PolarLava::Blog » Archive of April 2008

Math Gone Wild

Maybe it's just because I'm old, but this "new math" just seems stupidly wrong as illustrated in this clip.

I find this as yet another example of "change for the sake of change" that seems so prevalent in schools these days. About the only thing I find better is the insistence on teaching to pass "the test". Forget critical thinking, it's all about passing the standardized test.

April 30, 2008 @ 12:57 pm | Category: Brainwork

Magic Hat Roxy Rolles

April 29, 2008 @ 12:57 pm | Category: Beer

MP3’s Killing The Album

The article Who really gives a shit about MP3s killing the album? really struck a chord with me. I care. I started buying records roughly 35 years ago. And I've pretty much always listened to them from start to finish as a complete work. About the only time I really recall playing single tracks was when a good friend of mine would come over and I'd "play DJ" for him as he barked out requests. And in the car where I only have an AM/FM radio, I listen to random tunes. But when it comes to serious listening I always have, and hopefully always will listen to full albums from start to finish.

I've made at least a partial transition to MP3's with a portable for while I'm walking, working, etc. But even then it's loaded with full album which I will listen too from beginning to end. I just don't know or like it any other way. So in my mind, vinyl might be dead —although I still have about 300 records myself, the album certainly is not!

April 29, 2008 @ 12:53 pm | Category: Brainwork

Sad Kermit

So apparently this has been around for about a year, but only came to my attention recently. What can I say? I'm old and slow I guess. In any case, this is sick, twisted and most importantly very funny! Meet Sad Kermit.

April 29, 2008 @ 12:42 pm | Category: That's Funny!

Letchworth State Park (Upper Falls)

Dual Suspension Road Bike

Came across a rather interesting story earlier today about a dual suspension road bike from Bianchi ridden by John Museeuw in the 1994 Paris-Roubaix race.

I found this a rather interesting read and a combination cool/weird looking. I was also a bit surprised that I had never seen or heard of this anywhere before.

April 17, 2008 @ 12:27 pm | Category: Cycling

Mini-Project: jpcache

So after releasing one modification for jpcache, I've now adopted it as a mini-project.  I've used this application for a long time now and have found it to be an absolutely great addition to all of my pages.  In short it allows you to cache complex pages once they are generated and optionally compress the output on the fly as well.  This caching can effectively turn your complex pages into a static pages, thus allowing you to server them up faster.  Additionally you can specify the time between page generation/cache updates from 1 second to indefinitely.

So what's the problem?  I had made a few small contribution to the project a number of years ago and had discussed developing a cache management interface with Jean-Pierre (the "jp" of jpcache).  I actually never pursued this as MyClient was already meeting most of my cache management needs.  But sometimes I just wanted to quickly flush a single-page from the cache.  So I was compelled to develop a page-level flushing mechanism.  This development, after a minor modification was accepted by the project, but never released.

So a good deal of time passed and it became clear the jpcache project unfortunately had ground to a halt.  That's OK, I understand because being the developer of several projects myself, I can easily see how it happens.  Simply put, running a project is a lot of work.  I considered taking up the cause, but I was already managing more projects than I could handle.  It was at this point I released my page level flushing modification as V2.1pl via my blog.  (see below)

So for a longtime I was content with the situation.  Then in early 2008 I learned that jpcache had been taken over and renamed QuickCache.  I was happy to see somebody had taken up the cause and emailed the project lead about my single-page flush modification.  And unfortunately I never heard back from them, nor has this change shown up in the project.

Again I just sort of gave up on it.  But recently I've been looking for a reason to use the PHP SQLite extension simply because I found it interesting.  Thus I opted to (quickly and easily) create a SQLite backend for jpcache.  And at the time of writing this, it's the backend I'm currently using, although that could change in the future.  I thought about submitting it to the QuickCache project, but it appears that it's development is also stalled.  Thus I've opted to release it as "jpcache V2.2" at this time.  See the newly created jpcache project page for more information on this release.

In the future it's possible my jpcache changes could be incorporated into QuickCache should they be interested.  But a more likely scenario would be for me to create a new project branch —which I guess I effectively have at this point.  My reasons for doing this, beyond what's outlined above, is that one of the changes QuickCache made was the elimination of the configuration file.  Personally I disagree with this change and feel the configuration should stay separated from the operational logic as much as possible.  I also still toy with the idea of creating a cache management tool.  But realistically it's more likely I would first modify MyClient to support SQLite databases.  At that point I would again not need a management tool, although it would be nice to add that at some point.  Thus I will be maintaining some version of jpcache for the foreseeable future if for no other reason, my personal need and desire.  So if you're an abandoned jpcache user or simply someone looking for a web page caching solution, this might be a solution for you too!

April 13, 2008 @ 09:31 am | Category: Software Development