I just finished setting up Nginx on my Slicehost VPS, and I can already feel the performance boost up. My weblog scores a cool little “A” on the YSLOW performance measurement score. Well, more than that, I can feel a sigh of relief that I am not using my swap memory anymore, plus the bonus point that I have free RAM as well (I run 2 rails apps, and one weblog on my 256 MB slicehost VPS).
Frankly, if you are coming from the Apache world, setting up Nginx is a little problematic, similar to switching to Linux from windows. So, I spent a full day in getting the whole setup to work seamlessly (Nginx, PHP, Wordpress, Phusion Passenger).
If you are caught in the middle of switching over to Nginx, then some of these links might be helpful :
- mensk.com
- phusions-one-year-anniversary-gift
I would suggest that you start with point 2, i.e. install passenger gem first, and then install the passenger-nginx module. This will automatically, install Nginx as well, and you would be running nginx and rails apps under 5 minutes. And then, you can expand to running PHP apps using php-fastcgi (I use that only) reading through the 1st point.
Tagged as:
apache,
fast cgi,
Nginx,
php,
phusion passenger,
rails,
ruby
@font-face – unless you are a designer, and know that the people visiting your website / app run the latest browsers…@font-face is not really worth right now. Ofcourse, the future is bright !
sIFR – flash. painful. didn’t work for me in 10 minutes. So moved on.
Cufon – 1 minute to generate the custom font javascript. 1 minute to include in the page and replace elements. All done in 2 minutes. Bingo !
Tagged as:
@font-face,
CSS,
Javascript,
Text replacement
I can’t blog more than 100 words now…should see if I can port wordpress to TumblR or Posterous without losing rankings and google pagerank…
Just a quick post (more so like a reminder to myself to analyze further) here. Was trying to figure out who coined the term “Freemium” business model, and how it started, and came across the “Freemium page on wikipedia”. I actually don’t really trust everything that wikipedia has to offer on each topic (have had first-hand experience on a few topics), but then this facebook and freemium thing got me so curious that I had to figure out what freemium for facebook would actually mean. That’s probably gonna be the next post in a couple of days itself, going by the ton of free time that I have these days.
Why would this be interesting – people posting their twitter activities on Linkedin ?? Somehow this is not why I log onto linkedin – to read one of my connections responses to someone on twitter…would have possibly made sense if it concerned me…but I see no reason why I might be interested in someone else’s talks.
Definitely ruins my experience on linkedin. Could linkedin just STOP allowing this stuff ??
Tagged as:
linkedin,
user experience
After about a year and 6 months at picsquare.com, I finally decide to move on. It had been a great experience working with all the folks there, and a tremendous gain in knowledge..not just from a technical perspective, but even from the business side of things in a startup (specially e-commerce).
Right now, it will be 2-3 months of relaxation, nomadic traveling, deeper thinking on some of the vague ideas I have had over the last year, and learning new things (possibly develop some mobile app)
Just something my brother told me a few days back –
The only thing to do in life, is to implement your ideas
Noice..noice !!
Tagged as:
i me myself,
picsquare
I recently had a great opportunity to write something about startups at pluggd.in, and which I had to accept (I mean who lets such great opps to pass by :) ).
So I wrote about some of the points that I realized one should ideally do a reality check about, before joining a startup. And as it turns out, and as I had imagined before starting off, this really pissed off some of the startup janta (to say, the employers..a.k.a founders, co-founders).
It actually is a very debatable topic, and as an employee, I could probably argue till death with all those startup guys who thought the post was “misleading”. Actually it’s funny how these guys call it “misleading”. Aahhh…so much for the buzzword “startups, entrepreneurship and the eco-system” where employers always want it their way…huh..!
Read the whole story here at pluggd.in
Tagged as:
career,
employees,
startups,
working in startups
Infectious logo
Ok. My new year gift to myself. A brand new infectious art for my iPhone. Aahh…it’s a stunner of a design art.
You should go out and check some cool art for your iPhone, laptops, cars or maybe even your office / home walls. And if you need a neat 10% off your purchase, then use the coupon code “chipmunk” (good through 6/1/09 only).
Just a few screenshots – the before and after story :P
My iphone before
After pimpin' my iphone with infectious art
Tagged as:
Apple,
infectious,
Iphone,
iphone art
Let Mozilla break all the records as the most downloaded browser, curse Internet Explorer for anything (everything) as a developer and crib as much as you feel like, but the fact remains the same. Internet Explorer still is the most-used web browser.
Through techcrunch, I stumbled upon this report, which clearly shows the bigger picture. As a developer, use all the hacks you can to make things work in IE, but do it definitely. As a web developer, I myself have had tons of occasions when I wanted to simply through IE out of my system, and code for Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, et all. The times it gives me a headache to code for 3 different browsers is almost equivalent to the times I get a headache when I code for IE. Ahh…I wish Microsoft could understand my plight. Amongst all the things that could have been better, some are:
- Imagine no specific hacks for writing cross-browser css. One style-sheet to work for all :)
- Javascript. Life !! Debugging. Cakewalk !! But the best thing would be that DOJO would work all it’s magic. Specifically Dojox. A minor problem resulting in a major issue with dojo gfx in internet explorer is here. If this would have worked, I swear I would have never touched flex at all.
Where is microsoft ?? Are you guys listening? Do something about IE, and save us, the developers, of the unnecessary / extra work to make our neat and clean code work on your pathetic browsers. (Sigh :( )
Tagged as:
cross browser,
CSS,
firefox,
HTML,
Internet explorer,
Javascript,
most used browsers,
User interface
The iphone app store (for India) has some really pretty awesome apps, both for fun and work. Some of the apps that I’m literally addicted to on my iphone is “YouNote”, “Parking Lot”, “Air Sharing” and “Fring” (more on the best apps available on the Indian app store, coming in a different post).
But there is just one little app, that I find missing on the app store. Maybe it won’t be use to a lot of people, but it is certainly useful to me.
The idea is simple. The app lets me set my to-do things, and then just reminds me on time. Nothing great. Except that it should be distance-based, and not time or date based. Or if possible, on the basis of time left to reach my destination. A simple example : I live in Bangalore these days, and visit delhi once in about 4-6 months, but I never know exactly when, and most of the ticket-booking is all done at the last moment. So, effectively, I don’t really have much time to check up on things before leaving. So, when I reach delhi, and am about say 5 kms from my home, this app should remind me of things I need to do; i.e, clean up my messages, remove the indecent stuff :P , etc. Yes, and obviously, this could be better, if this app could determine my instantaneous speed (based on some past data and some heuristics) and tell me that i’ll probably reach home in 10 minutes, so this cleanup is a real priority now :D
If given a chance, I would probably be using this app almost everyday. Telling me to wake up 5 minutes before I reach the office in the mornings, or home in the evenings. I could watch even more movies late nights, having the luxury to catch up on my sleep in the mornings and evenings :)
Anyways, this might not be a great app, but it sure is definitely better than a lot of crap and useless ones on the app store these days. Is anyone listening ???
Tagged as:
Apple,
appleiphone,
iphone apps,
iphone india,
iphone review
