BNP and CSV

One for my reference only I should think. My bank only gives me statements as PDFs, my accountant wants .csv files.

The way to do it is the following:

Log on to the bank account.









Click on the Services link, then Télécharger ses relevés de comptes. You can leave all the settings as they are, it will download the last 30 days.

Unfortunately, despite the settings offered it only works for the last 30 days, so don't forget to do it.

EC2, Amleto and LightWave

Amazon's EC2 service can be used as a LightWave renderfarm, simply and cost effectively. I will write up how it can be done, right now, just notes.

• Elastic IP not needed.
• Make sure instances have enough memory for the scene.
• Amleto needs the master's IP address UDP does not work
• Add extra drive to basic instance to act as content drive
• install Dropbox and VNC
• When creating spot requests name them with the last bits of the IP address to better identify them (eg. 56.74.243.12 gets named 243.12)
• The security group needs stuff opened up, but I want to close ports that aren't needed down to minimize security risks
• Terminate instances using spot requests and cancel the requests otherwise you pay
• keep making AMIs as you refine your farm
• Add Amleto Server and Client to Startup folder
• Autologon for render nodes:Autologon

okay, so for a renderfarm you just need to install a LightWave trial edition on your first instance, which can be a t1.micro machine, it doesn't need to be bigger (except you might needs an EBS hard drive). Install Amleto (the render controller), Dropbox and umm, that's about it. Make an AMI from that setup and call it Farmer.

Then launch it again but this time load the Amleto client (and make sure it's in Startup) and Dropbox and Mark Russinovich's Autologon so that once you start those instances they begin rendering immediately.

Create an image of that setup and call it node and then you can request as many spot instances of that as you need and just view the Farmer computer and watch them come online and start rendering.

(Slightly updated 08.Jan.14 to make it a bit clearer)

The table below is based on 32/64-bit Windows machines and sorted on ECU, which is a measure of how rapid a node is. As you can see the t1.micro you will use as Farmer is not expensive to run a roughly 3 cents/hour. What you use for your nodes is up to you. The c machines are the ones designed for computing and I've highlighted a few good examples. Amazon updates the offerings quite regularly so this table will go out of date quite quickly I imagine.
 

	vCPU	ECU	Memory (GiB)	Instance Storage (GB)	Windows Usage
t1.micro	1	Variable	0.615	EBS Only	$0.035 per Hour
m1.small	1	1	1.7	1 x 160	$0.091 per Hour
m1.medium	1	2	3.75	1 x 410	$0.182 per Hour
c1.medium	2	5	1.7	1 x 350	$0.225 per Hour
c3.large	2	7	3.75	2 x 16 SSD	$0.233 per Hour
m1.large	2	4	7.5	2 x 420	$0.364 per Hour
c3.xlarge	4	14	7.5	2 x 40 SSD	$0.466 per Hour
m2.xlarge	2	6.5	17.1	1 x 420	$0.510 per Hour
m3.xlarge	4	13	15	2 x 40 SSD	$0.702 per Hour
m1.xlarge	4	8	15	4 x 420	$0.728 per Hour
g2.2xlarge	8	26	15	60 SSD	$0.767 per Hour
c1.xlarge	8	20	7	4 x 420	$0.900 per Hour
c3.2xlarge	8	28	15	2 x 80 SSD	$0.932 per Hour
i2.xlarge	4	14	30.5	1 x 800 SSD	$0.973 per Hour
m2.2xlarge	4	13	34.2	1 x 850	$1.020 per Hour
m3.2xlarge	8	26	30	2 x 80 SSD	$1.404 per Hour
c3.4xlarge	16	55	30	2 x 160 SSD	$1.864 per Hour
i2.2xlarge	8	27	61	2 x 800 SSD	$1.946 per Hour
m2.4xlarge	8	26	68.4	2 x 840	$2.040 per Hour
cg1.4xlarge	16	33.5	22.5	2 x 840	$2.600 per Hour
cc2.8xlarge	32	88	60.5	4 x 840	$2.970 per Hour
hi1.4xlarge	16	35	60.5	2 x 1024 SSD	$3.580 per Hour
c3.8xlarge	32	108	60	2 x 320 SSD	$3.728 per Hour
cr1.8xlarge	32	88	244	2 x 120 SSD	$3.831 per Hour
i2.4xlarge	16	53	122	4 x 800 SSD	$3.891 per Hour
hs1.8xlarge	16	35	117	24 x 2048	$4.931 per Hour
i2.8xlarge	32	104	244	8 x 800 SSD	$7.782 per Hour

Make your own Salmiari

If you have spent any time in Finland, or you have some friends from that snowy country, you may well have encountered a drink called Salmiakki Korstenkova, or Salmari for short. It's a vodka-based, salted liquorice-flavoured delight that will please any liquorice or aniseed lovers out there. It caused a stir in its native Finland when it was first put on sale because it was taxed as a liqueur but it had an ABV of 38% and thus had the largest alcoholic bang for the buck, or Euro, of any drink on the market. This meant it was the tipple of choice for hardened drinkers in Finland until it was removed from sale and put back on with a reduced ABV of 32%. This was how I tasted it in Los Angeles courtesy of a Finnish friend.

I thought I could perhaps make my own and discovered that the process was very simple. Take a good bottle of vodka, I had a litre bottle of Russian Standard, which maintains an ABV of 40% even though most have sunk to 37.5%. Drink about 200 ml to leave enough space in the bottle and furnish yourself with some Fazer Tyrkisk Peber from World of Sweets in Germany. The delivery was fast but expensive although the price of the liquorice seemed reasonable.

Have the vodka at room temperature and introduce one of the pastilles to the bottle every so often (I used about 80% of the tin in this bottle). Let them dissolve over the course of a couple of days, then put the bottle back in the freezer to serve at a low temperature in a few days' time. Yum.

Piracy encouraged

Cory Doctorow posted on Twitter about Lauren Beukes' new book (The Shining Girls) and I went to buy immediately since I really enjoyed Zoo City.

Amazon only sells a Kindle version naturally, so I wanted to find an .epub version. A South African site (Kalahari.com) sells it, but won't sell it to me because I'm not in South Africa. Piracy encouraged again! I will buy the paperback, which will sit on my shelf unread, like all of Cory's books, but I'll try and find a dodgy epub version to read. I want to shove money at this. I want to buy. I don't want Kindle format (and even the epub is DRMed).

No wonder the global economy is in a slump when people can't spend their money on things they want...