Che Guevara: A Revolutionary Life

Continuing on my quest to get a better handle on why the world is the way it is today, I figured I’d read about a prominent figure in recent Latin American history. That naturally led me to Che Guevara, who I initially had a bit of doubt about. From the Mao book, I learned that he had great plans for Che and Latin America, but was spurned away when he learned that Che wouldn’t allow Cuba to be dependent on Chinese aid. So since Mao rubbed me the wrong way, I suppose a bit of guilt-by-association made me feel a bit sketchy about socialism and all related things. But I resolved to give Che a fair shot in our greater quest to learn about recent history, and I was pleasantly surprised in what I found.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Book of the Week | Comments Off

The Family

A while ago I was watching a clip from The Rachel Maddow Show and saw Jeff Sharlet talk about a mysterious underground group named the Family. I was, like many people, pretty surprised to hear about a secret Christian organization that has connections all over the world who only recently became exposed after a number of its Republican members have been in trouble in the news and were found to all have been going to this organization for “help”. So naturally after seeing Jeff Sharlet go back on this show numerous times and eventually make his way onto the Daily Show, I decided I had to go pick up his book, aptly named The Family, and see what all the fuss was about. And rest assured, it is a shocker.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Book of the Week, Politics, Religion | Comments Off

Animal Farm

Having read the classic Orwell book 1984 several years ago (and loving it), I always thought I would have got around to reading his other classic work, Animal Farm, much more recently than now. But having stumbled upon it the other day, I knew I had to pick it up and see if it truly is a classic work or not (hint: it is). It is an amazing read, and to nerd it up for all of you out there, I would go so far as to say it is the Portal of books.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Book of the Week, Politics | Comments Off

AppScale 1.2 Released!

Just a quick blurb for now: the software my group works on, AppScale, has a new version out! It adds support for the Cassandra and Voldemort databases as well as the ability to deploy your Google App Engine apps to Amazon EC2, so check it out if that’s what you’re into! Here’s the changelog for the sake of completeness:

• Now compatible with Python Google App Engine 1.2.3
• Addition of support for Voldemort and Cassandra
• MySQL bug fix allowing for parallel API nodes
• Eucalyptus 1.5.2 support
• Amazon AWS EC2 public image available (ami-7136d618)
• Support for running Ubuntu Jaunty systems
• Single node deployments (Cassandra or Voldemort only)
• Ability to delete applications from a running deployment
• Python2.6 for everything except Google App Engine (Python2.5)
• Replication is configurable
• Additional robustness and bug fixes

Posted in Cloud Computing, Programming, Python, Ruby | Comments Off

America, the Last Best Hope (Part II)

With the health care debate taking center stage in American politics right now, I figured a good book to read up on would have to be something about America. As I asked around my family for such a book, one book repeatedly was recommended to me: America, the Last Best Hope. Technically, it’s two books, the first covering American history from its founding to right before World War I, and the second covering World War I to right before the fall of the Soviet Union. And while it certainly met the high expectations I had of it, it wasn’t what I was expecting at all. Since I borrowed the second book, this review will only cover that material.

Read the rest of this entry »

Posted in Book of the Week, Politics | Comments Off