DrBacchus' Journal

Add another one to the list of things that I've put off for a long time, only to realize that they're simple to do, and have a great pay-off.

Today I installed and enabled APC, which immediately doubled the speed of my PHP applications. And, more importantly, the load on the server immediately dropped by a factor of 10.

I understand that there are other php caching accelerating thingies out there, and I expect that everyone has their opinion of which one is the best. But I'm very impressed with APC.

In the mail today I received my shipment of Apache Cookbook, 2nd Edition. It's got a bunch of new recipes, and all the rest of them have been updated for the 2.2 version of the Apache Web Server. You owe it to yourself to go buy a copy now. Go ahead. We'll wait.

Meanwhile I'd like to share my dedication:

I dedicate this book to the experts on #apache who answer so many of these questions every day, and to their beginners, on their way to becoming experts, who ask them.

A huge thank you goes to all the many people involved in making this book a reality. Tatiana, thank you for your patience and persistent assistance throughout this process.

And, finally, thanks go to my wonderful family. To Sarah, who always looks for my books at the bookstore. To Isaiah, for all his boundless energy and tight hugs. And to my Best Beloved, for helping me discover so much Pointless Beauty.

At ApacheCon I gave a lightning talk about mod_config_rewrite. I keep meaning to convert it into some web-accessible form, but so far haven't had the cycles to do it justice.

Meanwhile, for those of you who care, I've stuck my slides up on people.apache.org so that you can get the general idea.

MarkMail is the latest cool way to visualize email on the many, many Apache mailing lists. Here's a snapshot of the messages that I've sent over the last 8 years or so. Has it really been that long?

About 4 years ago, most of my activity switched to non-public mailing lists, which, I think, accounts for the abrupt dropoff.

You've got just 2 more days to send in your paper proposal for ApacheCon Amsterdam. Lars extended the CFP through Friday. Hurry, hurry!

Meanwhile, just 11 days until ApacheCom Atlanta. I really need to finish my training notes. I'm particularly excited about my mod_rewrite training, which promises to be a lot of fun. For me, anyways. :-)