John Cleese's ideas for Creativity leveraging the unconscious brain

Jason Z. has a great post about John Cleese.

The amazing John Cleese shares his wisdom on writing, creativity, getting in the zone, and interruptions. It’s great to see advice that we hear all the time reaffirmed from outside the tech industry.

I love this video as I use many of these ideas to think of things, but don't do all of the things.

Watch the whole video as it gets even better at the end, and many of the frustrations John Cleese discuss applies to the challenges of a  green data center. At 9:02, John Cleese makes a point that is quite insightful.

Absolutely awesome: To know how good you are at something requires the same skills as it does to be good at those things. Which means if you're absolutely hopeless at something, you lack exactly the skills to know that you're absolutely hopeless at it. This is a profound discovery. that most people who have absolutely no idea what they're doing, have absolutely no idea that they have no idea of what they're doing. It explains a great deal of life.

Creativity in the data center is rare, and as John points out at 10:15 the problems for creativity when management feels like they have to be in control.

The video is here.

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Why I like my Kindle 3

I have the first generation Kindle and just received the Kindle 3 wifi only.  For $139 it was time for an upgrade.

Reading on the Kindle 3 is much closer to a book.  And, I enjoy a book to focus on learning a new topic.  Reading on the computer or iPhone or other multi-purpose devices is convenient, but many times it is too easy to lose focus as you are hold a computer.  A Kindle is a reading device.

The first book I am diving into on the Kindle is Time and the Soul with a foreword by John Cleese.

This book is addressed to everyone who is starved for time, i.e. everyone. We are all living in a culture that traps us into doing too many things, taking on too many responsibilities, facing too many choices and saying yes to too many opportunities. Nearing the end of over a century of inventions designed to save time, we find ourselves bereft of time itself.

What used to be considered a sign of success--being busy, having many responsibilities, being involved in many projects or activities--is now being felt as an affliction. It is leading us nowhere. More and more it is being experienced as meaningless.

This is the real significance of our problem with time. It is a crisis of meaning. What has disappeared is meaningful time. It is not technology or the accelerating influence of money; it is not global capitalism that is responsible for the time famine. The root of our modern problem with time is neither technological, sociological, economic nor psychological. It is metaphysical. It is a question of the meaning of human life itself.

I should finish the book in a day which I rarely do anymore, but today is a day of thinking and meditating after 3 days in SJ meeting lots of cool data center people.

One of the first things I noticed is how much easier it is to read on the Kindle 3.  Then I noticed the "fi" ligatures.  From my early days at Apple, I was obsessed to use the right fonts, and hated font remapping when you print.  I used Word 1.0 while everyone else was using MacWrite. And my font obsession led me to  The fact that the Kindle 3 has ligature support shows how far they are pushing the typography on the device.

Here are fi and fl ligatures.

Two common ligatures: fi and fl

If you are a book lover, then the Kindle 3 may be the one to get you switch. 

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Going Green in the data center with Biodiesel introduces risks

Matt Stansberry with SearchDataCenter reports on problems with Biodiesel use in data centers.

Biodiesel mandates cause backup generator problems

By Matt Stansberry, Executive Editor
20 Aug 2010 | SearchDataCenter.com

Soybean-based fuels are fouling up the best-laid backup plans of some data center pros.

Today, some data center managers wrestle with state government legislation that mandates the use of biodiesel over traditional petro-diesel -- mandates that are designed to wean states off petrol dependence and move toward more environmentally sustainable fuels.

But these alternatives pose risks. Derived from vegetable oils or animal fat instead of petroleum, biofuel blends can increase water and biological contaminants in fuel supplies. If handled improperly, biodiesel fuels can stop a data center's backup systems cold, according to a recent report from the Uptime Institute.

With biodiesel, the water tends to stay in suspension, and it makes the fuel look cloudy.
Lamont Fortune, lead mechanical engineer of data center facilities at UnitedHealth Group

As many of has said government regulation is what will drive green data center action for many and requiring biodiesel, a green fuel compared to petro-based diesel is relatively easy for a government group to mandate.

Minnesota, Washington and Oregon have biodiesel mandates. Minnesota mandates the use of B5 and will switch to B20 by 2015. Oregon and Washington currently mandate the use of B2. Biodiesel legislation is pending in Pennsylvania, New Mexico, Louisiana and Massachusetts.

Biodiesel backs up data center systems
Lamont Fortune, the lead mechanical engineer of data center facilities at insurance company UnitedHealth Group in Minnesota, knows firsthand how biodiesel can cause trouble for data center facilities. He was the driving force behind the Uptime Institute's biodiesel technical paper and co-authored it with Uptime VP Rick Schuknecht and other data center operators.

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Container Data Center Buyers Guide coming soon

DataCenterKnowledege reports on Mark Bramfitt's latest project.

Feds Prep Buying Guide for Modular Data Centers

August 24th, 2010 : Rich Miller

Another view of the a data center built by Colt using its new modular design.

In another sign of the momentum for modular data center designs, the federal government is developing a guide to help agencies choose among the growing number of container-based offerings. Industry consultant Mark Bramfitt says he is working with the General Services Administration (GSA) and the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) to develop a guide to evaluating container data centers and next-generation modular designs

Here is Mark's blog post.

Container/Modular DC Guidebook Under Dev - Call for Comment

Under the auspices of the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and the federal General Services Agency, I am drafting a guidebook that charts a process of choosing from available container-based and modular data center technologies, with a focus on energy efficiency and the provision of supporting infrastructure.

While it would be impossible to stay current with every development in this area, we are interested in providing a clear snapshot of the industry today, with the primary goal of describing a specification and deployment planning process that will be relevant in the future.

There are many who think containers will not work.  But, there are many who are also excited about the possibilities.

Will a container-powered cloud computing offering prove to be a compelling cost-cutting strategy for the Obama IT team?  It remains to be seen. But the creation of a buying guide for these products suggests that modular data center designs will, as Bramfitt puts it, be “relevant in the future.”

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Power IT Down Day - Aug, 27, 2010

ZDNET has an article on Power IT Down Day.

Can you power down for a day? Intel, HP and Citrix make the case

By Melanie D.G. Kaplan | August 24, 2010, 2:00am PDT

Summary

Power IT Down Day challenges the industry to shut off its IT equipment after work on August 27. If we can do it for one night, we can do it for two. Or 10. Or 365. Right?

Other than restarting my MacBook now and then for software updates, I don’t think I’ve turned it off since 2008.

But while I may be on the green police’s most wanted list, it’s never too late to start good habits. (I’ll be starting mine this week.)

Friday, Aug. 27 is the third annual Power IT Down Day. Last year 5,600 people pledged to turn off their computers, printers and monitors overnight, which saved more than 73,000 kilowatt-hours, which translated into $45,000, which was in turn donated to the Wounded Warrior Project.

Considering how many of us can survive the night without our hardware, 5,600 seems like a pretty small number. Can’t we do better this year? (To make your own power-down pledge, click here.)

The count of volunteers is at 4850.

image

Here is one little fact  I found.

It’s something everyone can do. “Standby” does not mean off. Lots of people in America seem to think when you put something on standby, it’s all good because it’s not consuming anything. But it’s still consuming 10 percent of the energy. That’s why the European community is outlawing the standby function.

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