DigitalFiz » php

Playing in the cloud!

DigitalFiz — Sun, 22 Nov 2009 12:38:03 +0000

Well I’ve been messing with Amazonz s3, EC2 and CloudFront for a few days and I must say it is a pretty awesome setup of power. s3 gives you unlimited storage, EC2 gives you almost instant access to as many VPS’s as you want(or can afford hehe) and CloudFront makes your s3 data available to people all around the word on a server near them for the fastest speeds and highest availability. Combined together you can have a web service that is always there and always fast. I will be working on tools to utilize Amazon’s web services in PHP and see if I can make some simple easy to use tools to automate a web services ability to expand with demands. Hopefully I can utilize a system to auto start instances(amazons term for a running VPS) based on server loads maybe even add some type of availability prediction to pre-start some instances during known times of high load. the Elastic BlockStore feature of EC2 makes it easy to share the dynamic data that changes so you can have 20 VPS’s using the same database and serving the same data. Adding some features to sync static data to a s3 storage bucket which is connected to a CloudFront distribution should make for a very scalable, reliable and fast system. I have a project or 2 that I think will be perfect candidates for testing this out.

Now I have been thinking about how amazon isnt the only “cloud” service out there and I do plan on making some tools that work with others too just have to research the more popular ones. Looking very for to microsofts new azure system and I think it might be the next step into big things “cloud”wise

Why do you taunt me amazon!

DigitalFiz — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 03:32:47 +0000

Man! I’ve been messing around with amazon web services for like 4 days straight. I am working with the AAWS part of their web service which seems to be a hidden secret of theirs. You cant find the links to information about it anywhere on the aws website. You have to find links to it from other websites to even get to it. Even searching there search doesn’t return anything. I’m not sure why they are hiding it but my guess is because its a free service provided for associates and not the other pay stuff they are promoting like the cloud computing crap and the storage crap. But what I don’t get is why they would hide it almost completely. They still make money from associate sales just they have to give a little chunk to the person doing all the foot work. Do they think they don’t need an affiliate system anymore? Is it on its way out? I sure hope not a lot of people are gonna have to go back to real jobs if they do. Maybe they don’t realize how many people depend and survive on the money they make using the associates program. Maybe I’m just a paranoid blind freak incapable of finding simple links directly on a website but I doubt it. Maybe they just forgot to link it in the search and dashboard who knows! I guess we’ll see. its not like they haven’t mixed things up before and caused a lot of mayhem for people using existing methods to access their product database.

RAD as usual

DigitalFiz — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 12:28:39 +0000

I think that one of my most faithful clients has successfully put a new meaning to the term RAD(rapid application development). I will say that but him creating very short deadlines that often times fall fairly short of realistic expectations it has taught me to work a lot faster and constantly recheck my efficiency. I have a project to finish before the weekend that should probably take normal GOOD developers a few weeks to complete. Notice I said GOOD developers. I know that there are shotty php programmers that can throw shit together in a matter of days but the code will probably be less then except-able and hardly efficient.

Even though these projects are high pressure I’m glad I’m not forced to compete on rent-a-coder or ifreelance against people in poor countries willing to do anything you wish for $50. Whens the last time $50 was worth more then a consultation now-a-days in america? at $50 a pop I’d have to do like 4-5 projects A DAY to pay bills and honestly you wont find many projects on those sites that can be completed that fast.