i’d been with cloud web, a division of eicomm (who also hosts anandtech) for about a year, and they’d been mostly great for that whole period of time. however, when i was updating my payment card, i realized that not only was i paying for my site hosting with cloudweb, but i was also paying for a vps (virtual private server) that i ran teamspeak and some other services on as well.  i hadn’t self-hosted or vps-hosted any of my own content since right around 2008. i got sick of feeling like i had to micromanage and tune every bit of my environment to ensure it was fast, fit in a relatively small memory space (512MB in that case) and i was also sick of paying $30/mo for the privilege of driving myself nuts. at that point, i decided to move to shared hosting, as it was significantly cheaper, reasonably secure (assuming you’re using a decent provider, of course).

this got me thinking – i’m paying for shared hosting and i’m paying for a perfectly capable vps that isn’t really even being fully utilized. why not just migrate all my content over to the VPS, configure a web server and stuff and just consolidate all that stuff in one place?

so, one night at work, i got really bored and archived my content at cloud web, wget’d the archive, set up apache, mysql and php on the VPS, hardened everything and deployed the archive. i was feeling pretty pleased with myself, but someone in IRC mentioned messing with NGINX (pronounced engine-x) on his VM and was really impressed with it. so i read up on it a bit, liked what i read and saw and decided to try it out. i’d never tried it before, so the configuration conventions were a bit different, but made more sense than the XML-style configs used by apache, which i’d had years of experience with.

apache example:

#virtual host, listening on any interface, port 80
ServerAdmin foo@bar.com #contact address for the operator
ServerName bar.com #server’s hostname
ServerAlias www.bar.com #alias of the server’s hostname
DocumentRoot /var/www/bar.com/htdocs #where apache can find the site content
ErrorLog /var/log/apache2/error.log #where apache logs errors
CustomLog /var/www/bar.com/logs/access.log combined #where/how apache logs access to the site

and the same sort of config with NGINX:

server {
server_name bar.com www.bar.com;
access_log /var/www/bar.com/logs/access.log;
error_log /var/nginx/error.log;
root /var/www/bar.com/htdocs;
listen 80; #listen on port 80 for http sessions
listen [::]:80; #if you wanna be fancy and also listen on available ipv6 interfaces

location / {
index index.html index.htm; #look for these files as the index for this path – apache does by default.
}
}

for me, NGINX’s configs just are clearer, especially when you take time to space them properly (which i’m not going to bother doing here) and annotating any odd or obscure rewrite rules (things that match stuff you specify and change it to something else. similar to mod_rewrite for apache) and couple the clarity of configuration with how much faster NGINX is than apache 2.2, i’ve just been blown away.

so, back to the hosting thing – last year, i’d migrated my DNS, service monitoring and VPS hosting to Zerigo. Zerigo was promptly acquired by a company called 8×8, who have subsequently sort of run Zerigo into the ground. support requests (for things like hideous network conditions, false positive ‘down’ alerts from watchdog, etc) are either answered really well after they’re no longer an issue or never answered at all.

it bummed me out, but i ended up having to set up a VPS with a different provider, in this case, bitcable whose servers are in ashburn, va, set up my environment and then SCP’d all the content over to the new server. a month in, and network conditions are generally much more stable and solid.

the point on the graph where it goes from peak-y and jittery to smooth is where the dns changes propagated for the change from Zerigo in Santa Clara, CA to Bitcable in Ashburn, VA as measured by a VM at my house on Comcast Business.

1. The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

2. From Dust

3. Deus Ex: Human Revolution

and the two remaining games, yet to release -

4. Battlefield 3 (October 25)

5. The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim (November 11)

Of the ones I’ve played so far, I’d have to say that Deus Ex and TW2 are tied for game of the year. Both continue two of my favorite IPs ever (Deus Ex and The Witcher) and both were supremely good games, almost perfect in both cases.

Deus Ex is my favorite game ever, and to say that I wasn’t breath-taken by Human Revolution would be a lie. At first, I was a little bummed because it felt very console-ish. (Of course, I don’t mean to say consoles suck, I play games on both PS3 and Xbox, but my PC is significantly more powerful than either machine, so in most cases, I’ll get a game on PC before I select it on a console.) – but the second I completed the prologue and saw the intro credits and opening cinematic, I knew I was in for something amazing. Easily one of the best games I’ve ever played. The soundtrack by composer Michael McCann is one of my favorites, regardless of medium (game, tv or film) and the environments, characters, dialogue, writing, animations, everything was really excellent. Character models are great, the engine (Crystal Dynamics engine, which is odd, since that’s an RPG engine…) does some of the best lighting I’ve seen in a game. All around, it was better than I imagined it would be. I finished this in a week (I only play 2 days a week)

The Witcher is also another favorite title of mine. It was a total sleeper hit, with excellent writing based on the short stories by Polish author, Andrzej Sapkowski. It played really well and was extremely brutally violent, and felt very “adult”. Lots of games pile on violence, but everything else is very ordinary. Temeria is rife with racism against non-humans, and it all just feels very “real”, I guess. The Witcher 2 has many of the same elements, with even more darkness and violence added to it. The engine powering TW2 is easily one of the best I’ve ever seen. The texturing and character models are second to none, the recorded speech and music were absolutely phenomenal. I’ve yet to finish it yet because I didn’t want to rush it. I’m in the final chapter of the game, and I want to put it off til I absolutely have to finish it.

I’d seen trailers for From Dust a year ago or so, but it never hit me that it was a game by Eric Chahi, who wrote & created the game “Another World” which came out in the early 90′s. I found that title a bit late, when it became available on gog.com, and I was blown away. The artwork and music in it stand up very well despite being nearly 20 years old. At any rate, after seeing Eric Chahi’s name on From Dust, I knew I had to buy it. I fired it up and really enjoyed the whole experience. It’s a “god” simulator with a really nice, totally neutral approach to the whole divinity thing. Instead of being an omnipotent bearded man in the sky, you’re “the Breath”, a natural force that can manipulate the world. You can’t directly interact with people, you don’t need them to believe in you, you simply exist to help them on a journey to different planes of existence. You can move lava to build walkways, divert water, all the while, helping to turn each “world” green with trees, water, grass and animal life. It’s a pretty inspiring experience. The gameplay is mostly puzzle based, but there’s such a diversity to each map that it keeps it fresh. I was really happy with this title as well.

Like I said, good year for games.

the black bar indicates the time after I made the changes to the DNS records for m0unds.net, to point them to superb. you’ll likely notice something…strange. yes, that says 4,093 milliseconds. that 4 seconds for a flat file with a couple kb of text and a single image to load. compare this to the current host (smaller numbers) which averaged 200ms (1/5th of one second) to load the same content.

grid/cloud stuff is interesting in part because storage is generally not actually part of the system that reads from it. so, despite the fact that the webservers may very well be extremely fast, if i/o is slow, the hosted sites will be slow. i submitted a ticket to ask tech support about the issue, and i’m anxious to see what they tell me. it’s hard to explain away something as a fluke when there are hard numbers backing it up.

*edit* – so it looks like superb’s awesome support folks strike again. after submitting my ticket with the screenshots from pingdom, including an hourly breakdown, one of their systems engineers was assigned the ticket. a few hours later, i received a maintenance email from superb’s NOC, and 5 minutes of downtime, followed by another email from the engineer indicating they isolated and corrected the problem system-wide. sure enough:

the black line indicates when the configuration change occurred.

so i’d been thinking. i wanted to learn python, i own several python books, but i’ve been having a hard time getting in to it. i’ve got javascript experience from working with palm’s PDK and mojo framework for webos, and while i enjoy it, i don’t have a new device running a more modern version of webos than i have on my pre, and getting a device that doesn’t support t-mobile’s 3g/AWS freqs is out of the question.

what i’ve decided to do instead is pick up a “bricked” (i.e. failed update rendered it bootless) windows phone 7 device. in this case, it’s a t-mobile HD7. i plan on trying to get into .NET, XNA and silverlight to try and learn to build applications for this platform. i watched a few different auctions on ebay, hoping to snag one for real cheap and ended up paying around $30 for a “bricked” HD7 like new in box. coupling this with my ccna/ccnp studies and my regular off-work activities is helping me feel a bit more balanced and a bit less “tired” of everything.

1. you can pass this variable in your chrome shortcut:

--proxy-server=socks5://proxy_ip_or_host:whateverport#

in my case, this didn’t work because it defaulted to using socks4, which doesn’t properly support DNS query traversal.

2. you can install the proxy switchy extension, configure the proxy in proxy switchy as “socks5″ via radio button. if you’re using the dyn internet guide or opendns, you can use one of their test pages to determine whether it’s working.

like i said, the first method didn’t work correctly for me in xp. the second method was equally easy to do and worked correctly.

nitrodesk touchdown 6.2.0012 ($19.99)
and
dataviz roadsync 2.5xxx ($9.99 – regularly $19.99)

background: so, i got sick of shitty google apps not syncing, google’s halfhearted integration efforts w/outlook, pitiful support (enterprise), their lack of support for use of gapps w/the android market, proprietary calendar apis, etc. and decided i’d go back to using exchange through a hosted exchange provider. previously, i’d used sherweb and left them because their service was pretty slow (they’re in eastern canada) – i figured i’d give them a shot again, and while their service’s speed was really improved, my route to their servers was really awful (300+ms). so i switched to 123together. they’ve been fine, and their premium mxlogic third party filtering is great (albeit $2.95/mo more)

after signing up for 123together, i needed to find a mail client. unfortunately, the email.apk built into most AOSP roms doesn’t support 2010 sp1. the htc sense exchange client is terrible, so i knew i’d have to look for a third party client.

i tried roadsync first, primarily because it was $10 cheaper and seemed to have most of the same features. the device i was using at the time was an EVO on sprint. first of all, configuration of exchange in roadsync is pretty simple. it does a good job of using autodiscover settings to configure the client. there are settings to specify maximum message download size, whether or not to use ssl, whether to store email on the sd card or device memory, etc. while roadsync is running and sync is enabled, there’s a roadsync icon that appears in the notification bar.

the interface of the main application is attractive and functional. the mail interface, however, isn’t all that great. (maybe i’ll add some screenshots, but i’m feeling lazy) – mail is a black screen with white/manila colored text, with green radio selection points on the left to select multiple messages. when selecting multiple items, and pressing menu, you’ve got an assortment of common functions including deleting, moving messages, marking as read, etc.

the calendar, like both exchange clients in this post is separate from the android calendar. roadsync’s calendar, however, doesn’t have any third party accessability capabilities, which means you’re stuck with a couple of boring, unattractive widgets, one for each function (except email). the calendar also doesn’t support categories, so every entry will show up under a single category. notifications for calendar entries are similar to AOSP roms’ and appear to use the same ui as the android notifications (or at least, a very close facsimile thereof)

contacts are probably the best part of roadsync. it’s capable of leveraging the android contact system, which means it’s really easy to add contacts using either roadsync’s editor or the android editor. you don’t have to maintain two databases of contacts (on the device and in the app).

roadsync also features task synchronization, which i don’t really use all that frequently. it opens a post-it-colored window where you can enter whatever content you like, which is then pushed to your exchange server. roadsync is also capable of adhering to IT policies for users whose IT depts enforce security policies for devices using activesync.

i did run into a few irritating quirks with roadsync, though. first, the lack of an api for third-party widgets to use is irritating. the in-built widgets suck, so you’re stuck with either no calendar widget or the crappy, unattractive roadsync ones. second, the mail interface, while it looks similar to the email.apk interface, is ugly and the rendering of some html email can cause a scrolling loop which makes it impossible to fully read the message as it continues to scroll infinitely, with the text or content of the message dropping below the viewable area. third, if you lose your data connection (either because of environmental factors or spotty coverage) the roadsync sync service will shut itself down (and you’ll know because the sync icon vanishes..confirmed via alogcat), and often won’t start back up again, leaving you without any mail synchronization until you notice and restart sync.

i’m also sort of unimpressed with dataviz’ support. they offer support via forums or a KB on their site. unfortunately, the KB on their site is really badly out of date (in most cases, referring to the android version’s beta or 2.x branch) and the support forum is full of unanswered support queries. while i haven’t had to use them myself, looking at their support site and forums is a bit disheartening. many reviews on the market point to their support being pretty poor as well.

so, all-in-all, i think roadsync is worth a try. they offer a 14-day trial via the android market, so you don’t have much to lose. i like the main app interface, simple configuration and relative ease of use, but i’m not so happy with the mail interface or crash-happy nature of the sync service on my devices (evo & G2/Desire Z, both running 2.2.1)

after using roadsync for a few days and feeling sort of underwhelmed, i tried nitrodesk touchdown. immediately after installing & launching touchdown, the quantity of options flabbergasted me. i’d never seen so many different configurable options. this is both a good and a bad thing, as you can tweak lots of different settings, but it’s also sometimes tough to find settings for each module, as they’re not all centrally located. the second thing i noticed was that i wasn’t really fond of the main application interface. it’s presented as a screen with a series of icons along the bottom, which allow you to access each of the individual functions of touchdown. i think the best way to describe touchdown is to say that it’s like outlook for your phone. while roadsync focuses on mail and calendar stuff with few tweakable options, touchdown is pretty much a full outlook-esque mobile client with contacts, notes, tasks, calendar and email access just like you’d get on your desktop. in fact, it even supports categories for messages, contacts and calendar events, as well as generating message rules to run on inbound email.

the mail interface itself is pretty pleasant. it allows two lines of text per message, with one being the subject and the second being the sender of the message. the window itself is white with black text, and messages can be categorized for easier identification. selection of multiple messages is handled with a checkbox on the right hand side of the panel, which i think is a little less intrusive than the obnoxious radio-button styled selection dingus implemented in roadsync. the mail reader itself is also nice, allowing pinch to zoom on multitouch devices, as well as having a set of zoom in/out buttons at the bottom. there is a set of quick-action buttons at the bottom allowing reply/fwd/reply to all/delete, etc without needing to invoke the menu. all in all, i like the mail client in touchdown better.

second, the calendar. again, the calendar is separate from the android calendar and looks pretty similar to the roadsync calendar, but there are a couple of differences. first, touchdown allows third party widgets to grab agenda information for use in widgets. this is awesome, since there’s no shortage of good third party calendar widgets available that support touchdown (my favorite being android agenda widget) and means that you aren’t forced to either use the bland touchdown default widget nor are you forced to go without one if you don’t care for the default. second, you can set categories for calendar events, and it seems to support just as many as outlook, with unique colors assigned to each. this allows you to view the calendar on the 30-day view and quickly recognize the category of events on the calendar.

third, the contacts. now, this sort of irks me- the contacts application is fully separate from the device’s built in contacts. in order to view contacts for your exchange account, you have to fire up touchdown and use the contacts section of the ui. you can copy your contacts from touchdown to your phone, but i found in some cases, that it can cause duplicate entries and it’s sort of kludgy. the interface for adding/navigating through contacts within touchdown looks great, with the colored categories available along the far left side of the panel. the lack of use of the android contact system is sort of annoying from a text messaging/social networking standpoint because it means that unless you copy your contacts to the phone from touchdown, you end up with an empty contact list and you have to go through another application to get them, or create separate shortcuts to that functionality on your homescreen. also, since there’s no integration w/android contacts, on sense and newer aosp roms, you won’t get contact photos unless they’re specified in outlook on the exchange server itself. if you have to add a contact, you need to do so from touchdown or it won’t show up in your exchange account. likewise, if you need to add a contact based on a phone number that called you, you have to go into touchdown and import from the phone list, creating a new contact or merging it with an existing one. again, really kludgy.

notes and tasks are what you’d expect. the notes sync feature is unique among these two apps, and will synchronize the notes you make on your device in touchdown with your outlook client on your pc. likewise with tasks.

touchdown’s support appears to be pretty awesome. nitrodesk, the developer of the app, has a google groups page that is constantly attended to by staff members and helpful users. again, i haven’t ever had to use their support, but they do seem a lot more professional and courteous, and the vast majority of reviews on the android market point to this being the case as well. i saw very few posts that hadn’t had some sort of intervention or assistance rendered by a staff member and in the majority of cases, it seemed as though a fix or workaround had been found for nearly every post i checked. the speed of development of touchdown is also exciting because they’re constantly adding new features, tweaking functionality and improving their product. the same can’t be said for roadsync, the last update for which (as of this post) was back in october 2010.

of the two applications i looked at here, i think that touchdown is a better product. it’s more actively developed, the developers have a much better client relationship and are willing to quickly fix issues with the product (not that i ran into any beyond weird usability quirks). i’m not a fan of the monolithic approach to synchronization. i like that they’ve emulated most of the functionality of a full outlook client within the application, but i don’t like that they’ve done that at the cost of forcing all of those functions to exist solely within touchdown unless you copy contacts to your device. mail sync was generally very reliable, and i infrequently encountered issues where sync wouldn’t occur, which usually was the result of waning data signal pausing the sync agent. i really don’t like that you can’t add contacts from the android dialer, but this sort of hearkens back to the monolithic approach they took to building the app. i think the price of touchdown is probably a bit steep for most users, however, it doesn’t bother me to pay $20 for a good product. all-in-all, i think despite the price, touchdown’s a better deal and i think nitrodesk deserves your business.

as an aside, i didn’t look at the free k9 mail client for android, nor did i check out moxiermail as i didn’t see a reason to. k9 is a fork of the default mail client and i sort of hate the default mail client anyway, and moxier doesn’t support anything *but* mail, and it’s the same price as touchdown, which makes it totally unattractive to me from any perspective. i hope this helps someone out.

last week, i had to pay almost $700 for rear brakes since carmax decided when they “repaired” an issue with my rear brakes when i bought my truck, that they wouldn’t have to follow a TSB issued by dodge that would address the problem at its root and prevent its recurrence.

while it was up on the rack at midas (no way i’m touching drum brakes. too many little parts for me to lose) they pointed out that the front brakes were ready to go as well. i ordered some rotors and “premium semi-metallic pads” from brakeperformance.com and had them delivered tuesday. wednesday, i spent 6 hours replacing the rotors and pads. it shoulda been a straightforward thing since the truck is equipped with a floating rotor assembly (the rotors are held on by a bracket and the lug nuts) but since the truck spent its early life in colorado, the rotors were seized to the hubs. 3 hours of beating and spraying w/wd-40 freed them and i was able to get them replaced. stopping distance is much improved, as is noise. pedal feel kind of sucks but i can live with it so long as the truck stops straight and the wheels don’t fall off.

next on the list of things to do to the truck is a bedliner. i’m leaning towards a bedrug because it’s soft and chemical/dirt resistant and can be rinsed like anything else. i’ll plan on doing that sometime later this summer. after that, maybe i’ll do cat-back exhaust or something equally snazzy. maybe some new weathertech floormats if they ever sort out their production capacity issues.

i’ve started playing star trek online. i found that it’s a good trade-off between the sci-fi stuff i loved about EVE but without all the know-it-all assholes that have populated the EVE universe since mid-08. i don’t feel like i’m missing out if i don’t play for a few days and i can easily kill a couple hours doing space combat missions without really having to do any away team missions (they’re boring, derivative MMORPG crap for the most part)

it’s also a very pretty game.

if you’re looking for a webhost, i’d totally recommend superb.net – their pricing, support and speeds are great.