HYPERAXE

Oftentimes, the default configuration of your servers would not fit your needs. Trust me on this.

One good example would be the Apache configuration. When I tried installing Apache on my VPS, I just installed it manually, hardened the security, configured my websites and that’s it. I then became busy for a few weeks, and never got the chance to check on my VPS and if everything was optimized. Besides, all my websites seems to be working well so I never really thought there’s an urgent need to optimize things. It was only when I added a community website that’s taking quite a number of hits a day that I took the time to look into how my VPS resources were being used. I’m glad I did ‘coz I was surprised to see that I am running out of memory, and come to think of it it shouldn’t happen at all considering that the hits are not that much to bring down even a small-scale VPS with around 256MB of RAM.

So I double-checked my configuration and saw that there’s quite a lot of HTTP process being spawned.  This seems to be an overkill with my current traffic. By default, Apache’s configuration for the Prefork MPM module would be:

<IfModule prefork.c>
StartServers 8
MinSpareServers 5
MaxSpareServers 20
ServerLimit 256
MaxClients 256
MaxRequestsPerChild 4000
</IfModule>

This was too much and I don’t think it’s worth creating a lot of spare server proceses which I don’t actually use. Moreover, I had to setup the server limits to fit my current VPS resources. So what I modified the configuration this way.

<IfModule prefork.c>
StartServers 1
MinSpareServers 1
MaxSpareServers 5
ServerLimit 5
MaxClients 5
MaxRequestsPerChild 4000
</IfModule>

After these settings, I saw a lot of improvements on my server. Even on the busiest time of the day, my VPS would only be using around 50%-60% of its RAM, and still my websites’ response time was still quick. This won’t be the ideal setup for everyone, since there’s a lot of things you need to consider such as website traffic, the services you run in parallel with Apache, and some other internal server workings that differs from one user to another. There’s also a lot of Apache optimization that I had not mentioned here ( but I’ll find time to blog about it soon), but as a rule of thumb on most server configuration, “Don’t create what you can’t use, and don’t use what you can’t create”.

I tried Joomla a couple of years ago but never really had a live implementation of it. I just did a simple install, played around with a couple of configuration and that was it. It was only a few weeks back when a couple of schoolmates back in my high school days suggested that we create an online community that we can use to communicate, share stuffs with each other, and even just simply reminisce our old times together. It was then that I tried registering a domain for us and setting up a community web site. I decided to make use of Joomla for this and I never really thought how easy it was. This time around, I really tried digging in to all its bits and pieces as well as customize it based on comments and suggestions from my old schoolmates.

My first impression with Joomla, is that it’s a great Content Management System (CMS). Setting it up and configuring it for your needs is so easy that you can have an online community in just a couple of minutes. Basically, I just downloaded its installer, followed the online installation instruction, and that’s it, I have my own Joomla based website. Installing additional modules and plug-ins can also be done in jiffy through the admin interface. You can just download the module/plug-in installer on your local machine, your server, or even just make use of its download link, and everything would be installed for you.

I made use of FireBoard as an integrated forum on Joomla, and it’s pretty cool and easy to setup as well. Not to mention that it has all the features we need such as being able to attach pictures and media files to our posts, easy administration, email notifications for new posts, and many more.

Performance wise, Joomla is fast and everything seems to be optimized. I haven’t experienced any lag or slow SQL queries yet. But I have yet to look again into this once heavy traffic comes in and DB data becomes populated significantly. But so far, Joomla and I are going along pretty well.

This email from a friend seemed to have slapped me in the face, as I must admit that I have a very short temper and I oftentimes get into trouble because of this. For those like me, take time to read and reflect..

Beware of Garbage Trucks

by David J. Pollay

How often do you let other people’s nonsense change your mood?

Do you let a bad driver, rude waiter, curt boss, or an insensitive employee ruin your day? You should not, unless you’re the Terminator, for an instant you’re probably set back on your heels, like what happened in Pasig City on October 2, 2007 when a car driver shot another car driver and a woman who berrated him and kicked his car.

However, the mark of a successful person is how quickly one can get back their focus on what’s important. Sixteen years ago I learned this lesson. I learned it in the back of a New York City taxi cab. Here’s what happened.

I hopped in a taxi, and we took off for Grand Central Station. We were driving in the right lane when, all of a sudden, a black car jumped out of a parking space right in front of us. My taxi driver slammed on his breaks, skidded, and missed the other car’s back end by just inches!

The driver of the other car, the guy who almost caused a big accident, whipped his head around and he started yelling bad words at us. My taxi driver just smiled and waved at the guy. And I mean, he was friendly. So, I said, “Why did you just do that? This guy almost ruined your car and sent us to the hospital!”

And this is when my taxi driver told me what I now call, “The Law of the

Garbage Truck.”

“Many people are like garbage trucks. They run around full of garbage, full of frustration, full of anger, and full of disappointment. As their garbage piles up, they need a place to dump it. And if you letthem, they’ll dump it on you.

When someone wants to dump on you, don’t take it personally. You just smile, wave, wish them well, and move on. You’ll be happy you did.”

So this was it: The “Law of the Garbage Truck.” I started thinking, how often do I let Garbage Trucks run right over me? And how often do I take their garbage and spread it to other people: at work, at home, on the streets? It was that day I said, “I’m not going to do it anymore.”

I began to see garbage trucks. Like in the movie “The Sixth Sense,” the little boy said, “I see Dead People.” Well, now “I see Garbage Trucks.” I see the load they’re carrying. I see them coming to drop it off. And like my Taxi Driver, I don’t make it a personal thing; I just smile, wave, wish them well, and I move on.

One of my favorite football players of all time, Walter Payton, did this every day on the football field. He would jump up as quickly as he hit the ground after being tackled. He never dwelled on a hit. Payton was ready to make the next play his best. Good leaders know they have to be ready for their next meeting. Good parents know that they have to welcome their children home from school with hugs and kisses. Leaders and parents know that they have to be fully present, and at their best for the people they care about.

The bottom line is that successful people do not let Garbage Trucks take over their day.

What about you? What would happen in your life, starting today, if you let more garbage trucks pass you by?

Here’s my bet. You’ll be happier.

Life’s too short to wake up in the morning with regrets, so. Love the people who treat you right. Forget about the ones who don’t. Believe that everything happens for a reason. If you get a chance , TAKE IT! If it changes your life , LET IT!

Nobody said it would be easy… They just promised it would be worth it!

I had now taken hold of the latest Mac OS X (10.5) tagged as Leopard on my MBP. Though I bought it around 2 days ago, it was only now that I had completed its installation and restoring applications. It took me some time as I had to finish first some tasks I have at work, and then I did a clean install which takes a bit longer than just doing an upgrade. As expected from Mac OS the installation was really easy and I loved the welcome video after the installation.

I know that I had previously posted that I plan to do an upgrade this December or early next year, but then I decided that there’s no point in waiting if there would be some new features on Leopard that would be useful for me. Moreover, I had not seen any serious flaws on Leopard except for the “data loss bug” found by several users who had already upgraded. I don’t think this would really affect me as I don’t usually transfer files between and SMB share or an external storage device. If ever I’ll do this, I usually have another backup somewhere else of the files I wanted to move. I’m a backup savvy I guess especially for those files I can’t afford losing.

Since I had only used Leopard for a day, I haven’t really played around with it that much an check out all features. As far as I know, there are 300+ new features a stated on Apple’s website, and I plan to check this out once I am done restoring my backups to my MBP’s new OS installation. Right now, I’m still busyrestoring both work related and personal files.

Here’s a list of new features that I had tried or somehow tried:

• Spaces - For the new features I tried, I really love Spaces and this may be one of the reasons that convinced me to upgrade. Being able to have multiple desktops is really cool for a programmer like me. Aside from my MBP’s 17″ LCD screen that already holds a lot of screen real estate, being able to group my windows/applications to different desktops really makes my programming life easier. I usually have different desktops to hold, browsers, IDE’s, terminal windows, and remote connection apps. Now, this is something that has been done by most Linux distros and I’m glad its on Mac OS now.
• Quick Look - Being able to preview photos, documents, movies, PDF files, etc. without having to open an application is really cool. It makes browsing through all my stuffs a lot faster.
• Stacks - Now this is something that I also love. It makes finding documents, downloads, and some important files I have on my notebook a lot faster. Having this useful tool in my dock item and being able to customize what folders I can stack up is really a pleasure to have.
• iChat - I don’t really use iChat but I just find it fun to use to have these cool backgrounds during video conversation. It’s kind cool to chat with someone who can see that you seem to be in some other places such as a park, sky, water, or some famous tourists destinations.
• Java - JDK 1.5.0_13 is by default the version used by Leopard but you can have the option to shift to JDK 1.4.2  through the System Preferences settings. Ant 1.0.7 and Maven 2.0.6 are also installed by default so building my java projects can now be done without the hassles of installing those build tools.

There are some other cool stuffs I need to checkout, such as Safari, Time Machine, Address Book, etc., and most of all stability and peformance. Hopefully, I’ll have a lot of time to do this over the weekend. Fingers crossed though, as I also have a lot of work currently at hand so I’ll just see if would really have the time and enthusiasm to play with Leopard during my rest days.

There’s just one thing that somehow disappointed me with the upgrade and this is not having iLife ‘08 included with Leopard. Well, I guess iLife is usually just included when you buy a new Mac, just like in the case of my default Tiger installation on my MBP which includes iLife ‘06. At least I can still install iLife ‘06 on my Leopard installation from my Tiger disc installers. Oh well, I don’t usually use iLife anyway, so I guess and iLife upgrade won’t be an immediate need for now.

This is quite an interesting post I stumbled upon from Yahoo’s website. It’s entitled “Music lessons pay off in higher earnings: poll“. You can click HERE for more details.

I am not really sure if this is true here in the Philippines, as I was a band member before and most of the people I had played with either didn’t finish their studies or somehow finished their studies but weren’t lucky enough to land a good job in the corporate world. Then again, I couldn’t disagree completely with this post since there are a few musicians I know who actually did good in their chosen careers (aside from music), and are great thinkers. They actually have good analytical and logical skills, and as the post suggests they know how to interact with other people very well. Maybe, those unfortunate musicians didn’t do good in life not because they lack the skills to succeed but rather they had just been overwhelmed by the band era and their hopes on making it big in the music industry didn’t took off at all. But I must agree that if they just made the right choices and made good use of the intellect and skills they have, they would surely succeed in life.

One good example would be this childhood friend of mine who was really good in playing keyboards. He can play any song by ear and a good composer as well. When it comes to his studies, I really admire the way he balances studies and having fun. I was surprised to see that the he has an average of between 1.25 - 1.5 in his college days and he wasn’t a nerd at all. You’ll never really expect such grades for someone, who plays in a band, goes bar hopping during weekends (and sometimes even weekdays), and who’s the happy go lucky type of person. This guy is the only person I know whom I can brand as “COOL” in its real sense. A fun loving person who lives life to the fullest but responsibly. He’s now taking over their family business, and got millions of pesos at his disposal.

Another good example would be a New Wave music lover classmate back in college who did some DJ mixing sidelines after we graduated. This guy didn’t really do good in college but he was a fast learner and his logic was way above average. He’s now working abroad but he was already a manager in his previous job and earns a lot. I look up to this guy as he never tires on learning new IT stuffs and he got to the top because he belongs there.

My last example would be a manager in Nokia Philippines who was my rhythm guitarist in a band I founded in my college days. This guy was also great thinker and if you argue with him on networking and servers, you better know what you are talking about as this guy eat those stuffs for breakfast. He’s a well-to-do guy now who recently married and earning an above-average income as well.

I am a musician before .. and now into an IT career … hmmm ..

The weakening US dollar may be the most significant problem faced by people like me earning in US dollars but living outside the US. This just simply means that our income decreases as the US dollar weakens its value against our local currency, which in my case is the Philippine Peso. I am sure that most OFWs share my sentiments regarding the decreasing income we are able to spend for our family’s needs.

Since I started working with my current company, the USD to PHP conversion rate had decreased quite a bit. From an exchange rate of US$1 = PHP49, it’s now at a disappointing rate of US$ = PHP43. That is just around 7 months ago. This isn’t really looking good as most financial analysts predicts that the US dollar would continue to weaken against European and Asian currencies . Sad but true in my case.

My dilemma right now is that as a Filipino, shouldn’t I be happy that my own country’s currency is getting stronger which somehow suggests a stronger economy? Is this really the case? How come that the prices of goods remains unchanged? Well, I’m not really sure if the Philippines is really showing signs of prosperity or not. A lot of questions still arises with us Filipinos regarding our economic status. Personally, I’m only seeing more foreign investments coming in and stocks are continuing to increase their value with record highs which might or might not be significant signs of prosperity. I really don’t know but I just hope things would get better for the Philippines, at least in time when my kids already have their own lives to live.

Right now, I won’t worry too much about this. It may be true that in time this continuous US dollar crisis might cripple my source of income, or in time I would really be earning less than most people in my field, but then if that should happen, I would have no regrets I took this path. I am very happy with my work and the freedom it gives me to spend more time to the more important people and things in life than salaries and foreign exchange rates alone.