Black and White In the World

Obsessed with site speed

2010-10-28T06:11:00.001-07:00

Obsessed with site speed

Recently i’ve been obsessed with site speed once again, and no, this is not because Google site speed factor that has been talked by various website recently, this is simply because i just want this website to load as fast as possible for this website visitors. Because i always believe that visitors will be pleased if your website can be loaded quickly (and this is also apply to me because i often close my browser tab whenever i visit a website and the page seems to not load)

So what i’ve been doing so far?
Since last week (or two weeks ago), i’ve testing and tweaking various part of this site and also server side related stuff. But obviously if i have to write all of them here it would be a very long post that is probably not interesting to most of you. And don’t ask me on how many times i’ve used Google Pagespeed and Yahoo YSLOW because i won’t be able to remember it

But of course there’s always room for improvement for a small thing like minimize dns lookup, and combining all the javascript and css used and also switched to using css sprites to minimize HTTP requests, but i’ll save that for later until i know on how to use css sprites properly as for minimize dns lookup, well i’ve been thinking on consolidating all static files into a subdirectory but because i think it’d be a mess if i have to put all of them in one place, i guess i’ll have to live with additional dns lookup

And the result is … well i can’t say if i were in your location, but if it’s for me (and my friend here), this site loads really fast for me (and my friend too) despite i’m in a location that is really far far away from the server location

Just when i thought that writing would be an easy task

2010-10-28T06:09:00.000-07:00

Just when i thought that writing would be an easy task

Just when i thought that i could start posting again to this blog … i had to moved to another city once again, and so there’s a delay until i can get a new connection here. But now … when i got a new connection, unfortunately because it has been a loooong time since the last time i wrote something, i just don’t have any ideas at all!

So what about this post then? well basically it is just a rant from me because i’m just so stressed because i don’t have any ideas to write something useful (or at least interesting to read) even after asking to Darkened Linux, but it seems that he don’t have any ideas at all just like me :(

So i guess for now i should just doing a little bit of reading here and there on various websites or forums. Or perhaps if there’s a kind soul reading this and got an idea (no matter what that is) on what the next subject should be. Please leave a comment here :D
Anway think of this post as a writing practice for me again because i just started writing again (and let’s just hope that i can get an idea by doing this) :) but obviously if you got an idea just let me know ;)

No more email delivered to your inbox from now on

2010-10-28T06:07:00.001-07:00

No more email delivered to your inbox from now on

As the title say, from now on … i’ll delete the entire email subscriber that have subscribed to this blog. And the reason for that is simple because from now on i’ll write post more often but … let’s say that since most of them will probably be a random post that is not going to be interesting to most of you (especially to those who are looking for World of Warcraft related topic), i think the best way for me is simply to turn off email subscription to all the previous subscribed users to make sure that i’m not spamming any useless post to your inbox (better be safe than sorry, right?) ;)

And so from now on, if you want to subscribe to receive blog updates, then you can do so by using various RSS Feed Readers like FeedDemon if you prefer to use a desktop based program or you can also subscribe to this blog using Google Reader, if you prefer to use web application and enter http://www.reaper-x.com/feed as the url for the rss feed. But of course you can always visit this blog directly if you prefer to not using any programs to get updates from this blog :D

And if you still continue receiving updates from this blog to your inbox after this post has been published (in case there’s something wrong), please report it to me here on this post and so i can fix it ASAP

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (COD MW2) Prestige Hack

2010-10-28T06:05:00.000-07:00

Call of Duty Modern Warfare 2 (COD MW2) Prestige Hack

I have recently stumbled upon a rather incredible hack for the PS3 to allow Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 users to gain the 10th and final prestige with a simple, risk free, ban free, easy to do, 5 minutes hack! Here is the guide.
REQUIREMENTS: A WORKING PS3, MODERN WARFARE 2, A FLASH DRIVE, INTERNET ACCESS AND A COMPUTER! These may seem obvious but I have heard really stupid questions before with THESE VERY obvious answers.
1. Start out by downloading the hack at any of the following links:

http://www.mediafire.com/?znme2muy4gd
http://filebeam.com/158ec0a02aae386c8da88b405dcbcf81
http://rapidshare.com/files/379010339/REAPER_MW2_PRESTIEGE_HACK_PS3.zip.html

2. Once downloaded you will need to extract the files to any folder (I used my desktop).
3. Copy the entire PS3 folder onto your USB flash drive and run the Patch Blocker file and press Start. (You will need to run as an Administrator if on Windows 7 or Vista. If you still get any errors while running then download Net Framework 1.1 at Microsoft Website
4. Connect the USB Flash Drive into your PS3 and copy the two saves named REAPER_ERR and REAPER_PRST to your PS3.
5. Next you will need to go to your Game > Game Data Utility and delete the Modern Warfare 2 data (No this does not delete saved game data only patches and in the future map packs, but these can easily be re-downloaded in a matter of minutes)
6. Now you will need to go to Settings > Network Settings > Internet Connection Settings and select custom. Now leave all of your settings the same except for when you get to the proxy settings. Select Use Proxy and enter the IP address in the box in the Patch Blocker running on your computer and set the port as 8080. (If you are running from behind a router than more than likely your IP will start with 192.168.)
7. Once done setting up your proxy hit ok BUT DO NOT TEST CONNECTION!
8. Now go and sign in and start up Modern Warfare 2. Then select Multiplayer and Play Online. Wait for all of your settings and online stats to load up so you should be able to join a match
9. Now go to Split Screen and load up REAPER_ERR. You should get a black screen with an error on it (This is good for once lol). Now go to LAN Party and go to Barracks and Prestige (another error screen like last time is good lol)!
10. Now go back to Split Screen and load up REAPER_PRST (No error should appear) and go to online and prestige.
11. You should now be on the 10th Prestige level 1.
12. Now you need to exit the game and go back to Settings > Network Settings > Internet Connection Settings and pick custom. Then once again leave everything the same except now change the Proxy settings to DO NOT USE. Press ok and sign back in.
13. Now all you have to do is download a small 15MB update once you start Modern Warfare 2 back up and you’ll be on your 10th Prestige! It is HIGHLY RECCOMENDED that you sign back online ASAP and play at least one match so that you can be saved to the leader boards and so there is no chance of you being reverted back to your old prestige and level. Enjoy and we plan on having more hacks soon!
Post any comments or questions below! I will do my best to help you

List of Free Web Page Test (Website speed test)

2010-10-28T06:04:00.000-07:00

List of Free Web Page Test (Website speed test)

As the title says, basically in this post i’ll be listing the free web page test service that i often use to test this site for performance (or other site performance). While some may argue that test like this inaccurate compared to the real world situation, but well that’s depend on your opinion of course, personally i find them useful to test site performance. And obviously if i say free, that means it is free without registration needed in order to use their service unless you want to go with higher plan with some of the service listed here that will cost you some money of course
Anyway here’s the list of free web page test service

Webpagetest – http://www.webpagetest.org

Webpagetest try to simulate on how fast your site loaded using Internet Explorer 7/8 from several location from US to China (although it’d be better in my opinion if they also add support for other browser such as Firefox, Safari or Google Chrome) and at the same time also capture on how your site looks like to Internet Explorer users
Other than that if you prefer to see how fast your site loaded, you can also choose to record a video of your site being loaded. So far this is the only service i know that offer you to record a video of your site being loaded and also give you a detailed checklist about every object found on your site from Keep-Alive to ETag

Pingdom Tools – http://tools.pingdom.com

Some of you probably have heard about Pingdom before, because they’re well known with their Website Monitoring Service. And fortunately other than offering a free website monitoring service they also provide you with a full page test to see how fast your site loaded using their simple Full Page Test tool. Although the result is quite simple compared to the service offered by webpagetest.org, but using Pingdom tools can get you an idea on how your site loaded

Site-Perf – http://www.site-perf.com

Site-Perf also offer the same service as Pingdom that allow you to see a waterfall view of every object loaded on your page, with options to check from three different servers located in different region, and also to adjust the bandwidth used to simulate different visitors connection type and other option as well like Keep Alive, Gzip Compression and referer plus suggestions on how to improve your site performance

LoadImpact – http://www.loadimpact.com

Unlike other similar service, LoadImpact allow you to stress test your website to see whether your site can handle the load if there are many visitors connecting at the same time (free option only allow you to simulate up to 50 users only). By using LoadImpact you can get an idea on how your server will perform if there are many visitors came to your site at the same time, but of course if you just simply want to test your site loading time, they also offer page analyzer with an option to change the browser emulation to test your site speed

GTMetrix – http://www.gtmetrix.com

GTMetrix offer an interesting way for you to see your site score using score given from the YSLOW and Google Pagespeed tool and obviously also list which objects need optimization, so basically consider GTMetrix as online YSLOW and Google Pagespeed test

Webslug – http://www.webslug.info

Webslug probably offer the most interesting tool and fun tool because you can engage your site in a battle against many other sites out there to see which one is the fast

DNS Made Easy Review

2010-10-28T06:01:00.000-07:00

DNS Made Easy Review

After reading great things about DNSMadeEasy on various forums, finally I have decided that perhaps i should try using their service for a few days to see on why many people recommend them for 3rd party DNS Hosting, and thankfully they are offering 30 days trial to test their service. And so for the past 5 days i’ve been using DNSMadeEasy services

As you can expect from a paying DNS Hosting, you’ll get all the features available right away even if you’re on trial account, from Vanity Nameserver (create your own custom branded nameserver) to editing A records, CNAME, MX, TXT, PTR, AAAA, SRV and also HTTP Redirection with adjustable TTL for each record (up to 5 seconds as the lowest TTL) with the only exception no DNS Failover unless you opt-in to use DNS Failover or use their higher plan, and AXFR is also allowed if you choose to allow AXFR request
And just like other popular DNS Services your monthly bill is based on how many queries your zone used, their lowest option is $15 / year for 3 domains, with a total aggregate of 1 million queries per month, and should you exceed their monthly queries limit, you’ll have to pay additional 0.6 cent per 1000 queries although DNS Made Easy beat other competitors in this area because they offer the lowest pricing option
What about their control panel you ask? Well I have to say, their control panel is fine (not great but fine based from it looks). But since I’m not sure whether they’d allow me to post a screenshot here, I’d suggest you to create an account there and see it for yourself (creating a new account will automatically give you trial account with them)

In conclusion, during the past 5 days when I’m still using DNSMadeEasy trial (with a total of 185,013 queries), i must say that I am really impressed with their speed but obviously performance would be great since they offer Anycast DNS, which is useful for faster dns resolving but because this is just a simple blog, I guess I’ll stick with free dns hosting for now. But of course if you want faster dns lookup for your site, you should try using DNSMadeEasy services because many people seems to forgot about the DNS Resolving when it comes to speeding up their website (especially if your DNS is hosted on bad network)

How to use PCSX2 the Playstation 2 Emulator

2010-10-28T05:59:00.000-07:00

How to use PCSX2 the Playstation 2 Emulator

Now im going to put some guide on how to configure PCSX2 to try out the PS2 Emulator. And since few people are asking is their system can play ps2, then the answer is no. You can’t actually play ps2 games on your pc right now (dunno for a real high end system which is using Dual Core Processor, SLI Graphics Card, etc, but to most users just wait for it), but if you want to help the PCSX2 team, you can do it by testing out PCSX2 and reporting any bugs you found to them.

First you must have PS2 Bios in order to try out the PCSX2 (you can find it easily on the internet) ;) and dont forget to put it into Bios Directory in your PCSX2 Directory
and the next step would be running the PCSX2 Executable and configure it like this (maybe different depending on your computer configuration, especially to those who are using SSE2 Enabled Processor, such as Pentium 4, Athlon64, etc)
1. Configuration Screen of PCSX2

2. Graphic Plugin Configuration Screen

3. Controller Configuration (since i dont own a joystick, im using Keyboard)

4. CDVD Plugin Configuration
Note: if you don’t have ASPI installed on your system use Win2k/XP IOCTL SCSI Command and set it into your DVD Rom Drive (if you’re not using ISO Image)

5. The next step would be putting your PS2 Games on your DVD ROM and choose to Run CD from File Menu … and pray hope it’ll work :P and in my case i was running Dragon Ball Z Budokai Tenkaichi PAL Version

And that’s it … you’re finished ;)
Note: If you got an error message saying error opening gs plugin or something like that, most likely you’re trying to use ZeroGS Plugin and your vga card is not a Pixel Shader 2.0 Capable Card (ZeroGS require Pixel Shader 2.0 ++ Capable Card) .. and the only solution is using GSDX Plugin as the graphic plugin or get a new graphic card

Benchmarking Multithreaded PCSX2

2010-10-28T05:56:00.000-07:00

As most people probably know, PCSX2 is primarily a dual-thread application. The two main threads are described as such:

EE/Core thread emulates the PS2's EmotionEngine (including VIF, SIF, GIF, and VUs) and the IOP (including SPU2, CDVD, and PAD)
GS thread emulates the PS2's Graphic Synthesizer (includes texture swizzling, texture filtering, upscaling, and frame rendering)

Each thread relies on the other thread in some way -- the GS thread cannot swizzle texture data until the EE thread has uploaded said data, for example. Meanwhile, the EE thread cannot upload texture data to the GS thread if the GS thread is currently bogged down rendering last week's frame to video. During these periods, either thread will sleep, only to be woken up once the other thread has caught up in its workload.

In theory the act of sleeping the EE/GS threads should make benchmarking the CPU load registered by each thread pretty easy: all modern operating systems have built-in APIs for reading the busy/idle time of any thread on the system -- this is the same API used by your tried and true task/process manager, for example:

(Air shows off his personal favorite, ProcessExplorer, part of the SysInternals Suite)

This readout is simple, efficient, and seemingly reliable. It also avoids a lot of the annoying pitfalls one runs into trying to use common alternatives such as rdtsc and QueryPerformanceCounter.

... and this is precisely the method I decided to use for PCSX2 0.9.7.r3113 (and still in use as of r3878). Simple theory really: if the GS thread is sleeping a lot (low load) then the game is bottlenecked by EE/Core thread activity. If the EE thread is sleeping a lot and the GS thread reports 90+%, then the GS thread is the bottleneck (a problem often correctable through using lower internal resolutions, for example).

But as I've recently found out, it doesn't work as expected.

It's filled with... threads!

The immediate problem faced by this simple method of load detection is that the latest wave of Windows Vista/7 GPU drivers themselves are multithreaded. It should have come as little surprise that one of the primary goals of the new DWM/Aero/DX11 systems implemented into Vista/7 is scalable parallel processing that takes better advantage of modern multi-core CPUs. Why this causes the OS built-in thread load detection to fail might be less obvious; I'll explain with an example:

When the GPU driver receives a directive to render the current scene (aka 'Present' in DirectX lingo), it sends the job to a thread dedicated to the task. That thread has a Present Queue, typically 1 or 2 frames deep, that automatically handles triple buffered vsync'd page updates. If the queue is full when the PCSX2 GS thread issues its next Present request, the GPU driver will put the GS thread to sleep until a slot in the Present Queue becomes available. End result: The GS thread reports idle time to the operating system (and to PCSX2's GS window), but the GPU is still quite overloaded and bottlenecked via work supplied to it by a different thread altogether.

In essence, it is nearly the same sort of inter-thread dependence that the EE/Core and GS threads have between each other, only now the EE/Core thread's dependency chain extends to include GS and GPU driver threads (of which there could be one or many).

The solution to this problem is to use a more traditional method of manual load checking: timing various sections of code executed in-thread via either the aforementioned rdtsc (timestamp) or QueryPerformanceCounter, read at key points in the GS thread's execution/program flow. This wasn't such a great idea a few years ago, due to K8/Athlon and P4 generation CPUs lacking a stable internal clock counter. Fortunately, all modern CPUs have a consistent counter suitable for benchmarking, so the pitfalls that have been long associated with using Intel/AMD timestamps are finally obsolete enough to not be a concern for us here.

Walking in a winter wonderland

2010-10-28T05:52:00.000-07:00

Happy Winter all!
It seems as if most of the US has had a taste (like it or not) of winter wonderland. The fresh blanket of snow has really brought the Christmas spirit to the Hudson Valley and I'm loving it! Lots to celebrate this season--finished student teaching ( have an interview for a long term sub position coming up, keep your fingers crossed!), sold a few prints on Etsy and have become a part of the awesome Amy team (a bunch of great cheerleaders!!) and of course I have a wonderful husband who's been my support system in so many ways and an affectionate cat that keeps me warm and entertained!

Speaking of the Amys in the Arts team, we've been fortunate to be chosen for a few treasuries up here and here if you can make it before they close! I've also been the featured Amy of the week here and here. Many thanks to SewArtsy for putting that together!!

Here's to a happy holiday to all you readers, passerbys and such! Thanks for stopping by! Hope you'll be back in the new year!

Post partum catch up

2010-10-28T05:49:00.000-07:00

Post partum catch up

So here we are again. Facing another fall, another start of a school year subbing. The past few months (let's say 7 and a half, almost 8) have been jam packed with enough drama, conflict and happiness to last, well, the last few months. I warn you now (as maybe I didn't say enough before)--do NOT, under any circumstances have a baby and buy/move into a house in need of a few repairs simultaneously. That is unless you live for that sort of thrill. Seriously. For. Real. I'm only just starting to come out on the other side and I think I left half my sanity back there. Part of me wants to go back to claim it but maybe it's just better to be happy with the little bit I have now. It works like those lizards' tails that fall off and grow back, right? Right?!

I felt like this summer either crawled by or streaked past me. I went back to subbing the last month of school which was good to get out of the house and not feel like a total financial suck. But then, Elinor turned into a baby, a real baby. One that cooos and talks back and bats her huge doe eyes and starts to learn to roll over and do things other than sleep and eat and poop. So I stayed home for the summer because why miss this?! Hubby seemed set in his day to day schedule of work and working on the house on his days off and maybe climbing or going for a motorcycle ride. I mean, I could do everything else. No problem. I've seen it done before.

Boy o boy-flash forward to my life as a twisted 1950's family sitcom except my pearl necklace is stashed in the back of my underwear drawer and most of the time I wore the same outfit the whole week. The best accomplishments of the day were getting a load of laundry done. Maybe vaccuuming the rug my child was learning to crawl on. I've never hated myself and my husband so much. Truly we were at a major crux in our relationship and one you couldn't easily walk away from.

I will say this. I am grateful for the "mommy meetings" I had once a week which made me feel, if only temporarily, that I wasn't alone in this situation, these feelings. It makes me so much more protective of newer mommies that I know, because I don't want them to feel those same overwhelming feelings. That one really needs a network of support not just when the baby is born or a few weeks after but consistently, on a day to day basis. I felt so good the first few months of Elinor's life because things seemed to be falling in place with the house and our new family. Elinor was a good portable baby and she basically fell into step with me. But this summer kicked my ass in being at home. Elinor's sleeping schedule changed. She got heavier. She learned how to move more. She fussed. I've lost more weight because I couldn't get enough to eat. I'm exhausted and bored and unmotivated. Mothering in this society can be very isolating and I'm already bad at asking for help.

So where are we now? I've identified that I need help in the first place and to not overload my expectations of myself. Since I've gone back to work, things seems easier. I seem slightly happier. There's more of a finite schedule built in. But I can't let this lull me into a false sense of "everything's worked itself out". I know the feelings will come back. I have to be ready this time.