However, sometime at the start of the year, Apache would sometimes throw a wobbler during the night here in the UK. Perhaps one day in 14 I’d get up and find my VPS slowed to a crawl; the culprit would be Apache hogging the CPU. Ouch! Restarting the Apache process would calm things down and I didn’t need to reboot but obviously something was awry.

At first I thought that the problem was an Apache misconfiguration. I focused my attention on a few segments of the main Apache configuration file and fiddled with these as follows:

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<ifmodule mpm_prefork_module>
    StartServers          3
    MinSpareServers       3
    MaxSpareServers       7
    MaxClients           20
    MaxRequestsPerChild  1000
</ifmodule>
<ifmodule mpm_worker_module>
    StartServers          2
    MaxClients          150
    MinSpareThreads      25
    MaxSpareThreads      75 
    ThreadsPerChild      25
    MaxRequestsPerChild   0
</ifmodule>

This didn’t do the trick (although the configuration is sound). I decided to trawl through my log-files and found that since most of my visitors are UK based, the sites were generally quiet during the UK night. However, around 6.00am, I’d get hit with a plethora of robots from all over the place wanting to spider my site. So that’s a good thing yeah? Well not in my case. It was around this time that my VPS would go wonky.

I wondered about the Wordpress pseudo-cron facility. Wordpress can perform tasks on your site(s) at pre-determined times but in the absence of a real cron, the task is triggered on the next page load after the scheduled time has passed.

I run several time dependent plug-ins on my sites such as Lifestreams, RSS feeds and Caches, so if these weren’t going to run until a page load, and there were next to no page loads in the night, then when the robots came-a-calling, all the cron jobs across several sites would trigger at the same time. So I thought about a solution and came up with:

• Disabling the Wordpress pseudo-cron
• Enabling a remote cron where I could control the time schedule

Disabling the Pseudo-Cron

This is easy. All you need to do is add this code-snippet into your wp-config.php file:

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define('DISABLE_WP_CRON', true);

Once added, that’s it. Wordpress doesn’t run its cron on page loads. OK, so now we need to run a real cron. I run mine from a remote server like so:

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0,30 * * * * /usr/bin/wget -O /dev/null http://foobar.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron >/dev/null 2>&1

The above crontab entry runs the Wordpress cron every 30 minutes, on the hour and on the half-hour. That’s easy for me since I have a remote shell account. If you don’t or the world of crontabs is a little bit mysterious to you, you can get a free web based cron account here:

http://www.mywebcron.com/

Once you’ve set-up your freebie account you can configure your cron call thus:

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http://foobar.com/wp-cron.php?doing_wp_cron

Nice and Stable

Good news. Since employing the above strategy, Apache is behaving itself and my sites achieved a 100% uptime during February. There is one little caveat to this news though. At the same time as making these changes to my system, I also installed Monit:

Monit is a free open source utility for managing and monitoring, processes, files, directories and filesystems on a UNIX system. Monit conducts automatic maintenance and repair and can execute meaningful causal actions in error situations.

What all that means is that if Apache does misbehave, Monit will gracefully restart the process and notify me. Since I installed it, Monit hasn’t had to do anything because my system has been OK but it’s a useful addition to my uptime bragging ability! I’ll write about Monit in another post.

Anyway, I’ll do a new theme (most likely child-theme) by the end of the month.

I Don’t Do Diaries

I’ve never been one to keep a paper diary. You know the “Dear Diary, today I discovered what’s been missing from my life…” kind of thing. I’ve always been too busy actually doing things rather than writing about them. All my best experiences and images I’ve seen are in my head and I don’t really feel the need to write about it too much. So that’s got me questioning the need to write about things I do on a daily basis on-line on a blog, on here. Who cares about my trip to town, my evening in the pub or how I love my cat? I wouldn’t if I was someone else. All the dross and random shit in my life gets recorded on Twitter anyway and therefore it also appears on my Lifestream Page.

I think the removal of the feeling that “I should really do a blog entry today…” will allow me to get other things done.

Multiple Interests

I think one of the reasons that I don’t write on my site too much is that I have conflicting or perhaps too many interests. I enjoy:

• Techy stuff, mainly Linux related
• Web Development, particulary Wordpress
• Sport. Cricket, Rugby, sometimes Football
• Horse Racing, including betting
• Photography, both taking photos and post production
• English, punctuation pedantry and use/misuse
• Politics, I think I’m a closet Marxist (a bit)
• Films
• Music and Music Festivals (well OK just Glastonbury these days)
• Having just bought a new mountain bike, cycling

So what I’m thinking is that I really should departmentalise my blogging. Maybe have a page that’s a focal point for everything I get up to on-line. Sort of like a portal to everything that’s me. If that’s not too narcissistic. I’m going to mull it over and perhaps come up with something in the next few weeks. I’ve got a bit of time on my hands coming up anyway so maybe this is a good time to shake off the cobwebs!

The weird thing is, I like meat. A meal without the central focus of meat or fish is something I always find a bit bland. Even things like pizzas always seem to be missing something when there isn’t any ham or pepperoni etc. I think it might be in my mind because I was brought up believing that the meat in a meal was the most important aspect of the food placed before me. If I was full I could leave stuff as long as I ate the meat. I even think I eat in a particular way that pays homage to the steak of pork chops on my plate. That’s going to go in (checks clock) a little over 12 hours time. Eeek!

So what’s the deal, why am I making what amounts to a lifestyle changing decision? Here are a few random things that have influenced me:

• I like animals. Especially cats. Particularly our cat George. I think I’m a bit obsessed with his well being and I like the fact that we got him from a rescue centre. We saved him and that’s cool. So, how can I justify loving my Georgey so much and then tuck into, for example, Roast Duck. I mean, I like ducks! I was watching an Animal Rescue program on telly the other day and this RSPCA guy was trying to capture an injured duck on a riverbank. The guy got the duck and they sorted out the injury. Hurrah. Except I also like to eat duck. Imagine some alien observers watching our day to day goings on. RSPCA guy saving a duck in one scene while a restaurant serves up duck in another. The aliens would think we were crazy and hypocrites. We probably are.
• A few years ago I had to frequently visit a slaughterhouse. I always felt really uneasy about it. On one occasion I found myself at the rear of the building and I saw a little fenced off area containing several lambs. They were all looking at me and behind them was a green door. On the other side of the door was death. Not good. During the same period in my life I would often follow vehicles carrying large amounts of chickens. All piled on top of each other and they’d be staring out at me not knowing what was going on. They were on their way to the chicken processing factory. Not good.
• In another period of my life I attended quite a few human post mortems. I’ve seen human bodies of all ages sawn open and witnessed the removal of vital organs. Once the internals are out, you may as well be at the butchers counter in Sainsbury’s. There’s no difference. So whenever I have to cut up chicken or beef, I wonder what my reaction would be if I were cutting up human flesh. Chicken = OK, Human = Throwing up. But there’s no difference, meat is meat.
• If I were marooned on a desert island and had to kill to stay alive, I could probably bring myself to do it, even if I wouldn’t like it. Could I accompany say Jamie Oliver to a farm, select a goat, kill it and then cook it? Not a bloody chance. Can I go to the supermarket and buy a joint of beef where it’s all sanitised and the death and slaughter is kept hidden from me. Course I can. More hypocrisy.
• I know animals kill other animals for food, I know there’s a food chain and we’re at the top. I know my rejection of meat isn’t going to change the world. It’s my choice though and I don’t want to eat something that has a face and eyes and can look at me.
• Of course there are a few other reasons to turn veggie, such as green issues. Fewer cattle means less carbon emmisions and more grain for humans. I understand all that. There’s the health advantage from not eating red meat etc. I understand all that too. They aren’t my reasons though. My carbon footprint is a bit shite due to my techy interests and I can’t claim health reasons since I probably knock days off my life every time I quaff copious amounts of Brothers Cider.
• So how about eating lesser animals. Like prawns and lower life forms. Well, I have a problem with that too. Where do you draw the line. Who decides what’s on my vegetarian Schindler’s list. So I’m not drawing the line. No animals directly or indirectly. I will drink milk though. That’s going to make me a lacto-vegetarian apparently.
• I’ve also started to think about animal products that I don’t eat. Leather springs to mind. So I’m going to avoid leather products as well. I’m not going to throw out all my belts and shoes but after mid-night tonight I won’t buy any more.

I realise that my life is going to be a bit more complicated from now on. People are going to have to go out of their way to accommodate me. I’m going to have to work a bit harder to find tasty nutritional meals and I’ll be scouring the ingredient panels on food I buy but I’m up for the challenge. There will be things I’ll really miss. @MilliesMum has agreed to join me but I don’t think she’ll go the distance. Perhaps I won’t but I’m going to try my hardest to give it a good go.

It’ll give me a few things to write about on here anyway!

The thing is, the way people are decorating their houses is getting way out of hand. The entire frontage of their homes are strewn with an array of light strings; fake animals, generally reindeer and the odd huge Father Christmas (Coca-cola variety, obviously). What are they trying to achieve? It strikes me that it’s nothing more than Beat the Joneses. John Jones up the street has an impressive display, right, I’m going even bigger.

What has any of this got to do with Christmas anyway. Let’s celebrate the alleged birthday of Jesus by sticking hundreds if not thousands of light bulbs on the outside of our house. In fact let’s do it just after bonfire night, that way we can get that warmy fuzzy Christmassy feeling for about seven weeks. Nice. We can conveniently forget about green issues for the festive period. Instead of switching stuff off to do our bit to save the planet, we can switch shit loads more stuff on!

Oh that last paragraph just made me think about something. I bet those people who do illuminate their homes have a green waste wheely bin. Can you imagine the ridiculous idea of someone taking their cardboard and paper and plastic out to their green wheely bin whilst at the same time lit up by their festive display. It sounds ridiculous doesn’t it but it will be happening, you just know it. Amazing. I’m going to keep on the look-out in the next few weeks to try and see that situation with my own eyes.

I hate Christmas

Dave

Oxford University

My youngest daughter Rebecca was invited to Oxford University for an interview. She’d applied to read English there. Now I didn’t go to Uni, instead I did vocational studies. Rebecca’s Mum didn’t go to Uni either. However, I realise that this is a big deal for Rebecca and the magnitude of her achievement on simply getting an interview has left me very proud indeed. Ironically she appeared apathetic to the whole process and whether that was a feeling of fear or perhaps lacking self-belief, who knows. Nevertheless they asked to see her and even if she isn’t offered a place, that’s something which she can add to her CV of achievements.

Lisa, Rebecca and I all travelled down to Oxford and stayed overnight. While Rebecca was being interviewed Lisa and I did a walking tour of the university and very good it was too. We were even able to have lunch at the Pieminister shop in the covered market. Oh happy days!

The interviews seem to have gone OK and Rebecca was very calm when we saw her at the end of the day. She’s a bright button and if she wasn’t successful then it’s nothing to be embarrassed about. She’s already been offered places at two of the better Universities in the country and no matter what she does or where she goes I know she’ll do well. I think we find out tomorrow funnily enough.

Goodbye Newark, Hello London

Out of the blue I spotted that my server hosts, Linode opened a new data centre in London. I got myself a second server there server pretty sharpish and I’ve spent about 5 days moving everything over. I eventually deleted my server in Newark and now everything I do is UK based. Ping responses from my new server = 28ms compared to 107ms before. Cool! I also took the opportunity of moving from CentOS to Debian. I think I’m happier with Debian, it makes me feel a bit more beardy!

If you want yourself a super-cool UK based Private Server, it’s a no-brainer. Linode seriously rock. Hell I’ll even help you set it up for a few beers or something. It’s EASY! Click one of the Linode links in this post to go look-see and I get referrer credit towards my hosting.

GIT

One of the knock-on effects of my new server has been that I’ve stopped using Subversion for the time being. There was an incompatibility problem that I could either sort out (which I couldn’t be arsed doing) or try something else. That something is GIT, the fast version control system. I’m only using it for web development and the only user will be me so although it’s a bit like using a sledge hammer to crack a nut, it works for me. I’ll write more about it in another post.

Incidentally, I’m not knocking Subversion, I’m just trying something different.

Christmas

Over the festive (sic) period I’m going to try and put a few sites together. More later…

The festive season must be a massive if not the biggest source of income for corporations trying to flog you stuff. I’ve not even bothered looking for stats to prove it because it’s just going to be true. I hate the whole idea of having to buy things for people, not because you love them but because the Christmas monster says you have to. Imagine not buying for someone who’s expecting you to buy them a present. Just imagine. I really want to write on the cards that I give to people:

Here’s a gift from me. I can’t really afford it, I’m only buying it for you because it’s Christmas and I’ll be skint because of it. You don’t actually need it, you probably won’t use it. Merry Christmas.

I don’t suppose that’d go down too well though would it.

From a very early age we are all duped into this merry-go-round of what I call Consumerismas. The big build up, the day arrives, the opening of stuff wrapped in shiny paper and boy-oh-boy this is great. The idea that buying stuff for people == love and happiness is etched into your soul and you’re fucked. And not just one present. Oh no, we’re now in the gluttonous age of more meaning better and the quantity or cost of something is directly proportional to the amount of love you feel for someone.

If you don’t join in with all this corporate fuelled madness you’re labelled as a Scrooge. Well if that’s the case we’ll ignore the fact that I spend the other 364 days of the year trying my damn best to be helpful, generous, polite, courteous, caring, thoughtful and loving. No, just because I hate lining executives pockets by buying pointless gifts I’m a bad person. For fuck’s sake.

Perfume Adverts on Telly

Sometime in early November they start. The Christmas adverts come on the telly and for me, the absolute worst examples are the bloody perfume/aftershave ones. You take one fit looking celebrity or model and show them: wandering down a deserted beach at sunset; attending a high-class society function; cavorting with some other fit looking celebrity or model; rambling on about life changing meaningless stuff or some other fantasy scene, shot in soft focus or monochrome. You watch and take it all in. Yes, you too Karen who works down the market with three kids, yes you John working as a plumber covered in shit all day, you too can look like Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor and live in fantasy land and have a six pack stomach or a barbie doll figure. All you need to do is spend shit loads of your hard earned cash for some fancy looking bottle of stuff that smells like chemicals and boom, your made it into the big time.

Well. I’m sorry Karen and John. No you haven’t. Karen, you still have to get up at six in the morning to get the kids sorted before you’re off to that market stall and John, sorry mate, that bunged up toilet is just around the corner. You should celebrate who you are and not try and be something you’re not and shouldn’t want to be. It’s a big fat lie of a fantasy that people with much more money than you are selling you. The end result is that they stay rich and you stay where you are. It’s time you, we, figured that out.

God and Jesus, Again

So, what has all this to do with religion. Fuck all that’s what. Corps selling consumers stuff they don’t need is not religious. It’s exploitation of the stupid masses by the rich and powerful. It’s the absolute antithesis of what the Christmas spirit is all about. If Jesus was alive and God existed, would you catch them down Argos buying Diesel perfume? Would you fuck. Do people buying all the shit think of God and Jesus when their gifts. Do they fuck.

Pathetic. And I’m not even a Christian!

Capitalism

Yeah, I understand that perhaps the whole structure of Western Capitalism is based on the corporations being rich. They keep rich partly due to Christmas. Well, in my world, all that would change. I think you could substitute the word Christmas for the word Capitalism in these posts and in a lot of cases, you wouldn’t notice the difference. Would you brother.

I hate Christmas

Dave