So, it looks like I’ve gone full circle.
About a week and a half ago, I noticed some major increases in response times from my server. Even when working in the terminal. Any command had a 5 second delay from when it executed. My site wouldn’t load in under 10 seconds. It was timing out when checking my email, and I was getting error emails sent on the various processes I was running. Continue reading
As long as I’ve been running a box on linux, all the tutorials and documentation I’ve read have been geared towards integration with a control panel (line cPanel or Virtualmin or ISPConfig). That’s all fine and good, but when you’re operating a box from your house, or a VPS, you don’t want to pay for the licensing fees or have them installed as the memory hogs they can be. Not to mention the fact that many of them suggest that you run your user’s sites out of the /var/www/ directory – not exactly a recipe for success, in my opinion.
I’ve long preferred the standard method of rooting users to the /home/ directory. It works, and you can lock a user to their individual folder. Unfortunately, with the way most installations go, it’s not the easiest thing in the world to accomplish.
(I wrote this last week, then saved it, and just realized I forgot to hit “Publish”.)
I’ve tried, I’ve really tried, but I just can’t really get comfortable running Ubuntu as a server. It’s just too much.
Strike one was the massive memory leak I had in my VPS when I tried Ubuntu there. When you’re running on 1gb of dedicated memory and 1gb “disk memory”, you can’t afford to be running at those limits after 8 hours of use. It just doesn’t work well.
Strike two came just last week, when I switched our gaming community’s dedicated server from Win2k3 to Ubuntu, and immediately fried the kernel trying to optimize it for a gameserver. (Then, to make matters even worse, the company we rented from has horrible service, and wouldn’t even be bothered to reboot it and get it back to a usable kernel). So that prompted a switch to a provider where I have complete root access.
Just a quick note to let everyone know there’s been an update to the library page. Seven new stories from three authors have been added.
Enjoy!
So, Rick Riordan’s new Heroes series was delivered to my Kindle this morning. I just finished reading it a bit ago. I’m left wondering how in the world Harry Potter fans survived 18+ months between books, when I only have to wait about 12 for the next one.
YA books are enjoyable reads. They’re not too involved as say a Clancy novel, but still entertaining enough to keep you turning pages. It’s something that keeps you involved and if it’s a good author, then you’re left guessing what the next step is – the next mystery to uncover. They’re also not overly long or filled with detailed character narratives and backstory.
I think that Riordan’s done a great job with this book, jumping off into the next series, if you will. It’s a shame that Lightning Thief flopped at the box office. The movie certainly didn’t give the books any credit, unlike the Potter movies (at least the first two).
Without trying to give away too much of the plot of the first five books for those who haven’t read, The Lost Hero starts moving the Greek mythology towards Roman mythology, as the two are often intertwined. As I read through the first 5 books, I couldn’t help but drawing some of the comparisons to the Roman gods or thinking “Hey wait, isn’t that X from the Roman mythology?” Now we’re moving into that territory.
Percy Jackson is the main character of the first five, but the new series focuses on some new characters to the arc (and I think that’s probably a more apt description for the sets of books – story arcs rather than series). The “original” characters make an appearance, and I have a feeling that given the second book is titled "Son of Neptune", we’ll see Percy and he’ll take center stage again. I’m just guessing though. I’ll have to wait till next fall for that to become fact or fiction.