Author Archives: Jason Ashdown

About Jason Ashdown

Currently works in Bath as a Web Developer for a magazine publisher. Passionate about web programming, loves computer games, animé, art, guitar and fine quality ale.

YouTube Cosmic Panda & New Homepage

Posted on by
Reply

If you ever fancy trying out the latest version of the YouTube Player, you can visit “Cosmic Panda”.
http://www.youtube.com/cosmicpanda

If you ever want to ever change back, just visit the page again and click the button to revert back to the original.
Note: It only affects the browser you select it in.

Tried it for a few months – was okay but I still prefer the original.

P.S. YouTube has changed their homepage today. Love it or hate it, change was due to happen.

Google rolls out +1 on AdSense adverts

Posted on by
Reply

I received this email in the post this morning, it reads as follows:

Google - Hello, In the next month, we'll introduce the +1 button and personal recommendations to display ads. The +1 button will begin to appear on AdSense for Content and AdSense for Mobile Content display ad formats -- image, animated gif, and Flash. +1s will be one additional signal to help determine an ad's relevance and we'll continue to show the ads that will generate the most revenue for you. We previously launched the +1 button on Google search and for publisher sites to make it easier for people to share and discover content across the web. Soon, your users will be able to endorse specific ads and make the ads more likely to appear to their social connections. We believe that these recommendations could help your readers notice ads on your site more, leading to higher returns for you over time. If you prefer not to show the +1 buttons on display ads on your pages, you can opt out in your account. For more information please visit the Inside AdSense blog. Sincerely, The Google AdSense team

So Google is going to let users tell them what Ad’s they like with adding the +1 to them?

It will be interesting to see if it catches on.

Too bad they had to launch it today… It’s seems to be dwarfed by the news of Facebook’s new re-design which is causing a bit of fiasco – no surprise there then.

Solved: Debian Squeeze + Nginx + PHP5-FPM

Posted on by
Reply

After tiresomely testing the config – I eventually got it to work.

Once you know how it’s really easy but I kept getting a “502 Bad Gateway” error that confused me.

Benefits of sockets over TCP:

  • Faster connection over sockets than TCP; 20% boost
  • More secure as sockets are harder to break their permissions

Anyway, here’s what you need to do. All config locations are the defaults installed by Debian Squeeze.

Add Dotdeb’s sources in your Debian /etc/apt/source.list

## PHP5-FPM
deb http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all
deb-src http://packages.dotdeb.org stable all

Then install php5-fpm:

apt-get update
apt-get install php5-fpm

Change the settings in /etc/php5/fpm/php-fpm.conf

pid = /var/run/php5-fpm.pid
error_log = /var/log/php5-fpm.log
daemonize = yes
include=/etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/*.conf

Recommended settings in /etc/php5/fpm/pool.d/www.conf

;listen = 127.0.0.1:9000
listen = /var/run/php5-fpm.sock

listen.owner = www-data
listen.group = www-data
listen.mode = 0666

user = www-data
group = www-data

php_flag[display_errors] = off
php_admin_value[error_log] = /var/log/fpm-php.www.log
php_admin_flag[log_errors] = on
php_admin_value[error_reporting] = 0
php_admin_value[memory_limit] = 128M
php_admin_value[date.timezone] = Europe/London

Start/Restart Nginx and PHP5-FPM and voila

/etc/init.d/nginx restart
/etc/init.d/php5-fpm start

Everything should be running smoothly. Enjoy your new faster server!

Thanks to the people below who wrote about it first.

Installing the latest Nginx on Debian Squeeze

Posted on by
Reply

I just updated my Nginx on Debian 6 (Squeeze) from 0.7.x.x to 1.0.6 by altering my source list.

Edit your /etc/apt/sources.list to include the following lines:

deb http://nginx.org/packages/debian/ squeeze nginx
deb-src http://nginx.org/packages/debian/ squeeze nginx

Then run `apt-get update` and `apt-get upgrade`.

Follow the on-screen instructions and BOOM! You’re running the latest version of Nginx! My preference is to use Nginx these days instead of Apache2 purely because of the extra performance you gain out of it. Much higher requests per second (rpp).

I highly recommend trying it if you haven’t already.

Facebook add, then taketh away

Posted on by
2

If you regularly browse Facebook, I’m sure you already noticed the new “status sharing” feature. As pictured above.

“Oh yay!” you will say! As it closely resembles Goolge+‘s “circles” feature which many had complemented as Google+‘s strong point.

“Facebook giveth, then they taketh away.”

Yes, that’s right. As I discovered, Facebook has removed the ability to “Hide all by annoying page“.

If you “Like” a page, they can post news stories in your main wall aka “feed”.

I don’t know about everyone else – but I hate people spamming the feed with promotions. E.g. I like “Coca Cola” for instance – but I don’t want to be subjective to their bullsh*t advertising.

Before you could solve that by hiding their posts but now when you “Hide this post” it tells you:

… the options are now limited. So Facebook is basically saying “You must put up with everyone’s spam – like it or hate it.”

I can see peoples patience wearing thin on this very quickly.

UPDATE: Several other things have been rolling out slowly through the day. I have noticed the “photo viewer” has changed.

I tried removing a Application notification posted by a friend, it does still allow you to block them.

Still no sign of being able to “hide posts by” a fan page without “Un-liking” the page yet.

UPDATE 9/9/2011:

They have finally returned the option to Hide all posts on fan pages. Thank you for catching up, eventually.