Sunday 17 October 2010

Quote for later

'The data storage model is clean, simple, and easy to learn, as is the programming model. SimpleDB excels at storing semi-structured data where the items (rows) are similar but not necessarily identical to each other."

Saturday 2 October 2010

Computer rental - £0.20 per day!


Another novel solution to running Windows applications when you are primarily Mac based - simply borrow someone else's computer. Only this computer was located in America, and I was in the UK.

The solution lies in using Amazon's suite of web services, appropriately enough called "Amazon Web Services". By loosely following this guide, I was able to boot a Windows 2008 server, remotely connect to it using CoRD, carry out the work I needed to do and then return the server resources to the cloud, for others to make use of.


A quick calculation suggests that typical running costs could be as low as 20p a day, or one pound a week, and I have no extra hardware to look after. A very cost effective solution for small jobs, or one-off tasks.