Rus - Page 10 of 25 - Opinions on building highly available software businesses

Consider Phlebas

Consider Phlebas is the first book in Ian. M. Bank’s Culture series and demonstrates his talent for suspense in a pretty hard core sci-fi novel detailing the exploits of a shape shifting secret agent of the Iridans.

Undertaking a clandestine mission to a forbidden planet in search of a fugitive artificial intelligence, Consider Phlebas is a serious space opera set in the midst of a war between two galactic empires.

The scale of the universe Banks paints is immense and apparently the rest of the series only gets better.

Gentile or Jew
O you who turn the wheel and look to windward,
Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you.

– T.S. Eliot

Tiger Muay Thai’s New Gym

by rus

When I first arrived at Tiger Muay Thai back in September, the indoor, air conditioned gym had been turned in to a BJJ hall and all the gym equipment had been moved outside, whilst construction on a new, larger gym was underway. The gym equipment was getting pretty weathered and people were lifting with gloves to protect themselves from rust etc. This caused me to join Titan Fitness’ gym for a while instead whilst I was living near it.

In the middle of December Tiger Muay Thai finally opened the doors on their new gym so I’ve been working out there since, 4 times a week doing the same body building routines I was doing back in Brighton with my old personal trainer Gervasio Da Gloria.

The gym features 2 proper squat cages with safety bars, 1 angled squat rack, a Smith machine, several benches, a dip/chin-up station, an assisted dip/chin-up station, an incline and a decline leg press, a cable sation and loads of dumbbells, free weights and barbells.

All the equipment uses the free weights, so there’s no moving a pin up and down a weight stack and all the weights are in lbs. There are 2.2lbs to a KG so I’m constantly having to do math to work out what I should be lifting. This is not the worst thing in the world however.

The leg extension and leg curls can be done with an accessory attached to the end of a bench, there’s no separate machine for these exercises, but it works. After the first day of leg curls my DOMS were so bad I couldn’t walk properly or straighten my legs and had to have it massaged out!

Whilst there is everything here I need to do my work outs, the other gyms on the street are all missing something key, I am a little concerned with the quality. The bench, for barbell bench press, is already getting rickety and I don’t think that’s because the bolts are lose. It’s a little concerning when you’ve a 90kg bar 2 ft above your face and the bench you are laying on is wobbling. I guess I’m working my core though .. right?

SSH Over TorBrowser

by rus

The hotel in Thailand that I’m currently staying in is for some inexplicable reason blocking SSH, randomly. 6 hours ago it was working fine, but now when I need to do some work it’s decided to block me. At least that’s what I think is happening as all other requests work fine. I think it’s using some deep packet inspection too, as moving to another port also doesn’t work.

Anyway, the way round this is our friend, Tor. There are lots of ways to install Tor, but I like to have my Mac relatively clean of cruft, so I’ve opted for the TorBrowser bundle, which doesn’t come with any of the usual Tor utilities like proxychains, tsocks or torify.

Netcat is installed by default on a Mac though, and Netcat is the BOMB, and you can use it to proxy SSH over the Tor instance that comes with TorBrowser!

Provided TorBrowser is installed, running and connected, the following will let you proxy SSH over it:

[code]
ssh -o ProxyCommand=’nc -x 0:9150 %h %p’ example.com
[/code]

Please note that the TorBrowser port has changed from 9050 to 9150, if you’re running a really old version of Tor you should probably update anyway.

And you thought netcat was just for reverse shells!

Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook: How to Tell Your Story in a Noisy Social World

by rus

This book is mandatory reading if you’re planning on running a social media campaign any time soon. Covering all the major players, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Tumbler, as well as Google+ and others, Gary analysis the facets of each network, dissects what makes posts successful, go viral and get over exposure, and what can make posts fail.

Using case studies as the book progresses you are shown exactly what can make or break a social media campaign on each respective network, and they are all different, so what works on one will not necessarily work on another.

Following Gary’s guidelines, and setting up your series of jabs correctly, you should then be able to deliver a killer right hook which will turn your audience from media consumers in to buying customers!

The White Temple Wat Rong Khun In Chiang Rai

by rus

To the east of Chiang Mai is another city called Chiang Rai who’s main claim to fame is the beautiful White Temple, Wat Rong Khun. As I’ve no plans to be back in the north of Thailand any time soon, now seemed like a great time for me to visit.

Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai By Bus

After asking around, the only place to buy a bus ticket from Chiang Mai to Chiang Rai is the bus station to the east of the old city, apparently there is a shop in the centre but I couldn’t find it. It’s easy to get to buy songthaew or tuk-tuk.

When you get to the bus station, inside and on the left is the Green Bus kiosk where you can buy your ticket. Head up to the front and on the right hand side is a little box on the wall where you can press a button to grab a ticket to get in line to er .. buy your ticket. I had about 15 people ahead of me in the queue but it took less than 5 minutes to clear! Make sure to buy your ticket at least a day in advance as the buses fill up super quick.

I bought a ticket for the VIP bus on the way to Chiang Rai, but the return VIP buses were already full so had to get a normal ‘First Class’ bus. The VIP bus was 288 Baht I think and the First Class was 185, so all in about £9 for a return ticket. The difference between the two buses is night and day though, the VIP bus was one of the most comfortable rides I’ve ever had, including my premium economy BA flight! The First Class was similar to a standard coach. Both buses had toilets on board and air conditioning. The trip, each way, was roughly 3 hours long and really enjoyable.

Wat Rong Khun

Wat Rong Khun, also known as The White Temple, is an art-exhibit in the style of a Buddhist temple that was opened in 1997. It’s free to enter, but a complete tourist trap, with the surrounding shopping area much larger than the temple itself. You can get a bus from the main Chiang Rai bus stop to the White Temple for 20 Baht (40 pence).

The White Temple is still being built and isn’t likely to be finished until 2070 but the centre piece is finished and looks amazing. There’s a little bit of earthquake damage to one of the buildings that still needs to be repaired but that doesn’t take away from the splendour of the area.

Raising Steam

by rus

Terry, with this book you are really spoiling us! Following in the steps of previous books, by revolving the plot around the addition of a real world device in to the Discworld, namely the steam train, Raising Steam has everything! Political intrigue, hijackings, goblins, dwarves, Corporal Nobby Nobs, drama, did I say intrigue?

This is definitely one of Terry’s best books and was a pleasure to read, I couldn’t put it down and took it to every meal as well as my day out to Chiang Rai. Featuring the new character, Dick Simnel, inventor of the Discworld’s first steam engine who, with the help of Harry King and Moist Von Lipwig, must also create a complete railway service!

If you like Pratchett, you will love this! I’ve got to say, 5 months in to travelling, the [amazon text=Kindle&asin=B00JG8GYAW] is the best little gadget I’ve bought with me. Whilst I sometimes read using my iPhone, being able to read properly with the [amazon text=Kindle&asin=B00JG8GYAW] is a luxury in comparison, and I love the way my books sync across both the Kindle and the iPhone Kindle app, so I can seamlessly switch between them if it calls for it!

First Shopify Sale

by rus

As part of building up a brand with Amazon FBA I have my own e-commerce store in order to build trust with customers that search for our brand name. So far I haven’t done much more than list my various products on it, with sales copy and images taken straight from my Amazon listings.

I’ve built e-commerce sites in the past, using either Woocommerce or Magento but this time opted for Shopify as it’s much less effort to set up and integrates with Amazon FBA really nicely. Until now though, everything has been quiet!

Then out of nowhere, boom, a $59.98 sale to someone buying 2 items. Due to the magic of Shopify and Amazon FBA integration I don’t even need to do anything! The customer paid via PayPal, rather than the other payment system we have, Stripe, and the money is already in my PayPal account! Shopify contacted Amazon and the order is already being handled and the items should be shipped shortly. Now that’s what I call passive income!

This is a great start to the new year and after product #5 is on the shelves I guess the next step is to get a handle on Google Adwords, tweak the sales copy on the Shopify store and create a new sales funnel and really kill it in 2015!

Profit Per Sale When Selling On Amazon

by rus

Now I’m back in Chiang Mai it seems that there’s been a huge swing. A lot of the people I met at the Drop Ship Lifestyle event are now looking at selling products on Amazon as their business model of choice and I’ve been fielding a lot of questions. The most common question is by far:

How much profit are you making per sale?

so I thought I’d answer that here, once and for all! Here are the transaction details for one of our sales, from Amazon.

The cost of this particular product for us to buy is $5.80, including shipping to Amazon, and we are selling it at $24.99. Here is the breakdown:

$24.99 Product Charge to customer
-$5.80 Product cost
-$1.00 FBA Order Handling Fee
-$1.02 FBA Pick & Pack Fee
-$0.55 FBA Weight Handling Fee
-$3.75 Referral Fee on Item Price

Total: $12.87 profit per sale

So as you can see, after the initial cost of the product and the various Amazon fees, we are left with $12.87 profit, which is roughly twice the cost of our product and half as much as we are selling it for.

Amazon themselves have a handy shipping calculator you can use to predict your own profits.

Basic Security Testing With Kali Linux

by rus

I quite fancy the idea of taking some of the Offensive Security certifications, but they are expensive and once paid for time limited to complete! So as a precursor I’m reading up on some of the tools and techniques that you are expected to learn about on the course and playing with the Kali Linux penetration testing distribution.

Basic Security Testing With Kali Linux is a lot of fun. I breezed through the book as I’m familiar with all the concepts already but it is aimed at the beginner so if you have no penetration testing experience you’ll be fine.

The book mostly covers the following topics, getting Kali Linux installed, installing an exploitable platform such as Metasploitable2 or Windows XP/7, then using the tools available in Kali Linux to gather information about the platforms, identify vulnerabilities then finally exploit those vulnerabilities using Metasploit and the various exploits and shells available. There are also several chapters on wireless security, how to conduct man-in-the-middle attacks and how to crack in to wireless networks.

The book is a great for ‘script kiddies’ as it doesn’t really go in to the guts of how things like buffer overflows work and what is actually going on when you use the tools, but it’s a great starting point and introduction to penetration testing.

Christmas In Chiang Mai

by rus

Thailand doesn’t really do Christmas so everywhere was open which made it a very interesting day indeed!

Christmas Lunch At Coffee Monster

In the Phuket Central Festival food hall they were selling Waitrose Christmas puddings, so for a bit of home from home I bought one of each for the total sum of 2000 Baht (£40). I felt my wallet haemorrhaging as I paid.

We spent Christmas morning working at Coffee Monster and I bought along one of the Christmas puddings. Ideally they should be steamed but none of us have kitchens. Coffee Monster does have a microwave though and they were more than happy to heat it up for us and provide plates etc!

Christmas Dinner At The Red Lion

There aren’t many places in Chiang Mai that do a Christmas dinner. In fact whilst Googling and asking around I found only one place, the Red Lion Pub in the Chiang Mai Night Bizarre. For 690 Baht (£14) they did a 3 course meal :

Home-made Pea and Ham Soup
Roast Turkey with Chipolata, Roast Potatoes, Vegetables, Sage & Onion Stuffing and Cranberry Sauce
Christmas Pudding with Brandy Sauce

They even give you Santa hats and Christmas Crackers!

Happy Christmas everyone!