Archive for Tech

SSL cert hints

Following up on one of my old posts, here is some useful additional information:

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Skype for Asterisk

Finally some work on an official Skype channel driver for Asterisk:

Specifically, the beta version of Skype For Asterisk is an add-on channel driver module that integrates Skype Internet calling with Asterisk-based telephony products. Skype For Asterisk also complements small and mid-sized business users’ existing services by providing low rates for calling landline and mobile phones around the world.

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Our changing file workloads

From Storagemojo:

 

Some significant differences from prior studies:

  • Workloads more write oriented. Read/write byte ratios and are now only 2 to 1 compared to the 4-1 or higher ratios reported earlier.
  • Workloads less read-centric. Read/write workloads are now 30x more common.
  • Most bytes transferred sequentially. These runs are 10x the length found in the old studies.
  • Files 10x bigger.
  • Files live 10x longer. Less than half are deleted within a day of creation.

Cool new findings

  • Files rarely re-opened. Over 66% are re-opened once and 95% fewer than 5 times.
  • Over 60% of file re-opens are within a minute of the first open.
  • Less than 1% of clients account for 50% of requests.
  • Infrequent file sharing. Over 76% of files are opened by just 1 client.
  • Concurrent file sharing very rare. As the prior point suggests, only 5% of files are opened by multiple clients and 90% of those are read only.
  • Most file types have no common access pattern.

Another interesting finding: 91% of VMWare Virtual Disk (vmdk) files accesses were small sequential reads – not the larger sequential accesses I’d expect.

And there’s this: over 90% of the active storage was untouched during the study. That makes it official: data is getting cooler.

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Chrome

I’ve been playing around with Chrome from Google for a short while and what I’ve seen so far I like.

Best feature to me so far is the seperate memory spaces for each tab – I actually like this idea. Firefox is a real PITA when it comes to memory. Especially on a laptop with long running firefox processes, and being able to kill a tab and see the memory completely go is good. I’m not sure how exactly Chrome works – but if the application code is cached and only the data specific to each tab is in separate process and memory space then it is probably efficient enough.

It will be interesting when more of the plugins from Firefox get portable or written for Chrome. I’d also like to see a portable version.

Check out the Chrome Book at Google Books – has some useful information.

For now I think I will be using Chrome and Firefox together. Chrome is definitely a very good replacement for Prism which still suffers from Firefox issues. Running Gmail in Chrome with application shortcuts is very easy. And the method is uses to load links from Gmail and GReader in the main window is very cool.

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AideRSS + GoogleReader Firefox extension

AideRSS and their GoogleReader Firefox extension seem to a good way to increase your productivity when reading feeds with GoogleReader.

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OpenVPN GUI client and Windows Vista

OpenVPN GUI client and Windows Vista from Computer Tech Union.

1) Open your client.ovpn file and add the following two lines to the bottom of the file:
route-method exe
route-delay 2

2) Create a shortcut to your OpenVPN GUI file. Right click the shortcut and click properties.
Under the ‘Shortcut’ tab.
Click ‘advanced’.
Check the box that says ‘Run as administrator’ and
then Click ‘OK’ and ‘OK’ again.

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Radiant CMS Script

Useful script for getting Radiant CMS installed.

I made a couple changes for my setup:

#!/bin/sh
radiant --database sqlite3 $1
cd $1
echo "
production:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: db/production.sqlite3
test:
  adapter: sqlite3
  database: db/test.sqlite3
development:
  production
" > config/database.yml

svn export http://dev.radiantcms.org/svn/radiant/trunk/extensions/shards vendor/extensions/00_shards
svn export http://svn.seancribbs.com/svn/rails/plugins/extensions/page_attachments vendor/extensions/page_attachments
svn export https://secure.svnrepository.com/s_swanki/open/radiant/extensions/page_meta/tags/v0.1.5 vendor/extensions/page_meta
svn export http://dev.radiantcms.org/svn/radiant/trunk/extensions/reorder/ vendor/extensions/reorder
rake radiant:freeze:edge
vendor/radiant/script/plugin install acts_as_list
rake production db:bootstrap
rake production db:migrate:extensions
rake production radiant:extensions:page_attachments:update
rake production radiant:extensions:reorder:update

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Asterisk Operator Panels

Links to couple operator panels that seem to be much better than FOOP.

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SDHC Cards vs Hard Drive vs SSD

SDHC Cards vs Hard Drive vs SSD

Pros:

  • SDHC cards offer cheap storage without the need to open up your laptop
  • Removable storage so you can take important applications with you
  • Fast SDHC cards have rapid data access times
  • Data transfer rates remain mostly constant

Cons:

  • Your notebook’s built-in card reader might be too slow
  • Slower SDHC cards aren’t really fast enough
  • Even a fast SDHC has slower transfer rates than most hard drives
  • Real SSDs are MUCH faster … and MUCH more expensive

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JoikuSpot

JoikuSpot turns an S60 phone into a WiFi hotspot with the phone’s 3G connectivity. Seems like a clever idea.

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