Ross and Dan made this video to illustrate the advanced technology we use behind the scenes at FriendFeed. (Ross and Dan, you are amazing - I can't believe how awesome this thing turned out)
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
How very creative. This is very fluid and cool.
- Louis Gray
OK, not exactly what I was expecting, but very cool.
- Kevin Arth
Anyone have the video somewhere other than Youtube? it's banned here in Turkey and I can't wait until we get home (next month) to watch it!!
- Chris Myles
Bret, this video should be titled: A Love Song for FriendFeed ! Great vid (and music) !
- Ahsan Ali
This is superb. I just showed it to my 5 year old son who enjoys Lego and has already taken some great photos, including one or two of his toys. So now he has the seed of the idea that, in time, he could take multiple stills and put them together to make moving pictures. Thank you very much for posting it and giving me and him that opportunity. Maybe, he might use FriendFeed one day too!
- John W Lewis
I think they need to make a full stop-motion version of the Matrix in legos. Now THAT would be awesome. I wonder what bullet-time looks like in LEGO?
- Bret Taylor
i'd pay to see the stop animation lego matrix, but not the sequels
- patrick
"Equipment Generously Provided By Casey Muller" - hahaha!! THIS IS AWESOMESAUCE!!! I love the creative energy and vibe in this video... LOTS of work went into that one! Thanks guys!! :)
- Susan Beebe
Genius, how much time did that all take?
- Wayne Hornsey
Chris Myles: if you want ot - DM me an address and I'll mail you a copy.
- guruvan (Rob Nelson)
..................... hmmm... interesting Mo......
- Johnny
from IM
It would be stylized of course. I think it represents an intersection of your erm..interests. I suppose the minifig could also be holding a lightsaber
- Mo Kargas
That's what I hear, Derrick... *BA-DOOM-TISH*
- Johnny
#oohJohnny. But I enjoy pork entirely too much. Bacon, chops, ribs, ham, smoked shoulder, pork belly, I like it all. Someone hand me a napkin.
- Derrick
"You've probably seen the Reese's eggs around Easter—or at least the 1.2-ounce-sized eggs. They're basically a Reese's Cup but different because, you know, they're egg-shaped. But we came across this behemoth of a six-ounce egg and couldn't resist trying it, especially after so many of you raved about the Reese's Reester Bunny after our chocolate bunny tasting."
- Derrick
from Bookmarklet
This has me convinced that our grandkids will be playing absolutely 100% photo-real video games within our lifetime.
- Nathan Chase
Grandkids? Mine maybe - we'll be playing photo-real games in 10 years or less.
- iTad
Tad, I hope you're right! It's all a matter of processing power I suppose now!
- Nathan Chase
Yup - look at what they're doing with Mass Effect and FFXIII. It'll be 2 more console generations MAX before game play will match cut-scene quality.
- iTad
Certainly impressive, but oh my god, I hope they go easy on the focus pulling in the future. That ruined it for me.
- Que Sarah Sarah
It does a little less of the focus effects later on. I agree it was a bit overused.
- Nathan Chase
"Vampires aren't the only ones with tortured souls. Superheroes and their villainous counterparts get mopey every now and again. JSalvador's Super Emo Friends show chibi versions of comic book characters alone with their most depressing thoughts. [Etsy http://www.etsy.com/shop... via Super Punch http://superpunch.blogspot.com/2009... ]"
- RAPatton
"The Rice Krispies give the spider treats a nice crunch (a must for Halloween) and the black licorice legs can be savored eight times over—but the best part is that anyone in elementary school can help make and decorate these easy chocolate arthropods. If you're still looking for a recipe to bake for a classroom or party this week, check these out."
- Derrick
from Bookmarklet
Pshaw. "Shit" doesn't count as swearing. Not when I'm drinking. At lunch today I was driving and told my coworkers if we didn't get to the restaurant they picked soon, we were going to "fucking Panda Express." I kid you not.
- Jandy
This post just got upgraded to PG-13
- Mark Krynsky
*kicks Mark in the shin* He wouldn't have said anything anyway.
- Anika
I want to do a meetup at my house if you guys are up for it. Just need to figure out a good date. Saturday May 30th might be good for me.
- Mark Krynsky
I can do that, but I'm not going to be on my best behavior.
- Derrick
Good, because I wouldn't tolerate that Derrick.
- Mark Krynsky
Well, hell, I'll leave my pants at home.
- Derrick
Good cause the pool will be warm and if it isn't there's always the Jacuzzi.
- Mark Krynsky
Go Swearing Jandy. Panda Express? I don't wish that on my worst enemy.
- Derrick
I think I can do May 30th. Is that Memorial Day weekend? Or is that the weekend before? I should ifnd out before I go into work and there's no work.
- Jandy
It's the week after. May 25th is Memorial Day.
- Mark Krynsky
Derrick, but the Panda Express was RIGHT THERE. And I didn't know where the hell they were trying to get me to go. The other choice that I knew where was was McDonalds. We did finally find it, though - and had awesome BBQ chicken sandwiches, as you saw in my feed at lunch. Way better than Panda Express.
- Jandy
Jandy, I looked that place up and bookmarked it. Chick's in Calabasas? I'm coming for you.
- Derrick
Dude, if you ever come out, let me know. I'll meet you there.
- Jandy
Would just like to add: The Jaguar was NOT 64 BIT. Lying Atari. However, Aliens vs. Predator? The awesome. </geek>
- Pete D
Dear Leo, I love you to death, however, please let your darling daughter know Monaco is not an island off the coast of France and yes, Monte Carlo is the capitol. My daughter is the same age and we are starting to shop college's as well. I wish you the best of luck finding a school that suits her well. I was an exchange student as well and found it the best experience ever!
- Jennifer Ragde
Okay, now my computer politically correct daughter is telling me this was not the correct way to state my opinion as I should have commented on the photograph. I'm really sorry, I love to listen to your broadcasts, but I really am computer retarded so please forgive me if I have transgressed in any manner. I can't even upload photographs without her help! Really, you don't look dapper,...
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- Jennifer Ragde
LOL Jennifer and +1 for your daughter. :)
- Josh Haley
Leo, you were one hot stack if pancakes back in the day!!
- Erik Boles
Not to nitpick or anything, but Monaco is the name of the state and the capital city. Monte Carlo is just one of city's administrative areas :)
- Dorian
It's 1985 or 1986. I was 28 or 29. And an utter dork.
- Leo Laporte
Okay. Leo you rock! Let me get that out of the way. But you look like Susan Boyle in this photo. Sorry, someone had to throw it out there. ;-)
- Oracio
LEO: if this was a family photo I think it might make it on to the hilarious site that aggregates awkward family photos: http://awkwardfamilyphotos.com/ must check this out! :)
- Mike Bracco
Not a family photo - it's a work photo. That's from KLOK-FM San Francisco.
- Leo Laporte
Leo: I know, I was just saying if it was :)
- Mike Bracco
What's that funny lookin thing in the background?
- Daniel James
Daniel.. I think that is what was known as a monochrome display. They were all the rage back then apparently.
- Rhys Amos
Your hair wasn't even real back then! :P
- Kreg Steppe
Dear Dorian, I stand corrected. I was just stunned that someone thought Monaco was an island. When I was in high school (when Dinosaurs roamed the earth, ha ha!), we had to memorize the world in geography. I guess times have changed.
- Jennifer Ragde
LOL, I took all those old photos of me and hid them deep!
- Lillian Banchik
You must have respect for wives. That they could see anything other than the geeks we looked like in those days makes you believe in clairvoyance. Of course now you would qualify as a silver fox.
- JR Holmes
from Nambu
You looked smart and confident :) Great photo! Thanks for sharing!
- mahjongmi
"PhotoSketch is an internet-based program that can take the rough, labeled sketch on the left and automagically turn it into the naff montage on the right."
- Paul Buchheit
from Bookmarklet
Wow, that is awesome. The authors list cracked me up: "Tao Chen, Ming-Ming Cheng, Ping Tan, Ariel Shamir, and Shi-Min Hu". One of these things is not like the others.
- Jim Norris
What is the definition of naff here? Here in the UK it effectively means stupid/silly/rubbish.
- travispuk
My 30,000th Photograph on Flickr The photo above represents my 30,000th photograph published to Flickr. It’s a milestone and part of my continuing goal to publish 1,000,000 photos to Flickr before I die. This photograph is from one of my favorite shoots. A shoot I did with my wife and children a ways back in this storm drain in Big Tujunga Canyon.
- Thomas Hawk
@thomasHawk didn't you say you wouldn't use flickr after they were gits once long ago?
- Prolific Programmer
from IM
Congratulations, Thomas! By the way, that shot would be perfect in my Vanishing Points group... I'll add an invite to it on Flickr.
- Kevin Trotman
Hasan, I did stop using Flickr for a while over some some censorship issues a while back. As you know I feel pretty strongly about censorship. I changed my mind though and couldn't really stay away.
- Thomas Hawk
"My 30,000th Photograph on Flickr" way to go @thomasHawk. I remember reading yr 10^6 & thinking thats ambitious. Now the Q. In the back of my mind I've been thinking about "how do you a) backup online against flickr takedowns? b) manage & curate the images as times goes on: cost, time etc?
- Peter Renshaw
Well mostly I back up my photos by using drobos as primary storage. I also keep another copy of my finished photos on hard drives off location. I upload pretty much the same photos to Flickr and Zooomr. So I've got two copies. Additionally, almost all of my flickr photos are fed into clustershot where they can be marketed for stock photography. I always upload original sized photographs...
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- Thomas Hawk
30,000, wow! Made me look. I'm only just past 20,000. Had no idea where I was. Need to pay attention to those landmarks. This is a wonderful shot, but then so many of yours are. You live to witness and share beauty.
- Patricia F. Anderson
500 a week! I feel slug-like. I'm so glad you do what you do with your talent at photography. Thank you for your inspiration and dedication to your craft, 4 children and spouse and a full time career aside. Very thought provoking and challenging. Congratulations on your milestone.
- Matt Penning
Congrats on reaching 30,000! Your artwork is always interesting.
- John (bird whisperer)
congrats Thomas! I always look at flickr each day to see what you have uploaded :)
- Heather
I started with XMBC and thought I loved it but there were quite a few quirks that I really was getting tired of. Most of those quirks seem to go away with Boxee. Also, the scripts/apps in Boxee actually work! I have had much trouble with the apps and scripts in XBMC. One thing I wish Boxee did that XBMC does is allow settings on how it updates the library. Boxee seems to think you shouldn't have anything to do with that process. plus for Boxee is the social element, which is basically optional.
- Josh Haley
hmmm I have an old out of date version of xbmc on my xbox, I might have to look into Boxee
- MikeDeal / ZoneDancer
Well, if I had to choose, I'd probably have to come clean and admit that I have no idea what either of these things are, and therefore no idea which would be better for you. Using 3 year old child logic, the choice is simple - Boxee. It's really fun and easy to say. So go with the Boxee. Yay! Boxee! Hooray Boxee! Hooray Beer!
- Morgan
You will please to excuse my brother. I have not had a chance to show him the new htpc yet.
- Josh Haley
And please excuse MY brother for assuming that I know what htpc is. My techie knowledge is actually quite minimal. Did you guys know that they keep updating things like programs and devices? I have stuff that I still need to learn how to use, and it's considered obsolete already. But I'll try to catch up with the masses eventually. This weekend I'm going to set up my new TRS-80 and try to write a chess game program. The maybe play some PONG. Yeah baby. R2-D2 ain't got nothing on me!
- Morgan
OK, start over... Anyone want to weigh in on this?
- Josh Haley
I like Boxee because it seems to be gaining support from the industry and has some money behind it, unlike XBMC which is a "hacker project" these days.
- G Dub of the Carolinas
I didn't realize it was actually funded. That does help a bit, huh.
- Josh Haley
I prefer Boxee too. I gave XBMC a try for a few hours but didn't enjoy the interface very much. I think Boxee does the right things most of the time.
- Juan Pablo González
i gave xbmc more than just a few hours. I used it even with the fancy Aeon interface for months and still, Boxee can do more. Don't get me wrong, the Aeon xbmc is quite amazing in how it looks butbin the end, functionality is the main thing for me. I don't think Boxee is especially "pretty" but it does flow rather well. Using on windows 7, btw.
- Josh Haley
from iPhone
I'm curious (and maybe I should go and try Boxee finally), but what is great about it, besides social features? I don't really care about social features for my media... I agree with Josh, I wish the scripts for XBMC were better organized and maintained. As for it being a "hacker" project, maybe so, but it is also one of the most well-organized open source projects out there.
- Tim Hoeck
Tim, forget about the social side, as it is not intrusive at all. Try it for the excellent scripting organization and usability. They almost all work, which is the opposite of what I am used to on xbmc and manual installs, etc. It's definitely worth a shot. You just have to give it time to create the library, maybe overnight, once you set up your media folders. I wish it showed a status on that but it does indeed do well with scraping, art, info, etc. let me know if you like it Tim.
- Josh Haley
Boxee. There's only 1 reason behind this decision, even though I haven't used it: HD video. The only reason why I say this is because I use XBMC on my Xbox, and it can't handle HD video at all.
- Matthew Horton
Right there with you Matt. I retired my Xbox running XBMC when I got my HDTV. It just couldn't handle the video.
- G Dub of the Carolinas
I like them both from a concept perspective but neither of them are exactly what I want. Maybe I'm old school but I like the interface design of a TiVo menu or even Miro. I want the ability to know about every online video service but my main focus should be shows that I know I enjoy and to know that new episodes are there. I also prefer whenever possible to pre-download those flags series to prevent network congestion while viewing.
- manielse (Mark Nielsen)
I use both. Xbmc on my xbox for one room and Boxee on a computer in another room. I prefer boxee for streaming/browsing online content, but use miro to pre-download content that I always watch. Then I stream the downloaded shows to the other room w/xmbc.
- Chris Goulart
media library and podcast RSS playback are important features, which work pretty well in boxee
- Mike Chelen
Amazing level of transparency and detail about their custom storage servers. HN discussion at http://news.ycombinator.com/item... (discusses why this is appropriate for backup, but perhaps not generic storage needs)
- Bret Taylor
from Bookmarklet
45 drives per unit and many units means they must be constantly replacing failed hard drives - just due to the sheer quantity of them in use
- Jacob Old
It wasn't entirely clear to me from the blog post what you have to do to replace a drive. Looks like at minimum you have to remove the unit from the rack, and I don't see any drawer guides or similar to assist with that. And do they have to take the unit offline to replace a single drive?
- Jason Wehmhoener
Geez. Back in 1998, Microsoft was bragging about their 1 TB cloud... :-) Millions of $ then I think.
- Mitchell Tsai
One happy Backblaze customer checking in.
- Russellreno
sounds neat - now what to do with 67 TB of storage...
- Matt Ellsworth
Seriously Matt! Lots and Lots and Lots of video? HD video!
- Rick Cogley
So, they store their data "securely" in Palo Alto? That makes me scared.
- Jonas S Karlsson
Quoted from blog- "Backblaze Storage Pods are building blocks upon which a larger system can be organized that doesn’t allow for a single point of failure." They have indicated an amazing amount of cost savings.
- Wins Fern
Mitchell: I don't think 1TB was "millions of dollars" in 1998.
- Steve de Mena
Nice idea. Pity that it only supports a HTTPS interface, not surprising at that cost though (the software that runs the filesystems on the NetApp and other devices isn't exactly cheap to write). Anyone see if they quoted transfer speeds? I'm wondering what impact the four SATA cards each with SATA multipliers on them has when it comes to access speeds.
- Russ
Steve: according to http://www.littletechshoppe.com/ns1625... disk cost ~$0.08 / mb in 1998, which comes out to >$800,000 for 1 TB or just over a million bucks in todays dollars. so maybe not millions, but a million!
- Karl Rosaen
Russ: It runs Debian. If you were rolling your own (and they don't sell these units), you could turn on NFS or some other protocol (CIFS, iSCSI). They only use HTTP because it's cloud storage. NFS license is a major expense on NetApp, but all the major Linux distributions can act as NFS servers, CIFS servers, and probably iSCSI targets.
- Andy Dustman
Andy: I know that you could do that on them but it leaves the problem of what to do with the storage. You could merge the 3 volumes into an LVM VG but the performance could become an issue with any load on it. It seems I wasn't the only one to question the performance, while the views of a Sun engineer aren't exactly unbiased it does highlight some of the downsides: http://www.c0t0d0s0.org/archive...
- Russ
Fascinating article; but more questions: "In rough terms, every time one of our customers buys a hard drive, Backblaze needs another hard drive." -- so what happens when a drive fails; how much redundancy is there? What happens when a meteorite destroys the whole building; is there off site backup too? (I know this *is* the off-site backup, but still...) I wonder how much data flows in and out over time. Maybe I should just read their website.
- Rob Fisher
Rob: they mention using 15 drive RAID6 volumes that can lose up to 2 drives before failure
- Mike Chelen
The worst part about this cluster design is the fact that I couldn’t shut up about it for the first couple days after finding out about it. It was the solution I proposed to every problem. There were complaints.
- A Mitchell
IMO RAID6 is not that great. Granted, it's highly unlikely to lose 3 drives at the same time, but there's still possibility. Besides, for write-intensive app, parity calculation is quite time-consuming. I personally prefer RAID 10 (striped array of RAID1 pairs). Yes the effective usable space is less than half total capacity, but for backups -- which will sooner or later be used to restore something -- I prefer data integrity over usage efficiency.
- Pandu ● IT Optimizer
from fftogo
IMO RAID6 is not that great. Granted, it's highly unlikely to lose 3 drives at the same time, but there's still possibility. Besides, for write-intensive app, parity calculation is quite time-consuming. I personally prefer RAID 10 (striped array of RAID1 pairs). Yes the effective usable space is less than half total capacity, but for backups -- which will sooner or later be used to restore something -- I prefer data integrity over usage efficiency.
- Pandu ● IT Optimizer
from fftogo
My First Pregnancy Photo Shoot! - The Amazing Sparky (aka Brian Johns http://friendfeed.com/brianjo...) and I teamed up to do a photo shoot of of our beautifully pregnant friend Georgia http://friendfeed.com/georgia who has also been kind enough to let me share the photos. I haven't seen Sparky's awesome photos yet, but his lighting was perfect!...
Oh, the third thumbnail is one of my favorites! Such a good shot :) I also LOVE number 22!
- Georgia
Georgia, the third thumbnail is one of my absolute favs too!
- Rachel Lea Fox
I couldn't remember which one of you and Nathan you liked best, the first one above and 22 are two of my favorites of the both of you alone with the spot color one.
- Rachel Lea Fox
There is a bug with the FriendFeed SmugMug crawl. I'm pushing a fix now :)
- Benjamin Golub
And as the subject matter, I must add, both Rachel and Brian made the experience wonderful! I don't think the shots would have been so incredible if I wasn't so comfortable around the both of them.
- Georgia
it'd definitely going to take me a while to get to a million. I'm publishing about 200 photos to flickr a week right now and at this pace it will take 92 years to get there. I'll get the pace up to 400-500 a week in the future though. Better technology should make processing easier and someday my kids will be grown and I'll be able to quit my day job and focus on this even more. The best photos have yet to be taken.
- Thomas Hawk
When I think about this I realize your best days are ahead of you.
- Russellreno
What's your shot/publish ratio? I mean, on average how many shots do you take to produce those you publish?
- Yuval Atzmon
atzmon, I probably average about 2,000 shots a week that I shoot. And I'm probably processing 300 or so of those a week at present, so I'm probably keeping about 15%. The other 85% never get processed and are kept in my archives. I'm trying only to process and publish the shots that I think meet a certain quality criteria.
- Thomas Hawk
Jauder, the good news is that processing will only get easier in the future. I've watched it get better with each successive Adobe release. Lightroom 2.0 is the best processing tool yet. It's not necessarily faster per se though because with more tools there are yet even more ways to tweak a photo hence even more time. But the tools to speed things up are coming too. auto geotagging, better anti dust tech, faster processing speeds, easier online tools with faster broadband are all around the corner.
- Thomas Hawk
16,000 ?? Yikes. Cool number. Congrats.
- Charlie Anzman
This photo is total awesome. It is made even more awesome by the knowledge that there are 15,999 more photos just as awesome as this one. EDIT: This photo is now my desktop background. :)
- Rishabh Mishra (p248)
Congrats & cheers TH. Your images confirm, you are, indeed, sui generis.
- Dave Martin
Beautiful shot! Congrats for achieving this landmark!
- Muhammad Ahmed
Congrats, I even don't think I took so many photos in my life. :)
- Ferhad Fidan
from fftogo
@thomas: Yahoo should be giving Flickr to you for free. You'd do a great job with it. And it would be historical: the first user-generated (company) acquisition :)))
- Alberto D'Ottavi
from fftogo
I guess the metier of 'photo editor' is kaput...or, at least, greatly altered....
- Chris Gulker
You know they are going to delete your account without warning once you hit 999,999, right? :)
- Ace
Ace, I hope not, I'd be so pissed. Actually I think alot of what gets me so upset about all the content/account deletion issues is that I really do worry that it actually will happen to me. Flickr staff hates me and they'd *love* to delete my account. I worry that I'll wake up one morning and everything will have been nuked. I suppose that's why I'd like to see them enact the ability to...
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- Thomas Hawk
Holyshit! You have taked just couple of photos...
- k00pa
Because this post is from September last year k00pa :)
- Simon Wicks
@Chris Gulker. Someday I hope to work with a photo editor. God knows I need to. I like to think of my Flickrstream today more as the raw material in a lot of ways for future projects. A good photo editor adds tremendous value to shaping a photographer's imagery.
- Thomas Hawk
reallifecomics: Hey guys - broadcasting the first of the user-written strips live! IN HD, no less! Come check it out - http://www.ustream.tv/channel...