Barack Obama

I've supported Obama since he won the Democratic nomination. I'm glad he is our next President, he will bring our country back to what it was and repair our relationship with the rest of the world.

John McCain didn't have a chance. Being 72 years old and having a history of cancer, I really don't know what he was thinking to pick Sarah Palin. Palin would be a heartbeat away from taking over as President, and that would end up worse than Bush. If I recall, it was the Republicans who were going on about Obama not having the experienced to lead. Palin didn't even know Africa was a continent. McCain's pick really showed how poor his judgment is.

The United States has come a long way since the time of slavery, and I think electing a black man proves it. It's one step closer to "all men are created equal."

All Natural VidaTea

So I was at Walgreens and saw something next to the Arizona Iced Tea that  caught my eye; something new and exciting was just waiting to be picked up.  I Picked up the can, read the side, looked at the can again, and put it back down. "VidaTea".

A couple days went by and I kept wondering if that can would be delicious, so I bought it.  Wow, that's it?

At first glance, it looks like an amazing drink.  It's in one of those small cans associated with energy drinks, sans-serif text and promising statements like "ultra premium sparking tea" and "all natural" which just made it seem like the thing to have.  It's funny that I'm in a a media studies class at school (where you learn how companies suck you into their product) and everything we've learned applies to this little can.

When I cracked open the Wild Berry Green Tea, it wasn't very good.  I was expecting something a bit sweeter and more like actual tea.  This was just sparkling water with some berry taste.  I'd drink it again, though, it would just take some getting used to.

Next I bought the pomegranate Green Tea.  The taste is so disgusting.  Sour, unsweetened, and again just sparkling water.  Maybe I just don't like pomegranate, but wow that was bad.

Finally I have the Desert Pear Green Tea.  At first I didn't like it, but I kept drinking some and it's not bad.  I'd rank it above the pomegranate.

If you're in your local drugstore and you see this stuff, stay clear of the pomegranate.  I would only recommend trying wild berry or desert pear.  It's overall not a horrible product, maybe I'm just used to things being sweetened with sugar instead of "organic blue agave".

Moving to Drupal

I recently moved my Web site (noobbox.com) over to the Drupal Content Management System.  This won't mean much to anyone who just browses the web, but to site owners, a CMS can be a life saver.

Recently I was working on a Web site for somebody and they needed a way to allow multiple users to upload pictures.  Being the idiot I am, I started writing one from scratch.  There is an incredible number of things to take into consideration from password recovery to permissions and the possibility of needing to extend/add features.  I started looking at Drupal because in Web Team, we're migrating the district's Web sites over to Drupal.

What a nice system.  It has everything you need, and it's modular which means anybody can develop add-ons for it.  One thing that takes a little work is moving existing templates/layouts over to being a Drupal theme.  If you take a look at my site, you'll see that some things are still a little whacky (I'm having issues with the breadcrumbs div) but overall it's much easier to maintain my site as well as log information about my visitors.

The only thing that Drupal could use (and I mean this as a module, so you developers out there may want to look at this) is a Download manager.  I need a section of my site to have categories, files with descriptions and download counter, password-protection per-file option, with upload and mirror capabilities.  I couldn't find one so right now I'm using Olate Download.

So if you're looking for a way to manage your Web site without having to type in HTML or PHP constantly, I'd suggest using a CMS like Drupal, Joomla!, Xoops or PHPNuke.

Apache vs. Lighttpd

I've been a big Apache fan since I was able to apt-get install on my Ubuntu box.  Lately I've been messing around with different web servers so I thought I'd try out Lighttpd to see how it compared to Apache.

I used Apache Benchmark to run the test.  All I did was run

ab -n 5000 http://localhost/

So I just sent 5000 request to localhost.  First I ran Apache by itself.  Here are the results:

Finished 5000 requests


Server Software:        Apache/2.2.8
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        145 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   3.910033 seconds
Complete requests:      5000
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      1990000 bytes
HTML transferred:       725000 bytes
Requests per second:    1278.76 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       0.782 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.782 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          496.93 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    0   0.4      0      30
Processing:     0    0   1.1      0      30
Waiting:        0    0   0.1      0       6
Total:          0    0   1.2      0      31

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%      0
  66%      0
  75%      0
  80%      0
  90%      0
  95%      1
  98%      2
  99%      3
 100%     31 (longest request)

It wasn't too bad.  Now on to Lighttpd

Finished 5000 requests


Server Software:        lighttpd/1.4.19
Server Hostname:        localhost
Server Port:            80

Document Path:          /
Document Length:        145 bytes

Concurrency Level:      1
Time taken for tests:   2.60885 seconds
Complete requests:      5000
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      2005000 bytes
HTML transferred:       725000 bytes
Requests per second:    2426.14 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       0.412 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       0.412 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          950.08 [Kbytes/sec] received

Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:        0    0   0.5      0      31
Processing:     0    0   0.5      0      29
Waiting:        0    0   0.0      0       0
Total:          0    0   0.7      0      32

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
  50%      0
  66%      0
  75%      0
  80%      0
  90%      0
  95%      0
  98%      1
  99%      1
 100%     32 (longest request)

If we compare the numbers, it's obvious that Lighttpd did a better job at fulfilling the requests faster, with a higher transfer rate.  For now I've switched my server over to Lighttpd.  It's only used for torrentflux, vmware, and small testing sites but the switch will definitely free some resources and serve pages more quickly.

Specs

Ubuntu 8.04 Server Edition

512 Mb Ram


1266 Mhz (1.266 Ghz)

Waim Server Project

I'm currently working on a project called waim.  It stands for Web AIM (AOL Instant Messenger).  Right now, it is in an early alpha stage but is coming along nicely.

The goal of this software is to allow anyone to start and run their own "web instant messenger" Web site (like meebo.com or aim express) without any knowledge of programming or coding.  All you'll need is an Internet connection, some firewall configuration, and you could start your own site.

Waim is an HTTP server in itself.  This means you don't need to find a web host provider who supports sockets or custom software or any of that.  It runs from your computer, and handles everything from serving the web pages to connecting to AIM.  The pages are fully customizable, allowing you to create a unique service while still using the waim server as the core of your site.

Security is a big issue when it comes to running any type of server.  There are internal checks on literally all data sent to waim, ensuring your computer stays safe.  There is also administration options allowing you to block users, disable service, and even shut down the server completely.  There are only a small number of web pages that are generated per page request, the rest are created when the server is started.  This limits the possible entry points to files on the host computer.

Waim is not finished, it is barely even started.  Right now the Web server functionality is up and running, but it does not have it's core functions (besides web server) even written yet.  I will continue to post updates about waim, and hopefully I will get a demo running so you can see how it's coming along.

Google Chrome

Google's web browser, "chrome", was released as a beta today. There are a lot of nice features built in, and it's a stable app even for being in beta. The render engine is based off of Web kit, and it has some features from Mozilla making it almost a hybrid of Safari and Firefox.

One of the first things you'll notice is how much of the page is in view. The interface is designed to display more of what you want to see, and less of what you don't need, like status bars and toolbars.

You'll notice that this browser, along with pretty much every new browser, has tabbed windows. But Chrome is different. Each tab has its own environment to exist in, with its own alocation of memory and on its own process. This way, tabs aren't sharing resources. But the best part of it is, if one tab crashes (maybe your game of duck hunt freezes) instead of losing every open tab, only that single tab is lost.

Another feature most modern browsers have is a search box in the upper right corner. If you notice, though, Google Chrome doesn't have one. So where did it go? Just type your search right where you would normally put a URL. Typing opens up searching, bookmarks, and history all in one place.

Some other features it has are

• Incognito mode - browse without saving history or cookies
• Import settings - copy your history, passwords, and bookmarks from Firefox right into chrome
• Simple downloads - a simple download manager at the bottom of the window, no intrusive and new popups
• V8 engine - Chrome can execute JavaScript much faster, making things like checking your E-Mail much faster
  
• Phish protection - Like in Firefox, chrome will alert you if you're on a suspicious web site

Along with the phish protection, Google went ahead and changed the way the current page URL is displayed. It will display the URL in a gray color, and the base URL in black. That way you can see exactly what web site you're on.


So is this a Firefox killer? Probably not. As nice as Chrome may be, it won't be replacing my Firefox. There's still no support for add-ons or skins. It also lacks the community that Firefox has. I can see it replacing Internet Explorer, but you never know. It's still in beta, and it's open source. Some great projects could come from it, let's just hope people put it to good use.

District Web Team

As some of you may know, I was accepted onto my school district's web team.  This means that I'll be working with schools, administrators, as well as other students on web sites and web projects.

We've already started working on redoing the school web sites.  Right now, each building has somebody who knows how to use Microsoft FrontPage who makes the sites.  What we're doing is moving everything onto a CMS (content management system) so that principals, teachers, and other staff are able to edit the web site without struggling through FrontPage or learning any HTML. One thing I've been working on for this was writing some JavaScript to calculate and display wind chill on our weather pages. 

It's going to be a great year working with this team of people on this.  We've already had three meetings about this project, and school hasn't even started yet :).  Hopefully I'll be on the team next year, too.