Deirdre Straughan

White Poppies

April 1, 2012
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Who You Calling “Slut”?

March 24, 2012

“When you judge someone, it doesn’t define the person you’re judging – it defines you.” Tulisa Contostavlos (story in The Guardian) A few months ago I had a Twitter exchange with a woman in the tech industry, who wrote that girls the age of her teenage son should not be allowed dress like “skanks”. I assumed [...]

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Testimony

March 22, 2012

Please share. Review of the Enchantingly Wicked show in which this was premiered

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A.D. MCMXXII

March 14, 2012
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Learn Italian in Song: I Promessi Sposi in Dieci Minuti

March 2, 2012

The Betrothed, in 10 Minutes I Promessi Sposi (The Betrothed), considered the first example of the modern novel in Italian (though the language is a bit antiquated today), is a story every educated Italian knows well, in part because they study it in school. We heard a lot about it in Lecco in particular because [...]

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Learn Italian in Song: Attenti al Lupo

March 1, 2012

C’e’ una casetta piccola cosi’ There’s a house so small con tante finestrelle colorate with many little colored windows E una donnina piccola cosi’ And a little woman so small Con due occhi grandi per guardare With two big eyes for watching E c’e’ un omino piccolo cosi’ And there’s a little man so small [...]

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Comcast: Customer Service Failure Before I’m Even a Customer

February 25, 2012

Here’s the email I sent to we_can_help@comcast.com this morning: Two days ago I was looking for Internet and a phone line – and ONLY that – for my move to a new apartment next week. Your current special offer was acceptable, though I was not happy that it required a 2-year contract; it took some time [...]

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The Twitter Diaries: January 2012

February 12, 2012

(in reverse chron order) 2012-01-31 23:40:29 DeirdreS: RT @pbeyssac: OMG! At last! RT @TechCrunch After Four Years, ZFS Finds Its Way To The Mac http://t.co/caiZVG6O http://twitter.com/DeirdreS/statuses/164493282955624449 2012-01-31 23:38:23 DeirdreS: Prophetic..? “noticed what we need to mention this morning twenty-one billion scripts it’s possible” @brendangregg http://t.co/V9Q8FtyY http://twitter.com/DeirdreS/statuses/164492755505131522 2012-01-31 23:11:31 DeirdreS: @sogrady but what have you done [...]

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Learn Italian in Song: Che Bambola!

February 4, 2012

Another classic from Fred Buscaglione ( the Italian version of this wikipedia bio is much better) Mi trovavo per la strada circa all’una e trentatrè, I found myself on the street about 1:33 L’altra notte mentre uscivo dal mio solito caffè, The other night while exiting from my usual café quando incontro un bel mammifero modello “centotrè” When [...]

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Solaris Videos

February 2, 2012

123 videos I did for Sun and later Oracle, plus a few later, can be found on my old YouTube channel.

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Videos from the illumos Meetup, January 2012

February 1, 2012

ZFS Feature Flags A new feature being introduced in illumos, presented by Chris Siden of Delphix at the illumos user group meetup sponsored by the Joyent Cloud, January 2012. ZFS Backwards Compatibility Testing with ztest Christopher Siden at the illumos user group meeting sponsored by the Joyent Cloud, January 2012. ZFS Code Comments Discussion at the illumos [...]

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YouTube Transcription FAIL

January 30, 2012

YouTube’s new, experimental automatic audio transcription still needs a lot of work. It seems to have particular difficulty with non-American accents, or with people speaking quickly – which describes most Joyent engineers! I’m sure it will improve, probably quickly, but we should keep for posterity the bizarre yet poetic discourse of a Brendan Gregg technical presentation [...]

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Using SmartOS as a Hypervisor

January 30, 2012

Robert Mustacchi’s talk at SCALE 10x. An excellent introduction to what SmartOS is and why it’s better. Want to learn more? Come meet Robert at the Joyent Cloud Meetup/Office Hours Jan 31. 5-7 pm. Beer and pizza provided! 60 minutes (playlist of 5 parts), shot and edited by Deirdré Straughan slides

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Performance Analysis: new tools and concepts from the cloud

January 30, 2012

Brendan Gregg, Lead Performance Engineer, Joyent, speaks at SCALE 10x. full slide deck 4-part playlist, total 60 mins, shot and edited by Deirdré Straughan

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Textures: Brick, Stone & Sky

January 29, 2012

stone wall ^ brick paving, Austin, Texas ^ cobbled path, Italy ^ herringbone brick path, Italy above and below: dry stone retaining wall (khud), Mussoorie, India ^ Roman wall, Italy   

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Mike Shapiro of Sun and Steve O’Grady of Redmonk

January 24, 2012

September, 2008 – filmed outside a bar in San Francisco.

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Solaris History: The Open Storage Revolution

January 24, 2012

Jeff Bonwick at SNIA SDC, Sept 2007. filmed and edited by Deirdré Straughan download (m4v)

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DTrace and ZBall

January 12, 2012

Another bit of Solaris history with Bryan Cantrill.

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Viva la Mamma? Motherhood, Menopause & Culture

January 8, 2012

I’m a US citizen, but I lived and raised my daughter Rossella (now 22) in Italy for 17 years. I left Italy in 2008 while Ross was at boarding school in India, and subsequently separated from my Italian husband (we were already geographically apart – he did not follow me to the US). My daughter is [...]

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2011 India Trip: Timeline

January 2, 2012

2011 was a rough year in many ways, but I did have a fantastic vacation in India! Here’s an outline, more detailed articles to follow (er, sometime…). Saturday, Oct 15: Depart SFO As his last piece of work before vacation, Brendan had to get that blog post out. We were actually standing in line at [...]

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