Weekly Tweets
- RT @nswpolice: http://twitpic.com/tze7t - We've found a young man, but he can't tell us who he is or where he's from. Can anyone help ? #
- *sigh* in about 6 hours, I will be waving goodbye to the goodlife that is my 20's. It hurts. It hurts a lot. #
- The worlds leaders cannot stop us from making the changes required to stop global warming if they are too spineless to enforce it. #
- More than a little disappointed in our Prime Minister right now. How silly was I to think he was 'The Answer'... #
- Crap... I fear my stomach has started digesting itself. Surely this is not a good thing. #
- RT @primatage: The most pimpest guinea pig who ever pimped - http://bit.ly/5bby8f - meet "Sooty" #
- @thegravytalker I have less than no idea what you are talking about... Its definitely not gravy, though. in reply to thegravytalker #
- Anybody know how the eBay 'distance' search results work. How they have their location data stored? I'd love to know. #
- @tommytrc Dont you mean Tweeviations ? in reply to tommytrc #
- Just did a political test. I find myself surrounded by Nelson Mandela, Ghandi and The Dalai Lama. http://bit.ly/4ys8S9 #
- Read this to give you a glimpse of how messed up things are in other countries http://bit.ly/6wVqwU [Specifically Aftermath] #
- Paypal makes me want to cry. 4 weeks, 30+ emails, 4 phonecalls and I am no closer to having my limitation lifted. #
- Climate ninjas scale Opera House as part of treaty protest http://bit.ly/7SvZqI [ I love that they are being called Ninjas!!] #
- Potty Training Pigs Helps Cut Water Use by 50%, Prevents Water Pollution (Video) http://bit.ly/7VEKNI #
- You live in a wealthy country. You dont need any more *things* for Christmas. Please get something for somebody else. http://bit.ly/4Ezddm #
- This guy only needs $100 to fill his loan request, can you help? http://www.kiva.org/community/viewMessages?team_id=116&_te=tmn #
- It upsets me how much I cannot wait for the Labor party to be voted out of NSW. They are so bad that I am willing tao vote for the libs... #
- @0Frank Its all a matter of perception. in reply to 0Frank #
- While my wife was off enjoying her friend giving birth, I had to get Abbey up, feed her, dress her and take her to kindy. Its all too hard. #
- RT @Iconic88: Congrats to @booneoakley for an amazing website!
http://bit.ly/8YyyS0 [Agree - Brilliant!!] #
Weekly Tweets
- First Aussie made hybrid http://bit.ly/8GEjaJ (Sorry if this posts twice, net is playing silly buggers) #
- Australians!!! Walk against warming!! http://bit.ly/5sgoA9 #getup #Cop09 #
- Survey Q - "Would you be willing to pay to play the Monopoly City Streets online game in the future?" hahahahahahahaha.... *composes self* #
- It's time the people of NSW were heard!! http://bit.ly/6XdXAS #
- @brop I know! Apart from his head, he's a bit of a looker. in reply to brop #
- God, where is Australia's Rugby Museum??? http://www.rugbymuseum.co.nz #
- Holy crap.. There is SO MUCH WRONG with a stripper dressing as John Howard!!!! http://bit.ly/5RYcPq #
- @chriscoyier I have some load balanced servers if you'd like to borrow some hosting for a while? in reply to chriscoyier #
- Sea Shepherds Ady Gil is a serious anti-whaling vessel. The coolest thing in the world. http://bit.ly/5LGv2w #
- @yonderboy Oh that is too freaking cool. in reply to yonderboy #
- Reminder to self: Sys admins are not hired for their inter-personal skills. #
- Don't say what you mean you might spoil your face. #
- I see the same woman walking with her pram every morning at 7:45am. The other day I saw her at the same spot at 10:30am. She's a nut bag! #
- @JetSetStephen Mate, gave GrooveShark a big of a pounding last night. Loving it, so awesome! in reply to JetSetStephen #
- @Talej Not to worry, there are more Poomsae in the ocean. in reply to Talej #
- @Talej Yep, its an interest free loan, you get the money back. Check this out http://bit.ly/8J5RRR in reply to Talej #
- Happy birthday Bob Hawke. http://bit.ly/8J81JS #
- Sea Sean needs only $75 more to buy a motorcycle taxi - http://bit.ly/86mbGM #
- @brop Thanks! Its definately a looker! We do know, but we are not revealing it. At least not yet.
in reply to brop # - http://twitpic.com/sn5w8 - Foetus Maximus. Wonder if its a problem that it seems attached to my wifes uterus. #
- There needs to be a 'love love love' option in last.fm... #
- @Talej Well, in his defence, he didn't punch her. He glassed her. And, did you read the last paragraph? He has other woman-bashing charges. in reply to Talej #
- Judge Michael Finnane said he believed the couple's story that Ms Milligan had been the aggressor in the argument http://bit.ly/8bB9VT #
- Child killer paroled after 16 years http://bit.ly/8W4vKM #
- Foetus Maximus is happy and healthy with 10 fingers, 10 toes and mighty 2.5cm long arms (1 inch for you non Aussies). Due date still 8/5/10 #
- Loving the idea behind Kiva. I might have to make a few loans! http://www.kiva.org/ #
- The unborn baby known as 'Foetus Maximus' will tomorrow morning be revealing its health and sex to us, its commoner parents. #
- Hmmm, the 'Tiger Woods PGA Tour' games have a dirty feel to them now. #
- The Sea Shepherd THE SHIP THAT STARTED IT ALL... ...AND THE CAMPAIGN SHE WON -- AT THE COST OF HER LIFE. http://bit.ly/4P96QB #
- Paypal customer 'service' is seriously pitiful. I'd have a better chance resolving my issue if I spoke to unborn puppies. #
Check and start a process in Linux
Over the past few days, we realised that, for various reasons, our Sphinx search process (searchd) would occasionally not be running. As Sphinx is pretty much the backbone of our sites, we couldn't have this happening. I wrote a small script that runs permanently, checks if searchd.pid exists (you can have it check anything) and if not, then starts searchd. This is all done in a screen session so I can just leave it running.
The script is very, very simple;
while [ "1 -eq 1" ]
do
if [ ! -e "/var/log/searchd.pid" ]
then
searchd
fi
sleep 2
done
Basically, we have an infinite loop, we check that /var/log/search.pid exists, if not, start it, then sleep ('pause' essentially) for 2 seconds before starting again. You can change it to alert you too, if you'd like.
To get an idea of how screen works, check out this post.
Thought it might help some of you.
Upgrading jailbroken iPhone – the no bullshit edition.
Why do the guys behind jailbreaking iPhones need to make their information so difficult to understand? More people would jail break if they knew how easy it was to do.
For the record, a jail broken iPhone (or iPod Touch) is one that can install software from sources other than iTunes. This has many advantages that I will not go into now.
I jail broke my iPhone initially with firmware 3.0.1 when I was convinced to do so after seeing a mate at work do it so easily and what it enabled him to do on the iPhone, I was still dubious about it but after I had done it, I never looked back.
Apple has released several updates to their firmware since then and they keep trying to stop people from jail breaking, which means that there is a lot of conflicting information on the net about what can and cannot be jail broken. For that reason, I left my iPhone on version 3.0.1. That was until today. Today I spoke to a guy at work (new work, new guy) about jail breaking as I didn't want to lose all my stuff if I upgraded my firmware. He told me about 'aptbackup' which backs up all the info on your jail broken apps installed through Cydia to a directory that is backed up by iTunes so you can easily restore your app's once you re jail break.
My concerns were;
- Loss of music
- Loss of pics
- Loss of apps
- Loss of jail broken apps
Here is the no bullshit way to upgrade to 3.1.2 and jail break;
- Install aptbackup from Cydia
- Open aptbackup and backup the iPhone (only takes a second)
- Backup your phone using iTunes (right click your iPhone on the left and select 'backup')
- Copy all your pictures over (I sync'ed them using iPhoto, but you can copy them over using windows explorer too)
- Open iTunes and upgrade to 3.1.2 (If a later version is available then do not proceeed!! Odds are, Apple has closed the hole in any later version, I cannot guarantee that these instructions will work on a later version!!!)
- Download blackra1n and run it - it will jail break your phone in about 15 seconds.
- Open the blackra1n app on the iPhone and choose to install Cydia
- Once installed, run any updates available
- Install aptbackup
- Open aptbackup and hit 'Restore' - this might take a few mins depending on how many apps you had
All done!
As a side note, I had 'categories' installed on my iPhone and this caused a lot of problems when aptbackup restored it. My app's were there but unusable, after hours and hours of attempted recovery, I had to delete the apps through ssh and then re-install them. My recommendation is to remove categories before using aptbackup and then install it afterwards.
Hopefully this helps, please ask any q's you might have.
Weekly Tweets
- @shanmoorthy Nice, I'll check them out. Thanks in reply to shanmoorthy #
- Really good 'screen' basics tutorial: http://bit.ly/4SjYWW #
- Watching the all blacks, barbarians replay. Beautiful team the baba's. #
- @Talej Was trying to look that burger up on the macca's website. I clicked on the 'heart tick' section and chuckled to myself. in reply to Talej #
- Natural selection at its finest. We should give these people their own island somewhere and see how long they last http://bit.ly/8BzP7S #
- Ergh, another short-sighted, out-of touch premier... Just what NSW needed. http://bit.ly/4HFe2O #
- @brop A mate of mine said that he can't drive straight. in reply to brop #
- I wonder if there has been any jokes yet about how Tiger likes to share his Woods? #
- I keep accidentally prefixing my variables with i. God damn apple and their marketing! Hmm, also could be because I am using vim. #
- Holy mother of god, I love Warren the water buffalo. http://bit.ly/8MdpLc @firstdogonmoon #
- It surprises me that the guys behind Monopoly City Streets screwed it up that badly. Ending the game 6 weeks early is probably a good thing. #
- Seems a bit rough to charge $50 for a filemerge tool that doesn't support 3-way diffs... http://bit.ly/3X04QG .. I might stick with Meld. #
- How fast is your site? http://bit.ly/80E4uT #
- This is Not a Trailer For Tiger Woods 2011, But It Should Be http://bit.ly/5tmN8b #
- @FirstDigg Happy Birthday!! in reply to FirstDigg #
- The first Hollywood movie I have been looking forward to in about 4 years! http://bit.ly/207SSY #
- @brop What? Thats the dumbest thing I have ever heard. I have never stopped drinking after getting pierced (and I have been pierced a lot!) in reply to brop #
- Google Dumps Gears for HTML5: http://bit.ly/8AhN0b via @addthis #
- http://twitpic.com/rnxgc - Pants that won't rip if I fall off my bike. But, if I put my hand in my pocket... #
- After telling her my families history, my hair dresser asked if I spoke Scottish. She also asked why the men wear "skirts". #
- @JetSetStephen Wow, that looks interesting, will have to check it out. How does it compare to last.fm? in reply to JetSetStephen #
- RT @mashable Twitter Declared English’s Most Popular Word in 2009 http://bit.ly/6BxN3j #
- RT @mashable Bill Cosby’s Mashable Bet Makes the New York Times http://bit.ly/54Y5oF #
- I just nominated Dropbox for the Best Internet Application Crunchie! Nominate here: http://is.gd/554D3 #crunchies #
- "Cant swing a dead cat" - "more than one way to skin a cat" - "curiosity killed the cat" - is it just me, or is there a pattern? #
- Is it just me, or does Technorati look and feel like crap these days? So many ads, reduced functionality, not a great design.. Not impressed #
- Because one of your already distant and obscure friends on facebook is friends with this person, you might be too! Click to add friend. #
Weekly Tweets
- @Warlach How about some cheese with your WHINE?!? in reply to Warlach #
- @Warlach Should I call you a waambulance? in reply to Warlach #
- @zlot I just use the bookmarklet, which is pretty good. Also their native application is nice also (including an iPhone app) in reply to zlot #
- According to my 2 year old, Santa Clause lives in a hole. (Not the North Pole as we tried to explain) #
- Loving tweetdeck for iPhone. Sorry tweetie, you have been beaten. #
- Took the screen protector off my iPhone. A million times better in every regard. #
- It blows me away that an $80k hsv Gts still has very average performance 5.3 to 100kph and a 13.5 qtr is not impressive. #
- Totally in love with mclaren's mp4-12c. One piece carbon fibre chassis does funny things to my insides. #
- Watching Australia trounce wales this morning made my month. I needed that. #
- Send them to Copenhagen!!!! http://bit.ly/5BoFi1 #
- Anybody interested in joining me in pip.io, DM me, I have a few invites available. #
- Town under siege: 6,000 camels to be shot http://bit.ly/5eda6I http://pic.gd/8f3f50 #
- Does Apple seriously think I am going to give a $2k laptop to somebody for chrissy? #
- Anybody know of a ManicTime equivalent on Mac? #
- Check this video out -- Brett Domino: Hip-Hop Medley - Stylophone Beatbox http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hELTtsBRie4 #
- There's a girl in New York City, calls herself the human trampoline. #
- #NSD Violence against women is unacceptable. Swear today at http://www.myoath.com.au. Retweet this if you agree #
- @Talej just proposed to me... Need to let him down gently. He's an emotional lad. #
- Sites that dont require that you confirm your password strike me as rebelious... I kinda like it. #
- New sustainmyself.com blog post: I wear my solar panels at night! http://bit.ly/77bJ8W #
- christianbiggins.com: 8 Weeks. Eight-Freaking-Weeks! http://bit.ly/8HXNZY #
- STATS: Xbox Live Generates One Million New Users for last.fm http://bit.ly/8YUuKZ [Seriously awesome! 300 subscriptions per minute!!] #
- Not sure if its a mac thing, but if I copy and paste the title from TIME, I get a link included, but @talej does not; http://bit.ly/74oqWZ #
- How Protecting the Jungle Can Help Combat Global Warming http://bit.ly/74oqWZ #
- A member of Skylines Australia? Got a wave account? Join the public 'Enhancements' wave by searching for 'with:public Skylines Australia' #
8 weeks. Eight-Freaking-Weeks!
8 weeks ago I embarked on a journey that would change my life. Little did I know at the time just how much this journey would affect me physically, emotionally and psycologically.
Lets go back a further 2 weeks. I started a new job as Senior Developer for OMG. We have a 'legacy' codebase for our CMS (Content Management System) which works, but needs some performance improvements. I have been given the task of fixing up this codebase. One of the areas that requires a lot of enhancing is our search engine, but its not quite as simple as writing a little query in SQL such as 'SELECT blah FROM table WHERE name LIKE "%search term%"'... Oh no, its not quite that easy.
Think 31,000 domain names, each with an unknown number of categories, each having either category niche (auto's for example) or a specific location match (Sydney, for example). Then, throw in almost 2,000,000 listings to appear on these sites in an ordering specific to their account type and account data and make sure that Tasmanian Lawyers do not appear on our Perth Plumbers site...
Enter an enthusastic new employee wanting to make his mark and you have an 8 week journey through 19 hour days, crashed servers, day-long data rebuilds and many more exciting activities.
We decided to build the search engine in Sphinx which is a full text replacement for MySQL, I wont go into the details of how we did this, but I will say that the code and indexes have been rewritten about 6 or 7 times inclusive. I have worked on this, day in and day out for 8 weeks. That is the longest time I have ever spent on a single component and a few times I have been curious about whether my boss thought he'd made an incorrect decision hiring me. More of my hair is grey now than it was 8 weeks ago and my wife is questioning my commitment to our marriage after displaying willingness to stay up and work rather than come to bed.
Last night, we pushed the latest changes to a staging server and replayed Apache logs (from a period when traffic was destroying our servers) to test performance... and it passed. To say I am happy is an under statement, we went into this to increase performance and to remove as much as we can from MySQL (for various reasons) and a few times there I was unsure whether we had just wasted our time, including one time when I made the suggestion that we use a different Full Text Indexer (such as Xapian.) But today, the finish line can be sensed, a term search across 1,900,000 rows is taking 0.07 seconds which is awesome, which only one or two queries in MySQL.
This is why I am in development, this sense of satisfaction you get when, after weeks of nutting something out, it works... and works well. Hopefully I'll still have a job now when my probation period is up next month.
I will be making a post about my findings with Sphinx and how to make it work well when you have multiple criteria to search within on Fliquid Studios in the coming weeks (once I am absolutely sure that this is working ok.)
Wavering unconditional support
This week I decided that I'd really start pushing my blogging again. I've been slack, mainly because I have had a lot going on, but also because I have been lazy. I dont spend much time online on the weekends anymore (on purpose) and I dont have time at work to stop and write for a little while.
So, todays post is a little different from the norm. I am a staunch Wallaby's supporter. They are my team. I go well out of my way to make sure I watch all of their games, I know all the players, I grit my teeth when other's speak badly of them. But lately, they continue to find ways to let me down, they have such an amazing lineup, a great coaching staff, huge levels of financial support from the ARU... But they can't win. Yesterday morning's 9-8 loss to Scotland was a big blow for me, I want to be the number 1 fan, but they continue to give me reasons not to be. I will continue to be an unwavering, staunch supporter, but maybe its time to come to the realisation that maybe Australian rugby will never reach the heights that it has before. It pains me to say that as for the first 2/3rds of my life, the Aussies have been very strong, winning 2 world cups and many Tri Nations and Bledisloe cups, but lately the trophy cabinet seems to get emptier by the day...
I am just bummed. I love my rugby, I love my sport, I just think they don't care anymore. To quote an awesome article today on FoxSports.com.au; 'Meanwhile the Wallabies were spending their chances like dissolute, drunken millionaires. Missed that chance? No matter, there will be another one along soon'.
Bleugh... I'll get over it. But I feel flat, heartbroken, I am suddenly not looking forward to the clash with Wales next weekend, not sure I'll cope with another astonishingly ugly performance.
Weekly Tweets
- Almost 1 year since being made redundant from REA Group - Was a blessing in disguise, much happier now. #
- It is really time to ramp up my blogging. I reckon I have made about 2 or 3 posts to my 3 blogs in the past 6 months... So slack. #
- Stunned by the Wallabies losing to Scotland... I love my team but I am starting to get discouraged... #
- @jezkerwin I'm worried I'd offend all my Christian followers. in reply to jezkerwin #
- I love people who follow based on term matches. Christians follow me because of my name and a pest place just followed because i said hornet #
- @MattBalara Yep, its a scorcher. The harbour certainly looks inviting today. in reply to MattBalara #
- Finally found a sweet Fender Eliminator for my Hornet. http://bit.ly/2P6m9x. #
- Why did it take the Department Of Community Services (DOCS) 3 YEARS to discover a child was missing? http://bit.ly/4hXrhG #
- Cundall offered free legal help after arrest [Brilliant story! Down with Gunns!] http://bit.ly/4uLpPl #
- @aimzsta Not sure if it will help, but check out Google Chart API, its super easy to use. http://bit.ly/7u9H0 #
- Japan whaling fleet leaves for Antarctic! http://bit.ly/1jJTAl #
- Macvim's screen refresh rate when scrolling bugs me a little bit. Cant find a solution anywhere. #
- @jezkerwin Whats the worst thing that can happen? You write it off! No biggie. in reply to jezkerwin #
- Springboks have now lost 3 games on the trot .... http://bit.ly/xZmwC #
- Writing a search engine for 1.9m rows with multi one-to-many relationships elsewhere is a tricky task... Up to rewrite number 3. #
- Join me in eRepublik please!! I need more friends! http://www.erepublik.com/en/referrer/cbiggins #
- The Australian Greens: Greens call for cap on working hours http://bit.ly/2Z3clF #
- Why do I feel inclined to add people I dont like as friends on facebook? Thats a little weird eh? #
- I want a Ducati Street Fighter. #
- Recycling SUV's to make baby incubators. http://bit.ly/3H8CVL #
- @Zee Heh, I can't write 'myself' without writing 'mysql' ... in reply to Zee #
- @Talej Nono, just a rickrolled jailbroken iPhone. in reply to Talej #
- Rick free since 09. #
- Bought the new Shazam but am fairly disappointed so far. #
- @sach33 Yeah I have now... Stupid root password. in reply to sach33 #
- Stupid Rick stupid Astley on my stupid iPhone.... #
Weekly Tweets
- @matmurray hahaha, yes I feel a similar weekend is in store for me too. in reply to matmurray #
- @zlot That looks awesome, I'm concerned about battery and bandwidth with the amount of tweets I receive... in reply to zlot #
- Melbourne announced as 15th Super Rugby license holder!! http://bit.ly/1YgoP8 #
- RT @junal: Another player in programming language "Google Go" http://bit.ly/2FqPNF something cool on the way hmm? [love the 'players'] #
- RT @AusConservation: Solar power backflip welcomed by environment groups: http://twurl.nl/83omk3 [AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!!!] #
- @zlot I just put my neck out looking at that. in reply to zlot #
- @shanmoorthy Yikes, emo already?
She's only 2. in reply to shanmoorthy # - Just gave my daughter balsamic vinegar for the first time and she told me her tongue was bleeding. #
- So upset to see Stoner didn't even get to start last nights motogp race. #
- @Talej Is that a rifle down your pants or are you just pleased to see me? in reply to Talej #
- @Talej I'm not about to buy her a gun, but dont you think it strange that I can still buy a gun, but not pepper spray? in reply to Talej #
- I love that it is apparently illegal to own pepper spray in NSW, but not to own a gun. My wife is going to need a bigger handbag... #