September 2007 – Lefthandedlayup

Hosting Thoughts

Migs, the high priest of Linux and server administration, whom I always look to for advice on such things, told me to write about my latest hosting issues and so I shall. I suppose this is a good way to talk and archive the recent problems I’d been having with the sites and what I do to fix it, and how I’m starting to realize that whatever ‘fix’ I do seems temporary since the site’s traffic increase again anyway that as soon as I enhance / improve performance, traffic increases again. I am therefore plagued, within days, by either mysql inefficiencies or run out of RAM. Anyway here’s a rundown:

Here’s a screenshot of Aug. 30’s mysql issues. WordPress serves that up when it can’t connect to the db. I emailed Rimuhosting about it and they figured out I was having issues with one of my favorite WordPress plugins called Counterize, which allowed me to produce those interesting stats at the footer of KikayEx which says ‘x number of visitors visited today, xx number the past 7 days. xxx number total since forever, and so on…‘. We activated an option on mysql to produce a ‘mysql-slow.log‘ which lists down all the mysql queries that take more than 2 seconds to complete. The results were stunning, as Counterize apparently had queries that take as long as 20 seconds, and at a given morning (not even a whole day), there were 40 queries already. Here’s how it looked:

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Random Thoughts on KE and MomEx

I’m flummoxed by a bit of news I just now received over IM from a friend, and just when I was about to start writing this. It’s hit me like a ton of bricks but at this very moment I think the best thing to do is to act normal and hope for the best. Not that there’s a best thing to do in this case anyway. You just go ahead and do it.

I suppose this is a kind of obligatory blog update, considering its been weeks since I greeted Freddie Mercury a happy birthday. I will obligatorily mention how so many things have happened since, and how I’m obligated to say I don’t know where to start. But for the most part I think my attention has been focused on the Kikay Shop. I’ve added new face and body care products from Leyende, and the rest of the products are due for an overhaul as well, with their suppliers coming out with new stuff.

I’ve pretty much laid out how things are gonna go for Kikay Exchange I think. As a matter of fact it was the same way as I planned it out years ago, but I admit I lost my way a bit partly due to getting too involved in the nitty gritty details and partly because I may have lost confidence in my original plans. But, as a testament to the value of planning, the foundations of a good idea are really what carries it onwards. Sooner or later (hopefully sooner), the site’s strengths come out, and you find yourself carrying out the plan whether you’re still intent on it or not. It’s sort of like planning and working your ass of to make something work and then, years later saying ‘Wow! It Worked! Who knew?!‘

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Belated Happy Birthday Freddie Mercury

Rather belatedly as well I think, Queen getting voted the ‘Best British Band Of All Time‘.

As if we needed to be told that.

Anyway, here’s a personal collection of select performances. The great Freddie Mercury will always bring chills down my spine.

Radio Ga Ga

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Hairspray Movie Review

If there’s any type of movie I’d say that best reflects my idea of Hollywood, it’s the big grand musical. Now I’m fairly aware that saying that sounds very gay, which I’m sure makes my homophobic girlfriend cringe. But hey, I’m not gonna lie. Big grand musicals are the epitome, to me, of what a ‘spectacular performance’ is. There’s great music, terrific melodies, and basically actors interpreting what they feel through feats of song and dance. Any story of great romance, deep despair, hate, fear, or anything for that matter, is made more meaningful and dramatic via moving performances filled with music and dancing.

Thus, I still remember happily the few magical musicals I chanced upon at a young age, such as Oklahoma, South Pacific, the King and I and other Rogers and Hammerstein classics. Then there’s Oliver Twist (which had me saying ‘Please Sir, may I have some more?‘ over and over again), Annie and My Fair Lady. Until today, when I type on a keyboard to test it, I usually write ‘The Rain In Spain stays mainly in the plain‘, rather than the standard ‘The quick red fox…‘.

But (I’m almost apologetic to admit due to their near boilerplate commonness) the ones I particularly remember best are The Sound Of Music, whose 2 songs ‘I Have Confidence‘ and ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain‘ I used to sing to myself (if I could remember the lyrics) whenever I took on a job interview; the less common Fiddler on the Roof, whom I admired for its ability to present a political view whilst providing pure musical enjoyment, and finally, Grease, for taking you to a certain place and time, in this case the late 50’s America, with its terrific songs, performances and costumes that added a hundred more colors to the standard boy meets girl.

And due to the fact it had almost the same location and time of Grease, I approached Hairspray, justifiably or not, with that as my barometer. I love Grease, I loved John Travolta’s oozing, greasy masculinity and Olivia Newton John’s openness and virginal innocence, I loved the song ‘Greased Lightnin” and hated it when they cut that song out from the TV version of the movie, and I have been waiting for a long long time to watch something of anywhere near the calibre of those three. It was therefore with great anticipation that I waited on the promises made by Hairspray.

And my conclusion?

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Hairspray

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Ateneo: 2. La Salle: 0. My thoughts: 10

Note: For the sake of finally making a post here and to try and trick you into visiting Basketball Exchange by forcing you to click the link below to read the rest of it (I’m obviously very smart and devious), I’m reposting this here. If you wanna just go and read the whole thing uninterrupted then click here. See how I made you do that? See?

It’s the morning after La Salle’s heartbreaking (yes it is always heartbreaking to me. Always.) loss to Ateneo, 87-89 at Araneta last night. Obviously, I’m disappointed, but what the heck. What a game, huh? It was exciting all the way, from start to finish, and I promise you I’ve watched so many games for so many years it’s hard to get me as excited as I was when I watched it last night.

Here are some thoughts:

That boy Salamat (15 pts) is fantastic. He is a true point guard and even acts and runs like it, with quick feet doing most of the motion and his torso up and erect, allowing his head to look steadily at what’s happening at the rest of the court. With good training from the Reyes brothers he can be a very effective player in the future.
The Escueta boy (16 pts) is another revelation. One of those stick thin shooting guard types that’s deadly with the 3. He gives Chris Tiu much needed reprieve from scoring chores and reminds me of a smaller Jason Terry.
Speaking of Chris Tiu (19 pts), this guy blossomed early and is still the epitome of cool confidence. What a stroke. He’s got that down pat, but I still think he’s too short so he’s got to prepare himself for the life of a point guard if he’s gonna turn pro. If that’s the case, he’d be behind pure PGs like Salamat or UST’s Cuan, so he might be in the mold of another Ren-Ren, which is unfortunate because the Philippines needs taller shooters. We’ll see what happens there.
Rico Maierhofer (24 pts) has turned out to be DLSU’s main man, but I always thought it would’ve been Pocholo Villanueva (18 pts), an old school type slasher – or maybe it’ll be his year next year? In any case, Maierhofer is unstoppable, but still a little too raw and undisciplined. He needs to learn a bit more about life in the post and bulk up as well. In other words, try and find other ways to be more effective other than relying on his jumping ability and scrappiness. His athleticism is exciting to watch and results in sensational plays, but like all young athletes, gravity will eventually set in and he’ll need to slow his game down. He’ll need to develop a mid – range ‘money’ shot that doesn’t require so much effort. Think Tim Duncan’s bankshot, Kareem’s hook or Karl Malone’s 20 foot J from the either wing. If he develops a reliable shot he wouldn’t have to get beat up too much and reserve the spectacular stuff for later.

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Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

Whatever’s the latest Harry Potter movie, it’s almost always the best one. Some people will argue, but in this case, I’m quite positive that a lot would agree that it is.

Just to get it out of the way, I think the fifth movie was great. I have read the book about three times already, and even after the release of the Half-Blood Prince, it remains my favourite. The effects of the movie were amazing and Daniel Radcliffe has gone a long way with his acting. Maybe appearing on stage naked really did help? I don’t know. Plus, there’s Gary Oldman, and anything with him in it, I would take.

Imelda Staunton (Dolores Umbridge) and Evanna Lynch (Luna Lovegood) were perfect for their roles and I am so glad that they managed to squeeze in Fred and George’s departure from Hogwart’s.

However, there are a bunch of things that didn’t work for me and as a true nerd, I will enumerate them because there is no one around me who is as enthusiastic about all this, and it sucks talking to the wall about a boy wizard.

First, the scenes that they cut off:

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