5. Re: 4, even tho it’s smoother after Mass Ave, part of the easierness is that your feet sort of get used to the pain. If you push it too hard, you get blood blisters (shown above) and you hobble around for the rest of your day.

6. A good way to deal with blood blisters is to stick a pin into them, and drain them. Sleep on it, and tomorrow you’re ready to go.

It’s odd to me how much I love to run. I mean, all you do is get out and pick up your knees for a while. I love it because for old guys like me it’s more of a head game than anything else. It is so hard for me to stick to my schedule without pushing harder than my rickety old body can handle.

Also of note, I ran four Yassao 800’s in 2:59, 2:59, 2:54, 2:54. Jogged 200 meters slowly in between each. I guess that’s a starting point, and over the summer I’ll try to do that once every other week or so, and work up from four to ten, keeping the time the same.

The girls like it here too… When they’re allowed to run free.