Now served by nginx!
by admin on January 19, 2012
A few months back, my blog web server(apache) randomly stopped responding to HTTP requests.(My EC2 instance once stopped responding to pings as well, but that was an entirely different issue) The error log said that apache had hit MaxClients. This was surprising considering that my server/blog gets virtually zero traffic. A quick restart and things seemed to be back to normal. But the issue kept repeating, and I had to come up with a long term fix. I could have spent some time trying to debug the issue, and tinker with apache’s default settings (which might not be the best for an EC2 Micro Instance). But I decided to go the easier route and just switched to nginx. I had absolutely no experience of working with nginx, but the term “lightweight” had always been associated with it in my mind, and it seemed to be an ideal choice for the 613MB of memory that an EC2 Micro Instance provides. Read up a bit on setting it up, tried a few things with the configuration and things were up and running in a few minutes. The blog has been fairly stable since and I’ve hardly noticed any downtime. The memory usage, as expected, is pretty low, and it’s noticeably faster as well!
Would you use airbnb?
by admin on May 31, 2011
Airbnb is certainly getting a lot of attention these days. And also a billion dollar valuation. For those who don’t know, it’s a service which allows you to “book” rooms/houses/couches as if they were hotel rooms. The difference being that you pay a real person, not a business. And sometimes, this person is living in that same apartment and acts as a host. I personally used it because hotels in San Francisco are mostly too expensive, and living with a host would have given me access to valuable local information.
As someone who’s used airbnb, I’ve tried to explain the concept to quite a few people. Most people were surprised at the idea that someone could rent out their room to a complete stranger. Which brings us to the topic of reviews on airbnb. Now that I look back, I realize that I’d seen only positive reviews (I must mention that hosts can review their guests too. And yes, I got reviewed as well) Doesn’t this boil down to the fact that you’re reviewing real people and their homes and not evil, private businesses? Aren’t most people nice? At least when you’re paying them? For example, I saw this in one of the reviews on airbnb
“He had two tiny problems we had to work with, the shower head was awful and one of the windows wouldn’t fully close”
“Look past the window and shower and everything is amazing and perfect.”
Would people have “looked past” such things had it been a hotel? You can in fact see hundreds of negative reviews of hotels on sites like Tripadvisor for much less. The Wi-Fi in my room was broken for a couple of days, but I still ended up giving a mostly positive review. Had it been a hotel, I probably would have whined and cursed them all day. And written bad things about them on Twitter/Yelp/Tripadvisor/every goddamn site I could find.
People are just too nice to say bad things about a person and his home, especially in public. For this reason, I feel airbnb’s review system is flawed. Or rather, the idea is right, but people are just not straightforward enough to use the system right. At the same time, you need to be considerably open-minded to use a service like this, both as a host and a guest. Maybe that translates to more flexibility and lower expectations, and in turn more positive reviews.
Something better than nothing?
by admin on July 20, 2009
It’s been more than eight month since I posted something here. Eight bloody months. This in spite of several jobless periods in those eight months including one week of doing absolutely nothing at home in Ernakulam. Clearly, blogging is not my cup of tea. Or maybe it’s just twitter getting all those lines popping up in my head. Add to that my extreme laziness and this state of the blog is quite expected. Well, i’ve decided not to be too fancy or creative and at least post things that come easily to me, namely reviews and football. I had started putting my restaurant reviews on Burrp! (one great site) as i’m pretty sure they would get more readers there than on my blog 
I might duplicate some of it, but I guess having some updates here is better than having none at all. Also hoping to come up with a post for Real Madrid’s almost unreal transfer season. The Galacticos are back baby!
PS: I contribute on Burrp! with the username “rohitnair“
Phew!
by admin on November 16, 2008
What a week it’s been, probably one of my best after coming to Bangalore. To summarize the events,
sprint deadlines, work late, legacy systems, ecstasy(cafe), addiction(cafe), barton fink(movie), meetings, curse IE, bamboo shoots(restaurant), bowling @ amoeba, meet family, home food, football, dostana(movie), taken(movie), skandagiri, night trek, get drenched in rain.
I doubt if I’ll be able to move a muscle tomorrow. Time for some much needed rest.
Switch to WordPress
by admin on October 18, 2008
Now that I have a domain name of my own, thought I’ll move my blog to it and use good ol’ simple wordpress to maintain it. Setting it up took mere minutes and thanks to ljarchive, I could export all my livejournal posts in a jiffy. Also, trying out a plugin that will apparently cross post to livejournal.
RRR (Restaurant Review Round-up)
by admin on October 11, 2008
It’s been a long time since i posted here, and a longer time since i posted a restaurant review. I’ve been caught up with work lately, and hence the lack of time. I have been to quite a few restaurants in the past few weeks though and i thought I’ll just summarize my views here. Ratings in brackets next to the restaurant name
Giancarlo’s Place (3.5/5)
Went here with my team as it’s just across our office. The place looks very upscale and has nice ambience. As for the food, it was good at best.The garlic bread they served us was not too good, the crust was just too hard. I had lasagna for my main course and it was decent and very filling. The selection of desserts is quite limited and falls well short compared to the choice at Sunny’s next door. Service was ordinary, and i remember we had to wait at least 15 minutes for the bill.
Toscanos (4/5)
One of the new joints that have opened up in the UB City food court. They bread they serve at the start is awesome. Our starter(smoked salmon) was quite disappointing, the portion especially small. The main course(i had some Toscano’s special chicken) though was heavenly. Didn’t have the appetite that day to try out their desserts but i’ve heard they are pretty good as well. The food is served aesthetically and you might find it hard to dig your fork in!
The gates to Liberty City are open again!
by admin on May 2, 2008
I’m talking about the much awaited release of GTA IV of course.The game is finally out and the critics are already raving about it. Just to give you an idea,check out the ratings given by some of the mainstream game reviewers
- IGN : 10/10 overall plus 10/10 in each of the categories,the first time they’ve given a perfect score since ’99!
- Gamespot.com : 10/10, first game since 2001 to get that rating
- Official Xbox 360 Magazine : 10/10
- Official PS3 Magazine : 10/10
- Xbox World 360 – 98%,their highest rating for a game yet
The list goes on and on,and obviously the hype surrounding the game was worth it. This is what NY times had to say about the game “violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun”. I think that just sums up the GTA series as a whole,and GTA IV seems to have touched perfection. I just CANNOT wait to get my hands on it. Sadly, there is no PC version and there may never be one(i even found an online petition asking them to launch it soon,lol). The only way I could play it would be on the PS3 in office! Need to convince the necessary people to get a copy somehow!!
Edit : My wish has come true! Thanks a ton to Ankit for getting it from US. PS3, a huge Plasma TV with HDMI cable and GTA IV, what more could you ask for!
Hello Mr.Mac!
by admin on April 18, 2008
Finally got a laptop for work, and man,the wait was surely worth it! A MacBook Pro! With a 2.4 Ghz Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 2 GB ram, a 256 MB Nvidia 8600 card, 200 GB hard disk, DVD Writer and so on, the MBP is a beast of a laptop, easily one of the fastest ones around.
Sadly, IT supports only Tiger and thus there’s no multi-touch support, no Spaces, no Boot Camp (Come on!I need Windows to play games and exploit that Nvidia card! Plus to run that useless but indispensable app called Internet Explorer) It’s a bit weird to have just one mouse button but hopefully will get used to that. And although OS X is based on Unix, certain updates do require system restarts.
OMG,South Park is Online!
by admin on March 26, 2008
Every single South Park episode right from the first to the latest can be viewed on their official site for free! Yes, you read that right. This news was like a godsend on a slow Tuesday morning.So what are you waiting for? Here’s the link, go check it out yourself!