Monthly Archives: June 2009

Wassup Returns

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Back in March, when I was just switching to my, then, new IIS server, I had some issues with a plugin called Wassup.  More specifically, the plugin was causing some major performance issues and caused my blog to take several seconds to load.

Well, now three months later, they seem to have addressed this issue.  From a post on their support forum (quoting a member there named vlogoution):

I had this problem too, and what’s causing it are the several calls made by Wassup to php’s gethostbyaddr function which does the host lookup. The problem is at its worst if the function can’t find the host name (ie. on a local LAN). To solve it, I basically changed every call to gethostbyaddr in wassup.php to call “gethost”, which I’ve included below. This still uses gethostbyaddr, but it caches the calls on each run with a local cache and by using memcached (if enabled and available with the object-cache.php dropin). Ideally, it would probably be better to code an nslookup (for windows) or host call for linux, but for now this is working for me just fine. Another way would be to cache/store the host lookups in the database for a period of time. Hopefully the author of Wassup will look to include this patch (or some even better variation) in a future release. I believe the poor performance of this one function call is holding back the high potential of this plugin.

(I placed the function just below the “global $wp_version;” statement in wassup.php:

function gethost($ip) {
//much faster cached replacement for gethostbyaddr - http://us3.php.net/gethostbyaddr
global $dns_cache;
if ($dns_cache[$ip]) {
return $dns_cache[$ip];
} else {
if (!$dns = wp_cache_get( $ip, 'dns', 216000 ) ) {
$dns = gethostbyaddr($ip);
wp_cache_add( $ip, $dns, 'dns', 216000 );
}
$dns_cache[$ip] = $dns;
return $dns;
}
}

And so it seems that they have implemented the patch (or some variation thereof) mentioned above to fix the issue.  I’m happy to report that I’m now running Wassup again (and am pretty happy about it).

Full post in the support forum.

Refreshing App-V Publishing Server

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We’re in the middle of checking out App-V from Microsoft’s MDOP.  At the moment, the deployment is limited to IT (and a fraction of IT at that).  We’ve already figured out a lot of cool things about it, but we’ve also run across a few annoying things.  In any case, I’ve run across something those testing might want to keep in mind.  I wouldn’t call it a bug – the design is probably purposeful – but it’s something to be aware of.

appvconsolerefreshGenerally, the App-V Client refreshes the applications published to a user at log on.  This, of course, means valuable seconds/minutes are wasted waiting for the machine to log off and back on.  So, of course, there is a way to manually refresh the published applications via the App-V Client Console.

As any good administrator does (yeah, right), they do not set themselves as a local administrator for the machine they are using.  In order to access some of the “administrative-y” features of the App-V Client Console (such as the option to delete an application from the client), one must “Run as Administrator” – assuming they aren’t a local administrator.

Here’s the kicker: if you’ve opened the console as an administrator (using “Run as…”) and refresh the published applications, you’ll be updating it based on the user’s credentials you’ve provided.  If you’re running the console under the logged in user’s credentials, you’ll be updating the applications based on the applications published to that user.

I’ll admit this does sound like an obvious conclusion, but for those of us who choose not to be local administrators it seems a bit confusing.  Just remember: the console updates based on user – not machine (because the applications are published based on a user and not a computer account).

WordPress Upgrade

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As anyone remotely familiar with WordPress 2.7 will know, 2.7 introduced a very cool feature: the automatic upgrade.  This is cool for a few reasons.  First and foremost, it prevents the blog owner from having to manually copy the new version over to their web server.

In any case, it’s quite annoying when you administer four blogs and all but one detect the updated version.  You see, WordPress is on a 12 hour update-check.  So, you could conceivably be forced to wait for up to 12 hours for your WordPress installation to detect that it needs to be upgraded.  Not anymore!

If you have access to your raw database, you can browse to the wp_options table.  In that table will be a row called update_core.  Delete this row.  Now, I will give this disclaimer (as any good technical advice does): BACKUP! before you do anything to your database.  After you’ve deleted said row, refresh your dashboard (you don’t even have to log out and back in) and look at the top for your upgrade notification.

I’ve seen some message boards that suggest altering this row.  This is bad for a number of reasons, not the least of which is the fact that the update_core data itself is serialized and you can break your installation if you screw up.

Now, I say all of this to say this: WordPress 2.8 is pretty cool.  Check here for a complete list of the new features.  Now, an excerpt:

On June 10th, 2009, WordPress Version 2.8, named for noted trumpeter and vocalist Chet Baker, was released to the public. For more information on this enhancement and bug-fix release, read the Development Blog Announcement and see the Changelog for 2.8.

DVD Region

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In my playings-around with Windows 7, I’ve really loved the fact that it plays DVDs and AVIs nativly with no extra codecs or applications.  I have to tell you, it’s really nice to be able to just pop a DVD in and have it play automagically.  Until this happens:

capture

Now, if you don’t get it at first, read it again.  Anyway, I was forced to reset my region to 1 (from 1), taking up one of the five changes that I’m allowed.  Not that I’m going to be changing my region to anything else, but still, I find this dialog box humorous.

Windows 7 Windows Management

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Around the office, most of us are used to using UltraMon to manage our windows on the beautiful 23″ monitors we have.  Unfortunately, for the time being, UltraMon doesn’t provide support for 7, so some of us are left manually wrangling windows around.

In a rare moment of helpfulness, I managed to find some keyboard shortcuts to help.  One of the plus sides here, is that when using the shortcuts below, a window can be docked to the inside of your dual monitor setup (since you can’t do it with the mouse).

Win + Up Arrow Maximizes the window.
Win + Down Arrow Minimizes a restored window.  Restores a maximized window.
Win + Left Arrow Docks the window to the left side of the screen.  If the window is already docked, restores.  If the window is docked to the right side of the screen, re-docks to the left side.
Win + Right Arrow Docks the window to the right side of the screen.  If the window is already docked, restores.  If the window is docked to the left side of the screen, re-docks to the right side.
Win + Shift + Left Arrow Moves the window to the left monitor, assuming dual monitors.
Win + Shift + Right Arrow Moves the window to the right monitor, assuming dual monitors.
Win + Home Minimizes all windows except the one currently in focus.
Win + Space Shows the desktop (the “peek” feature).
Win + Plus Sign Activates the magnifier and zooms in.
Win + Minus Sign Activates the magnifier and zooms out.

Oh, and for those of you that I see using “Ctrl+Alt+Del” and pressing “Enter” to lock your computer, try Win + L.