I just wanted to share some technical aspects of the Find Michelle site and some lessons learned.

In one day, Friday, April 20, 2012, over 55 gigs of data was transferred (first picture). This was shortly after major media outlets started linking to the site as well as many of her friends tweeting the URL to celebrities (in one case, Rick Mercer retweeted it to his ~268,000 followers). The second picture shows the average hourly transfer rate (so the spike was between 8pm-9pm; 80-100M bits/sec).

I had been hosting all of the images and documents on my host, but after seeing how much traffic was being taken, I had to move the images to Imgur.com and documents/files to Dropbox (public folder). FYI, Dropbox allows 20 gigs/day of traffic for public links, and Imgur offers unlimited bandwidth (only requirement is your image(s) must receive a hit a day or else it’s deleted).

In terms of the actual page itself, it was a simple HTML page that I had designed to be client-based. If the site was server-based, my server wouldn’t have been able to handle the sheer server load. I used Google’s API to load the latest news reports, Facebook’s API to integrate the Facebook page, and Twitter’s API for both the official Twitter account her friends had set up and for a feed that tracked the hash tag. (in short, the site centralized activity in the news, on Facebook and on Twitter)

I also learned of a tool Facebook provides: https://developers.facebook.com/tools/debug With this tool, I was able to refresh their cached “Share Link” copy of the site to change it from my host’s landing page to the actual site content itself.

A bit of social analysis, most hits to the site were at 6pm:

First bar is Thursday, April 19 (site was launched), second cyan bar is Friday, April 20 (things started picking up), third blue bar is Saturday, April 21 (decent amount of traffic for a weekend)

It’s not every day you are able to become a part of something of this scale: scalability, stress-testing, responsiveness and overall intuition are vital.

Simply observe how the person interacts with their parental figures: if they still talk (like best friends or like enemies), if they live together, if they visit each other often, etc. Don’t intrude on your interest to find this out and don’t pry (e.g. “Hey, so tell me about your mom.“). It’s quite easy to observe without asking weird questions: just spend time with your interest and you’ll find out how close they are with their parental figures. If they don’t mention their parental figures at all, then that’s a possible red flag.

The main concept is this: a positive and healthy relationship between the parental figure(s) and your interest implies that the parental figure raised their child well. This would lead one to believe there is a high probability the interest will be a good parent in the future. If you’re thinking: “WHOA, I should think of my crush as a parent already?“, then disregard this post, but it is something that most of us will or should inevitably consider.

I don’t mind if I get referred to as a nerd/geek for this, but one must consider how well their interest aligns with their family, and how one aligns with their interest’s family. Sort of like strategic alignment for implementation projects in an organization: how well it aligns with the organization’s vision, mission statement, culture, and all that fun stuff.

I took a few key theories away from my psychology/sociology courses, one of them is socialization and how family is the primary socialization agent for individuals. An example of this are feral/isolated/captive children where some documented cases involve children who don’t understand basic linguistics and communication methods. Moving beyond the basics and moving higher up the hierarchy to more complex items such as virtues (formed on values), the importance of positive, constant relationships between parents and their child/children cannot be emphasized enough and will reflect in their child/children themselves.

There are exceptions to this. Sometimes a person has no parental figure to look up to,  or for some reason has no contact with them. Sometimes as time passes by, you find out that their parental figure(s) are, in fact, despicable with warrant. And of course, an individual can make choices that lead them to be a better or worse person than their parental figures not just based on their interactions.

Perception is everything, so don’t believe just what you see, use your other four senses as well (where applicable of course, don’t go licking everything). Take this concept as your grain of salt, with a grain of salt as well.

“The offer that Local 79 members will be voting on is fair, reasonable and affordable,” Mr. Holyday said in a statement. “It is very similar to the Local 416 agreement ratified last month and we are confident that Local 79 members will ratify the deal.’”

http://news.nationalpost.com/2012/03/26/labour-proposal-great-news-for-toronto-doug-holyday-says-ahead-of-wednesday-inside-workers-vote/

I remember thinking to myself: “Well, I’d like to see them NOT ratify it just to prove him wrong”.

Lo and behold, three days later:

Only two of the four bargaining units representing City of Toronto inside workers voted Wednesday to accept the city’s final contract offer, leaving the possibility of a lockout or strike involving part-time recreation workers.

While full-time and part-time units accepted the deal, both part-time recreation workers and long-term care workers voted against the deal, which union leadership had decided not to endorse.

http://www.thestar.com/news/article/1153524–cupe-79-inside-workers-split-on-city-s-offer-recreation-centres-could-close?bn=1

Perhaps some CUPE 79 workers felt the same way I did.

Lessons:

• you can never accurately predict future outcomes based on the outcomes from a similar past event, you can really only draw lessons from the past
• don’t force your expectations on others: people need space, give them their space
• be humble

I wonder what Mr. Holyday is saying now.

Needing reassurance. This isn’t the main thing about this entry, but I just wanted to touch on it. There is a spectrum of needing reassurance: Low = Medium = High. Needing reassurance and self-confidence levels negatively correlate where the less you need reassurance, the more self-confident you are.

Those who don’t seek reassurance often can either be perceived positively, as “mature”, a “pillar of strength”, “a Chuck Norris/Rambo”, or negatively, “antisocial”, “foolish”, and “arrogant”. This depends strongly on what they’re able to achieve without needing reassurance, or a vote of confidence from another individual about their own confidence.

Skipping the Average level (average = average), jumping straight to those who seek reassurance often, the same case as the above, can be seen in a positive (“consensus-building”, “collaborative”, “inclusive”), or negative (“needy”, “uncertain”, “incompetent”) light. What matters is being successful after gathering reassurance (and ideas) from others.

So one thing is common in both examples: there is nothing wrong with being a “nomad” (low required reassurance) or being someone who naturally asks for reassurance from others. There are pros and cons to both; the common theme is being able to embrace where you fall on this spectrum and pull things off. If you’re similar to me, someone who has a slightly below-average level of self-confidence (and a slightly higher need of reassurance), I go to different people for basically a vote of confidence, similar to saying “You’re in the right direction, keep up the good work”. I’ve come to embrace this because it doesn’t hurt to get a second opinion on things and include other people along the way (in projects, initiatives, and life in general).

Giving reassurance. This is where things get interesting (for me at least). Intrinsically, I’m a highly analytical and (reasonably) skeptical person. When people (try to) reassure me, I can’t help but be skeptical and initially be doubtful. This will probably be easier to understand with examples, so here are some:

• “Can I borrow your essay? I swear I won’t submit it ad-verbatim”
• “… unless I procrastinate to the point where I will copy it word-for-word, submit it, and get you in academic trouble.”
• “You can trust me.”
• Trust, to me, is a precious thing. I’ve learned to cautiously invest trust in people due to bad past experiences shattering the trust I had in them.
• Yes, I “invest” trust; I don’t give it freely. If I invest trust, just like money, I expect trust in return. Don’t say it without being genuine about it.
• “Don’t worry, I’m okay.”
• I get worried if someone says this to me, and I have a natural need to make sure they’re really “okay”
• To me, this relates to reverse psychology: either you’re really not okay, or you are intending on getting another person to reassure you you’re okay
• “You won’t find a better price anywhere else.”
• No explanation needed

So, how would one reassure a person like me?

• Unless I’ve come to know how you are/interact with other people (e.g. genuinely as a friend with good values or shallow in order to just leech off of me), I will be skeptical
• Have a positive track record and be able to pull things off; have things to support what you say
• Mention the two words “trust me” to me with extreme care
• I’m mostly skeptical of people who talk “too much” (in the sense of being like a salesperson), so don’t fluff up what you say and don’t repeat things over and over. One of my personal pet peeves is people who say the same things more than once.
• Repetition, to me, equates to uncertainty, fear and/or hidden intentions behind what is being said

Another point of this entry is not to give reassurance/receive reassurance too easily. Don’t be easily blinded by the words of others, and don’t give reassurance to others where you’re not being sincere about it. It’s safer to be skeptical than not, but don’t be paranoid.

This will be a short and sweet post on Dropbox, how to get it, and how to get as much free space as possible.

1. Registration is free and easy, sign up here: http://db.tt/L7iTxBG8 (<= click on this link to register, and you’ll start off with 2.25GB instead of 2GB!)
2. After you’re done, go to this page and do all of the steps to get free space: https://www2.dropbox.com/gs
3. Get 768MB free here: http://www.dropbox.com/free
4. Are you a student? Check this page out: https://www2.dropbox.com/edu
5. Get 3GB free by testing out an experimental build (time-limited opportunity): http://forums.dropbox.com/topic.php?id=55007
6. Refer your friends: https://www2.dropbox.com/referrals

That’s basically it, you should be able to get over 6-7GB of free space easily if you do the above 6 steps. Not bad eh?

Now, for how to actually use Dropbox, I use it in different ways:

• Collaboration: I share a folder with friends/colleagues and we dump files for projects we’re working on in it
• Todo List/Scratchpad: a plain text document to keep notes in that’s accessible from almost anywhere.
• Universal portable apps: check out http://portableapps.com/ for portable apps. Just download what you want (e.g. Portable Firefox), drop it in your Dropbox folder into its own folder, and use it. The benefit of having it on Dropbox is that your bookmarks and settings will be synced automatically with your other computers!
• Some other useful apps to use with this method: KeePass, Chrome Portable
• TrueCrypt: for private and sensitive files, I create a Truecrypt container file and put it in my Dropbox folder. It will automatically sync on all of your computers.
• Public downloads: you can easily share files with Dropbox => drop files in the “Public” folder and right-click => Dropbox => Copy public link and send it to your friends/family or post it on the Internet!
• Backup: and the most obvious usage of Dropbox, using it to back up your files (especially school files). Once your files are on Dropbox, you can access your files by logging into Dropbox’s site!
• Torrent Downloading: if you have a laptop and a desktop, where your desktop’s always on, you can set your torrent program to watch a folder for new torrent files and automatically download them. Set such a folder as one in your Dropbox folder, so that you can download torrent files onto your netbook and copy them into that folder, which your desktop will pick up and automatically start downloading.
• Surveillance: if you have a webcam at home and a program like Yawcam that supports motion detection image capturing, you can set the output folder for saved images in Yawcam to be a folder on your Dropbox

I hope this helps in some shape or form!