After following various tutorials and picking certain peoples brains, I think I finally have arrived at the bees knees as they say (or do they?)!

The configuration

The dream config breaks down as follows:

• 128MB VPS (Virtualbox for testing, KVM or XEN for production
• Debian 6 (Squeeze)
• PHP5 with FPM (via dotdeb)
• Nginx web server
• APC Optcode cache
• Varnish Caching Proxy
• WordPress with W3 Cache plug-in
• and for good measure Cloudflare CDN/Proxy

I will write up an easy to follow, cut-and-past tutorial soon – promise! And publish my script once it’s done and working. Until then, please check out the following comparison between Nginx+Varnish and Nginx without Varnish. The difference is clear!

This is with WP (latest) and W3 Cache active, running on APC with browser caching.

The test were run with Apache Bench (apt-get install apache2-utils).

Nginx (with APC & W3C)

ab -kc 10 -n 1000 http://localhost:8080/

This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms - milliseconds)
50% 405
66% 417
75% 424
80% 428
90% 444
95% 459
98% 484
99% 496
100% 534 (longest request)


Nginx and Varnish (with APC & W3C)

ab -kc 10 -n 1000 http://localhost/

This is ApacheBench, Version 2.3 <$Revision: 655654 $>
Copyright 1996 Adam Twiss, Zeus Technology Ltd, http://www.zeustech.net/
Licensed to The Apache Software Foundation, http://www.apache.org/

Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms - milliseconds )
50% 1
66% 1
75% 2
80% 2
90% 2
95% 3
98% 19
99% 1137
100% 1139 (longest request)


Summary

On its own Nginx (with APC and W3C) takes 40s to run a test with 1000 requests. With Varnish in front of it is only takes 1.2s to serve the same number!

On its own Nginx will handle 24.52 requests per second, whereas with Varnish in front it will handle 769.98!

On its own Nginx will transfer 6.30 Kbytes/sec with Varnish it will push 4,827.39 Kbytes/sec!

The majority of requests (90%) were served within 444ms with just nginx but just 2ms with varnish. This is from localhost of course.

Now imagine the whole thing protected and CDN’d by Cloudflare and you got yourself a website that can truly fly.

Cushty! ;D

PS: Thanks to Daniel Miesler’s post for inspiration. There are more people to thank but I’ll save that until the next post.

Coming Soon

Related posts in this (little) series:

• How to: Testing Nginx with APC, Varnish, WordPress and W3 Cache on a 128MB VPS
• How to: Install Nginx with APC, Varnish, WordPress and W3 Cache on a 128MB VPS
• How to: Benchmark Nginx and Varnish for a WordPress Site
• How to: Make Money from Offering VPS Hosting

RAW photos and uncompressed HD video rushes are big! A project I filmed recently over two days weighs in with just over 50GB of HD1080i footage recorded by my Sony EX3 XDCAM. My Lightroom catalog is already 57.3GB of RAW photos although I only started shooting professionally sometime in the second quarter this year. Not hard to imagine how large a collection of raw material I will have collected by the end of the year!

The olden days

Before, I shot on DV tape or took photos saved as JPG, producing a relatively small amount of data that needed backing up. In all cases I simply made sure the original tapes were stored safely and copied the final project with associated footage to DVD and an external hard drive. So far this has worked pretty well and with the advent of “cloud” data storage (Amazon S3, Dropbox, SugarSync to name but three), I also had a neat way to backup, version and share files while keeping them in-sync across multiple computers.

Using this system with hundreds of Gigabytes of files will make you poor very quickly as well as max out your internet connection for long periods. Even when you are on fibre optic cable pushing 2MBit/s upload speeds, you can expect your 50GB of newly acquired data to take a while to upload to the notoriously slow servers of most cloud storage providers.

Backing-up to DVD results in not much more joy as you will need DVD-DL disks offering a measly 8GB of space and therefore a lot of disks. Hard drives are cheap but if you are using a single external USB2 drive for backups then you are not much safer. USB2 is also excruciatingly slow and even with Firewire 800 you are looking at not much better transfer times.

Things that do not work well

Time for a quick summary to see what’s not working so far:

• External USB or Firewire hard drives
  Because it’s slow as well as unsafe to store data on a single (cheap) hard drive.
• DVD disks
  Too many disks required to backup to. Professional grade archive quality disks are expensive too!
• Cloud storage providers
  Too slow and too expensive for huge amounts of data required to be stored!

Find out how I do it on the next page… .

1. Go to your itunes store on PC/Mac and go to the user account (top right hand corner – usually your email address)
   
2. Enter your account password when prompted
   
3. Next thing you see is your account overview. From here we’ll select “Edit Payment Information” (second from top right)
   
4. You’ll notice a message in red at the top of this page. In my screenshot you will not see anything other than a normal screen though.
   
5. Scroll to the bottom and press “Done”.
   
6. You are back at the account overview. Press “Done” once more to exit.
   
7. Now reboot your Apple TV (don’t do “Standby”) – unplug the power cable and plug it back in again.
8. Now try logging on to your iTunes account on the Apple TV again and purchase something!

This worked for my client and I hope it will work for you too. Let me know.

Example: #31#07794132161

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Simply install the add-on (Thunderbird Menu -> Tools -> Add-ons -> Install add-on) and then restart Thunderbird.

The backup add-on can be found at Kaosmos website and downloaded for free! It works on all platforms as far as I know (Mac OS X, Windows, Linux).

Here’s a quick step-by-step guide on how to get it working (in my case it’s Thunderbird running on Ma OSX). The screen shots can be enlarged by clicking on them:-

Go to your Thunderbird Tools Menu and select add-ons:

The add-ons screen. Now select “install” from the bottom left corner:

A dialog pops-up asking you for the location of the file. Select it and press “open”:

A security prompt will ask you to confirm whether you really want to install the file. Press “Install now”:

The dialog box will show the installed file and prompt you to restart Thunderbird. Press “Restart Thunderbird”:

After Thunderbird restarted go to your inbox and select the emails you want to export:

Right-click on any of the selected messages to bring up a menu. Go to “Save selected messages” to view the choices:

Select the desired export format. I suggest EML since it’s the easiest way to import emails to other programs. You can also import to Plain Text and HTML if you just want a backup you can read later but not require it to be in any mail program:

A dialog appears, asking you where to save the emails to. Make your choice and press “Choose”:

Now browse to the selected destination to view your exported messages. In my case it’s on a Mac:

Hope this was useful to you. Have a nice day

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Für Windows: Riva VX Encoder (kostenlos)
Für Mac OS X: VisualHub (free to try und 23.32 US$ für die volle Version)
Für Linux: ffmpeg (kostenlos)

Alle drei Tools basieren auf der freien ffmpeg Software, welche es für alle Betriebssysteme gibt. Sönke Rohde hat eine gute Anleitung (auf Englisch) zum Thema Flash Video konvertierung geschrieben, welches nicht nur für Windows Nutzer zutreffend ist.

Mac User sollten auf jeden Fall sich VisualHub angucken, bzw. am besten kostenlos testen! Für 23.32 US$ (circa 19 EUR) gibts ein Tool was alles sehr einfach und bequem macht, ohne dabei auf erweiterte Features zu verzichten. Das ganze ist im endeffekt eine GUI für ffmpeg, und die Beste die ich gefunden habe

Wenn ich Flash Videos (flv) erstelle, oder jedes andere Format, mache ich das heute so dass ich aus iMovie oder FVP ein Master MOV erstelle und dann mit VisualHub konvertiere. Damit kann man auch DVDs, etc. machen. Also wirklich so fast alles was man sich wünschen kann.

Bonus Tipp: Nun das Ihr Flash Videos erstellen könnt, möchtet Ihr warscheinlich wissen wie sie einfach auf die Website oder Blog kommen. Mein Tipp ist das FLV Embed plug-in für WordPress, welches Jeroen Wijering’s FLV Player einfach einbindet. Ihr könnt es in Aktion auf meiner Website vlog sehen.

Viel Spass.

Update: Visual Hub hat die Entwicklung eingestellt. Allerdings ist es immer noch das einfachst zu bedienende Konvertierungs Program was ich für den Mac kenne.

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Suckerfish for jQuery code can be found on Myles Angell page, instructions on how to get it (easily) working on WordPress can be found at invokemedia’s site. Just replace the Javascript code on the latter, with the code found on the former

BTW You can see it in action on my new WordPress vBlog for Axle Video Productions.

Natürlich kann man die Bilder auch als Quicktime Movie aufnehmen. Es ersetzt selbstverständlich keinen professionellen Videovorschaumonitor, ist aber besser (und billiger) um einfach mal zu sehen ob das ganze OK aussieht was man da aufnehmen will. Kontrast, Auflösung und Farben sind natürlich nicht kontrollierbar damit aber besser als die eingebaute mini-LCD oder b/w Sucher allemal! Hier ein kleines Testvideo was ich vor einer Minute in meinem unterbelichteten Zimmer aufgenommen habe:

[flv:/media/testrecording.flv 440 330]

Mehr:

• Download (288kb, ZIP Archive, O/S: OS X 10.4.+)
• Homepage (www.mindsprockets.com)

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This way I can use my Apple Mac PowerBook as a preview monitor and even capture quick clips. OK, so it doesn’t have the best resolution or give you any control over image colour, sharpness, etc. but it works just dandy to check that you can actually use the image you are about to record. Beats a small LCD panel or b/w finder any time! Here’s the test footage, recorded about a minute ago in my darkened room:

[flv:/media/testrecording.flv 440 330]

More:

• Download (288kb, ZIP Archive, O/S: OS X 10.4.+)
• Homepage (www.mindsprockets.com)

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The only way to get rid of them and free up much needed space on your account is to “purge” your folders. Although this can be automated somehow, it’s really inconvenient for me. I prefer messages to be moved to my Trash folder for review and then permanently removed when I choose to. The last thing on my mind is remembering to clean up after a bit of software that should be doing this for me.

So what’s the solution?

I’ve looked through Outlook (2003) and found nothing.

I’ve queried the MS Knowledgebase and drew a blank (apart from the useful message quoted above earlier).

I’ve tried creating rules using the build-in “Rules Wizard” to no effect. There’s just no way to do it using rules in Outlook (2003).

I’ve tried “Visual Basic for Applications” (VBA) macro scripting… and hit pay dirt:

Reference: www.outlookcode.com

lafong (05-Jul-2005, 16:28)
Here’s a script to copy message(s) to a “Deleted Items” folder, then purge the current mailbox. You have to create a “Deleted Items” folder in your IMAP account. Seems to work for both POP “Personal Folders” too, if you use it accidentally, but not for Exchange(who cares). After making the macro you can create a toolbar button to activate it. I’m no vbs guru, so no guarantees.

by lafong – http://www.outlookcode.com/codedetail.aspx?id=427

Sub DeleteMessages()

Set myOlApp = CreateObject("Outlook.Application")

Dim myNameSpace As NameSpace

Set myNameSpace = myOlApp.GetNamespace("MAPI")

Dim myExplorer As Explorer

Set myExplorer = myOlApp.ActiveExplorer

'Get the folder type, expected type is 0 i.e. mail folder. If other type of folder
'being used then abort macro as it should only be used with mail folders.
folderType = myExplorer.CurrentFolder.DefaultItemType

'Check that folder is mail folder
If TypeName(myExplorer) = "Nothing" Or folderType <> 0 Then
GoTo invalidMailbox
End If

'Locate root folder for this account
Set thisFolder = myExplorer.CurrentFolder
Do Until thisFolder.Parent = myNameSpace
Set thisFolder = thisFolder.Parent
Loop
Set accountFolder = thisFolder

'Identify selected messages
Dim selectedItems As Selection
Set selectedItems = myExplorer.Selection
Dim currentMailItem As MailItem
Dim iterator As Long

'Run loop on selected messages
For iterator = 1 To selectedItems.Count
Set currentMailItem = selectedItems.Item(iterator)

'Move messages to Deleted Items folder
Set trashFolder = accountFolder.Folders("Deleted Items")
currentMailItem.Move (trashFolder)

Next

'Now, purge deleted messages
Dim myBar As CommandBar
Set myBar = Application.ActiveExplorer.CommandBars("Menu Bar")
Dim myButtonPopup As CommandBarPopup
Set myButtonPopup = myBar.Controls("Edit")
Dim myButton As CommandBarButton
Set myButton = myButtonPopup.Controls("Purge Deleted Messages")
myButton.Execute

Exit Sub

invalidMailbox:
MsgBox ("Macro configured only to work with mail folders! ")

Exit Sub

End Sub

Good luck and let me know how it works out for you.

Technorati Tags: outlook · imapmicrosoft · macro

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Instructions

1. Open the Terminal.app (Applications/Utilities/Terminal)
2. Then type in the following (just copy-n-paste):
   cd /System/Library/Frameworks/Carbon.framework/Versions/A/Frameworks/HIToolbox.framework/Versions/A/Resources/
3. Press Enter/Return
4. Then type in the following followed by enter:
   sudo mv Extras.rsrc Extras.rsrc.BAD
   Enter your normal user pass when prompted!
5. Type in the following followed by enter:
   sudo mv Extras.rsrc.orig Extras.rsrc
   Enter your normal user pass when prompted!
6. Then close everything down and restart your Mac
7. Log back in and keep your fingers crossed…
8. Open a folder and enjoy the good old (ugly) metalised theme

Reference:
http://forum.macbidouille.com/lofiversion/index.php/t136881.html
Version Tracker Info and Feedback on Whiteout
Whiteout Developer Site

Good luck and let me know whether it works for you

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Alternatively you could just download the hack in a handy ZIP file, read the intall guide and get happy quicker. Have fun.

Just copy-n-paste the two commands from the text file and your standard IntegraMod 1.4.0 files and folders will have the right permissions. Please note that the two commands have to be on one line each! Make sure that it is before you copy and paste it into your shell by turning off “wrap text” in your text editor. Questions? Please post your comments below.

Also note that I cannot offer any guarantees that it’ll work for you. However, there’s not much that can go wrong with this really since you are only changing file and folder permissions

Have fun

Download:

IntegraMod 1.4.0 Chmod Commands for Shell use.