December 2009 Web Server Survey – nginx grows

In the latest Netcraft December 2009 web server survey, Nginx web server showed a substantial growth of 0.53% since last month. Good news for Nginx users.

Most of the other web servers Apache, IIS, qq.com and lighttpd have a reduction in usage.

I’m a big fan of Nginx and use it on most of the development and production websites. Apart from the low memory footprint as compared to Apache’s huge memory consumption, web pages load on Nginx very fast.

Personally, I prefer Nginx taking all the HTTP load and proxying the PHP/Perl/Python requests to Apache. Other ways of running PHP and Perl scripts are by forwarding those requests to a FastCGI server.

I’ve also tried PHP-FPM on a development machine; PHP has to be patched and rebuilt for this. But since PHP-FPM has not been maintained for a while, I decided against using it for production servers. (Looks like they have made some progress with PHP-FPM).

Are you a new convert to Nginx? What do you like most about this webserver? Which method do you prefer for running PHP/Perl/Python scripts?

How to use Google Talk on iPhone with Google App hosted domain

When you try to use Google Talk on your iphone with a Google App hosted domain, it insists that you use an @gmail.com account.

The [not publicized] URL to get past this is

http://hostedtalkgadget.google.com/a/DOMAIN/talkgadget/m

Just replace DOMAIN with your domain. And you can get on Google talk on your iPhone or iPod touch on your Google App hosted domain.

More URLs here.

Domain deccan.com expired!!

Oh no! Deccan Chronicle’s short domain name deccan.com expired on December 9th. Is it going to be renewed or is anyone going to cash on this domain name? Anyone at Deccan Chronicle reading this?

Deccan Chronicle parking page

Lazy Ubuntu geek uses his Linux desktop as a baby rocker

baby rocker

Read more.

Topper Denied Medical Admission Because He Is Underage

The EAMCET exam medical topper was today denied admission into medical college because he is 15 days underage!

According to Deccan Chronicle,

The Eamcet medical topper, Mr A. Sairam, was denied a MBBS seat by the NTR University of Health Sciences because he was 15 days below the qualifying age of 17 years. Mr Sairam was, as per the date on his SSC certificate, 16 years 11 months and 16 days old on December 31, the Eamcet cut-off date.

As per norms, Eamcet officials should have rejected his application. They considered it on “humanitarian grounds” after requests from his parents. On July 17, his father, Mr Ankam Anjura, a farmer from Venkatampet village of Nalgonda, approached the Chief Minister’s Office for help. Mr Prabhakar Reddy, special secretary, directed Mrs Lakshmi Par-thasaradhi, principal secretary, higher education, to issue a GO relaxing age norm for Mr Sairam. She issued the GO on July 18.

Read more.

Starbucks offers free pastry on July 21 morning

Starbucks is offering a free pastry on the morning of July 21st, from opening to 10:30am. Well, its not *totally free*, you have to buy coffee and they’ll give you the pastry free.

All you have to do is get there between opening and 10:30 am (or until they run out, whichever is earlier) and either show them the coupon or show it on their cell phones when they place the order. Read More.

In other unrelated news, Starbucks is opening a new bunch of stores – not tagged with the “Starbucks” name – that sell liquor along with coffee. There will be no logo, no sign, nothing. Just the local neighborhood name. Hope they rake in a little extra $$ and lower the prices of their coffee.

Array O Sambar

Toor daal prices jumped to Rs. 100 per kilogram in Tamil Nadu. It was Rs. 62 last month and is expected to jump by another Rs 20 a kilo in the next few months.

I wonder what the average people over there will eat with these kind of ridiculous prices. The government has to do something about this.

Read more at Deccan Chronicle.

RIP Michael Jackson

The king of pop is dead, long live the king.

This is one of my favourite songs – “I’ll be there” in Acapella.

Kavya Shivashankar wins Spelling Bee

Kavya Shivashankar won the 82nd National Spelling Bee 2008 in Washington, DC, a few minutes ago. It was a very good show.The last word she said was “Laodicean“.

This was her fourth appearance in the bee. I liked the way she wrote the word on her palm with her finger before spelling it out aloud.

Kavya Shivshankar wins the Spelling Bee

Kavya spelling out a word

In this AP article,

Kavya was making her fourth appearance at the bee, having finishing 10th, eighth and fourth over the last three years. She enjoys playing the violin, bicycling, swimming and learning Indian classical dance, and her role model is Nupur Lala, the 1999 champion featured in the documentary “Spellbound.”

Read more.

On a related note, it is also the seventh time in the last decade that American kids of Indian origin have won the title. Previous winners include Nupur Lala (1999), George Thampy (2000), Pratyush Buddiga (2002), Sai Gunturi (2003), Anurag Kashyap (2005) and Sameer Mishra (2008). The first American of Indian origin to win the Bee was Balu Natarajan, followed by Rageshree Ramachandran in 1987.

Amitabh shows his middle finger – I voted

Amitabh Bachchan voted. And he’s showing his voting finger. No, he’s not giving anyone the finger.

Amitabh shows his voting finger