speed up firefox

By Josh Highland in hacks, internet, software

Alot of people I know dont like firefox because its slow. after following my insteructions here, firefox will be anything but slow:

  1. Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down and look for the following entries:

    network.http.pipelining

    network.http.proxy.pipelining

    network.http.pipelining.maxrequests

    Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.

  2. Alter the entries as follows:

    Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"

    Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"

    Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This means it will make 30 requests at once.

  3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it "nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.

    If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!"

I love “myisamchk -r”

By Josh Highland in software

This weekend I had some major problems with my web server. Here is a brief log of events.

Saturday 07/16/2006

  • 3:00pm: I try to go to one of my sites, "can not connect to database". It seems that all of the connections are in use. Weird. I check the server… 500 open db connections? I reboot the mysql server, things seem like they are working.
  • 4pm – 5pm: I go out to eat with my friends. Using my phone, and a ssh client, I check the database server, things seem to be ok. (damn im a nerd! im checking my linux database sever via ssh on a cell phone!)
  • 6pm – 7pm: mysql server still running. I look at the message board on notopular.com, "database error". After doing some research, I realize that the harddrive that the databases sit on is 100% full. Not good. Looking at the files, there are a ton of error logs that have been generated. I clear up some room on the drive, reboot the sql server. Sweet now I can write to the DB again.
  • 8pm – 10pm: Looking at my message board, "Cannot connect to DB", some more research, I realize that some of the tables for the forums application are corrupt. great. I break out the good ol' "myisamchk -r" command and get to work. A bunch of the indexes are totally hosed. After everything is done running, I can connect and view the database, I back everything up.
  • 12 midnight – 4am: I check the message boards again. I can view everything, but I cant post to the forums! the table that contains the message text (a HUGE table, 670,000+ records) has something wrong with it, I cant write to it. Again i break out "myisamchk -r" but i get an error. "Please use the -o flag, -r can not repair this table". CRAP! I need this table! its the guts of the message boards!. I know that the -o flag is going to take a while, so I bring down the apache webserver to gain some CPU power, and then run "myisamchk -o" on the table. I figure out how long its going to take… so I reniced the process to turbo charge it, and cut down on the time… by cutting down on the time, I mean its only going to take 3 hours to run!
  • 4am – 5am: The rebuild of the table indexes has worked! All of the records were salvaged! I bring the webserver back up and start checking. Everything is looking good. Back up the database locally and offsite.
  • 5:30am: the sun is coming up. im going to bed.

All in the night of a developer/webmaster/systems administrator

metal putting me to sleep?

By Josh Highland in Josh's Rambling, music

I have been listening to a lot of metal at work lately.
I dont know if its a coincidence, but I have been extremely tired at work. Its like my brain is worn out. When I take off my headphones and dont listen to anything I start to feel more alert.

A while back I remember Derek telling me that he listens to death metal before he goes to be because it puts him to sleep,

I think that he might be right on that one. There is so much going on in most metal songs, your brain takes it all in and tried to analyze every note flying into your ears. As a result, you get mentally worn on. I dont really know if thats the cause of me being so tired, but I have been beat lately.

music does sooth the savage beast!

Tongue Cancer?!?

By Josh Highland in Josh's Rambling

Last week I went to the dentist to have my teeth cleaned… regular routine stuff, nothing to worry about.

The hygienist is looking my moth over when she says "lift up your tongue for me" then she leans in with a probing tool. "can you feel that?" she asks. "Nope, are you even touching me?" I reply. "I need the dentist to look at this" as she left the room. Im thinking "great here we go, something amazing is about to happen". The dentist, who was obviously working on someone else and was stopped to come look at me pulls up a chair and says "lets see whats going on here, lift up your tongue for me… OH!.. can you feel this?" I gave him the same response, "are you even touching me? whats going on?". "yeah, we need you to get that removed right away". "whats going on, remove what from under my tongue?" I asked. The dentist went on to say that I have a think white patch developing on the underside of my tongue, and that its not always a bad sign, but commonly it is a symptom of TONGUE CANCER!"

TONGUE CANCER! WHAT THE HELL!

The dentist asked me how much I smoke of chew tobacco on a daily basis. I told him that Ive never smoked or chewed in my life. Hell, Ive been straight edge for over 10 years now.

Yesterday I went to the Oral surgeon for him to check it out. He was a nice guy, but his reaction was the same "how much do you smoke/chew?". Simply amazing. When I told him that I dont touch the stuff, he asked me if I have a family history of cancer. If you count my mom, 3 of my grandparents, my great grandpa, my aunt, my uncle, and myself all having cancer, tumors or something biopsied, then yeah I guess there is a bit of history (In 2000, I had my right breast removed at 19, because the drs thought I had breast cancer, im glad it was just a benign tumor).

So yeah, the doctor wants to do a biopsy on the "Leukoplakia" I have under my tongue right away. By right away he means today. He said that Im going to need a few stitches to close it up. Stitches un my tongue� suck. It doesnt make me feel good when I go to a doctor about something that could be cancer growing under my tongue, and he wants to remove it and analysis it 24 hours later.