The server that this site is running on is a Debian sarge machine with some backports.org packages for things that I just have to have up-to-date. This has been a pretty successful strategy for me for running servers... except for one thing.
If you're running any PHP code, you really need to have an opcode cache like eAccelerator running on your server, too. Otherwise, every single hit to a PHP app loads and compiles every single PHP page it uses before executing. For any kind of load, and any kind of non-trivial app, it's just not a question.
But there's not an eaccelerator package in sarge or in backports.org, so I built my own, which I have to keep up-to-date with PHP packages coming down the line from backports. Today, I upgraded from PHP 5.1.x to PHP 5.2.x, and I rebuilt eaccelerator, and... blammo. Segfaults all over the place with MediaWiki, and Drupal decided it wasn't going to save sessions any more.
Turning off eaccelerator was enough to solve the problems with MW, but I had to track down this Drupal-PHP-5.2 bug and apply the patch to make Drupal work again. Of course, performance is sucking because there's no opcode cache.
I kind of hate that kind of day.
tags: php drupal php 5.2 eaccelerator mediawiki
xcache
Update to that: I tried out xcache, and it seems to be working fine. So, y'know, hopefully that project keeps working in the future.
Pirates
So, probably the most interesting thing about getafirstlife.com is that the image chosen to represent analog reality is a bunch of kids dressed like pirates. That is one of the selling points of First Life, I guess.
tags: getafirstlife kids pirates
Goethe
I had a really good class at the Montreal Goethe Institute yesterday. I'm continually impressed by the facilities there. My class did a little tour of the building, including the half-size movie theatre, the huge reading room (with the day's German newspapers), and the big library. They even have a TV going with the Deutsche Welle satellite feed coming in. It's a pretty cool thing to have this kind of resource in Montreal.
Mon pays
Speaking of great resources in Montreal, Amita June and I went for a walk through Parc LaFontaine today. It was a balmy -8C (18°F) and the sun was shining on the snow. They've opened up the pond for skating, and there were about a dozen people lazily twirling around on the ice. Well... they looked lazy. They were probably working pretty hard.
Our stated purpose for the walk was to get to the Bibliothèque centrale-jeunes on the other side of the parc. The main Bibliothèque Centrale shut down about a year ago when the new Grande Bibliothèque opened down by UQAM. But they've kept the children's library open, and Amita June's just at the age where she can actually enjoy it.
It was really a very nice library. There were a ton of books in good shape, lots of open tables, and a couple of billion toys, blocks, and games to play with. Amita and I both got library cards, which should be pretty fun to use, and we played around with the different books and such. They also have story-time hours at 10AM each weekday, so we'll be going back soon.
Amita's favourite part of the library, though, was a big rock dove they had. It had a nice cage with water and toys and mirrors and stuff, but it seemed to like walking around on the shelves better. Amita followed it around making dove noises -- coo ca coo!
Our trip back across the parc was pretty nice, too. The kids in the school there were out for recess, and they had built some epic-scale snow forts and were involved in an 18-sided snowball fight as we passed. There was also a passel of kids from a nearby garderie (daycare) who were making Inukshuks out of hardened snow. By the time we got home, we were pretty exhausted, but glad to have gotten some winter outdoor time.
tags: winter montreal library parc lafontaine