Time for the Show
The preparations are complete. Even now, with everything all planned out there is a feeling of aprehension. But, there is only so much you can do. In my experience even with the best laid plans, things have a way of not going 'according to plan'. However, the difference between having a plan and not means that you know the way it should go, and gently push it in that direction, often causing it to be a success.
So far we've been sucessful with this approach for 3 separate events.
IshGirls first audition:
- 8 girls
- 3 photographers
- 4 assistants
- 2 meals
- 1 dj
- 1 chauffer and car
- 9 hours of shooting
IshGirls second audition:
- 12 girls
- 4 no shows
- 6 assistants
- 1 big mess to clean up 1 hour before the shoot
- 3 photographers
- 3 back drops
- 3 dj's
- 2 Trucks
- 1 xbox and projector
IshGirls website launch party:
- 9 dj's
- 8 girls
- 24 outfits
- 1 makeup artist
- 10 photographers
- 8 security
- 3 promoters
- 1 door girl
- 1 carpenter
- 1 last minute catwalk
- 6 assistants
- 1 model manager
- 1 business manager
- 1 dvd video created and final compilation done 1 hour before the show
- 1 really big party to compete with
- 180 really happy and amazed clients
What to expect this time? Well thanks to the fact that we are simply hosting and not planning, the numbers are much smaller. But if we forget something, we are in another city....
This will be my first time in Saskatoon, I'm really looking forward to it. I have heard how beautiful it is, but have always been skeptical because of my Regina experiences. We aren't 'officially' doing auditions out there, but are setting up a photo booth to take some shots. Who knows, perhaps there's a girl out there that will just blow us away. My main objective is to collect information on as many Saskatoon photographers as I can while I'm out there. The site is done, our review / posting process is almost ready, now, is the time to start pushing everyone to create art. Now is the time we start building a REAL site. Now is the time to SHINE!!!!!
Service Oriented Analysis and Design
So today I've been reading about Service Oriented Architecture and Design concepts. It seems to be an interesting development in the arena of Systems Analsysis and Design. From what I've read so far, it takes elements from Enterprise Architecture, Business Process Modeling, and Object Oriented Analysis and Design.
The central concept of SOAD is that it further abstracts concepts in those three areas into real life (for example Web) functional concepts. Operations, Services, and Business Processes. Operations are Logical Units of Work. For example a software component that could retreive an attribute, like getFirstName(). A Service, is simply a grouping of these operations, like getUserProfile(). And a Business Process is a grouping of Services, like createNewUser().
Part of the reason this has come around is the age old problem of what do we do with our old systems? Typically when you design a new system, you do a top down approach, map out all the actors and objects, map out sequences of events, and how objects interact. But when you want to integrate it with an existing system, you must also do a bottom up analysis, and meet somewhere in the middle. Service Oriented Analysis optimizes this experience, by allowing one to do a holistic analysis of the Business Services that are provided by a system.
So essentially SO is like OOAD (Object Oriented Analysis and Design) but it blurs the details of the Class and Object relationships so you can focus on higher level, more important concepts like Services.
Then you start getting into how you descibe these Services and interactions. For example a common one on the web is WSDL (Web Service Description Language) based on XML and using SOAP. So to interact with someone's web service, you use a service directory to first search for and find a service that fits your needs. These are often stored in UDDI (Universal Description Discovery and Integration) on some sort of Directory. Once the appropriate service is found, you can use the WSDL to connect to it. The WSDL will describe what sort of methods can be used, what port to connected to, basically all the information an Actor would need to get or put information into a system. It can also describe constraints such as order of operations and such.
With that in mind, you start to see how new web applications and systems can be designed with Services in mind, rather than just simple classes and objects. From what I have so far, this is one more level of abstraction that will allow much more transparencies between different systems, and will help move towards the 'Data Everywhere' model that is demonstrated by web applications such as salesforce.com or facebook.com.
I know I'm not an expert on this, so no flames please. I'm simply exploring some new ideas in an area that I happen to be researching at the moment.
Solaris vs The World
So everyone seems to be jumping on this whole Open Source bandwagon, or at least trying to take advantage of it. OS X did what few do and completely revamped their entire OS, deciding to go with BSD (my favorite) as the underlying infrastructure. Vista, white they stole a lot of their visual styles and interface widgets from OS X, are making the move to become more like Open Source OS' by implementing (yes I know, bad) User Access Control, and a new command shell with scripting ability. Microsoft has even bought out Sysinternals and made their OS tools their own, tools which all have a very *nix feel to them.
Sun has been trying to emulate a lot of what BSD has been doing for years, and yes, in some cases they actually do it better. Take BSD jails for instance. They have been around since like 2000? Something like that. Sun eventually came out with their own variant, Solaris Zones. Now I do admit, Zones have much more granular control than jails do.
And now Sun has publicly released their OpenSolaris OS which is still based on the Solaris kernel, but has been a collaborative development project involving many Open Source developers and software platforms. They implement modern *nix desktops such as GNOME and a brand new package managment facility that is supposed to be similar to many linux package managers.
This is great. Sun does do a good job on the underlying OS, where they've historically had many problems (and problems that I deal with every day) is in applicaiton development and support. For example I don't know a Sun admin who actually runs Sun's IPF module (except us lol) because of all the problems with it. So trashing all that and replacing it with OS software is a good idea.
What I'm interested to see with the new OS, and no one has commented on this yet, is if Sun has implemented a headless install option. If you've ever tried to do this with Solaris, you know what I'm talking about. They have so tightly integrated their java desktop and other packages, that the dependancy resolution will take you years to figure out...and there's no easy way to go about it either. So if you happen to be using a Console connection through a 9600 baud terminal server...it really takes hours to figure out that there is no way in hell it will let you strip off the packages you don't need. Any literature that I've read on this subject recommends just installing everything, and turning down services you don't need.
From a security perspective, in my eyes, packages you don't need introduce variables and potential security holes that really have no place on a secure system. Many of my FreeBSD boxes which service only one purpose (such as a db server) have about 5 packages installed on them. Easy to maintain, easy to audit. Look at the process table once and you have it memorized. You will instantly know if something is 'off'.
Sun, if you are reading this, please please please implement a headless install option.
IshGirls.Com is Alive!
Ok so here's my first blog post in years. I used to use Livejournal, but the whole community aspect / payment aspect of it just didn't rub me the right way. I'm using WordPress, which appears to be the g33k standard in weblogging. This is essentially going to be a place for me to put random information about my life that I want to keep track of.
Last night the Beta launch of IshGirls.Com went live. You still won't be able to see it, but we are using the new python based framework DJango. First of all, if you know Python, you love it. If you don't, you've heard of it. Django for Python is essentially what Rails is for Ruby. It makes developing web applications quick, modular, and entirely ORM driven. We are currently attempting to get into the DJango beta at media temple, however they have not yet responded to us.
IshGirls' main focus is fashion. We have a vision of what we want an IshGirl to look like. Part of this vision is that an IshGirl defines her own style. The roots can come from common styles (Goth, Punk, etc.) however, an IshGirl integrates those styles into something of her own. She can shop at expensive or cheap stores – all that matters is that it’s styleIsh!
An IshGirl takes ideas from all around her and creates something unique that expresses who she is. She will create, modify and flaunt her style with confidence, wherever she may be. The style is fluid, changing day to day, mood to mood. What IshGirls aims to capture are those unique girls who go the extra mile with their style, no matter what the occasion.
We all know IshGirls. I know you are thinking of one now. They stick out from the crowd. They are the fashion bellwethers that fashion mogules travel all around the world to study and mimic for next years lines. What we want to do is to capture this, record it, and give a tribute to the World's IshGirls.
IshGirls is a fully Canadian owned Winnipeg based company and is my 4th company to date. We are always looking for new ideas and people. If you are energetic, or just full of amazing ideas, please feel free to contact me!
Subscribe to RSS
Follow me on Twitter
Join me on FacebookTwitter Feed
- @mak_kolybabi @ron_bowes damn straight! 2012-04-17
- Starting The Destiny of the Dead, by Ian Irvine http://t.co/bT5D3O0K 2012-04-09
- On page 550 of The Curse on the Chosen, by Ian Irvine http://t.co/hoMTf93m 2012-04-09
- More updates...
Posting tweet...
Links
Archives
- June 2011
- May 2011
- April 2011
- March 2011
- December 2010
- November 2010
- October 2010
- September 2010
- August 2010
- July 2010
- June 2010
- May 2010
- April 2010
- March 2010
- February 2010
- May 2009
- April 2009
- March 2009
- January 2009
- October 2008
- September 2008
- August 2008
- July 2008
- June 2008
- May 2008
- April 2008
- September 2007
- May 2007
- April 2007
- March 2007
- December 2006
- November 2006
- October 2006