However, my experience with HAProxy is nill, so I’ve been putting this off for as long as possible. After reading the ServerFault blog and what they did with HAProxy I decided it was finally time to get my hands dirty.

Our scenario involves multiple windows servers, but HAProxy is frankly pretty shit under Windows/Cygwin (feel free to interpret that link however you will). So, *nix it is. I’m OK with that – I’ve got just enough experience in FreeBSD and Ubuntu server to get by, and Google is your friend. But that begs the question:

HAProxy on Ubuntu, or HAProxy on FreeBSD? I couldn’t find any real benchmarks comparing the two out in the wild, so I decided to do my own. Warning: From hereon in my stats are, to be honest, not going to be hugely accurate because I don’t have enough *nix knowledge to test all the proper metrics for this kind of exercise. I’m just hoping that if one of them is a clear winner, it wouldn’t matter if I honed in my statistics gathering. We’ll see.

The setup
Everything we do at work is virtualised, so it makes sense to make the tests virtualised.

The VMWare Host: I’m doing this on a development machine, which is a Quad Core 2.8Ghz, 8Gb of PC3200, RAID10 drives, in VMWare Workstation. The live environment will be a VMWare ESXi cluster, but this is as close as I can get.
Web Servers: These are what we will be load balancing. I have two identical Windows Server 2008 R2 web servers running a simple, no-frills HTML webpage in IIS7, straight out of the box, no tuning whatsoever.
HAProxy VMs Two vCPUs, 1024Mb of RAM, 20Gb fixed-size HDD. VMWare tools installed and updated.
FreeBSD: FreeBSD 8.0-released-amd64. This isn’t the very latest version of FreeBSD but it’s all I had lying around. “Minimal” install
Ubuntu: Ubuntu Server 10.4 amd64. No packages installed.
Jmeter: I’ll be using Apache’s JMeter to run real-world tests on the system. I want to simulate real-world usage for our servers. I’m not looking to absolutally max out the servers, mainly because I don’t have the ability to do that. I’m looking to simulate between 6000 and 8000 requests per second.

The process

Both of the VM’s are identical in specs. I’ve kep the load on the host as small as possible, to eliminate as many variables as possible. I will only be running three VM’s at a time (two web servers and one HAProxy). The connections will all be initiated from the host machine.

The first thing that I had forgotten about FreeBSD (especially with a Minimal install) is that installing VMWare tools is a bitch. Install the Perl package, install its dependancies, install the compatibility packages, answer these questions, blah blah blah. Installing VMWare tools on Ubuntu is as easy as pie.

I will be building HAProxy from scratch to ensure that the installations are as close as possible. The version of HAProxy in question is haproxy-1.4.8. This is where Ubuntu and FreeBSD were reversed. FreeBSD had everything needed to compile HAProxy immediately, whereas Ubutnu required GCC and libpcre++-dev. Swings and roundabouts…

What was immediately obvious is that the compile times were fast on both operating systems. Less than 3 seconds in both cases. Nice.

Thankfully the haproxy config file was identical for both HAProxy installations, because they weren’t using any os-specific options. It was as follows:

global
pidfile /var/run/haproxy.pid
daemon

defaults
mode http
contimeout 500
clitimeout 500
srvtimeout 500

frontend http-in
bind *:80
default_backend servers

backend servers
server web1 192.168.0.210:80 check
server web2 192.168.0.211:80 check
balance roundrobin
option httpchk HEAD /index.html HTTP/1.0

So. On to the results.

The results

(if you’re interested you might want to click through to the full-sized versions. Multiple the scale by 100x to get the real values).

They look pretty similar. So, let’s go and put them ontop of eachother:

The result – almost identical. Which goes to show – in real-world conditions (and if you’re getting 8,000 hits a second – lucky you) there is no discernable difference between FreeBSD and Ubuntu when it comes to running HAProxy.

Managing this cluster means using the VMWare vSphere Client, which is fine. It’s a brilliant tool! Worth every penny. There’s just one thing that really, really, really bugs me, and after almost 6 months of using it every day, I’m still falling in the same trap.

Take a look at the following login screen for the vSphere client. Don’t linger, just take a glance. After all, it’s just a login screen:

Now, for someone who logs into dozens and dozens of things (apps/websites) every single day, a login screen is very standard. So what I see when I log in, is actually this:

Time to play spot the difference. Can’t be bothered? OK, here’s the big difference:

This difference is HUGELY important. Especially considering the vSphere domain is different to my local domain, so this option actually destroys my login. And it’s incredibly annoying, because:

1. The “Save my credentials” button goes on every single other login dialogue box I’ve ever used has been replaced by something that’s quite the opposite

2. After you’ve already typed your (in my case, very complicated) username and password

3. It deletes your username and password that you just typed in

And by the time I remember, it’s too late, I’ve already hit ENTER, and I have to wait 15 seconds for the login to fail just to be dumped back at the login prompt without any username or password.

What it SHOULD look like is:

This way, you’re doing things in a flow and order that makes sense, and nobody will ever wonder why vSphere wiped out their session credentials instead of saving them.

(just to be clear, not providing any option for saving your vSphere credentials is quite sensible. That’s not my issue here).

Originally, I wanted to talk highly about the ‘shift’ in the developers goals of creating mindless, violent First-Person Shooters where you go around killing anything that moves – to that of more ‘thought-inducing’ strategy based learning teaching games.

Back when I first started playing games, I wasn’t allowed to play Doom or Wolfenstein 3D – which were the original FPS’s of the time. Instead, I grew up playing games like The island of Dr Brain, and The castle of Dr Brain, along with The Incredible Machine, Hugo’s House of Horrors, Kings Quest, Day of the Tentacle and even Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, (Sam and Max, and The Adventures of Willy Beamish also were in my fav’s list – which goes on and on….)

I’m not sure how many of these games you’ll recognise or know, but they were ‘classics’ in my mind, and bring a nostalgic flair to my memory. What was different about these games is that you had ‘puzzles’ you had to solve. Be it having to go between 4 or 5 different characters to get the rope you needed to swing across the chasm, or working out that you had to mix 6 different items in your ‘bottomless backpack of inventory items’ to create the one item you need to get that shiny ring.
It was all in the name of good fun – and a lot of humour, subtle or otherwise.

Recently, Portal provided a similar experience, one that was different from the ‘norm’. Sure, we had the 3D engines, and everything looks really schmick on screen – but that’s only 10% of what makes a game. A good storyline is critical. I know I always get criticism from people when I harp on about this, but I stand by my ‘guns’. Movies and Books are the same – I don’t enjoy many modern ones because like many modern games, they lack this crucial element.

Mirrors Edge was a game I thought had a unique game-play style, backed by a positive and solid story. It was only when I reached the end that I was quite disappointed; primarily due to the lack of ‘fulfillment’ of where the story ended up, and also because I wanted to do some more tricks; Like so many ‘chick flicks’ – the main issues are discovered, and the dilemma of the protagonist is related to the viewer. However, the resolution seems to come to quickly and swiftly. Perhaps it’s because they feel the audience has been left on the edge of their seats for long enough – or they just ran out of ‘intermediary’ people and sub-plots to place between the ‘plateau’ of the issues and the final point of resolution.

Another game I’ve started in recent months (and yet to finish) is Assassins Creed. This one is an interesting mix between FPS and a more puzzle-based game, with goals and quests – not always requiring killing people, sometimes you have strange tasks such as picking pockets, or collecting a set number of ‘flags’ within a time limit. The more interesting elements is the main story plot, and then sub plots within the characters. Scientifically speaking, it’s mostly none sense: But when has anyone let that get in the way of a good story? You get ‘sound’ in space on shows like Star Wars and Star Trek – but not in Firefly.

In comparison, games on Wii are different again – primarily due to the controls. I know, there are FPS’s and various other games on there, but some of the ‘Wii Fitness’ games are just plain fun! I love the Tennis and Golf that comes with Wii Sport – partially because it is a ‘sporting’ game, but also because it’s something different.

The future of gaming is interesting. Microsoft’s latest attachment for the Xbox-360, an interactive camera nicknamed Project Natal, should be an interesting shift in how games are played – and may even prompt a new interface for computing (though, that one is being actively targeted by touch-screen systems).

Apart from the controls, the environment is the next part that developers are working on – though that is harder; allowing users to fully interact with their environment (read: destroy everything they can) provides a challenge and a freedom – which can be fun at times, but definitely not primary to the main story or purpose of the game.

Let’s watch and see what the next 10 years of gaming will bring us to our respective gaming ‘console’ of choice!

Unfortunately, in the other spirit of open-source, the simple documentation is lacking a bit, so this blog post will hopefully help pave the way for people who might follow in my footsteps.

Intended Use

Basically, within one of the applications, I desired to have a link available in a menu that simply says “Report a problem”, which then submits a prefilled report to a bug tracking system including important information such as which version is being run, OS details etc.  My experience with Ubuntu has taught me that Apport is an ideal system that already supports the intended use-case, and is integrated into some existing apps in the same way that I’m looking for.

UbuntuOne Apport Configuration

The existing documentation that I referenced most heavily was found at https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Apport/DeveloperHowTo.  The first thing that struck me was that there seems to be no simple uses cases for what I thought would have been a reasonably commonly required use case, i.e., how to integrate with an app being released from a launchpad-hosted ppa.  The existing apport configuration makes apport-bug prevent reports being generated for non-Ubuntu packages (i.e., packages that are not in the main Ubuntu repositories).  This creates a hassle if releasing from a private or team ppa.

Fortunately, through browsing /etc/apport/ I found that the ubuntuone-client already uses apport with a non-genuine Ubuntu package.  This is done by placing a config file in /etc/apport/crashdb.conf.d, and an apport hook in /usr/share/apport/package-hooks/source_ubuntuone-client.py.

Basic Configuration

So, from all this, the most simple example I can come up with is the following.  To configure Apport to behave with an application, the following steps are required.

1. Configure the CrashDb

Place a CrashDb config file in /etc/apport/crashdb.conf.d called <package-name>-crashdb.conf (note: you can actually called it whatever you want… but for sanity’s sake I’d keep it as package-name ).  Inside this file place something similar to the following:

<package-name> = {
 'impl' : 'launchpad',
 'project' : '<package-name>',
 'bug_pattern_base' : None,
}

2. Install an apport hook to specify the CrashDb

Place a file in /usr/share/apport/package-hooks called <package-name>.py or source_<package-name>.py.  This file should contain the following, which simply  sets the CrashDb to use the correct configuration:

import apport

def add_info(report):
 """add report info"""

 if not apport.packaging.is_distro_package(report['Package'].split()[0]):
 report['ThirdParty'] = 'True'
 # replace <package-name> with the crashdb config defined in the previous step
 report['CrashDB'] = '<package-name>'

Testing the settings…

Assuming all has been correctly set up, you should now be able to report bugs against the custom package by entering the following command in a terminal (or using alt+f2):

ubuntu-bug <package-name>

This will open up a window allowing you to send a report.  If you click submit, you should be taken to launchpad, with a new bug being logged against the specified application.

I must warn, the sound quality is VERY dependant on your network speeds and CPU loads at either end.  If you are running a lot of programs on either the server or the client, the sound will be erratic.  See the bugs on the pulseaudio website.  I was unable to get the sound to run very smoothly for any length of time on between two Ubuntu VM’s on pulseaudio version 0.9.19-0ubuntu4.  The specific bugs are:

• http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/670
• http://www.pulseaudio.org/ticket/477

Either way, it is a fun exercise in pulseaudio configuration.  In order to demonstrate this I have set up two Ubuntu VM’s using VirtualBox on a local network.

Graphical Setup

The first step is to install the tools we’re going to use to configure this. Install PulseAudio Device Chooserm PulseAudio Volume Control and PulseAudio Preferences. Select these items from the Ubuntu Software Centre. You can easily reduce the list to these items by searching for pulseaudio in the search bar as shown in the following screenshot:

Screenshot of Ubuntu Software Center installing Pulseaudio

Once this is installed, you can launch it by selecting it from Applications menu.

Open the Pulseaudio Device Chooser

This will put an audio plug icon up near the clock. Left-click (or primary click) . Select “Configure local Sound Server” and change to the Multicast/RTP tab in the Preferences window:

PulseAudio Preferences

Server Computer

The first computer set-up will be the server. This is the computer you will be controlling & playing the sound from. On this computer you will need to open up rhythmbox or your chosen audio program that supports pulseaudio output. Totem or VLC also fit this prescription.

On the server computer you will want to “Enable Mutlicast/RTP sender”. If you want to play the sound out this server computer’s speakers, select “Send audio from local speakers”. If you want to be more specific about what is sent, I would recommend you select “Create separate audio device for Multicast/RTP”. For my setup, I want to be able to send only music to the stream when I want it, so I am going to chose the second option.

Client Computer(s)

The client computers will all need to be set up with the “Enable Multicast/RTP receiver” option enabled. Assuming the networks are working properly, you should immediately start hearing music on all the client computers!

Manual Configuration

If you don’t have the benefits of a running Xserver, or want to configure these settings to work on a headless machine, you will need to be manually configuring the pulseaudio config files. The pulseaudio config files are stored in /etc/pulse/system.pa if you’re running in daemon mode, and /etc/pulse/default.pa if you’re running in a per user setup (this is the default method in Ubuntu). I’m going to write this assuming you are using daemon-mode, so we will be editing /etc/pulse/system.pa.

Server Computer

To setup the server computer, you need to edit the configuration. In a terminal or on a console with admin access type the following:

sudo nano /etc/pulse/system.pa

In this file, find and uncomment the lines that look like:

load-module module-null-sink sink_name=rtp format=s16be channels=2 rate=44100 description="RTP Multicast Sink"
load-module module-rtp-send source=rtp.monitor

(If these don’t exist, just add them to the end of the file)

Once this is done, restart the pulseaudio server by running:

sudo /etc/init.d/pulseaudio restart

Client Computer(s)

The client computer will be done by editing /etc/pulse/system.pa (alternatively, you can copy this file to ~/pulse/default.pa). Edit this file by typing:

sudo nano /etc/pulse/system.pa

In this file, find and uncomment the lines that look like:

### Load the RTP reciever module (also configured via paprefs, see above)
#load-module module-rtp-recv

Again, if this doesn’t exist, just add them to the end of the file.

Once you’ve saved this, apply the changes the same way you did previously… by restarting pulseaudio:

sudo /etc/init.d/pulseaudio restart

Once again, assuming the network is behaving correctly, you should be hearing sound out both ends.

Troubleshooting & More Information

Troubleshooting guides are well written on the pulseaudio site. If you have any issues I would suggest reading the wonderful article at http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/HowToListenToTheRtpStream. The key thing is to check that you can see the broadcast packets (see the tcpdump section in the article).

Another good tip is to start the pulseaudio server in non-daemon mode. This will allow you to see and interact with the pulseaudio from the command line. To do this, stop any existing pulseaudio servers with the following command:

sudo /etc/init.d/pulseaudio stop # in system or daemon mode or

pulseaudio -k # for single user mode

To start pulseaudio server, run the following:

sudo pulseaudio --system -Cv # in system or daemon mode or

pulseaudio -Cv # for single user mode

Take note of any errors you see when starting this. Once the server is started, you can list the modules loaded by typing the following in the pulseaudio console:

list-modules

For more information on how to load modules see http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/Modules, and specifically http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/Modules#RTPSDPSAPTransport.

More information about the commands that can be run in the pulseaudio console, see http://www.pulseaudio.org/wiki/CLI

Windows 7 is fresh out in the wild.
Following close behind is Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic Koala.

What better oppertunity to
1. Do a clean install of Windows 7 and
2. Test the dual-booting ‘ease of setup’ inbuilt into Ubuntu.

I started with Windows 7. It installed in 15 minutes quite happily. One Criticism: It didn’t ‘automatically’ find and install drivers for my Broadcom PCI-Gigabit Network Card; but it was ok – I simply plugged in the onboard network  and Windows downloaded the drivers for the Gigabit Network Card in 30 seconds.

Next, I tried the “Wubi Installer“. I tried the default “Download and fetch Ubuntu from the internet” option. It started to download the AMD-64 bit version. Unbeknownst to me at the time, this was the typical 64 Bit version of Ubuntu, but because I read ‘AMD’ in the name, and I’m running an Intel system, I thought this could potentially lead to a bad outcome. I now understand that the Ubuntu labeling of this distribution as AMD-64 is merely a reference to the 64 Bit Extension set that was developed by AMD – and fully compatible with Intel systems. If I’d known that at the time, I probably would’ve proceeded with it.

As it was, I cancelled the auto download, and booted the system from the 9.10 Karmic bootable disc which I’d burnt earlier.

When it booted, I was faced with the standard questions:

I was after the second. After selecting it, it went through the usual motions of asking where you lived, time zones, keyboard type: But then the big, hairy one – How do you want to install Ubuntu?

There are a few options:

Now, here was where it became tricky, and this is only from a User Interface perspective – At the bottom is the slider to decided what percentage of the drive you want to allocate to the first partition (in my case, dedicated to Windows 7 use), but so far as I can tell, that has to do with the FIRST point Install them side by side, choosing between them at startup.
Perhaps it’s just me, but I would’ve put the slider under this particular option, so as to show a link between them; particularly since neither of the other two options have any relevance or association with the slider.

Insanity encouraged me to report it as a ‘bug’ – so I did. It’ll be interesting to see the comments, and what comes of it.

Once it had finished the installation and the computer rebooted, I was presented with a newer GRUB bootloader to what I have seen in the past. It’s up to GRUB-2 version 1.97 Beta 4.

Ubuntu is set to the default first boot (though this can be changed in the GRUB settings), along with the other alternate boot options, with Windows coming in at the bottom. When you first boot Windows after this installation process, it runs a CHKDSK to ensure the consistency of the system files, and disk drive. This is because when Linux does it’s partitioning, it messes with Windows mind (basically, Windows remembers the original size of the drive, and suddenly things have changed – so it makes sure that everything is still intact).

Edit: I replicated the install process and the setup on my laptop: To my surprise, Windows did not require a CHKDSK upon it’s first boot post Ubuntu install / GRUB writing to the boot record. I thought that was most interesting.

I’ll be following up with some reviews and thoughts on how the two systems behave, and a comparison / contrast of the two in the coming days. Stay tune!

“There’s been some discussion in Europe about the use of what’s called a computer drivers licence –  where you have a standard set of skills people should learn before they start using computers,”

This has been something I’ve discussed with a number of people in the past.
My main drive was frustration at people’s ignorance, or just lack of knowledge of how to use the tool that they either want – or have – to use.

The other reason was that people seemed to not want to learn, or didn’t know how to learn.

I’m in two minds about this.

Mind 1: I think making people study for a license could be beneficial: Both for the individual, but also for society in general. It would make these people understand a little more about how computers really work – and that it isn’t just a heap of ‘voodoo’ in the ether that makes their electronic message get to their long lost relative across the globe.

However, who decides on the things that are needed to be taught, and subsequently graded? How shallow or deep would such a training go. Would you have a series (like with a car license – Learner and Probationary)? How would you enforce it? And what would be the ‘punishment’ for someone browsing without a license?

Mind 2: Computers were designed by highly intelligent people – scientists, mathematicians, physicists – for use by the very same people. They were originally designed as scientific instruments, to process ‘data’ and spit out answers. Their workings are complicated, and only became more common place in the late 80′s / early 90′s due to the shift in form factor (size).

How they are used now, and what they’ve been ‘made’ to become is different from their original intended purpose. They can now be used by anyone to do any number of things.

It’s important to raise at this point the idea of systems. A system that is open and flexible to being changed is better suited to those who know what they’re doing, and wish to ‘improve’ parts of those systems: But in the hands of the unknowing, this can cause more problems than good.

However, a system that is more locked down [better suited to the dim-witted and unknowing] will provide the functionality that is needed, but limits what can be changed by the ones who know what they’re doing.

Conclusion – We need two systems.
System 1: This one is simple, unbreakable – Safe. Where a user can browse the web without fearing that by accidentally clicking on a banner they will unwittingly download a virus. Or, in the case that they do – the virus cannot be installed or executed due to the restricted nature of the system. More like the current Apple Operating System – only even further restricted.
System 2: This one is more complicated, open to modifications, and can only be sold to people with half a brain. The system wouldn’t be vastly different to what is available now (Windows / Linux) however, you will need to prove that you’re up to the challenge of using it.

This would solve 90% of the technological problems of the world. Possibly.

There are dozens of virtualisation products at the server end of the market. SuSE and Novell have one, there’s the venerable VMWare ESX, Microsoft Virtual PC, HP and Dell even ship servers with VMWare ESXi HyperVisor installed on a flash chip. There’s VirtualBox, Parallels, Virtuozzo, the list goes on.

At our datacenter, our sysems administrator started making the move to virtualisation 12 months ago. He moved four terminal servers and two web servers onto his first application server (A dual-quad-core Xeon with 24gb of RAM for those who were wondering). Since then we’ve moved countless terminal servers, web servers, backup domain controllers, certificate authorities, DNS servers, nameservers (yeah they’re the same thing I know), and backup databases onto Virtual Machines, over about 6 application servers (all similar specs to the one above).

From four fully-packed racks down to less than one rack. Which has meant that he’s been able to afford the rack space in a better co-location faculity and thus we’ve gone from a 2Mb copper link to a 1000Mb fiber link directly into a major backbone and MAN network in Sydney. Brilliant.

When I was on holidays recently (see my post about my trip to Adelaide a few weeks ago), our primary database server (which was not a virtual machine, it was a dedicated dual-quad-core Xeon with 4Gb of RAM and RAID10 SAS drives) went to hell in a handbasket, and it took everything with it.

Now, we’re not stupid. We had live mirroring to our backup servers, and it only took them a few minutes to take the backup servers out of recovery mode and flick the switch to turn them into production machines (we don’t have the licenses for the version of MSSQL that does this for you, as a few mins of downtime is not the end of the world).

Boy though, were we in for a surprise. Even though it was only for a few days, and technically the application servers were superior in specs than the database servers, we fielded countless complains about the speed of EVERYTHING. And of course with the database server under load, it stole resourceses from the other machines on that server.

After the replacement server arrived, we moved everything back to that server (except for one database) and everyone was happy again. Why did we leave one database? I don’t know – I think we just forgot. It’s not a heavily used database, however yesterday someone who was using it complained of incredible slowness when saving records. According to the profiler it was taking FOUR SECONDS to execute a single “update” command.

We thought, rather than take it offline and move it in the middle of the day, I’ll see if I can bandaid it and find the query that’s obviously screwing it up. Well, I found the query, analysed it, and it was perfect. Indexes were OK, it wasn’t waiting on any locks, SQL analyser found nothing wrong with it.

So, after 20 minutes of farting around with the query, I decided to just bite the bullet, kick everyone off, and move the database to where it was meant to be in the first place. So I did, people were grumpy while it was offline (it may have been slow but at least it worked), but I think we’ll survive.

The result? The statement that took 4143 milliseconds to run on the virtualised server – took 45 milliseconds on the proper server. Thats almost a 100x (or 10,000%) increase in speed. On a machine with less ram (4gb vs 24gb) and slower processors.

Health practitioners learn anatomy; IT practitioners learn computer architecture

This was part of the opening line that my Computer Systems lecturer began with.

Too many times people don’t understand the problems they’re having, or experiencing. They may see the symptoms, but can’t actually work out what is the cause of them.

Back when I worked in a Helpdesk & Support role, I’d often get phone calls saying “I can’t connect to the internet – is it down?”. On occasion, it was accurate that the fault lay with the proxy server, or the internet connection itself; however, up to a quarter of the time it was simply because the wireless switch that was on the front of the notebooks being used by the staff, had been switched off.

It is possible to understand – and even expect – that the average end user does not know how their wireless works, or how to increase the systems virtual memory (For those playing in the Windows world).
The bare minimum one would hope is that they know that there is a switch that turns the wireless on and off – just like a car has a switch to turn the lights on and off.

Many geeks out there have a fascination with Science Fiction writings, television shows, and films. This isn’t a ‘given’, but it’s a natural part of being interested with computers, science and technology. These artistic representations talk about and deal with elements that appeal to these individuals.

In a discussion with a fellow systems administrator once, he noted that as time goes on, the things that are once taught at the higher academic levels, becomes more ‘common knowledge’, so that the learning becomes more and more complex.

This would appear to be true – to a point.
In the case of my course, we went back to the very basic level of computer architecture; looking at how computers developed from simple counting machines, through to the theorising of ‘logic’, which resulted in boolean algebra – and with the transistor, allowed for the creation of logic gates for circuit design and construction…
And all this is very important, because you need to know and understand where you’ve come from, to know where you currently are, and where you are heading – or may end up.
It appears not everyone in society feels this way.

There’s no denying that people have it easy these days – speaking of course for the ‘Westernised’ world here. As a result of that ease, they no longer thing or struggle with certain concepts. They live their lives day-to-day, getting by, doing their work, and then go home, do whatever, and then get up and continue the cycle. There doesn’t appear to be that ‘thirst for knowledge’ or wanting to understand how or why things are done. People seem to just accept it.

A large part of this would defintely be a personality trait; and it would be what makes people like us (the writers on this blog, and various others in the computer field) the way we are. It’s knowing that through learning and understanding we can increase our ‘usefullness’, putting us in better positions to help others – which is often an intrinsic part of our makeup – and ultimately, slowly allowing the change in society to happen.

If only there was a way to get others interested – but perhaps they wont, because they have no need. “The path of least resistance” is too often the one that is chosen.

Truely a testament to how lazy our society has become!

I was reading Nadine’s blog this morning, and just after she says the word that most men dread *cough*tampon*cough*, she links to a brand named called Moxie. So, out of morbid curiosity (and I’m bored, and I’ve never heard of that brand before, which in itself is not entirely unusual) I clicked the link. Low and behold, it’s one of the WORST websites I’ve ever seen. Let me explain.

Ok. That’s a screenshot of the website. No it’s not a splash banner or an intro movie, that’s the website. You navigate by clicking on some (but not all) of the objects on or around the mirror. And, there’s no clear distinction about what is and what isn’t a link. There does not seem to be any corrolation between the items you click on and where they take you (clicking the bottom drawer takes you to Events, clicking on the bottle of perfume takes you to Where To Buy).

I can’t even begin to list all the reasons why this is poor design – it’s just too long and I would have a buffer overflow if I tried to locate a starting point.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m all for progressive design. Many of the sites we develop we’ve thrown out the traditional design and gone for something different. But at least they’re usable. Logical. And they don’t open every single link in a new window.

Let’s just take one example. I went to the Moxie website because I was interested to see what they would sell that would make women want to put their most personal items inside it. Do you think I found anything? Hells no. Maybe thats because I’m a man – I don’t know. Do I click on “Collection” (a tin, which is a container, and thus I thought the logical thing to click on given my research reason), or do I click on “Designer Series” (an incredible unrealistic barbie-doll shaped woman designed to lower teenage girls self-image in a corset). Turns out neither.