RobbieAllen.com

Instead of trying to Work Less find Work You Can’t Live Without

Robbie — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 14:59:13 +0000

Are you familiar with the “Work Less” mantra that has gained popularity in recent years from the people at 37Signals and from books like 4 Hour Work Week? It is the idea that by working fewer hours in a week, you’ll be more productive while you are working. Employees at 37Signals only work [...]

I’m no longer going to watch Grey’s Anatomy

Robbie — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 02:18:59 +0000

One of the few shows I watch on TV is Grey’s Anatomy. The scripts are usually entertaining and the cast does a good job. However, over the past couple of years they have steadily been getting more graphic with the episodes. It has gotten so bad that tonight they showed a guy’s [...]

So Far So Good with SliceHost

Robbie — Mon, 13 Oct 2008 10:42:49 +0000

I continue to get a few emails asking what I’ve done since I reported problems with my web hosting provider Joyent. After quite a bit of research, I narrowed down my options to Engine Yard and SliceHost. Both companies have pretty good reputations in the Rails community. Engine Yard is a high [...]

Amazon S3 is no longer my CDN

Robbie — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 16:24:07 +0000

I’ve been very interested in Amazon’s cloud computing initiative. They’ve slowly been adding services to the point where some startups are able to use Amazon for storage, computing, and even database services. With StatSheet, I needed a simple content delivery network to host images, javascript, and stylesheets. S3 seemed like a good [...]

Latest book

Robbie — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 14:28:02 +0000

As I mentioned last year, I’ve stopped writing books and articles to pursue a new passion. Being the author or co-author for 10 books in 5 years can wear you out on writing ;-) However, an essay I wrote on blogging while at MIT has made it into a book that [...]

Landree is a year old!

Robbie — Tue, 03 Jun 2008 00:10:09 +0000

For the first time in my life I’m starting to feel “old” :-) Having a child unlike anything else really makes you see how fast time flies. But I wouldn’t trade this for anything:

The solution to my troubles with Windows

Robbie — Fri, 15 Feb 2008 02:26:17 +0000

That’s right. I’ve switched to a Mac. I bought a MacBook Pro a couple of years ago, but only used it sparingly. Now, I’ve turned in my Microsoft Club Card (btw, MS didn’t renew my MVP status this year and for good reason). There is no going back…at least for a while. [...]

Joyent’s problems continue

Robbie — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 22:25:29 +0000

I’m both a BingoDisk (online storage) and Accelerator (virtual private host) customer with Joyent. I’ve only been marginally satisfied with BingoDisk to date (WebDAV access is flaky to say the least), and my Accelerators are decent but have experienced quite a few IO problems from being on shared storage. As of last Saturday, BingoDisk and [...]

2007 in Review

Robbie — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:04:23 +0000

Personally, 2007 will be a hard year to beat. I saw the birth of my daughter and have been enjoying her ever since. Professionally, it has been a mixed bag, with some things going well and other things not so well. Obviously the new baby had an impact on my priorities. [...]

Fed up with Firefox AND IE AND Vista

Robbie — Sat, 29 Dec 2007 00:26:53 +0000

About a month ago, I described how I was fed up with Firefox memory problems and instability so I decided to try out IE7. Well I’m unhappy to report that my experience with IE hasn’t been much better. Yes, it also bloats up to several hundred MBs and over a period of a [...]