Opinion – Ian Paullin

December 30, 2017

Octopus 4.0 Review

Octopus 4.0 (v4.0.4) was officially released as non-release candidate on Tuesday, November 21st 2017. Since then, Octopus has already pushed forward to v4.1 since and are at v4.1.5 as of last week on Wednesday, December 20th. I’ve been using Octopus Deploy since the early version 2.1 days so to have 4.0 (or rather 4.1) now released to the masses, I’m...

Octopus Deploy/Opinion Comments: 0

December 8, 2015

The epic fail of Microsoft, Verizon and dead on arrival Lumia 950/950XL

It’s Tuesday, December 8th, 2015 and in the United States, we still have this stupid arrangement within the mobile phone industry with infrastructure cartels also known as carriers. On the other end of the mobile industry is the mobile phone manufacturers. Somewhere the two meet and that’s where consumers get the “privilege” to live – in this contorted hell between carriers...

Microsoft/Mobile/Opinion/Phones Comments: 2

October 26, 2015

The Zen of Deployment Automation Retrospective

Every now and then, I’m asked by one of our Octopus users: “Sometimes we need to change one or two files. Can I just deploy one or two files?” It’s at this point, I place my elbows on my desk and put my head in my hands. And I thought I was bad at letting go. Let me backtrack a little....

ALM/Continuous Deployment/Octopus Deploy/Opinion/Release Management Comments: 0

February 25, 2015

Octopus Deploy 3.0 details emerge

For months, I’ve been anticipating Octopus Deploy 3.0. The details have been slowly emerging over the past few months dating back to late November 2014 from several blog posts from the Octopus team. Each post has revealed some detail about the upcoming changes and technical details behind 3.0. Looking back on all the blog posts, I found four that explicitly state Octopus...

Octopus Deploy/Opinion Comments: 0

February 10, 2015

The Zen of Deployment Automation

I work with a lot of users using our Octopus Deploy server on a daily basis. It seems that not all, but many of our users don’t fully grasp the philosophy behind automated deployments so I thought a rant was in order. If you’re using Octopus Deploy or even thinking about implementing it, Octopus is indeed a great first step into automation...

ALM/Continuous Deployment/Octopus Deploy/Opinion Comments: 7

December 19, 2014

Thoughts on Octopus Deploy 2.6

Now that Octopus Deploy 2.6 was just released, I feel I can publish some of my opinions on it. I installed the pre-release on my Azure instance weeks ago just before Thanksgiving and I’ve just upgraded to the official release (2.6.0.778). Even though 2.6 is a minor update, it is a game changer. Changes listed on Octopus Deploy 2.6 are: Lifecycles to control promotion...

Announcement/Octopus Deploy/Opinion Comment: 1

December 1, 2014

Initial thoughts on Octopus Deploy 3.0 – from RavenDB back to SQL Server

This is pretty big news for any Octopus Deploy users. Paul Stovell has hinted a return back to SQL Server over the past few months in blog posts and uservoice forum comments, but from the public view, it’s all speculation and rumor until otherwise official. This weekend, Octopus made it official – version 3.0, they’re moving from RavenDB back to SQL...

Announcement/Databases/NoSQL/Octopus Deploy/Opinion/RavenDB/SQL Server Comments: 2

October 2, 2014

Windows 10 Tech Preview – first impressions

I think most people were surprised by the announcement of Windows 10. I’m not sure why the jump was necessary. Granted the number 10 is a psychologically satisfying number, it seems strange to jump over the version number 9; apparently no one wanted to be reminded about version number 8. I, for one, didn’t mind Windows 8. I preferred 8.1 though....

Operating Systems/Opinion/Technology/Windows 10 Comments: 0

February 22, 2013

Apple's regression from the desktop

I consider myself nowadays to be desktop OS (operating system) agnostic. I’ve used numerous operating systems and I enjoy trying them all out. I like some more than others of course. I recently tried re-installing the latest Mac OS X version 10.8 (Mountain Lion) on a Mac Mini; an experience that was less than awful for an Apple product. Initially,...

Apple/Operating Systems/Opinion/Technology Comments: 0

February 4, 2013

Backup master class: no attendance required

In October of last year, I ranted about Joel Hruska’s article at ExtremeTech about his “Backup Master Class” article on RAID. After reading the whole series of articles I realize Joel was expanding on his recent data loss experience. Now his articles have given me context. While I heavily criticized his article about RAID, his overall attempt at awareness to...

Articles/Opinion Comments: 0

Category: Opinion