Author: Darian

That Ain’t Right

Shaking_head_animatedI read a disturbing post last week; it looks like someone is using photos from a blogger’s personal site to create a meme of characters from Scandal. The rub is that the stolen photos were of the blogger’s kid. From the sheknows.com blog:

There is some good and some bad to having cute kids. The good news is that they make great photography subjects and models. The bad news is, others agree and sometimes take that fact too far — even stealing my family’s photos and turning them into memes for popular TV shows.

I’d thought I’d seen it all. That was until a friend and die-hard Scandal fan direct messaged me a photo of my kids’ heads Photoshopped in with Olivia Pope and Fitzgerald Grant. She found it on a Scandal fan page and thought I should know.

You can read the full blog post here: http://www.sheknows.com/parenting/articles/1101235/scandal-meme-stolen-family-photo#

Getting Started with my Blog on AWS

I workAWS_Services as a technology consultant, and it’s been some time since I’ve been hands-on (these days, I typically architect solutions on paper and the work with technology architects, designers, and developers to implement the solution). This blog will give me the opportunity, in a live environment, to get my hands dirty. Along the way, I’ll document what I’ve done, so others can follow (or use for their own purposes).

Step 1: Take AWS training. The best place to get instant hands-on experience is aws.qwiklabs.com. The website provides everything you need to learn about AWS and to build working examples.1

Step 2: Sign up for a free account. And yes, free means free, for the most part (more on that later).

Step 3: Build a LAMP server. The instructions here (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/install-LAMP.html) are easy peasy.

Step 4: Install WordPress. Again, super simple instructions (http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/UserGuide/hosting-wordpress.html) Continue reading “Getting Started with my Blog on AWS”

Hello world!

Hello-WorldWelcome to my blog. It’s still a work in progress, and it’s purpose will change over time… but for now, its serves the following purposes:

  1. Exercising the “right hemisphere” of my brain, as I share my thoughts on music, technology, books, hobbies, etc….
  2. Gives me a place to rehost posts from my old blog
  3. Helps me to grow my experience with AWS and other technologies that I’m becoming familiar with. Today, I’m hosting my own WordPress instance on a LAMP server that I installed on an AWS EC2 micro instance. I’m using S3 to host the images and media. Over time, I hope to use AWS (or scripting in PHP) to
    1. write a program (or use AWS media technologies or Lambda) to convert m4a files for mp3 (it’s easier to share my music in mp3 format)
    2. change the WP-S3 plugin to use S3 infrequent storage (no need for the redundancy that S3 provides)
    3. convert the DB from MySQL to Amazon Dynamo (or another noSQL db).

So, thanks for checking out my blog and feel free to leave a comment!

dbj

My Favorite Albums: Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star

blackstarby_yumgsta-d4qil6k

I first heard Black Star in the summer of 1999. I was between my senior and “super senior1” years in college and was interning in New York (working on Long Island, living in Brooklyn). It was a special time in my life; I was evaluating my next steps through all prisms (social, spiritual, economic) and was making key decisions about the direction I wanted to take.

New York was the perfect backdrop for my sometimes poignant, often pointless ponderings on life. The city was a hotbed of activity and I took in my fair share –readings at Nuyorican Poets Cafe, jazz at the Blue Note, way-too-late nights out at countless Reggae clubs, and long walks throughout Manhattan.

It was on one of those long walks that I came across Black Star; by chance I walked into a free concert in Central Park. N’Dea Davenport was the featured performer. She was good… but the real stars were the lyrical duo of Mos2 and Talib. They flowed effortlessly on stage, as if they had been doing it for years.

I wrote their names down in my quotes book (along with the line “Your skin is the inspiration for cocoa butter”) and went on about my business… forgetting about them after a while.

Continue reading “My Favorite Albums: Mos Def and Talib Kweli are Black Star”

My Favorite Albums: Al Green’s Call Me

Call MeI’ve never used this phase before (and I hope to never use it again), but nothing else describes Al Green’s Call Me as well as the oft-used term “Grown Folks Music”.

I was first introduced to a few cuts from Call Me in the summer of 1995, on a double date 1 with some friends from high school. My buddy (RIP Leon) supplied the wheels and the music – a 1991 Saab and Al Green’s Best Of. While I knew most of the tracks, two in particular stood out: “Call Me (Come Back Home)” and “You Ought To Be With Me”. There was a heft and grit in Al Green’s voice that I hadn’t heard since discovering Billie Holiday. He was raw and vulnerable…. but at the same time, tough, proud, and matter-of-fact.

Continue reading “My Favorite Albums: Al Green’s Call Me”