Three Wise Men

Optimizing Wordpress – Tips for Speed

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Wordpress is crap, but it is the best crap we can get. When your website, with Wordpress sitting in the back, starts to pick up traffic, it will slow down and become unresponsive. Adding hardware will help, but correctly implemented load balancing and load distribution across more than one computer can be tricky and expensive. Trying to optimize Wordpress and the web server itself usually gives better short-term results. In the long run even this won’t help and it will just postpone the inevitable, you will have to cluster in one way or another. I am not going to talk about clustering and load balancing today, I will focus on optimizing your Wordpress. Newbie friendly, yet hardcore, meaning that I will provide explanation for all the complicated stuff.
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Eclipse runs “File Search” when pressing AltGr+G

Did you ever have any problems with Eclipse? With initial versions of Galileo¹ and in previously released Gynamed there was a problem with preassigned keyboard shortcuts on some locale’s². The problem that Eclipse created when using Slovene keyboard layout was that while programmer wanted to type the ] key, Eclipse run File Search action.

Slovenian users are not to blame that their keyboard has ] key mapped to AltGr+G key combination. And Eclipse developers could browse through Wikipedia to discover what obscure keyboard layouts exist.

Any competent programmer will notice that with the default key mapping Eclipse guards programmers from using too many arrays since typically array is marked with [] key combination. They are advancing object oriented design and programming. But in some cases arrays actually make your code faster and optimize memory usage and fragmentation.

To discover how to remedy the problem read on. READ MORE

1. should be corrected in 3.5 [↩]
2. Slovenian and Hungarian, if my memory serves me [↩]

TorrentFlux – The Best Torrent Client in the Galaxy

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File sharing has a long history and I will start with the time when I first got into it. At that time I was using ZX Spectrum 48k and games were distributed mostly on magnetic tapes packed in plastic boxes more commonly known as compact cassettes¹.

Twenty years ago, give or take a few, violation of copyrights² wasn’t really a big issue in a country behind the iron curtain. Getting a new game involved borrowing the tape from a friend, going back home and copying that tape with a double cassette recorder that supported high-speed dubbing.

The other a more sophisticated way of getting a game was to tune your FM radio to a certain local radio station. Then you had to put a blank tape in a cassette recorder and press Record when they started airing the games³. Yes, the local radio station was in fact airing all sorts of ZX Spectrum games and you were able to record them on tape. This was the first method of file sharing that I encountered and by today this is the only one that is limited only by the range and not by the bandwidth. A billion clients can connect at the same time and perform a download.

Read on if you want to know more on how to set up the best BitTorrent client in the Galaxy. ;)

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1. Back then piracy was not for soft-hearted types, it was for real men — it was almost a hardware business. [↩]
2. Piracy. [↩]
3. Storing data as a bunch of chirps and beeps on the audio tape was something very common. [↩]

Windows 7 driver update for AuthenTec AES2810 fingerprint scanner on HP notebooks

In my previous post I was describing a method how to enable and use the AuthenTec ASE2810 fingerprint scanner beta Windows 7 driver. There was some positive feedback and the method worked on some HP notebook devices. For some with different versions of fingerprint scanner the method did not work. Hopefully times have changed for all of us.

On the October 23, 2009 AuthenTec released information about update to Windows 7 driver infrastructure. About 2 weeks ago I noticed an optional update in Windows 7 update section. It read AuthenTec Inc. driver update for AuthenTec Inc. AES2810. I was pleased to finally get the final version of the driver.

Immediately checked it and started the 32Mb download procedure. Smooth download, smooth install. Went to Control Panel->Hardware and Sound->Biometric Devices and the  AES2810 was still available. I decided for clean setup so I removed my existing fingerprint data by clicking and confirming the Remove your fingerprint data dialog. Then I clicked on Manage your fingerprint data and waited for my password dialog. None appeared. Frustrated and angry about the stupid update I started to minimize the windows and was presently surprised by the TrueSuite login screen¹. Typed and retyped in password of my account and voila I was ready to enroll my fingers.

TrueSuite Application has changed a bit. Must say that it is simple and intuitive to use². You have 2 options. Enroll finger by selecting a finger to enroll and repeating finger swipe 3 times and delete an enrolled finger. Additional nifty feature is available when you enroll a finger.  When TrueSuite application is run through manage your fingerprint data call you are presented by the password login screen. But now you can use your enrolled finger to authenticate your self. No more password typing.

I repeated the update on both HP notebooks that I own. So I can confirm that the driver works for HP EliteBook 8530p and HP Compaq 2230s. Bravo AuthenTec. Now if you could only release data which would help to create or create a Linux driver then I would be in heaven.

1. I don’t know if that was my impatience or the on top functionality of login screen is broken, but I was unable to repeat this feature [↩]
2. not that I was complaining about previous beta version [↩]

Network boot and install of Ubuntu Linux

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You tried everything, booting from CD, DVD, USB, and in your desperate attempts you already started to look if there is a floppy drive laying around the house, just to get the damned thing to boot. The very same thing happened to me today. Computer, simply, would not boot. The only thing left to do is booting your computer from the network. Sounds scary, I know, but in reality this can be a trivial thing to acomplish. I have a Linksys WRT54 router that is running DD-WRT and it serves me as a DHCP server. DD-WRT is using dnsmasq which can provides DNS, DHCP and TFTP services! Great news, since this is all that you need for network boot. Unfortunately TFTP server is disabled and not really usable if you don’t have any extra storage where you could put the tftp files. You will have to use an alternative tftp server, in my case Ubuntu Workstation. Continue reading for the whole recipe …

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