The XBox One

One of the nice things about working for a video game company is that you get to take time out of your busy day and watch press release announcements about new gaming consoles. Today Microsoft unveiled their XBox One, which is the follow-on to the XBox 360. Sony made their announcement of the PlayStation 4 back in February and so it is nice to be able to compare the two new consoles.

Microsoft was able to do something at their release that wasn't done by Sony, they actually showed what the new console will look like. It wasn't sexy or pretty as I thought it looked like a black box. As far as technical specifications go, the PS4 and XBox One look to be very similar. They both use 8-core CPUs, have 8GB of RAM, and come with BluRay players. I like the looks of the Sony Controller vs. Microsoft's, but then I am a fan of PlayStation and so that makes sense. Microsoft's new console will also come bundled with the next version of the Connect. I've never used the Connect but can't really say there is anything groundbreaking with this new version. Perhaps I am wrong.

Missing from both announcements are pricing and release dates. I think both companies are waiting until E3 to make those announcements. The software announcements made by both companies looked very similar, but Microsoft will include Windows with the XBox One. While Microsoft may see that as a benefit, I really hate Windows and that is enough to keep me from buying one. You may feel differently.

Deploying Software in the Cloud

I spent my day working on deploying software in our company's private cloud. It may sound complicated, but isn't really once you get past a few basic concepts. Remember that "The Cloud" means different things to different people, but generally means computer servers running in an environment that is accessible on the Internet. We have all sorts of security to keep the wrong people from being able to do bad things to our computers and so that adds a level of complexity to install software. Furthermore, we are still testing our cloud and that means servers need to be easily configured even with all of the added security.

There are several open-source tools to help with this type of software deployment. We have started using Chef and it is supposed to make our life easier. At first glance, Chef looks fairly complicated. There are recipes and cookbooks with all sorts of different options and bits to twiddle. Today I worked with another one of our software engineers and we worked on getting MongoDB up and running on three different servers. If you go to the Opscode website for Chef, you can see that there is already a cookbook for MongoDB. We just downloaded it and made simple modifications for our specific environment. Now if we need to add a fourth MongoDB server, it is just a matter of running a single command on the server and everything is ready to go.

Sir Isaac Newton once said something along the lines of, "All that I have achieved is because I have been able to stand on the shoulders of other great men." He didn't worry about recreating work done before him, he just made sure to add to it. Open-source software and Chef are good examples of that principle in action today.

Annoying Software Updates

This morning I was minding my own business and going through e-mail when the Microsoft Office Auto Update program decided to take over my computer. I was typing mid-sentence when a dialog box appeared on my screen and stole the focus from a very important e-mail I was composing. I was slightly annoyed but decided that it was probably a good idea to get the update and let it continue. That was a mistake. The installation program decided that it didn't want any other programs running while it updated the Microsoft Office software. Now I can understand the need to shut down other Office programs like Outlook and Word, but why did it need to shut down my non-Microsoft Browser?

At this point I did what I should have done when the auto update program first appeared, I put it in the background and ignored it until I finished what I was working on. I sent my e-mail and then allowed the update to take place while I went and got a drink of water. When I got back, my computer was ready to use again.

I don't know who writes these auto update programs, but I am sure they lack any form of social skills. You know the type. Those people that interrupt important conversations with mundane and routine comments that should be kept quite until the grown-ups are done talking. I wonder if they started their careers as telemarketers calling people during dinner?