$(obj1).animate({height:10,width:32,margin:30,left:5});
$(obj2).animate({height:20,width:62,margin:20,left:45});
$(obj3).animate({height:30,width:92,margin:10,left:25});
$(obj4).animate({height:40,width:122,margin:00,left:23});

Well everything is not entirely prefect because each animation occurs within its own timer interval. If one animation is slighter more complex than the other, it forces the rest of the animations to wait. This problem compounds itself to create an “easing” affect where the animation appears exponentially instead of linearly. This is due to how browsers fail to isolate different javascript timers or tabs from affecting each other.

Now my quest is to find an animation plugin where you can animate multiple objects with their own parameters in a single animation timer interval to ensure smooth, linear animation. If I can’t find one, this might be my chance to finally submit something back to jQuery. It might look something like this:

$.animate([
    {obj: obj1, params:{height:10,width:32,margin:30,left:5}},
    {obj: obj2, params:{height:20,width:62,margin:20,left:45}},
    {obj: obj3, params:{height:30,width:92,margin:10,left:25}},
    {obj: obj4, params:{height:40,width:122,margin:00,left:23}}
]);

Find and delete a directory:

find /PATH/TO/DIR -type d -name SEARCH -exec rm -rf {} \;

Find and delete a file:

find /PATH/TO/DIR -name SEARCH -exec rm -rf {} \;

Search within files:

 grep -r "SEARCH" *.EXTENSION /PATH/TO/DIR

Find and search within files:

find /PATH/TO/DIR -name "SEARCH" | xargs -I{} grep -H SEARCH {}

For more advanced options there’s always:

man find
man grep

Trying to remove trackerd is much harder than one would think. Using apt/aptitude proved fruitless since trying to remove/purge trackerd or tracker-utils does absolutely nothing. From Travis, I use these two scripts to basically prevent trackerd from running:

killall trackerd
mv /usr/bin/trackerd /usr/bin/trackerd-old

You might want to use ‘whereis trackerd’ to find out where your trackerd binary is actually located before using the move command.

After checking out the PHP/Memcache documentation, the code to achieve this is fairly simple:

ini_set('memcache.allow_failover', true); // default is usually true
ini_set('memcache.hash_strategy', 'consistent');

Somewhere in your configuration/initialization script, make sure these memcache settings are in place. Allow failover tells the memcache client to try another server if it cannot connect to a particular memcache daemon. The hash strategy is pretty self explanatory. Now onto the actual server code:

$failCount = 0;
$realInstance = new Memcache;
$testInstance = new Memcache;
 
$servers = array("server1", "server2", "server3");
$defautlPort = '1';
foreach($servers as $host) {
    if($testInstance->connect($host)) {
        $realInstance->addServer($host);
        $testInstance->close(); // only close if connection was success
    } else {
        $realInstance->addServer($host, defautlPort, true, 1, 1, -1, false);
        $failCount++;
    }
}
$isConnected = true;
if($failCount == count($servers)) {
    // set false if every server is marked as failed
    $isConnected = false;
}

I use two instances of Memcache (might not be most optimal solution) to check the availability of that server and if it is available, add it to the pool with all of the default options. If it is not available, set up the connection to automatically failover but also maintain its position in the server pool. These options are set using this paragraph from the PHP docs:

bool Memcache::addServer ( string $host [, int $port [, bool $persistent [, int $weight [, int $timeout [, int $retry_interval [, bool $status [, callback $failure_callback ]]]]]]] )

retry_interval: Controls how often a failed server will be retried, the default value is 15 seconds. Setting this parameter to -1 disables automatic retry.

status: Controls if the server should be flagged as online. Setting this parameter to FALSE and retry_interval to -1 allows a failed server to be kept in the pool so as not to affect the key distribution algoritm. Requests for this server will then failover or fail immediatly depending on the memcache.allow_failover setting.

There’s also error checking to ensure that at least one server is online to be considered connected to a memcache pool.

Camp Videos: The Nostalgia Song:

Classic Nickelodeon Show Intros:

MySQL Performance Blog: This is my favorite Mysql site and was absolutely indispensable when first starting out with Mysql. They pretty much cover any Mysql related topic.

MySQL Reference: The actual reference site is a must have. It’s fairly thorough and covers everything in simple detail.

Travis’s Mysql Postings: He’s the most knowledgeable database person I know and is usually the first person I go to with anything Mysql.

Jay’s Mysql Postings: He’s the 2nd most knowledgeable database person I know and he’s always spot-on with any tips he gives.

The rest are just a list of sites/pages that I find useful for whenever I need something specific:

Speeding up InnoDB Imports
10 Performance Tips
84 Performance Tips
Google Search

Today after doing a bunch of updates, both my video and sound went to crap. With the help of my favorite Linux hacker, Travis, we figured out that I was actually running the server version of the Linux kernel. Next, I uninstalled all instances of the server kernels, uninstalled all nvidia drivers and modules, and rebooted. From there, I followed the basic steps to install nVidia drivers, configured my screen settings and now I am able to run all of the fancy Compiz visuals and my Ubuntu install has never been better.