mattgadient.com

PREFACE: Back up your database before removing anything!!!

My Wordpress database was getting pretty big, despite not having all that many posts all things considered.

I figured the biggest issue was drafts wasting space, although it turned out to be “revisions” which make up over half the “post” size of my database. If you make a post and then tweak it 10 times because it doesn’t look right, you’ve just saved that post to your database 11 times. UGH! I’ll get into cleaning those up another day though.

Looking through PhpMyAdmin, the other area I found to be a bit large was the wp_options table. I started looking through all the listings and found a lot of entries that were obviously for plugins I didn’t use anymore. Some I deleted off-the-hop, but others I wasn’t so sure about. Note that a nice fast way of detecting and removing these “possible orphans” is using a Wordpress plugin I came across in my searching called Clean Options. It really helps narrow down what’s not being actively used.

In any case, looking up all these orphans took quite some time, but here’s a list of what I found out about some of them:

ai_ stuff
This appears to be leftovers from the All in One Adsense and YPN plugin
ai_120×240 — ai_120×600 — ai_125×125 — ai_160×600 — ai_180×150 — ai_200×200 — ai_234×60 — ai_250×250 — ai_300×250 — ai_336×280 — ai_468×60 — ai_728×90 — ai_adtype — ai_after — ai_archive — ai_before — ai_cat — ai_channel — ai_channel_ypn — ai_client — ai_client_ypn — ai_color_bg — ai_color_border — ai_color_link — ai_corner_style — ai_dfirst — ai_home — ai_lra — ai_nads — ai_nadspp — ai_network — ai_page — ai_post — ai_space
Yikes, quite a lot.  They hurt my eyes in notepad too. I was able to delete them successfully.

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channel_id
chitika_id
These appear to be Read more…

My last week’s been comprised of a lot of reading, a lot of brain-storming, and a lot of planning.

Here’s a scenerio:

• Step 1: One of the sites on my VPS gets slashdotted, dugg, or picked up on by a major news site. It has actually happened a few times already although fortunately it’s been a side-story rather than a front-page news item (I say “fortunately” because I was on a shared host the times it happened. Being a side-story, it didn’t kill the server or get me canned).
• Step 2: VPS starts to choke – either Apache swells up and starts swapping / dies when it hits the memory limit, or MySQL starts suffering from the same effect. In any case, the site doesn’t handle the traffic.

If the VPS isn’t responsive enough to log in, the possible rush-to-fix’s become: Read more…

I wrote this up quite a while ago, and it’s been sitting as a draft since. I pulled information on each setting from a few different websites, and while I don’t have any “final results” to show you (and the write-up wasn’t quite completed), hopefully the information’s useful in helping you to better determine what each setting does (and how it will affect encode time and quality), and to come up with your own settings.

I’ve used Handbrake in the past to encode movies and various TV series from DVD source. Recently, I grabbed the latest version (0.9.3), and decided to encode a TV series from DVD.

In short, here’s what I’m looking to get from my encode:
-High quality, even if it takes a while to encode.
-File size of between 250-400mb for each 1-hour episde (about 42-44 mins).

Of course, the best way to see how well you’ve done is to find something to compare it to. Therefore, I grabbed a torrent of the same TV show, and aimed to create a better quality encode at a smaller file size.

Before dumping into the x264 settings, it’s worth noting that I used a 2-pass encode, and mixed the audio down to a 160kbps Dolby Surround encode.

Here’s a list of the x264 settings I chose in Handbrake, and why:

Reference Frames: 6
Normally, I’d go much higher here. However if you go too high, both hardware and *some* software players can choke. Unfortunately, reference frames are subject to diminishing returns. According to a document at mplayerhq.hu , while going from a setting of 1 to 2 would improve the signal-to-noise by 0.15dB, going from 6 to 12 would typically improve the signal-to-noise ratio by only 0.02dB but result in a 15-20% longer encoding time. Really high diminishing returns for something you probably won’t notice, and something that might cause issues if you ever try to play your video in a hardware player. That said, go crazy if you want and try 16. Just make sure your video plays fine afterwards.

Mixed References: Yes
You get some quality at the cost of some speed. I’ve never seen anyone give a good reason to turn it off. Read more…

If you’re using the MSI X58 PRO-E motherboard and have checked out the temperatures in your BIOS, you might be alarmed to find that the IOH temperature (northbridge) is quite high. Indeed, a little searching around will show that you’re not alone – plenty of these motherboard owners have expressed similar concerns.

The good news is that Intel designed the X58 northbridge to safely handle temperatures of up to 100 degrees celcius, so if you’re not quite there, technically, you should be safe.

The bad news is that if you’re flirting with high 80’s or 90’s already, a bit of overclocking or a hot day may very well put you over the top.

If you’re concerned about temperatures, you have a few options:

1. Contact MSI and inquire about an RMA. Note that unless your temps are actually passing 100 degrees, they may simply tell you that it’s operating within design limits… which is true.
2. Keep the environment cool, be careful with overclocking, and hope for the best. Worst case scenerio is the motherboard dies outside of the warranty period. Chances are you’ll be fine.
3. Add some internal cooling. Internal fans help, or you can glue a little fan to the heatsink.
4. Upgrade to an aftermarket cooler. Pricey, and it would probably cost less to simply buy a motherboard with better default cooling instead, but it’s an option.
5. Remove the thermal interface pad from the Northbridge/Southbridge and apply some high-quality thermal paste instead.

Option #5 is the one we’ll be looking at here.

Feel free to watch the video below for a walk-though (skip to the 3.5 minute mark if you just want to see how it’s done). Alternately, you can scroll down for the write-up.

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Step 1: Remove the Read more…

Today we’re taking a quick look at the Antec Sonata III Mid Tower Quiet Case.

The Sonata III was bought as a replacement for the Sonata Piano Finish case. It’s actually very similar, although it doesn’t have quite the same piano-finish look to it. There have been improvements in other areas though, and they’ll be mentioned below (you can check out the video or scroll down to read the written review).

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Front view of the Antec Sonata III

Starting at the front, you’ll notice the ports are flush with the case. The older version had the ports hidden away under a silver “door”. While I suppose the old version probably blended in better if you actually had it sitting beside your grand piano, it’s wasn’t the best in terms of functionality. Even when open, the door made it impossible to see the ports from above resulting in a lot of fumbling around if you were trying to plug something in. When the door was open, that section also became an “intake” resulting in a lot of dust getting sucked in as well. Having a flush mount with the Sonata 3 should definitely help to alleviate both these issues. Another change that should serve to help is that the lower intake’s on the left and right are a little larger. Offering less constriction there should help ensure that most of the intake air is pulled from the bottom and passes the filter.

The front panel remains similar, although the Sonata 3 has been double-hinged, making it Read more…