My curiosity was reignited when Garrett recently tweeted a link to this fantastic lecture:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So I have a new analogue hacking project: I’m going to see if I can massively reduce the amount of sugar in my diet. Obvious targets #1 and #2: soft drinks and sweets.

Although they probably represent the vast majority of my sugar consumption, the rest of it is the ugly, insidious, sand-in-your-budgies sugar you’ll find in the strangest of foods… especially if you’re in the USA, given the HFCS damage.

The Great Australian Internet Blackout is a combined online and offline demonstration against imposed online censorship. We’re collaborating with Electronic Frontiers Australia (and hoping to bring on similar organisations soon) to make sure every Australian knows why this draconian policy is unacceptable.

We’re gathering steam within the online community opposed to this policy, then broadening our audience with offline outreach efforts. Our first big demonstration will be during the week of Australia Day… websites across the country with go dark for the week, and we will celebrate the national holiday by joining the traditional Australia Day public parties across the nation, wearing black (hey, it’s a “blackout” after all!) and informing our fellow citizens about the threat of imposed online censorship.

Check out the website for more info, follow @OzNetBlackout on Twitter and get involved via Facebook group and events.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Please, black out your website and online profile images in protest against the Australian Government’s Internet Filtering policy.

Why?

It may seem cheesy to turn your website or avatar black for an online protest, but it can form a part of a good online and offline campaign, particularly for Internet-related protests.

Many of my friends in New Zealand turned their websites and online profile images black to protest a proposed “guilt upon accusation” copyright law (Section 92A), providing massive online “Internet Blackout” support to the Creative Freedom campaign. I, and plenty of others around the world, also participated.

The most important bit: New Zealand media took notice, bringing a level of awareness to an Internet / copyright / online rights issue that would otherwise never have materialised. Ultimately, the new government chose to review the entire bill, and while the issue is still being fought, at least one battle was won… and now, there are more people informed about the issue to fight ACTA.

Now it’s Australia’s turn. Our current (otherwise pretty bloody sensible) government has adopted a terrible policy of mandatory Internet filtering, which Australians have been fighting against for many, many months. A technical report about the feasibility of the filter has just been released, which (on first glance) appears to validate the policy against technical challenges, and the government has announced that it is pursuing the policy to legislation.

Now, I’m not suggesting that turning stuff black will have a direct impact on government policy… However, I am suggesting that we can use broad-based online protest to increase awareness of the problem, and help those attempting to fight the good fight offline.

If Sunrise (a breakfast news show in Australia) or other news outlets note that “Australians are turning out the lights in protest against the government’s Internet filter”, that’s awareness value we’d never be able to raise by, say, marching in the streets. If it causes Tony Jones or Leigh Sales to ask a government minister why Australians are so upset about this policy, that’s incredibly worthy opinion-leader influence… and very likely cringe-worthy interview fodder.

So yes, blacking out your websites and online profile images alone would be tilting at windmills. But as an online component of a complete No Clean Feed campaign… very useful.

For my readers who are not in Australia… consider how this western, English-speaking democratic country might be the thin end of the wedge — that’s why I supported my New Zealand friends against S92A. Please participate, and support Australians in their embarrassment about this terrible Internet policy!

Remember: This is only useful as part of a broader campaign to raise awareness of the issue and pressure politicians to put a stop to this filter. Go to the EFA’s No Clean Feed site for all kinds of other things you can do. The best thing? Write in your own words by snail mail, call by telephone or meet with your local MP.

#nocleanfeed

How?

The easy Twitter option:

1. Use Twibbon to put a #nocleanfeed blackout layer on your avatar.

More creative options… You could start with some handy templates I have made:

With layers: PSD for Photoshop · XCF for GIMP

Modifying your avatar, if you’re au fait with Photoshop or The GIMP:

1. Download the PSD for Photoshop or XCF for The GIMP
2. Copy your existing avatar into a new layer
3. Move that layer between the #nocleanfeed and Background layers
4. Desaturate the coloured avatar layer (so it’s just black and white)
5. Set that layer to between 30% and 50% transparent
6. Flatten the image (combine all the layers)
7. Save it as a PNG or JPEG, ready to use on Twitter, Facebook, or… wherever

On Twitter:

1. Download the blank image or modify one of the templates above
2. Make sure you’re logged in at twitter.com
3. Click “Settings” in the menu at the top right of the page
4. Click “Picture” in the links under your current avatar
5. Click “Choose File” and select your blacked out avatar
6. Click “Save” and you’re done.

On Facebook:

1. Download the blank image or modify one of the templates above
2. Make sure you’re logged in at www.facebook.com
3. Click your name, next to “Settings” in the menu at the top right of the page
4. Move your mouse over your current avatar and click “Change Picture”
5. Click “Upload a Picture” in the drop-down menu
6. Click “Choose File” and select your blacked out avatar
7. Wait for your photo to upload, and you’re done

On Gravatar (for blogs and lots of other websites):

1. Download the blank image or modify one of the templates above
2. Make sure you’re logged in at gravatar.com
3. Click on “add a new image” beneath your list of registered emails
4. Choose “My computer’s hard drive”
5. Click “Choose File” and select your blacked out avatar
6. Click “Next”
7. If your image is already square (like the templates), just click “Crop and Finish!”
8. Add a rating… probably G
9. Now select the email addresses you want to use this avatar with
10. Click “Use for selected addresses” and you’re done

Ah, the life and times of a kernel hacker…

So for now, instead of watching the PHP fastcgi process directly, I’m tracking its performance and usage from nginx’s perspective. You can log all kinds of data about upstream performance with nginx:

log_format upstream '$remote_addr - - [$time_local] "$request" $status '
    'upstream $upstream_response_time request $request_time '
    '[for $host via $upstream_addr]';

Then we log to a central upstream.log file from every location block which includes a fastcgi_pass parameter. For example:

location ~ \.php$ {
    include  fastcgi_params;
    access_log  /var/log/nginx/upstream.log  upstream;
    fastcgi_pass  fcgi_php;
    fastcgi_param  SCRIPT_FILENAME  $wordpress_root$fastcgi_script_name;
}

Now we know how many requests the PHP fastcgi process is handling, and how quickly it’s doing so. collectd’s tail plugin can watch this log file…

<Plugin tail>
  <File "/var/log/nginx/upstream.log">
  Instance "nginx"
    <Match>
      Regex ".*"
      DSType "CounterInc"
      Type counter
      Instance "requests"
    </Match>
    <Match>
      Regex " upstream ([0-9.]*) "
      DSType GaugeAverage
      Type delay
      Instance "upstream"
    </Match>
  </File>
</Plugin>

… and turn it into something readable. First, the number of requests per second (which I only started watching at 14:30 this afternoon), then the delay for each request:

(Relatively boring statistics here, as it’s only monitoring the dynamic processing of my personal sites.)

Combining nginx’s flexible logging and collectd’s tail plugin makes it pretty easy to watch the usage and performance of whatever you’re running behind nginx, even if you can’t instrument the application itself.

… and thus far, I’m pretty happy with the performance, reliability and resource usage of nginx in front of PHP in fastcgi mode.

Rather than completely dumping the native wpdb class (as most WordPress database adapters appear to do), I have subclassed it, replacing only the methods which use mysql_ functions.

This way, it’s easier to maintain, and more likely to work with plugins and future versions of WordPress. I have also written a cheesy, retroactive test suite for wpdb… I haven’t done a lot of TDD, so I have no idea if it’s any good, but it was helpful during development.

Because Drizzle has removed column types and various bits of syntax that WordPress (and heaps of  plugins) rely on, the adapter does a tiny bit of query munging along the way. For now, the only filters required are for CREATE, ALTER and friends.

Here’s a screenshot of WordPress running on Drizzle. Note that in the sidebar, I’m showing off two plugins which maintain their own tables — WP-PostRatings and Twitter Tools.

To test this bad boy out — because it’s absolutely not for production blogs! — you’ll need the Drizzle server (and its dependencies, naturally), the Drizzle PHP extension, WordPress 2.8 and my adapter. Note that I have yet to test it with WordPress MU, but it shouldn’t require many changes if it doesn’t work already.

If you use Ubuntu and want an easier time of it, you can get almost everything from the following PPAs. The Drizzle server isn’t packaged, but it’s incredibly easy to build and changes so quickly that you’ll probably find you want to keep it up to date from the source anyway.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/drizzle-developers/ppa/ubuntu hardy main
deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/jdub/devel/ubuntu hardy main

(I have only built my packages for Ubuntu 8.04, hardy, but you can always just grab the source packages and build them for whatever you’re using.)

Make sure you install the database adapter before you go through the WordPress install process. In every other respect, your test blog should operate in a completely unsurprising manner. Except when Drizzle crashes… but that’s precisely why you’re testing it, right?

On Drizzle

I am incredibly impressed with the Drizzle project. It’s a living case study of Open Source innovation and project renewal.

In response to what could be regarded as the unadventurous maturity of the MySQL project, the Drizzle developers have not simply chosen a new goal and forked the code — they have crafted a mission based on an insightful reading of current and future needs, questioned everything about MySQL without throwing away what they had learned, and thoroughly redefined their expectations and model for community collaboration.

It’s the perfect application of Software Freedom’s most functional of permissions: the freedom to fork. Like other forks built on both technical and social foundations — such as Firefox and, coincidentally, WordPress — I think it will eclipse its predecessor. Yes, even the mighty MySQL.

I hope that what the Drizzle developers have done will teach and inspire other projects to look beyond their own horizon.

Here’s a rocktastic presentation by Brian Aker, “Drizzle: Rethinking MySQL for the Web”, from the recent Open Source Bridge conference:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Meanwhile, I’ve always assumed that dogs and cats scooped up the water in their tongue like a bucket. Turns out that was right, albeit backwards… in the slow-mo video below, you can see that dogs actually use the back of their tongue as a scoop, not the front (which is the way I would do it)!

Click here to view the embedded video.

Update: After some encouragement in the comments, Dusty sent along a video of Sarah (a six month old Gordon Setter) drinking through her snout like a straw! It may not be slow motion, but you can still clearly see her unusual approach to the problem towards the end of the video. Check it out:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yesterday we adopted a beautiful, 2½ month-old Border Collie puppy. He was the more curious and attentive of two brothers, though it was still a difficult choice! He is heart-stoppingly cute, has that adorable “new puppy” smell, soft and fluffy long fur, and is already beginning to figure out the inscrutable noises of the silly humans. Po seems to be very comfortable at his new home:

Click here to view the embedded video.

So much awesome.

That’s what I would describe as “the hopes and dreams of a generation” (of Software Freedom lovers), and is the result of fantastic product definition, branding, genuine user excitement, years of incredible — and largely unsung — work of thousands of Debian developers (not to mention all the upstreams)… and a pretty substantial X factor.

Update: Whenever I talk about this chart in presentations, I always follow up with another chart which puts that incredible rising line in context: Ubuntu vs. Firefox. Interestingly, that chart is looking far less impressive today than it was last year. Which is great news… The rise and rise of Ubuntu is catching up to the star power of Firefox! Wow!