theBside

I know what a Launch Party is.  This video advertisement for Windows 7 makes it all sound so creepy though.  And who are the writers of this stuff?  And the poor actors – they’re so rife with stereotypes that are trying not to be stereotypes that I can’t imagine how many takes it took to get some of those lines out.

The whole thing feels so terribly manufactured – could anyone possibly think it is a good ad?  Which makes me wonder who they’re targetting for this.  Which then makes me wonder if this is simply a viral marketing effort, a more sureptitious means of getting the word out than a simple ad.

Whatever the case, I won’t be holding or attending a Windows 7 Release Party.  Sorry.

It was only a matter of time – they’re making a sequel to Tron.  Hopefully it turns out as enjoyable as the original, though that might be touch as expectations are probably way out of whack.

Yeah!  Now what about those pesky Conservatives?

Optimize WordPress for speed

Here are the results from my current (old) system for comparison:

Benchmarking thebside.ca (be patient).....done

Server Software:        Apache/2.2.9
Server Hostname:        thebside.ca
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        26643 bytes

Concurrency Level:      10
Time taken for tests:   126.358 seconds
Complete requests:      100
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      2716600 bytes
HTML transferred:       2664300 bytes
Requests per second:    0.79 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       12635.836 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       1263.584 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          21.00 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    5  21.1      1     108
Processing:  3432 12418 1510.4  12669   15194
Waiting:     2785 7833 906.1   7867    9657
Total:       3433 12423 1507.4  12669   15195

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50%  12669
66%  12956
75%  13106
80%  13145
90%  13978
95%  14549
98%  14919
99%  15195
100%  15195 (longest request)

Specs of the old machine:


Athlon XP 2100+, 756 MB RAM

hdparm -tT /dev/sda1

/dev/sda1:
Timing cached reads:   336 MB in  2.00 seconds = 167.97 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:  192 MB in  3.03 seconds =  63.40 MB/sec

Now below are the numbers for my new hardware, though they may deteriorate as I add additional services.

Benchmarking localhost (be patient).....done

Server Software: Apache/2.2.11
Server Hostname: localhost
Server Port: 80

Document Path: /
Document Length: 28407 bytes

Concurrency Level: 10
Time taken for tests: 12.385 seconds
Complete requests: 100
Failed requests: 0
Write errors: 0
Total transferred: 2890200 bytes
HTML transferred: 2840700 bytes
Requests per second: 8.07 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request: 1238.451 [ms] (mean)
Time per request: 123.845 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate: 227.90 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
min mean[+/-sd] median max
Connect: 0 9 30.1 0 119
Processing: 782 1220 163.2 1205 1781
Waiting: 499 790 145.2 757 1344
Total: 782 1229 182.8 1205 1781

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50% 1205
66% 1243
75% 1286
80% 1308
90% 1516
95% 1666
98% 1734
99% 1781
100% 1781 (longest request)

And the new server’s specs?

AMD Athlon Dual Core 5050e, 4GB RAM

hdparm -tT /dev/sda

/dev/sda:
Timing cached reads: 1292 MB in 2.00 seconds = 646.06 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 252 MB in 3.00 seconds = 83.94 MB/sec

So things are looking good!

A fan-made sequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy looks great from the trailers.  It will be released for free on this Sunday.

For those of us who are Monty Python fans, they’re finally pissed off enough with people putting horrible VHS-quality videos of their skits online that they’ve made their own video channel on YouTube.

No Monty Python-type pun here (as tempting as it is), just a simple Huzzah!

Marley’s best friend (BFF) Kendall gave her the neatest gift when Cohen arrived – her very own digital camera.  She has taken to it enormously, and is constantly taking pictures of pretty much anything that interests her.  What interests her?  Well, I’ve put together a little page of all the pictures she’s taken to date, so have a look.

Note that she had a little help with a few of them, but a few of her own solo compositions really stand out as really interesting … such as

Poppa catching a snooze at the hospital

Her very first self portrait

Some of them give us a glimpse into what it is like to be her height

Steep stairs

Under the table

A new talent has been revealed here – I’m really looking forward to seeing what her next 400 pictures look like!

Oh Look, Daddy smiling with teeth!

P.S. She’s been given absolute access to everything, and now that she’s taking pictures of these things we’re going to have to keep an eye on the appropriateness of some of her subject matter.  In the meantime, if you happen to see an inappropriate picture please notify me.  You can give me the picture ID by hovering your mouse over the thumbnail, it will be something like “IMG_0059.JPG”, for example.  Thanks for your diligence citizens!

In reading my daily dumb quotes calendar this morning I came across a brief story of Engineer Charles Steinmetz.  I’ll quote another site that has done a write up:

Here’s an interesting anecdote, as told by Charles M. Vest, President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, during commencement on June 4th, 1999. “In the early years of this century, Steinmetz was brought to General Electric’s facilities in Schenectady, New York. GE had encountered a performance problem with one of their huge electrical generators and had been absolutely unable to correct it. Steinmetz, a genius in his understanding of electromagnetic phenomena, was brought in as a consultant – not a very common occurrence in those days, as it would be now. Steinmetz also found the problem difficult to diagnose, but for some days he closeted himself with the generator, its engineering drawings, paper and pencil. At the end of this period, he emerged, confident that he knew how to correct the problem. After he departed, GE’s engineers found a large “X” marked with chalk on the side of the generator casing. There also was a note instructing them to cut the casing open at that location and remove so many turns of wire from the stator. The generator would then function properly. And indeed it did. Steinmetz was asked what his fee would be. Having no idea in the world what was appropriate, he replied with the absolutely unheard of answer that his fee was $1000. Stunned, the GE bureaucracy then required him to submit a formally itemized invoice. They soon received it. It included two items: 1. Marking chalk “X” on side of generator: $1. 2. Knowing where to mark chalk “X”: $999.”

Now other sites have him asking for $10,000, while others have him simply pacing around the machines for a few moments and figuring it out.  I prefer the quoted version because it feels the most real to me.

A nice little story about the value of knowledge.  Note that he lived from 1865 to 1923.