This sucks because you may want to use DNS for round-robin (RR) load-balancing across CNAME records much like you would for A records. The good news is that Route53 supports “Weighted Sets” which allow you to do round-robin-eque load balancing between multiple CNAMEs. For example, you might want to distribute your load evenly between multiple AWS regions like us-west-1 and us-west-2 that each contain an Elastic Load Balancer (ELB).

The other possibility is you cannot use an ELB because a particular service is private. Remember, services behind an ELB are internet accessible from 0.0.0.0/0; ELBs themselves cannot be controlled by security groups.  Using A records, one can do DNS-RR to either the public or private IP address on an instance, but not both (it just wouldn’t make sense). The drawback here is that you cannot use the same hostname for services that are inside Ec2 as services that are outside of Ec2. If instead, you use a Weighted-Set with a short TTL (e.g. 10 seconds), you can create a CNAME that points to the CNAMEs of each of the EC2 instances. Because the CNAME points to another CNAME, when it’s resolved inside of EC2 a private ip address is returned; conversely when it’s resolved from outside of EC2 a public IP address is returned.

The reason it’s important to return either a public or private IP address is due to the way EC2 security groups work. When an ingress rule is granted from a particular security group (e.g. allow “Group A” to access “Group B”), it only applies to the private IP addresses of instances in “Group A”. This means that when instances in “Group A” need to access instances in “Group B”, they should use the private IP address of instances in “Group B”. Using the CNAME of an EC2 instance ensures you’re always connecting to the most appropriate IP address whether your inside or outside of EC2.

In the post, they make a pretty compelling argument for why to use client-side templating. Their problems are all similar to the ones I’ve seen countless times — anywhere a services based architecture is employed like at TV.com.

At LinkedIn they have a services based architecture with applications written in a slew of frameworks across multiple languages. Because of this, it’s hard to re-use visual components. Requiring that all components be written in the same language reduces productivity of developers and hinders their ability to rapidly prototype new features, but having the templates reimplemented in each language makes maintenance a chore. What LinkedIn settled on doing was to only require applications to produce JSON responses (light weight and efficient to render) and rely on client-side (browser) rendering to transform the layout templates with JavaScript. This puts the expensive cost of rendering on the browser (totally scalable), and allows for LinkedIn to cache the layout on CDNs to accelerate their delivery (in addition to the CSS, Images, JS, etc.)

Some might argue that well written HTML+CSS is essentially the same thing. It’s not. First, HTML is verbose; the amount of data needed to even express a simple document far exceeds that of JSON because it includes layout information. Then generating the HTML is an expensive operation on the server involving parsing some source templates in (ERB, JSP, Jinja, Smarty, etc) and assembling them in a string object with lots of concatenation. Lastly, no matter how “light” you make the HTML, you’re still mixing layout with data so you can’t statically cache the layout on a CDN without using ESI (fancy XSLT).

Compare this to simply requiring apps to produce JSON responses. JSON is lightweight and efficient to generate. Most scripted languages have native bindings to libjson so that rendering is done in C.

Lastly, if the thought of templating done entirely in the browser is not appealing (perhaps for SEO reasons), there’s always Node.js which can sit in between; however, this negates the CDN-effect for template caching and puts the computational onus back into your datacenter / cloud.

I’m not a “frontend” guy, so maybe that’s why this immediately appeals to me. I’m curious what frontend developers think about this approach?

Use PayTrust as your permanent billing address and universal bill payer

• Reduces the volume of junkmail
• Increases your privacy
• Multiple funding accounts

Use Evernote for everything

• I have no more physical files; I’ve scanned every document going back to ’97
• Access insurance binders, medical records, eBooks, etc from one application
• Use as primary bookmarking log; keeps original snapshot of the page that you can search (like your own Google)
• To share screenshots with people over IM
• Save serial numbers & digital copies of software
• Print to Evernote to save all electronic confirmations

Use 1Password for keeping your passwords secure

• Keeps your “Key Chain” in sync with all other devices
• Autocompletes Credit Cards, Forms, Addresses, etc
• Works on iOS, OSX, Windows and in all standard browsers

Use CardMunch for importing all business cards

• Uses Mechanical Turk for crowd sourced data-entry; beats OCR any day
• Integrates with LinkedIn

Use LinkedIn for managing all professional contacts

• Living Resume complete with recommendations
• Professional forum for interaction
• Use Resume Builder to export your resume in a professional format

Use Mint.com to get an overview of all finances

• Supports every financial institution I use
• If your financial institution is not supported, you should consider moving your money else where

Use ConnectedHQ.com as your personal CRM

• Set reminders for when to follow up with people
• Overview of what your contacts are doing on all connected social networks

Use an IronKey to protect your utmost sensitive data

• Tamper-proof, hardware encrypted USB stick
• Self-destructs if too many unlock failures

Use Amazon Prime

• Buy anything that’s out of your way from Amazon; e.g. Trader Joe’s doesn’t carry shaving cream, salon products, etc.

Use the Jing Screen Recorder

• To communicate bugs to tech support; spend less time describing the problem by just illustrating it

Use iCloud (Formerly MobileMe) for device synchronization and discovery

• If your an Apple fan-boy as myself, then just sticking with *Mac makes everything so much smoother
• Google Sync + iCloud sync does NOT work; constant contact duplication and problems with UTF8 names
• Find lost iPhones and Macs
• Remote wipe stolen or lost devices
• Over-the-air backups of iOS devices (including Photos!)

Use Automator on the Mac with shortcuts to scan to Evernote

• I use Command+E to automatically scan whatever is in my HP-e710 directly into Evernote
• Eliminates the frequent run-around going to the MFP

Use One Medical for doctors visits

• Same day appointments
• Direct access to your doctor via email

Use Google Voice

• One permanent number that rings any device when and how you want it to
• Spam caller detection + Call blocking (“Sorry, the number you have dialed is no longer in service”)
• Voice mail transcription means you receive voicemails as emails
• Free SMS

Use Sipgate.com for your own SIP phone

• This allows me to bring my phone with me when I travel (works overseas!)
• Allows me to have my landline both at my house via a cordless handset and on my laptop
• Cheap calling rates and no monthly usage fees

Use Facebook Messenger on the iPhone

• Easy way to get ahold of my friends for free.
• No more of that “What Apps”, BlackBerry Messenger BS.

Use Google Apps for all your private domains

• Hosting your own SMTP/IMAP server is so passe
• I’ve had 100% uptime for the past 5-6 years
• No service has better spam detection

Use DropBox

• To keep your Desktop in sync with all your devices
• To remotely start torrents
• To sync and backup your encrypted 1Password Agile KeyChain

Use Airport Extreme

• To wirelessly backup all your devices without you having to remember to do anything
• Act as your home router

Use GPG Tools for the Mac

• To cryptographically sign all your outgoing mail
• To encrypt/decrypt mail
• To keep a manage your GPG Key Chain

Use FreshBooks for invoicing

• Simpler to use than QuickBooks if you can get away with it
• Automatically send invoices on a schedule via snail mail or email

Use an Accountant to handle all your taxes

• I can’t keep up with the tax codes and special deductions available
• Just hand them the keys to Mint.com
• Especially handy when receiving numerous 1099s
• A resource you can ask questions as they come up

Use Ubercab for getting around San Francisco

• All you need is your phone; no cash or credit cards; tip included in fare
• Arrives FAST
• Courteous, professional drivers

Use 3-Bureau Credit Monitoring

• Because if your life is now hosted in SaaS, you’re vulnerable to identify theft; it’s just a matter of time
• For the piece of mind

Use TripIt.com to keep track of all your travel itineraries

• Most useful for complex travel plans involving multiple legs
• Handy iPhone app so you can view all flights from a single application

Use PagerDuty.com for on call alert notifications

• Calls you when your stuff is down; SMS is so 90s
• Supports on-call calendars so you don’t have to manage it yourself
• Import on-call calendars straight into iCal

Please share the tips and tricks you use! I’d love to hear them.

Add the Varnish apt repo to your /etc/apt/sources.list:

Add the Varnish distributors GPG key:

Update your repo cache:

Download & compile source:

Then, in /usr/src/ you’ll find your new .deb packages ready for installation.

• Cheap! Only $9.95/mo.
• Multiple funding sources (e.g. any checking account you want to use such as your brokerage account or traditional bank checking account)
• Late bill reminders, if no statement received with-in N number of days of your last one.
• Permanent billing address (PO BOX 1819*****, SIOUX FALLS, SD, 57186) that doesn’t change when you move.
• Paperless. All mail gets scanned and is available on their site for viewing or download.
• View new or existing bills while out of town. I can go out of town for a month and not worry about anything.
• Integrates with Mint.com “Real Balance” so you can see what your available account balances are. Kind of basic, but still a good thing.
• Does both E-Bills and paper bills. E-bills is where it logs into the account and downloads the PDFs for you (go green!)
• Backed by Intuit & been around for more than 10 years, so it feels more legit than some small little startup.
• I get almost no advertisements in the mail as they all go to PayTrust and get shredded.
• 24 hour phone support and no wait times. It’s almost like a direct line into their offices.
• They research any payment issues such as payment not received or missing statements
• They don’t float your money. Money leaves your account the day the check clears, not a few days before like normal banks do with online bill pay.
• I use it as your billing address for “private” registration for DNS.
• I receive CD once a year with all my bills that I hold on to for safe-keeping and store in Evernote.
• Automatically pay statements with variable monthly amounts such as a gas bill (No bank offered Bill Pay service can do that!)
• Pay exactly what you want to pay. For example, pay off your monthly credit card bill so long as it is under your maximum threshold.
• No need to update 50 vendors with your new credit card the next time you lose it or it expires.
• No need to login to multiple sites to manage your automatic payment profiles. Manage them all on PayTrust.

The fix is almost always that BuildRoot is not defined in the spec file. Defining one near the top of the file will resolve the issue.

Some smart alec is probably going to mention that the CPAN module has done this for ages, why not just use it? My problem with using the CPAN module on top of MacPorts is that that don’t play with each other, which results unsatisfied MacPort dependencies and thus duplicate installs.