wonkablog

My server has been going slightly slower than I’d like lately when it comes to serving up HTTP requests. Sometimes when I go into Wordpress or its admin, it would take up to a minute to finally go through. It was driving me kind of crazy. I like to blame it all on Jason though, since I bought the box from him, and he doesn’t know the first thing about building computers.

I think I may have fixed it though, and it was pretty simple, really. I went into my kernel config and started flipping all the network configs to modules instead of being compiled in. In the first place, I theorized, if the kernel really needs it, it can load it instead of me telling it to put it in there. I’m not sure how well that rationality holds in reality, but in my dreamland it sounds great and smells even better. Secondly, I went back and admitted to myself that I really don’t know that much about networking (which is putting it mildly), and turned off any features that said, “If you are unsure, say N”. Recompiled the kernel, rebooted, and lo and behold … it’s much, much snappier.

The kernel only ended up pulling in a few fundamental modules (which I was expecting it would), so I guess that cut out some of the overhead. I haven’t run any networking benchmarks or anything, but apache and ssh are noticably snappier. I haven’t had one timeout yet. The lesson to be learned here? Read the kernel docs, build your own stinking boxes, and don’t let me anywhere near your network.

Every now and then, I like to check in on some blogs from people whose ideas are completely contrary to mine just so I can keep my perspective in check. It makes for some interesting reading most of the time, and sometimes it really illustrates the point about how much some people are suffering from tunnel vision. I’m the same way in a lot of areas, I’m sure, but I try to keep an open mind all the same.

Anyway, there’s this one blog I checked out on a semi-regular basis called Coding Horror. Near as I can tell, the author is a heavy .NET user and advocate, but not so much an MS apologist. He does talk about coding styles and philosophy now and then which I find interesting. Up until today’s post, I didn’t realize how little he thought of open source software. That’s a good thing, though. That’s the kind of antagonism I’m looking for to help me broaden my own viewpoints.

His latest post is a rip on Eric Raymond’s article, How to Ask Questions the Smart Way.

Now, in all fairness, I do agree with him (the blog author) on a few points. Eric’s FAQ is long. Newbies probably wouldn’t find it on their own. I still don’t see how he comes to the conclusion from that it somehow “speaks volumes about the difficulty the open source community has had delivering usable software.” That’s just trolling, man.

Really — what is the only difference between closed and open software? That’s right, one is open, one is not. Let’s keep it simple, here. So with that simple difference, how can one assume such sweeping changes would take place between the two? All software suffer from the same maladies, regardless of the licensing scheme. There is some great commercial software, and some horrific shareware. Same with open source. Just because it’s open doesn’t make it magically better quality. I don’t think anyone in their right mind has ever made that contention. As a result, I summarily reject his opinion that closed source software is equally any better.

Alas, I’m preaching to the choir though, and not likely to say anything profound or new that anyone hasn’t heard before, so I’ll just stop.

I added this sweet netflix plugin for wordpress to my blog so that anyone can see what movies I’ve got at home that I’m watching. Or eventually watching … I had A Little Princess out for almost three months, and never did get around to seeing all of it. I’ll just buy it.

I’m pretty embarrassed to mention that, actually.  Although whether I’m talking about the movie or the length of time, I’m not sure.

I have been having a really poor string of movies lately.  None of them have been really bad, except maybe Poseidon, which was halfway interesting.  The last three movies I rented on Netflix though have all bombed for me, though.  I did watch Heaven Can Wait, though, which I haven’t seen like probably 20 years or more, and it was really good.  Too much language for me, but I enjoyed it.

I was pleasantly surprised to find out that Slashdot just switched over to the new CSS look and feel.  I hope it’s not another 10 years before they fix more bugs.  Also, has anyone else noticed there seem to be less trolls on /. lately?  I think they’ve all migrated over to digg.

I found this recent story interesting, about how there might be kiosks to burn your own DVDs.  The thought occurred to me that the MPAA seems absoutely adamant about keeping their releases on a physical medium.  It’s really not going to matter in the long, run I think.  On demand is just too likable to go away.  I’m really not one to complain about how I get my media, though.  In fact, I actually prefer having a physical disc over a download anyway.  It gives a feeling of ownership and value to what I purchased.  That, and I always forget to backup my files when I reformat my drives.

Sure, I could gripe about how DVDs have forced ads and things like that, but if I really wanted too, I could just easily rip all my DVDs, reburn them, tag them, store them on my computer, or whatever.  Actually, I’ll never rip any of my movies until I find a media player that has two simple features: bookmarking and Matroska chapter support.  Ogle has one, VLC has the other.  I should put a bounty on the bugs.

My RMA’d notebook harddrive that I was going to use in my Mini-ITX system came in the mail yesterday, and I’ve been fiddling around trying to get it working. So far I haven’t had any luck. I don’t think the drive even works. I went over to PC Club and picked up a 2.5 to 3.5 IDE converter. First I hooked it up to the mini, but the BIOS didn’t detect the harddrive. I figured the cables were just being picky so I took it out and tried just a regular sized IDE harddrive, and that loaded up just fine. Hmm. Then I tried the cable in my desktop, and same thing. BIOS doesn’t make a peep, and booting a Linux LiveCD doesn’t mention anything about the IDE that indicates there is a disk there. I tried booting up again, and this time I held the drive in my hand I couldn’t feel any activity from it whatsoever. I’m guessing it was DOA.

So right now I have two options: get a new notebook harddrive or put an IDE harddrive in my mini case. Physically, I can fit it in the case, but it’s like cramming twelve Twinkies in your mouth. Sure you can do it, but it’s not a great idea. Ah well. I hate to spend even more money on this thing, but it sure would be fun to have it working 100%.

I’ve been playing around with nuvexport a bit more, and discovered that you can export to XviD with a two-pass encoding. Pretty cool. Depending on how many export features you use, it can take an incredibly long time. With all the extra options ticked on a two-pass XviD export, it took 3 and half hours to re-encode one 30 minute episode, at about 8 frames per second. When I export to DivX with no deinterlacing and no noise reduction, it runs at about 48 fps. Neither one is still quite as fast compared to just running mencoder and just re-encoding the video (about 90 fps), but I’m not quite sure what other steps nuvexport is running.

It’s not a big deal, really. I’m just glad I can actually export them to AVI in the first place. Now, though, I’ve got three shows I’m recording and manually cutting on a regular basis because the TV DVDs are completely missing in action: Malcolm in the Middle, 7th Heaven and Without a Trace.

It’s very frustrating when the studios (Fox, Paramount, Warner Bros., respectively) release only one or two seasons and then we hear nothing else for years. I’ve heard that most people won’t even buy the first season unless they see that the studio is “committed” to the series and has released more than just a few sets. Personally, I don’t much see the point of letting something so many people worked on so hard just sit on a shelf somewhere when people are willing to pay good money for it. Is it any wonder torrents are so popular? There’s some stuff you just can’t get any other way.

I went to Institute the other night with Jared. That was the first time I think I’ve stepped in there for at least two years. What a slacker. The first twenty minutes of it, I was totally engrossed, but after that my tolerance level maxed out, so I sat there for another hour just waiting to leave.

I did pick up some cool tidbits while I was actually paying attention, though. The best one was that the teacher talked about how in Lehi’s dream, that those who held to the rod had to go through the world, instead of around it. That kinda struck home.

I can remember a few more things than that, but I’d totally butcher the delivery, so I’ll just hold off. It was cool to go, though.