This last couple of years haven’t been the best for Research in Motion. No matter what they do, they seem to be attracting derision from all sides and seem unable to turn around the perception that they are a failing company in the eyes of US media.

With the mis-fired launch of the PlayBook and its delayed updates, the limited impact of BB7 and the further delays of the BlackBerry 10 phones, it seems as though everything’s bleak. RIM is pushing the company to the brink as sales are falling and confidence in the company’s ability to deliver, by both pundits and fans, is gradually eroded.

I was thinking about what RIM could do over the next year to maintain trust and interest in what they are doing. From my perspective I have 10 BlackBerry ‘paper cuts’ that have annoyed me and irritated me for too long now. If they could get these things fixed now before the new phones hit, then they benefit those phones, the current phones AND make BlackBerry users happier. For now.

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The way I like to develop is to create specific virtual machines for my web development.

The chore is to start the machine, mount the file system and then open up your IDE. All a nuisance that takes time. So, I’ve taken to writing a simple Bash script that will do the grunt work for you. All you have to do is put in your settings, save it and run it!

This will mount the VM’s web folder onto your file system and let you know it’s connected. All you need to do is then start your IDE of choice! (more…)

The new Toastmasters logo

Now I’ve had access to the branding materials I wanted to share my thoughts about the Toastmasters branding and what it means to clubs like Ambassadors Speakers Club.

First of all, the branding overhaul was very much needed in my opinion. I think that consistency is a key factor is showing Toastmasters as a unified organisation and this is the start of addressing those issues.

The new logo and tagline, ‘Where Leaders Are Made’, is fresher and gives the organisation a less ‘stuffy’ feel to it. I always felt that the cross-gavels logo gave the wrong impression about Toastmasters and I was loathe to use it in our club’s website design.

The Good Bits

The colours give a classic, yet contemporary feel. I’ve always felt that the maroon / ochre colour instills a sense of integrity authority for instance. It’s the style that wouldn’t be out of place in Westminister. I’m sure that the overall scheme was investigated with great detail.

The sample marketing material is great – it gets across the keys points of Toastmasters to non-members.

I won’t wax lyrical about why these things are good improvements, as I think that the guidelines book and presentations make that clear and for the most part I agree.

However, it’s not all undulating praise – I want to share some reservations that I have about the rebrand and in true Toastmasters style, offer some points for improvement. (more…)

I don’t know if it’s around the web at the moment. But Google+ is finally available for users who have Google+ email addresses,

This means that Google Profiles has finally been enabled for the same users and domains, so we should be seeing some more interoperability between Google related sites.

I only noticed that it was available because the web mail interface had a new look available that matches a number of profiled sites.

I’m often switching between different Amazon AWS accounts. So to speed things along I’ve set up some simple scripts to easily switch between accounts while at the command line

On Linux (aws_setup):

#!/bin/bash
export EC2_URL=https://eu-west-1.ec2.amazonaws.com
export EC2_CERT=/home/john/cert-12345678901234567890123456789012.pem
export EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=/home/john/pk-12345678901234567890123456789012.pem

Once saved, run chmod +x aws_setup
On Windows (aws_setup.cmd):

SET EC2_URL=https://eu-west-1.ec2.amazonaws.com
SET EC2_CERT=C:\Users\John\cert-12345678901234567890123456789012.pem
SET EC2_PRIVATE_KEY=C:\Users\John\pk-12345678901234567890123456789012.pem

Save as many files with the paths to your various AWS key pairs, and simply run the script from within a terminal before using the ec2 tools.

NOTE, when you run the scripts on Linux (and I guess Macs), add an extra dot before you run it. This will allow the environment variable to persist when the script ends.

. ./aws_setup

Here are some simple commands to get you started with using Amazon EC2:

ec2dim
Displays your account’s AMIs that are on Amazon

ec2run ami-XXXXXXXX
This launches your Amazon EC2 instance. Use your own or one of Amazon’s AMI IDs

ec2din
Describes your running instances with AMI and instance IDs

ec2dvol
Lists your account’s volumes and their status

ec2attvol vol-XXXXXXXX -i i-XXXXXXXX -d xvdf
Attaches an Elastic Block Storage device to your running instance

ec2detvol i-XXXXXXXX
Detaches the storage volume from an instance (use -f to force)

ec2stop i-XXXXXXXX
Stops a running instance so that you can perform maintenance on it

ec2minatt i-XXXXXXXX
Modifies an instance attribute such as the instance type

ec2start i-XXXXXXXX
Resumes your stopped instance

ec2kill i-XXXXXXXX
Terminates your running instance