Author: Paweł Gościcki

Ruby/Rails programmer.

Top 25 music of 2006

Just like last year – here are my favourite tunes of 2006!

  1. Largo – Tango Passion
  2. Randy Crawford – When I Get Over You
  3. Métisse – Boom Boom Ba
  4. Sharam – Patt (Party All The Time)
  5. Nelly Furtado – Say It Right
  6. The Jet Set – Just Call Me
  7. Ferry Corsten – Holding On
  8. Morandi – Love Me
  9. Bob Sinclair – World, Hold On
  10. Andru Donalds & Eugenia Vlasova – Wind Of Hope
  11. Therapy – Diane
  12. Pussycat Dolls ft. Snoop Dogg – Buttons
  13. Mory Kante – Yeke Yeke
  14. Kasia Cerekwicka – Na Kolana
  15. Arash ft. Aneela – Bombay Dreams
  16. Pati Yang – Reverse The Day.
  17. K-Maro – Les Frcres Existent Encore
  18. U2 & Green Day – The Saints Are Coming
  19. Chicane ft. Tom Jones – Stoned In Love
  20. Ivan i Delfin – Jej Czarne Oczy
  21. Ласковый Май – Белые Розы (Biełyje Rozy)
  22. Akcent – Kylie
  23. Malu – Fotonovela
  24. Shamur – Gonna Make it
  25. Long & Junior feat. DJ Wiesłaff – Bo Ja Tańczyc Chcę (Style Mix 2004)

It should be no surprise that half of those tunes come straight from my dance class.

Squid: WARNING! Your cache is running out of filedescriptors

So you have a LAN with 50+ users and you set up a nice Squid w3cache as a transparent proxy with 100GB of space reserved for the cache (hdds are so cheap nowadays…). Weeks pass and suddenly you notice that something is messing up your web experience as Firefox suddenly decides to run painfully slow. About 30 minutes wasted on finding the culprit (like changing your DNS servers, clearing browser cache, etc.) until you decide to check the router and then the Squid with its logs. And then you find something fishy:

2007/01/01 17:51:19| WARNING! Your cache is running out of filedescriptors
2007/01/01 17:51:35| WARNING! Your cache is running out of filedescriptors
2007/01/01 17:51:51| WARNING! Your cache is running out of filedescriptors
(...)

I won’t be explaining why this happens. Others have done it before. What I’m going to do is present you with a solution that does not require a complete Squid recompilation/reinstallation procedure.

RedHat/Fedora

/etc/init.d/squid stop

nano /etc/squid/squid.conf
  max_filedesc 4096

nano /etc/init.d/squid
  # add this just after the comments (before any script code)
  ulimit -HSn 4096

/etc/init.d/squid start

Debian

nano /etc/defaults/squid
  SQUID_MAXFD=4096

/etc/init.d/squid restart

Ubuntu

nano /etc/default/squid
  SQUID_MAXFD=4096

/etc/init.d/squid restart

And now watch the /var/log/squid/cache.log for a similar line:

2007/01/01 18:32:27 With 4096 file descriptors available

If it still says 1024 file descriptors available (or similarly low value) you are out of luck (or you’ve just messed something up).

WP Movie Ratings v1.4 released!

It’s been very long long since the latest release (1.3) of my precious WP Movie Ratings plugin. In fact, it was way too long. But it had also its bright sides, for example, I had lots of time to test it out thoroughly. Some of you bugged me via email to place your hands on the newest version before its official release and I was very happy to send it to you as it made for a great beta testing pool (thanks!). Lots of bugs were squished. Lots of code changed. I think that this is the point when my plugin reaches some kind of maturity. In its current form, that is, as there are some very heavy changes planned for 2.0.

But getting back to the just released v1.4, here are some notable changes:

  • new features: pagination when in page mode, default sorting options for page mode, option to highlight top rated movies, ability to edit imdb links for already rated movies.
  • movies are now grouped together by month when sorting by view date in page mode.
  • added a new database field with optional link that is used instead of imdb.
  • if no imdb link is given, the plugin will not look for the movie’s title on imdb.
  • fixed lots of rendering problems, character encoding issues and bugs.

You will find the detailed list of changes in the changelog file. And here’s the direct download link. Enjoy!

New wordpress plugin: Book Reviews

Devin Reams decided that movie reviews are simply not enough for him and went as far as forking my original WP Movie Ratings plugin creating a new wordpress plugin called Book Reviews, which let’s you rate… yes, you guessed it, books!

I’m very happy to see this kind of work being made. So if you need to rate books instead of just movies go and download his plugin.

Update: no longer available. Devin decided to take it off of his site.

So what is the “rabbit’s foot” anyway?

  • It was the briefcase from Pulp Fiction.
  • ye lol, but i heard that the briefcase in pulp fiction is actually the dvels soul
  • it was Ving Rhames soul in pulp fiction.. and thats why he helped get it in this film
  • It is also the Maltese Falcon, the Continuum Transfunctioner, and the weird glow in the trunk of the car in “Repo Man”.
  • a mcdonalds mcmuffin
  • A toaster strudle… Davian gets hungry too.
  • Its the episode when the coyote catch and eat the roadrunner…
  • Its Paris Hiltons latest sex tape.
  • it s the script for the final ever episode of Lost. thus why JJ Abrams wanted Cruise to get it back.
  • Obviously, the Rabbit’s foot is Larry Wachowsky’s penis.
  • It’s Suri Cruise’s bronzed poop.
  • It’s the key to getting laid.
  • Its the one ring to rule them all.
  • It was Ethan Hunt’s Good Luck gift.
  • It’s the weapons of mass destruction the US never found in Iraq
  • it s deux ex machina.
  • If you look very closely you can see a little white furry paw in that glass thingy
  • The script for MI4

God, I love imdb boards. And MI-3 was a fantastic movie!

31st Polish Film Festival ‘2006

It’s been a while now since the 31st Polish Film Festival has ended and I was kind of too busy to write anything besides the movie reviews from the festival but now the right time has come and here is my private summary of this event. It doesn’t matter that it’s been almost a month now since it has ended as it’s a purely personal entry.

6 days, 2 cinemas, 8 simultaneous screenings. I’ve seen only 22 movies, which makes an average of 3,66 movies per day. Not much, you might say, especially comparing it with the accomplishment at 6th Era Nowe Horyzonty Film Festival this year’s summer. This time, unfortunately, besides having a great time watching the movies I was also working. Both as a reporter and a photographer.

Here are my daily reports from the festival (in Polish):

and here are my pictures:

Now as for the festival, it is no surprise that I love Polish cinema. Even its less acclaimed works. That’s why there won’t be a list of TOP 5 worst movies. Not because I don’t want to write one, but because in my opinion none of the movies qualify to be there! Year after year movie critics all over Poland say that Polish cinema is at its knees and nothing good comes out. This is, of course, entirely not true as every year there are small masterpieces to watch. And here are this year’s best movies (according to my taste, of course):

The best movies of the festival (TOP 5):

  1. Bezmiar sprawiedliwości (2006)
  2. Z odzysku (2006)
  3. Przybyli ułani (2006)
  4. Jasminum (2006)
  5. Statyści (2006)

Outside of the competition is Leben der Anderen, Das (2006), which had a special screening at the festival. It would be my number two on this list as it’s a truly remarkable piece of work. But as the above list is Polish-only it’s not there.

And btw: I really do love Polish cinema very, very much!