I’ve recently been doing quite a bit of work with Amazon Web Services. Over the past few weeks I have been developing a simple way to manage multi-node applications using EC2. Much of this is very project-specific but the methodology could easily be applied to a wide variety of deployments. The techniques described here were inspired by this blog post. This article is intended for people who are already somewhat familiar with Amazon Web Services — for a brief introduction to S3 and EC2, view my previous blog post. If you’re ready for it, read on.

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Apparently, this Italian TV personality was able to con his way into the Bernabeu recently to get VIP treatment for a Champions League game against AS Roma. He did so by pretending to be, of all people, American movie star Nicholas Cage. Interestingly, his C-list Italian celebrity wasn’t enough to afford him the luxury (on his own continent no less) reserved for the star of Con Air.

As someone who has managed to sneak into more than one sporting event where I didn’t belong and/or had previously been kicked out, I would like to salute you, Paolo Calabresi. Your accomplishment has proven to the world that anyone with enough balls and enough confidence can pull off the best seats in the house and a chance to shoot the shit with the team prez.

I will leave you with this amazing tale to inspire all those fans out there- remember, just look like you know what you’re doing.

I was reading a couple of my favorite blogs recently and I saw a few examples of what is starting to become commonplace among the blogging community. Whether it’s somebody trying to find an obscure painting, or a well-known software firm attempting to secure an advertising contract, it’s become fairly common to see people trying to get something done via a blog post.

While it immediately struck me as somewhat lazy to outsource these tasks to your readers, I realized rather quickly that it makes a ton of sense. I’m sure that Jason at 37 Signals did his research trying to find the best marketing firm, but he’s limited to the resources of one or a few people. And I’m sure that Anthony scoured the web and Google images to try and find his painting to no avail. BEFORE they posted. But I guess that’s one of the good things about being a high-profile blog (that’s right I consider vdov high-profile) – you have the kind of distribution that makes doing something like this on your own almost selling yourself short.

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