Qemu + KVM is the future of open source virtualization

Open source virtualization has been evolving dramatically over the last few years. Incumbent proprietary platforms such as VMWare still hold the throne in many areas but open source competitors are gaining ground fast on their way to ubiquity. Things are a-changing in the land of virtualization.

Right now we have three contenders to the (open source) throne battling it out for supremacy:

  • Xen: backed by Citrix
  • VirtualBox: backed by Oracle/Sun
  • KVM: backed by RedHat
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Amazon EC2 metadata - Python library and CLI

Each Amazon EC2 instance has associated metadata, as well as user data supplied when launching the instance. The meta and user data is instance-specific, and therefore only accessible to the instance.

The data is useful on several levels, such as configuring SSH public keys, programmatically configuring the instance according to certain criteria, or even executing user supplied initialization scripts.
 

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CSS cheat sheet

While reading CSS books and experimenting I found it helpful to take notes and put together a cheat sheet for quick reference. I figured others might find it useful so I'm sharing. I've also uploaded a simple PDF version.

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Python symmetric encryption with CRC

Recently I needed to transfer data between entities, but I needed to keep the data secure from prying eyes, and its integrity intact from busy little fingers on the wire.

I needed the solution to be simple, and support a high-performance environment. Seeing that I could exchange a secret key over a secure channel out-of-band (OOB), I opted for using symmetric-key cryptography.

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9 things about CSS any web developer should know

9 things I didn't know about CSS that I should have known years ago but I only picked up from a couple of good CSS books.

Having dabbled in web development over the years, I've had a basic working knowledge of CSS for quite some time. In fact, I've been around long enough to remember what the web was like when we were all using font tags and transparent pixel tricks. Back when it wasn't unusual to come across a web site using the BLINK tag. Let me tell you it was ugly and it was a mess. (Now get off my lawn!).

As soon as browsers started supporting CSS I picked up just enough to save myself from committing the geek equivalent of a war crime, but I never got around to fully mastering CSS in all its glory. Advanced subjects such as floats and layout still seemed a bit mysterious. And every so often I would come across a bit of CSS code that made no sense yet rendered perfectly in every single browser I tested. Clearly my CSS skills were behind the times.

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Django User Profiles - Simple yet powerful

So you're building a web application, and using the excellent contrib.auth subsystem to manage user accounts. Most probably you need to store additional information about your users, but how? Django profiles to the rescue!

Django provides a lightweight way of defining a profile object linked to a given user. The profile object can differ from project to project, and it can even handle different profiles for different sites served from the same database.

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SSH session slow to start? It's the DNS stupid!

Ever tried logging into a machine with ssh and found you have to wait much longer than reasonable for the session to start? This happened to me a few times and was especially annoying with machines on my local network (or a VM attached to a virtual network) that should be letting me in immediately.

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Tweeting for news-a-holics

Hi, my name is Alon and I'm a news-a-holic.

Lets face it, some of us have addictions, be it alcoholism, nicotine, gambling, over-eating, television, or even just mowing the lawn. Mine is being up to date with the latest news.

Some addictions are worse than others in being self-destructive, and as you already know, identifying and acknowledging you have a problem is the first step. I am also a work-a-holic, so when I realized that having to know the latest news was impacting my workflow, I needed to find a solution.

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Smack yourself if you don't use generic shell script hooks

Smack yourself in the forehead if you don't use the following snippet (or an equivalent) in all custom shell scripts that could benefit from a hooking mechanism: