WARNING (2017-04-06): I've recently found that something in this setup is corrupting NFS traffic between my machines. I'm going to try to isolate it at some point, but be wary.

I've recently built a personal file server (running Ubuntu 16.04), and elected to try connecting it to my main workstation (a macpro6,1 running macOS Sierra) with a pair of bonded 1Gb/s Ethernet links.

Using the default settings does work, however I don't seem to have any control over how the link is negotiated with LACP. It results in using one of the packet hashing modes that puts entire TCP connections on one link or the other. This seems great for stability, and aggregate throughput, however my use case has be mounting the server via NFS or SMB (which runs via a single connection).

In that case, I'm not getting much benefit out of the bond for my primary use case of setting up the bond at all!

Early on, I discovered that if I set both sides of the bond to be "static", then they would both default into a round-robin style packet distribution. In this mode, I can hit 220-230MB/s while doing file operations!

The problem: macOS spontaneously reverts the bond mode back to LACP.

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Nearly two years ago, GitHub introduced contribution calendars on everyone's profile, which roughly visualize how frequently one has been "contributing" for the past year. Through 2013, mine displayed some interesting patterns and features, many of which scream that they have a story:

Having used GitHub as the primary code host for multiple full-time jobs, and a few growing open-source projects, I now believe that these calendars introduce, for me, two negative effects that vastly outweigh their benefits.

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The second GitHub Data Challenge recently finished, and GitHub just announced the winners.

The first place went to The Open Source Report Card, which generates an English prose summary of your GitHub activity (from January to March 2013), and provides some charts to back it up.

My report card for that period is somewhat eerie (to me):

Mike is a serious Pythonista (one of the top 13% most active Python users) who loves pushing code. Mike is a nine-to-fiver who seems to work best in the mid-afternoon.

[...]

It seems—from their activity streams—that Mike and westernx are probably friends or at least virtual friends. With this in mind, it's worth noting that westernx is less foul mouthed

I would love to see a chart about my tendency to swear in commit messages.

I just started a new toy project for extracting Haikus from straight prose. It is currently in very rough shape and not very capable, but it is still fun to play with.

Choice examples from Emily Carr's "Klee Wyck" include:

Beaches Trees Held Back
By Rocky Cliffs Pointed Fir
Trees Climbing In Dark

Tipped Forward In Sleep
And Rolled Among The Bundles
The Old Man Shipping

The Sun And The Moon
Crossed Ways Before Day Ended
By And By The Bulls

Another example from Sun Tzu's "The Art of War":

Retained In Command
The General That Hearkens
Not To My Counsel

Watch the project on GitHub to see it develop.