Nov 2008 3 rd
AWS User Group Ireland - You Can Get Involved
Well, given my current situation, there is an upside. I get to spend time on projects and things I’ve been putting off for a long time. One of these things & something which I am very passionate about is Amazon Web Services.
As a web guy and sys admin, I’ve been using AWS for quite a while now, and I see the real advantages to its use in many different scenarios that many Irish developers encounter on a day to day basis.
I also often get asked by others about AWS and their plans for it, how to use it etc, and most of the time I find its just a case of the other person needing a sounding board to bounce their ideas off.
Add a commentOct 2008 25 th
Slowly getting there - first tweetxt screen
Inspired by the Contrast Crew’s build an app in 5 days, I’ve spent my spare time this week playing a lot with the Twitter API. My aim here is to enable SMS and IM updates without hammering the Twitter servers for myself and my friends & to do so in as short a time as possible. To do this I am employing some fun and new ways of speaking with Twitter. In fact sometimes I don’t even have to speak to them, they speak to me!
I’ve managed to get SMS back up and running, it usually takes between 3 and 10 seconds to get to my phone after someone I follow updates. I am still fighting with some IM issues but it appears to work, but is rather flakey. I don’t know if thats Twitter or myself just yet. Anyhow see below a wee screen grab of where I am at.Yes I know it looks crap, but that because uber cool designer Walter is still on his honey moon. Once he gets his hands on it, he’ll sort out my dodgy photoshoping. In case Flickr is funny, the original is already there.
Oct 2008 21 st
Tweetrush update - now tracking the client stats
Just a quick one. We’ve released some updates to Tweetrush.com that has now enabled to the public, Twitter client stats.
While every attempt is made to validate our stats, there are some issues around source identification. However by and large the % totals should enable client developers to gauge the take up of their application. As an added bonus, we’ve also added the top 30 daily users of the client, just in case developers want to reach out and touch base with their most devoted users.
This release also marks an important milestone in the development of Rush Hour, our action and event based analytic engine. We’ve all been busy over the past few weeks, testing and adding new features. We expect to be on time for a version one release Q1 of next year. We’ve also had contact from some really cool companies wishing to use it, which for us is very flattering for us. But we’re also confident that our little app will more than meet their requirements and look forward to putting some really heavy hitting beats into place.
Right, back to work.
3 CommentsOct 2008 18 th
Building a Simple PHP Twitter Client Without Twitter
Part One - Getting to Grips with GNIP
Okay so now I suppose I better start doing some geek stuff as its been far too long. What I’m going to try and accomplish is to build a simple Twitter client using PHP and GNIP and as little help from the Twitter API. Sure this may fail badly but we’ll learn something along the way. Why Twitter? Well I do lots of stuff with Twitter data, so why not. But I also want to demonstrate the power of GNIP to you as well as showing that there are ways to be friendly to Twitter & other providers without having to hammer their API’s.
Aug 2008 3 rd
Impresive MySQL stats
So I’m doing something that relies on MySQL a lot. Last night I had to test a rebuild process that we would use if there was a failure in our systems. Worst case secnairo would be we would have lost about a weeks data and need to reinsert the whole lot.
So I wrote a quick and nasty PHP script with multiple nested foreach() loops, yeah I know what your thinking, but as I said, it was a quick and nasty script. Basically all this script done was parse a directory full off XML files and based upon the content, perform multiple SELECT, INSERT or UPDATE based on the data per element in the given XML file.
So, on my little iMac (24″, 4GB RAM, 1TB Drive) the following are the stats from the completition of the script.
Total Processing Time: 4975.59566307 seconds.
Total DB Inserts: 1,961,000
Total Selects: 12,035,743
Total Updates: 10,465,071
This all translates to;
Inserts Per Second: 394.12
Selects Per Second: 2,418.95
Updates Per Second: 2,103.28
Keep in mind, I was watching a movie at the same time and that there has been no optimisation carried out on the server at all (Although the DB is fairly well normalised). Table format was MyISAM.
Now imagine what MySQL could do on an optimised Linux server with custom optimisations to make it faster. I am quite impresed given the workstation I was working on and the complexity of the queries we are doing. Pat on head for MySQL. Well done.
1 CommentJul 2008 15 th
So much for a global company. How Apple & Others treat Europeans
Reading Pat Phelan’s blog yesterday about Apple and how it restricts the rest of the world as to what it can purchase through iTunes got me thinking. I’ve long known that Apple deploy such practices as do many other organizations. I don’t think its right at all, yet have thought I would have been a crackpot for thinking same. If I buy an iPhone to have access to all the applications and Games, that means I want access to ALL the games and applications and not a limited subset. Alas they (Apple) cannot be fooled by the use of a mere proxy server, you need to supply a US address too, thus making it impossible for us Europeans to but such games as “Insert desired super cool game not currently available in Europe”.
Another thing Apple engage in which I am also not a fan of, is over charging or taxing their European customers. For example, I recently bought an iMAC 24″ With the 3.06 Proc. Its US cost is $2,199.00, yet its Euro Price is €1,919.00. If the exchange rate were taken into consideration it would be €1,377.43 Euro (15th July 08 - 08:00). This sort of thing is not confined just to Apple, recently I’ve experienced the same sort of practices with Adobe, so I am guessing there are others too.
You could argue that its not possible to keep track of exchange rates. I say balderdash. I know many smaller companies that deploy either daily adjustments or realtime adjustments in order to be as competitive as possible. Yes, Apple don’t need to be competitive to an extent, however they do need to start looking after their customers in Europe and not discriminate against them based simply on where you are coming from. Currently a European customer in not as equal as a US customer to Apple it would appear, from my recent use of iTunes anyhow.
I don’t subscribe to the content licence argument either. If it could be arranged with the music companies it can be arranged with the TV,Film and Software houses. Then Apple may be really disruptive, changing EU broadcasting too.
Calling for a boycott of such products from their vendors is at best a pipe dream. Yes I know they are discriminating against me, but I still want to use their products, or indeed in some circumstances I may need to use them. So how do we register our complaints, how are we heard? Is blogging about it going to be enough? I don’t know, is my answer, but hell I’ll give it a try and add to the growing choir.
So back to the thinking, here is one for someone with a bit of time on their hands. Setup up a buinssess selling proxy serivces Not only web based proxy services, but also real world proxy services, where people order stuff they can’t get in their location so the end up purchasing through you. Yes it would be a pain, to do, but then again I don’t care, I just want my cool iPhone game…. NOW!!!!!!
Feb 2008 22 nd
Goodbye Drupal, Hello Wordpress
Well, finally after ages of messing around, I feel comfortable enough with my theme to switch over to Wordpress instead of Drupal. Note, its not complete, but it is getting there. I hope you don’t find too many things broken.
Before I get hit with a lot of mail asking why I ditched Drupal, let me say it was not for any other reason than time. Something which I have very little of these days as projects come in by the truck load.
Nov 2007 30 th
Testing Wordpress Super Cache Performance on SLES 10 SP1 using Siege
I was reading a post by Donncha recently on the new Wordpress plugin, WP Super Cache. He mentioned that he did not know what the performance would be like, which got me thinking about running my own tests to see for myself (I was doing some basic ones anyhow for another idea I had). There are many bloggers using Wordpress whom do not know one technical thing (nor should they!), but they should know what its gonna be like for them when their site gets busy.
N.B. My intention here was to just see what would happen. This should not be regarded as a complete proper test, but rather an indicative one. I had limited time and was not arsed doing this 100% correctly.
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