Tag Archives: general-confusion

And then…

… the magical, floating, multi-color space-orb just disappeared and I was able to go on with my so-called life.

Anyways, I was working on ZagrebDox for the whole month of February and it kind of took all of my time and energy, but ended up being a really nice project because I’ve, once again, learned a lot of new things about WordPress.

I’ve also learned a few new things about MySQL and how to crash your hosting provider’s shared server.

What happened:

  • the site has over 300 pages (each with at least 3 attachments)  and I’ve used a permalink structure which started with %category% – this combination produced waaay too many rewrite rules
  • there was a 20MB database size limit
  • for some reason, the wp_options->rewrite_rules field got duplicated ~10 times, and the database had grown to 50MB in no time
  • combine that with the 20MB limit and what you get is a bunch of never-ending transactions
  • so the server went kabang! and the site was promptly moved to another one

To solve the problem, I’ve changed the permalink structure to begin with %year%, disabled creation of rewrite rules for attachments (thanks to Johan Eenfeldt – his code has made my number of queries per page drop from ~3900 to ~90), set the number of post revisions to 2, and then repaired and optimized the database which now stands happily still at 5.7MB.

I don’t know how rewrite_rules field got duplicated, I haven’t used any plugins that would mess with it, so I’m still in the dark about that. What I do know is: you can’t host over 700 sites on one single server and expect everything to go smoothly until the end of days. Not to mention that the only available transport protocol is fsockopen which made the admin area a bit slow until I’ve blocked all the others…

There’s been some other stuff I’ve worked on, but I’ll put that in another post.

It’s lunch time. And I miss Ma.gnolia

Getting off

One more year and I’ll have my diploma. I’ll be free to do whatever I want with it, even burn it if I feel like it. Not that I plan to do that. Although, I have considered the option.
Unfortunately, that would just piss some people off — my parents, for example. But the thing is – I don’t really need a diploma. I have knowledge. And I got that knowledge by reading, working, messing around with computers, with software, by learning from other people on and off the net — by doing stuff in real-world situations. And it seems like I need a diploma from some third-grade "school" to prove it. I don’t. I don’t plan to work for anyone but myself. But… You never know what kind of shitty old chocolate you may find in that box, so you better be carrying guns. Or a diploma. Get it if you can. Knowledge is power, especially if it’s certified. Nerd power.

A comforting thought: life sucks even if you’re a billionaire.

Mr. Nenad "16×16" Jalsovec ".org" of Counterclockwise fame is one of the few sad, little people who have applied for some public ass-kicking in the beginning of 2008. And paid a small entrance fee for it. I’m, of course, talking about the IGF – Independent Gaming Festival, and this very paragraph’s first sentence is what people refer to as sarcasm. It’s that kind of a day today, so please bear with me.
While Nenad is crunching the numbers code, I’m learning how to fart working on the sound effects and music, but it’s all still very messy at the moment. The game is addictively playable and very kick-assy old-school in a way and it’s gonna be universally awesome. This is, of course, a hyperbolic statement – but truthful, nevertheless. You’ll get a chance to play it yourself in a couple weeks, anyway.

No new music from me. I’ve had no inspiration lately. I hope this year will go by and be forgotten as fast as the new "Bionic woman" will should be.

Love, peace, beer, no kids.

This is Dexter I’ve got a 2 month old kitten with me. I named him Dexter. Quite appropriately, I must say, as it’s a flesh-eating killer cat. I’ve got worse scars on me than Amy Winehouse had after she got in a fight with her own husband last month (or maybe it was back in September?). But I like him. I freaking love this allovermycables-peeing little piece of fur. But I’m sadly aware of the fact that I’ll have to find him a new home soon. I’m one of those ever-worrying freak-people. Unfortunately. Fingers crossed for a great new home for little Dexter? Yes, please :)

Also: I’ve played Half-life 2 Episode 2 and I liked it a lot. I’m going to play Portal over the weekend, it looks promising. I still have Minerva to finish (very cool).

Have a great weekend, y’all.

The “What I want” moment in my own little history

So, without further ado, here’s a list of stuff I’d (really) like to own (not necessarily sorted by their level of hotness):

  1. Nintendo Wii and a bunch of games for it
  2. 4GB Pro Duo Memory stick
  3. Rode NT4 stereo microphone
  4. Zoom H4 portable stereo recorder
  5. Canon XL-H1 HD digital camcorder
  6. Sony PCM-D1 portable stereo recorder
  7. a stable but lightweight microphone stand
  8. new hard disk (preferably SATA, 160GB or more)
  9. new scanner
  10. new printer (preferably Canon Pixma iP4300 or better, one that can print on CDs)
  11. new pair of jeans (ahem, I’ve got ONE good pair and… well, after wearing it for over 2 years, do I even have to explain?)
  12. fat and warm sneakers for the winter (I know, I know :) )
  13. Wacom Cintiq or a tablet PC (ahh, the freedom…)
  14. a real concert piano (and a big room)
  15. 23″ Apple Cinema Display (or a Samsung in that size and quality range)
  16. HD LCD TV with HDMI (preferably 32″ or more)
  17. a top of the line DSLR camera with wide lenses
  18. a mobile phone that can handle 500 or more SMS’s (without slowing its operation when opening Inbox)
  19. a DVD/DivX player that has no problem reading files encoded by any possible DivX/XviD version and utilizing “that and that” feature (qpel, gmc, VBR audio, etc.)
  20. my own apartment with a sound-isolated room
  21. mad pd (pure data) skillz and a bunch of MIDI hardware gadgets to play around with
  22. all the other stuff on my Amazon wishlist and plenty of other stuff I can’t think of right now :)

What do you think: how would a world in which everyone has everything they want function? Would it function? Would there still be people who’d be willing to do their jobs so the world doesn’t come to a stop? And how do you even define that kind of world? Is it possible for it to exist?

And I’m still waiting for the snow >:(

ps.: this is something I really don’t need, but it looks waaay too sexy and I had to post at least a link to it: Cantar-X by Aaton. Why don’t all products look this good? I’d be definitely willing to pay more for a better designed product.