Alan's Real Life Notebook

Life Ball 2008

alan — Sun, 18 May 2008 02:09:42 +0300

Life Ball 2008, Tonight we were attended in Europe's largest AIDS charity event at city hall of Vienna. It consists of two parts: a fashion show at Rathausplatz and a fancy dress show inside the city hall with a limited number of tickets (4000). It was very interesting and beautiful. There were many people at the show and many many beautiful self designed fancy flashy clothes and also open air music performance. I expected the batteries to be finished but the memory card filled up first!

Islamic Radicalism

alan — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 20:26:35 +0300

I fetched the so called "FITNA" movie three days ago. It just took few minutes to get the whole thirty nine megabytes file over torrent. Despite the clamor around, unfortunately the movie is very close to truth and I profoundly believe that only Muslims are responsible against this kind of viewpoint about themselves. Yes, now days the Islamic radicalism is the greatest threat for the peace, freedom and democracy as the same as radical Christianity ages ago. Again nobody can fix this viewpoint except Muslims themselves.

Freedom Has Just Begun

alan — Thu, 06 Mar 2008 15:22:14 +0200

I just arrived in Vienna, one of the most beautiful cities in central Europe. I love history, culture and music and Vienna seems to have all of them together. City has an excellent public transportation system consisting underground, tramway and bus lines and also suburb railways and bus lines. It's said that you will never get lost in Vienna, due to that excellent transportation system and I believe that you will never need to buy a car. Buy a ticket and use the transportation system as much as you need, Eu 50 for a month worths nothing. The above photo has been taken in the front of the Austrian Parliament, in a windy evening. Will write more about the city.

Beyond God's Law

alan — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 09:23:28 +0200

Belle, Is the only word that suits her well
When she dances, oh the story she can tell
A free bird trying out her wings to fly away
And when I see her move, I see hell to pay
She dances naked in my soul and sleep won't come
And it's no use to pray theses prayers Notre-Dame
Tell, who'd be the first to raise his hand and throw a stone
I'd hang him high and laugh to see him die alone
Oh Lucifer, please let me go beyond God's law
Anf run my fingers through her hair - Esmeralda!

Belle, There's a demon inside her who came from hell
And he turned my eyes from God, and oh, I fell
He put this heat inside me I'm ashamed to tell
Without my God inside I'm just a burning shell
The sin of Eve she has in her I know so well
For want of her I know I'd give my soul to sell

Belle, This gypsy girl, is there a soul beneath her skin?
And does she bear the cross of all our human sin?
Oh Notre-Dame please let me go beyond God's law
Open the door of love inside Esmeralda!

Belle, Even though her eyes seem to lead us to hell
She may be more pure, more pure than words can tell
But when she dances feeling come no man can quell
Beneath her rainbow-coloured dress there burns the well
My promised one, please let me one time be untrue
Before in front of God an man I Marry you
Who would be the man who'd turn from her to save his soul
To be with her I'd let the devil take me whole
Oh Fleur-de-Lys I am a man who knows no law
I go to open up the rose - Esmeralda!

She dances naked in my soul and sleep won't come
And it's no use to pray these prayers to Notre-Dame
Tell who'd be the first to raise his hand and throw a stone
I'd hang him high and laugh to see him die alone
Oh Lucifer, please let me go beyond God's law
And run my fingers through her hair - Esmeralda!
Esmeralda!

I feel the shadow of war

alan — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 07:50:46 +0200

Humans are coming to fight the Orcs. God! I'm not kind an Orc, give me a shelter in the Elven wood. Orcs would force the slaves to fight, I don't want to fight against those Humans. Let me go far from the war to build a new life in the Elven wood. Days and nights come and go, I feel war shadowing our lives.

APC Opcode Cache

alan — Sun, 04 Nov 2007 13:01:49 +0200

Armen recommended me to install APC opcode cache system to improve PHP performance on our servers. APC seems to be better for PHP5 and might be implemented as a default feature in PHP6. Pages are displayed faster and system load is better, but I shortly noticed that there is a common "White page of Death" problem with APC. This problem causes all pages to be displayed as a blank white page. Discarding cache contents (or simply restarting Apache) solves the problem.

A small cron script with curl checks if APC is death:

#!/bin/bash
# Needs: curl, apache or apache2
# Prevent's APC's white pages of death

CHK="`/usr/bin/curl -s <YOUR SITE URL>`"

if [ -z "$CHK" ]; then
      echo "APC is dead..."

      if [ -f /usr/sbin/apache2ctl ]; then
          /usr/sbin/apache2ctl restart
      elif [ -f /isr/sbin/apachectl ]; then
         /usr/sbin/apachectl restart
      else
         echo "No Apache?"
      fi
else
   echo "Status OK"
fi

Here's the short installation instructions for Debian Etch with Apache 2.0 and PHP5:

# wget http://pecl.php.net/get/APC-3.0.15.tgz
# tar -zxf APC-3.0.15.tgz && cd APC-3.0.15/
# apt-get update && apt-get install apache2-dev php5-dev
# phpize && ./configure --enable-apc --enable-apc-mmap --with-apxs=/usr/bin/apxs2 --with-php-config=/usr/bin/php-config
# make && make install
# echo "extension=apc.so" >> /etc/php5/apache2/php.ini
# apache2ctl restart

Finished! I also recommend to copy shipped `apc.php` file to an authenticated web accessed directory to monitor APC status.