Move along, nothing to read

Earlier in the week, I had a weird dream. "So what?" you ask! I seldom remember dreams, and even if I do they are even less worth writing about.

The core portion of the dream had Brittney Brokenshire (neé Bogyo, a former classmate of mine at TechBC) and her father, Terry, kidnapped by a BC union organization that had gone militant (in the style of the Shi'te militias of Iraq, as portrayed by western media). The dream ended with me talking to David Brokenshire about how he was handling it (the dream contained no conclusion to the kidnapping), and Paul (David's brother) arranging all the flowers that were being sent to the home from well-wishers.

Anyway, while I thought the dream was strange at the time, it a random occurrence later this week that made me wonder. Yesterday I went to the FedEx depot at the airport, to collect package that I had missed the delivery of. It turns out that the FedEx depot is a MAJOR pita to get to via public transit. The best you can do is get to the Airport transfer station, and then walk the next 1.5km, because the 424 bus loops around the wrong way (you can use it on the way back, but not effectively on the way there). After collecting my package and returning to the Airport transfer station to continue back to Vancouver proper, a fellow walked up to the stop, and I was certain I knew him, but could remember his name. I said "Hi" anyway, and he recognized me.

For the TechBC lurkers on my journal, Micheal Cox is back in town! He moved back to Vancouver 3 weeks ago, after his 2.5 years in London. He's still doing Oracle stuff, still for the same company. He's engaged to be married, sometime in the last quarter of 2007. He doesn't really drive much anymore - Living in London has converted him to public transit (the Tube did it he says).

Of the random bits gleaned from Micheal, David and Brittney are relocating to New Zealand, to follow Vive Kumar for David's doctorate.

Dear Lazy-Web,

I haven't needed to use the lazy-web before, there something I saw in the past, and can't find again. Several years ago, I read about a survey (taken of programmer's partner's), that correlated the programmer's programming language with their Libido. I seem to be recall that Java came out tops, and there were remarks about "it just leaves you wanting to conquer more".

Links appreciated.

I meant to blog this a while back, but things slipped by me, so I only (remembered to do it && had time when I remembered) now. Quick thanks to Flameeyes and a UK-based user for the "Finding Nemo" and "Ferengi Rules of Aquisition" from my wishlist.

In regards to my previous post, I should clarify that I was looking at patterns in spam, and wondering about taking advantage of the spammers.

Here's another one that turned up in my spam folder since I went to bed. Obviously this stock is well past it's prime, but it rocketed 480% from $0.012 to $0.058 between the opening of business Thursday, and the opening of business Friday: MHII.OB.

Corey Shields pointed out the markets are closed today, as it's Martin Luther King day, but I will stick to my prediction about VTSS anyway.

I'm wondering, from an IT point of view, if we noticed enough of the spam, esp. early during the spam runs, could we profit from the actions of spammers?

I had a few things I wanted to post about, but for a moment, a list, so I don't forget about them.

• Noisy upstairs neighbours
• On being a IT generalist
• Tales of ISPs past
• Giving Gentoo development a good kick in the ass
• Writing testsuites for my own open-source applications

So a while ago, I signed up for last.fm, finding it amusing that an idea I had during the first year of university, and couldn't figure a way to capitalize on, has come alive on it's own. I guess this should count as prior art against last.fm. Started 28th January 2002 and finished writing it 7th Febuary 2002 according to the original timestamps on the files - and I used it until August 2004 on my own systems :-)

For our art class (New Media Images [NMI]), we were required to create a piece of unique art, in Flash, that utilized some form of live data via the internet. Most of the class were using webcams or stock market data. I wasn't happy with this, and wanted to do something else. Using the OnSongChange plugins for WinAmp and XMMS, I rigged up a little webapp that recorded songs as called by the URL. Then on top of that data a little XML/CSV provider for the data.

Here's where I blogged about it originally: http://robbat2.livejournal.com/2002/01/30/
The main web interface is broken, but the raw data feeds are still available, as are the flash interface.
Raw data XML interface - seems that Firefox doesn't like a DTD at the top of the document, but view source shows it fine.
Live flash display applet - Works fine, shows the last entry from 2004
Art project data consumer - Doesn't connect properly anymore (URL changes and I can't open the flash master file to update it), but everything else works

Anyway, bringing this full circle, now that I'm using last.fm, I rigged up a new display on my webpage for the XML data from last.fm. Last.fm Statistics. The sources to it (one shell file, 2 XSLT files) are on the bottom of the page.

Oh, and LiveJournal needs a larger music field, I'm now listening to: Perfect Remixes Vol. 2 - 2004/Joe T. Vannelli ft.Csilla - Voices in Harmony (PVD Csilla In Wonderland Remix).
Which horridbly doesn't fit at all.

I meant to get back to doing more statistics on Bugzilla, but it fell by the wayside. The following is mainly for completeness, and the interest of those as to why Bugzilla has been so bog slow for Gentoo in the past.

First of all, I had some questions as to why I focused on specific actions in Bugzilla. The truth of this is, that we can break down Bugzilla's usage of the database into three specifics:

1. Changes to bugs (INSERT, UPDATE)
2. Loads of specific bugs and attachments (SELECT with a primary key)
3. Searches for bugs (Complex SELECT)

Unfortunetly, the usage patterns are heavily against Bugzilla here. Searches for bugs using some string plus a variety of conditions are the most common action. Benchmarking slow queries? That's pretty much any of the complex SELECTS. "Add more indexes" I hear some people shouting. The indexes are already nearly the same size as the actual dataset they index (400mb of index for 500mb of data)! There is an index on every field that is used for searching! One of the problems is that mysql trashes it's caches on UPDATEs and INSERTs in many cases, so spends a lot of time reloading them.

Bugzilla could massively benefit from an external text indexing system like Apache's Lucene, that can handle live modifications to the index without wasting anything. Changes are fed realtime to the index, and searches for text are performed against the dedicated index (which can also be parallized easily).

More numbers

Stuart asked for some more actual numbers, so I've put them together.

Breakdown by Request Type
Type	Mean	Max	Min
Total GET	53809	60409	45094
—Static GET	35401	39774	28797
—Dynamic GET	18407	20635	16223
Total POST	1394	1569	1106

( Graphs below the cut, hidden to avoid spamming the page )

Bye folks, I'm leaving on my honeymoon. Back late on Dec 7th.
Flight details
Dec 1st: HQ0876 YVR to HNL; HQ2262 HNL to ITO
Dec 7th: HQ2121 ITO to HNL; HQ0879 HNL to YVR

Stay out of trouble while we're gone!

I needed a replacement power supply for an eSATA enclosure I purchased (the original one had a nasty transformer whine, I accidently got one that hadn't been replaced by the manufacter already).
The manufacter has done a sterling job, however FedEx seems to be screwing up all over the place.

The short version:

1. Package left Irvine, CA, on 16/Nov, 15h37.
2. Went to depot, and on to Los Angeles, CA.
3. Sat in LA from 16/Nov 21h55 until 18/Nov 03h16 - just over 29 hours.
4. Arrived in Oakland, CA, 18/Nov 11h24. (No notation as to when it left Oakland)
5. Arrived in Anchorage, AK, 20/Nov 11h50 (48 hours after it arrived in Oakland). Left Anchorage 20/Nov. 16h25
6. Arrived in Memphis, TN, 21/Nov 00h53. Left Memphis 02h23.
7. Arrived in Vancouver, BC, 21/Nov 07h20.
8. Then they attempted to deliver it, and I was out, and saw their note.
9. Now the fun bit. At some point they sent it BACK to Anchorage, AK, and it left Anchorage at 16h49 again.
10. Then it arrived in Memphis, TN again at 22/Nov 01h34.
11. Suddenly it's in Vancouver (no notation of left Memphis). And they try to deliver it again, with my upstairs neighbour ending up signing for it.

( FedEx tracking data )

As a few folks are aware, I've been working on the new Gentoo Bugzilla. While I have got it up now (bugstest.gentoo.org), I'm uncertain as to how the new system would cope under the load, having never done any management of a Bugzilla installation previously, nor handled anything about the existing Gentoo Bugzilla instance.

This of course nessicates a performance analysis of the existing Bugzilla 8-). Read on for statistics on the matter, including the top 3 most active users in the Gentoo Bugzilla.

( Read more... )