There is not a lot of seediness here. Doors are left unlocked. Even our wireless router is not password-protected. The internet is very fast at 30Mbps down/10Mbps up, and pings are low in the region, but I can’t play US-based first person shooters anymore. My appliances work fine.

There is much harmony and nobility. I’ve stopped judging and have discovered a kind feeling towards others. Even though I’ve done nothing yet, I’m becoming closer to who I really am.

My destination is Tokyo. I have a connecting flight in Detroit. I’m sitting in the waiting area of Gate 40 in Newark International Airport, across from Sleeping Beauty, and I’m sure that I’m caught up in the atmosphere of hope that is all around me! I had a lot of things I wanted to write about leaving and about anticipation, but it all seems so insignificant now.

Do you believe that human beings have souls? Well, I do, and I call souls “ghosts” after the anime Ghost in the Shell. My ghost was bound to the world through its self-reflection off of my parents and friends. Here, I find that that is no longer the case. If I had to say where my ghost is now, I’d say it’s somewhere in between the lines of my face, the paleness of my skin, and the movement of my pupils as they look at you. It’s time to board.

First, make sure that ALL of your domains on the Dreamhost PS are proxied through Litespeed. This allows Dreamhost’s Apache to only use 6MB of RAM per thread, instead of the usual 8MB. This is a huge memory savings. Each domain must be forwarded to a different internal port within Dreamhost’s proxy interface. A new listener with the corresponding port and a new virtual host must be defined within Litespeed’s configuration for each domain.

Next, in Dreamhost’s “Manage Domains,” “Extra Web Security” should be turned off since Apache is no longer used. When it is on, mod_security is loaded, which wastes RAM. Security and request filters can be tuned in the Litespeed web console. This can possibly reduce server load from spam bots. In Server/Request Filter, turn on “Enable Request Filtering” and “Scan Request Body.” Disable the “XSS attack” rule set because it breaks certain applications such as WordPress.

In Litespeed’s Server/Tuning/GZIP Compression, turn on compression, but leave dynamic compression off. There is insufficient CPU on a downscaled Dreamhost PS to perform dynamic compression for each request, and if it is on, the web server will suffer. If you have a larger Dreamhost PS, you can turn it on, but should leave the compression level at 1 for best performance.

In Litespeed’s Server/Tuning, reduce the Connection Timeout, Keep-Alive Timeout, Max Request URL Length, and Max Request Header Size, using the values in the tooltips as a guide. Again, this may reduce load from spam bots and DOS attacks.

In Litespeed’s Server/General/General settings, turn on “Use Client IP in Header” becaue we are behind a proxy server. This will allow Litespeed to read the HTTP 1.1 X-Forwarded-For header, which contains the actual IP address of the web connection.

In Litespeed’s Server/External App/phpLsapi, set Max Connections to 3, Persistent Connection to Yes, Instances to 1, Max Idle Time to 60, Connection Keepalive Timeout to 60, and use these lines in Environment:
PHP_LSAPI_MAX_REQUESTS=10000
PHP_LSAPI_CHILDREN=3
LSAPI_AVOID_FORK=1

If the server has more than 512MB of RAM, set Max Connections to 5 and PHP_LSAPI_CHILDREN=5. If it has more than 1024MB of RAM, use 10, and so on. This will help the concurrency of busy servers.

In Dreamhost’s Stats/Site Statistics, uncheck the “Run Analog Reports” box for all of your domains. The calculation of the stats uses up a lot of server resources each day, and although you will no longer see useful information about individual requests and bots, a non-server-log-parsing tracker such as Mint or Statcounter is preferable.

Tune Dreamhost PS’s CPU/Memory settings, maintaining at least 200MB free swap memory AND keeping the 15-minute load average below 1. After a short burst of CPU Usage or Memory past your limits, the speed of the CPU or memory will be throttled greatly. If PHP decides to use those slow resources, it can cause a chain reaction that starts too many Apache threads, possibly bringing the server down.

Mem: 307200k total, 253608k used, 53592k free
Swap: 307200k total, 0k used, 307200k free

That’s all! Your Dreamhost PS should now be running in top shape.

Socially, he died.
However, as an animal, he lives.

First, make sure that your Dreamhost PS is temporarily set to at least 600MHz/600MB. Compiling is a CPU intensive task, and without sufficient CPU power, it will take far too long.

Next, connect to your shell account via SSH.

Download, extract, and compile autoconf and automake:
wget ftp://ftp.ucsb.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/gentoo/distfiles/autoconf-2.61.tar.gz
wget ftp://ftp.ucsb.edu/pub/mirrors/linux/gentoo/distfiles/automake-1.10.1.tar.bz2
tar xzf autoconf-2.61.tar.gz
tar xjf automake-1.10.1.tar.bz2
cd autoconf-2.61
./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
cd $HOME/automake-1.10.1
./configure --prefix=$HOME
make
make install
Compile PHP5 from the Litespeed web administration interface. Note that the compile options and file paths in the below image differ from the defaults. Replace username with your user name. gettext is important for international language support, mysql is important for WordPress, jpeg is important for image manipulation, and PEAR is not used very often. Each PHP web application has different PHP requirements, and not everything was included here, so please make sure to include the compile options that you need. If you are unsure, take a look at Dreamhost’s default compile options to see many other possibilities. In the interest of keeping a small PHP memory footprint, include only necessary compile options.

Next, we must compile eAccelerator manually. If you are compiling PHP 5.2.5, you can skip this and download the binary here.
wget http://bart.eaccelerator.net/source/0.9.5.2/eaccelerator-0.9.5.2.tar.bz2
tar -xjf eaccelerator-0.9.5.2.tar.bz2
cd eaccelerator-0.9.5.2
export PHP_PREFIX=$HOME/lsws/lsphp5/bin
export PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
$PHP_PREFIX/phpize
./configure --prefix=$HOME --enable-eaccelerator-shared --with-php-config=$PHP_PREFIX/php-config
make
cp modules/eaccelerator.so $HOME


After the compile is complete and eaccelerator.so is in your /home/username/ folder, change the Command setting in Server/External App/phpLsapi from $SERVER_ROOT/fcgi-bin/lsphp to $SERVER_ROOT/fcgi-bin/lsphp5
Make a file called php.ini in your $HOME/lsws/fcgi-bin/ directory. Add these lines to enable eAccelerator.
extension_dir = "/home/username"
extension="eaccelerator.so"
eaccelerator.allowed_admin_path="/home/username"
eaccelerator.shm_size="16"
eaccelerator.cache_dir="/home/username/tmp/eaccelerator"
eaccelerator.enable="1"
eaccelerator.optimizer="1"
eaccelerator.check_mtime="0"
eaccelerator.debug="0"
eaccelerator.filter=""
eaccelerator.shm_max="0"
eaccelerator.shm_ttl="3600"
eaccelerator.shm_prune_period="3600"
eaccelerator.shm_only="1"
eaccelerator.compress="0"
eaccelerator.compress_level="1"
eaccelerator.keys = "shm_only"
eaccelerator.sessions = "shm_only"
eaccelerator.content = "shm_only"
output_buffering = On
memory_limit = 32M


Make a directory /home/username/tmp/eaccelerator and chmod those directories 777. Keep the shm_size as large as your memory will allow. Dreamhost’s NFS file mounts are slow, and we want to avoid putting cache files there. Using /tmp as the cache_dir is faster and allows a smaller shm_size to be used, but it has a capacity of only 128MB, and the server will crash if that directory runs out of space.

Now perform a graceful restart of Litespeed. That’s it! To check if everything is running as it should, create and browse to a file called phpinfo.php with these lines of code:
< ?php
phpinfo();
?>
If all is well, you should see a page titled PHP 5.2.5 that contains this line: “with eAccelerator v0.9.5.2, Copyright (c) 2004-2006 eAccelerator, by eAccelerator.”

With the installation of PHP5 and eAccelerator, most of our speed optimizations for Litespeed are complete. Next time: final tuning of Litespeed and Dreamhost settings for lowest cost and highest stability.

1. Change to lighttpd in https://panel.dreamhost.com/?tree=vserver.settings

2. Edit the lighttpd configuration file in /home/username/lighttpd with server.port = 3000

3. Restart the VPS to unbind lighttpd from port 80

4. Install litespeed as below, ignoring the proxy step.

Dreamhost PS can act as a very cost effective VPS setup if you are able to configure it correctly. For $15.00 a month on top of the generous Dreamhost shared hosting plan, you can move off of the horrendously loaded shared webservers and onto a virtual private server with 150 MB RAM, 150 MB swap memory, and 150 MHz of dedicated CPU. Dreamhost’s MySQL database servers are still shared with others, but they are decent enough for most sites, and the fact that they are off-server means that they don’t use precious VPS memory.

Dreamhost PS’s default configuration was inherited directly from their shared hosting setup. It was slightly fiddled with but never fully optimized for low memory situations, which is what we have with Dreamhost PS. In particular, the Apache prefork threads that manage web connections to clients are compiled with libraries that you probably don’t need for your personal site. Because of this, more than 2MB of RAM are wasted per thread, and a moderately popular website usually has 30 or more threads. Also, the FastCGI settings are crude, leading to out-of-memory errors and debilitating “blocking” load from common FCGI daemons such as PHP, Perl, and Ruby.

There is much instability when running Dreamhost PS at the lowest memory settings. The easiest solution to this problem is to scale up the CPU/Memory of the Dreamhost PS server until it reaches acceptable levels, and pay extra month after month. A more cost-effective solution is to install an alternative web server behind Dreamhost’s Apache mod_proxy setup. The Litespeed web server is fast, stable, and .htaccess rewrite compatible so it’ll work straight out of the box with your WordPress or Gallery or phpBB.

First, we’ll install the Litespeed Standard Edition web server to our home directory. The free Litespeed Standard Edition has a low connection limit of 150 and is more like trial software. However, since all of our web connections will be routed through Apache’s front-end mod_proxy module, Litespeed will never reach that limit, and we will never have to purchase Litespeed’s Enterprise Edition. Using Litespeed behind a proxy server makes for a slick deal.

Connect to your PS server’s shell account using SSH.

Using the command prompt, download the Litespeed web server:
wget http://www.litespeedtech.com/packages/3.0/lsws-3.3.4-std-i386-linux.tar.gz
Unzip it to a directory in your home:
tar -xzf lsws-3.3.4-std-i386-linux.tar.gz
Run the install, agreeing to the license and following the instructions:
lsws-3.3.4/install.sh

The Litespeed configuration server will automatically start after the install. Load the LiteSpeed Web configuration panel by browsing to domain.com:7080/

The important settings that you’ll need to configure to get started are .htaccess overrides and file paths. Under Server’s htaccess allow override, untick None and set the overrides that you require. FileInfo is important, as it controls permalinks and mod_rewrite ability. In Virtual Host’s general tab, untick all htaccess overrides to inherit the settings from Server. To set up file paths, edit the Virtual Host Root in the Basic tab to /home/YOURUSERNAME/. Edit the Document Root in the General tab to $VH_ROOT/yourdomain.com/

That should be enough to begin! Perform a graceful restart of Litespeed and test your site by browsing to yourdomain.com:8088.

If it works, we move on to Dreamhost’s control panel to finalize the configuration. In the Domains “Mongrel and Proxy” page, proxy your entire domain to port 8088.

In the Goodies “Cron Jobs” page, add a new cron job that initializes Litespeed after every server reboot: /home/yourusername/lsws/bin/lshttpd start

Wait a few minutes, and Litespeed should be serving the site on the default web port of 80. To check if it worked, use curl to grab the web page headers, and it should read “Litespeed” instead of “Apache”:
curl -I yourdomain.com

You’ll notice that all of your Apache threads are now lighter. They only use about 6MB RAM in mod_proxy mode instead of Dreamhost’s normal 8MB.
top
CTRL+C

We’ve taken a big step towards optimizing performance, but we’re not done yet. Litespeed comes standard with PHP4 for your popular web applications such as WordPress, Gallery2, and phpBB. Next time, we’ll compile Litespeed’s PHP5 LSAPI with eAccelerator for top PHP performance.

My freedom is the empty kind.

Yours is the freedom to choose what you want to do.

A very substantial freedom that you got from experiencing lots of hardship and pain.

You’re free to choose what you want.
That’s why you’re also free to abandon what you want.

FREE is a song with high pop sensibilities. The rhythm is strong, and the melody is catchy. Erika’s voice constantly modulates between whispery and confident, and it is truly a captivating voice. Compared to the more acoustic Taiyou no Uta, FREE is a rockin’ song.

In the PV, Erika has changed her image. Whereas before she was snowy and pure, she is now bronzed and sexy. During the numerous scenes in which she is lying on a bed, she faintly resembles a tanned Reon Kadena.

Without the backing of a drama and with the abandonment of her image, FREE is a experiment in change. The great thing that Taiyou no Uta had was a soulful synergy between girl, drama, and song. The acoustics of FREE are nearly on par with Taiyou no Uta, but it feels like something is missing.

Still, the song sounds good, Sawajiri Erika has a major fan base, and there’s a curious air about this debut release. How far will it go up the Oricon charts (I’m guessing 125,000 copies sold)? I can’t wait to find out!

Erika – FREE lyrics:

Nee kikoeru? Kono koe ga
Furitsuzuku you ni kimi ni made tooku todoku kana?
Mou ano basho ni wa kaerenai
Kaze ni kieru negai
Kimi ga iru dake de boku wa toberu yo
Itami sasu basho e doko made mo
Tsunaide itai tsunaide itai
Mada aenakutemo inori nagara hibikiwataru sora e
Aa koko kara dakedaseru chikara ga hoshii yo
Te no hira no mirai sore dake de
Ushinatte kitamono
Te ni shita mono
Zenbu idaite hashiru
Kotae ga aru kara ima wo ikiteru
Mamoritai mono ga koko ni aru
Tatoe ima ga kioku no naka kara kiesattemo
Kimi no koto wa koko de oboeteru yo…
Itsuka deau hi ga kite
Sono te ni furerareru no nara
Yasashiku kono te wo nibiri kaeshite yo
Kimi ga iru dake de boku wa toberu yo
Kienai itami nara sono mama de
Tsunaide itai tsunaide itai itsuka aemasu you ni
Inori nagara hibikiwataru koe de
Ano hibi
I wanna be free…
Ano hibi

作詩：ERIKA・白鳥マイカ 作曲：COZZi

ねえ　聴こえる?　この声が
降り続くように　君にまで遠く　届くかな?

もうあの場所には　帰れない
風に消える願い

君がいるだけで　僕は飛べるよ
光挿す場所へ　どこまでも
つないでいたい　つないでいたい
まだ会えなくても
祈りながら　響き渡る　空へ

ああ　ここから駆け出せる　力が欲しいよ
手のひらの未来　それだけで

失ってきたもの　手にしたもの
全部抱いて　走る

答えがあるから　今を生きてる
守りたいものが　ここにある
例え今が　記憶の中から　消えさっても
君のことは　ココで　覚えてるよ…

いつか　出会う日が来て
その手に　触れられるのなら
優しく　この手を　握り返してよ

君がいるだけで　僕は飛べるよ
消えない痛みなら　そのままで
つないでいたい　つないでいたい　いつか会えますように
祈りながら　響き渡る　声で

I Wanna be free…

But today, I want to go to California, because Hirano Aya is going to sing at the Anime Expo there on 6-29. I’ll probably be able to find a recording of the performance on the web afterwards, but I still want to be there. Maybe it’s because there’s some sort of significance in seeing her in 3D for the first time. Maybe it’s because she’s an idol. Maybe.. I don’t know.

Every place becomes a mirror of yourself. Traveling is not about the places you go or the things you see, but the ways in which you change.

Incidentally, the Apple iPhone is also going to be released on 6-29.

Purple Haze, by borealnz