After my iPod was stolen, I figured I’d play music with my phone, anticipating replacing it with a modern device and wanting to avoid a potentially redundant iPod. That hasn’t happened yet.

Anytime I tried to check out The Golden Filter’s new record, I was denied. Pocket Tunes, the preloaded music app, just couldn’t access the folder containing the mp3s.

The folder was named “The Golden Filter – Völuspà 320,” and since nothing else was inaccessible, I figured the special characters (the umlaut and grave in Völuspà) were the culprits. Renaming the folder worked, but I immediately switched my memory card with another containing the original name.

I’ve tried to listen to the record at least five times now, and the name has made it unplayable on my (admittedly ancient) device. Maybe I’d have loved it and become their loudest evangelist, or maybe it would’ve inspired me to drive my car into a swimming pool. But most bands would never consider that an exotic-looking title might make playing its album physically impossible.

I take it as a reminder that many decisions, especially related to design, have unintended consequences.

lighttpd 1.5.0 has been in the works since at least 2006 and doesn’t look like it’ll be out anytime before Duke Nukem Forever.

nginx, on the other hand, is leading the pack of extremely resource-efficient C10k-answering web servers these days.

So let’s jump into a CentOS/RHEL install. First, download the latest stable version and your desired modules. Unzip it all and issue your typical commands. Here are mine.


./configure --with-http_ssl_module --with-http_gzip_static_module --add-module=/root/ngx/mod_zip-1.1.5 --add-module=/root/ngx/nginx-accesskey-2.0.3 --add-module=/root/ngx/ngx_http_secure_download --add-module=/root/ngx/nginx_upload_module-2.0.10 --add-module=/root/ngx/masterzen-nginx-upload-progress-module-2bf172d
make
sudo make install


I chose a bunch of modules, but they’re all optional. You probably want the HTTP SSL module and the upload module (without which you can’t accept file uploads or multipart forms?!). Secure download is particularly useful to me for Sendshack, allowing for download links.

If you have problems with ./configure, make sure you’re using a stable release. Trying to configure 0.8 wouldn’t work with many of the modules I selected.

Let’s set up PHP first. We’ll be running PHP via FastCGI, so make sure your PHP build supports it (you should see cgi-fcgi if you type php -v at the command line).

Make a file named fastcgi.conf in your nginx conf directory (default /usr/local/nginx/conf) that dictates what variables nginx passes to PHP. It should contain this:


fastcgi_param SCRIPT_FILENAME $document_root$fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param QUERY_STRING $query_string;
fastcgi_param REQUEST_METHOD $request_method;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_TYPE $content_type;
fastcgi_param CONTENT_LENGTH $content_length;
fastcgi_param SCRIPT_NAME $fastcgi_script_name;
fastcgi_param REQUEST_URI $request_uri;
fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_URI $document_uri;
fastcgi_param DOCUMENT_ROOT $document_root;
fastcgi_param SERVER_PROTOCOL $server_protocol;
fastcgi_param GATEWAY_INTERFACE CGI/1.1;
fastcgi_param SERVER_SOFTWARE nginx/$nginx_version;
fastcgi_param REMOTE_ADDR $remote_addr;
fastcgi_param REMOTE_PORT $remote_port;
fastcgi_param SERVER_ADDR $server_addr;
fastcgi_param SERVER_PORT $server_port;
fastcgi_param SERVER_NAME $server_name;
# PHP only, required if PHP was built with --enable-force-cgi-redirect
fastcgi_param REDIRECT_STATUS 200;
fastcgi_index index.php;


Reference it in your nginx.conf — your http section should begin:


http {
include /usr/local/nginx/conf/mime.types;
include /usr/local/nginx/conf/proxy.conf;
include /usr/local/nginx/conf/fastcgi.conf;


Next, make sure you have spawn-fcgi installed. If you don’t, a quick yum install spawn-fcgi should take care of it.

Here’s where I bring something different to the table. Most people will tell you to set up a TCP socket for PHP, but I run a tight iptables ship and think it inelegant to bounce around TCP ports, so I brought my lighttpd Unix socket config over to nginx.

Edit /etc/init.d/nginx and change your start and stop functions to:


start() {
[ -x $nginx ] || exit 5
[ -f $NGINX_CONF_FILE ] || exit 6
echo -n $"Starting $prog: "
daemon $nginx -c $NGINX_CONF_FILE
/usr/local/bin/spawn-fcgi -s /tmp/php-fastcgi.sock -f /usr/bin/php-cgi -u ngninxuser -g nginxgroup -C 5 -P /var/run/spawn-fcgi.pid
retval=$?
echo
[ $retval -eq 0 ] && touch $lockfile
return $retval
}
stop() {
echo -n $"Stopping $prog: "
killproc $prog -QUIT
killproc php-cgi
retval=$?
echo
[ $retval -eq 0 ] && rm -f $lockfile
[ -f /tmp/php-fastcgi.sock ] && /bin/rm -f /tmp/php-fastcgi.sock || :
[ -f /var/run/spawn-fcgi.pid ] && /bin/rm -f /var/run/spawn-fcgi.pid || :
return $retval
}


Substitute your nginx user and group for the placeholders nginxuser and nginxgroup.

Now you can set up a virtual server. nginx doesn’t, but should, allow some global (for me) directives to be set across all servers, so include them by referencing a file to allow for easier editing.

Make a file called vs_std.conf that contains:


location / {
index index.html index.htm index.php;
}
location ~ \.php$ {
fastcgi_pass unix:/tmp/php-fastcgi.sock;
}
location ~* \.(jpg|jpeg|gif|png|swf)$ {
access_log off;
expires 7d;
}


You may or may not want to include an expires directive like the last location item. Purely optional.

Then reference that file from the server declaration in your config file.


server {
listen 80;
server_name wpaudio.com;
root /home/wpaudio.com/public_html;
include vs_std.conf;
}


You can also enable gzip for text by including this in the http section:


gzip on;
gzip_types text/html text/css text/xml application/x-javascript application/atom+xml text/mathml text/plain text/vnd.sun.j2me.app-descriptor text/vnd.wap.wml text/x-component;
gzip_disable "MSIE [1-6]\.(?!.*SV1)";


The disable line is particularly important if you’re worried about IE compatibility, since gzipped content breaks anything before IE6 SV2.

For WordPress, the easiest way to manage permalinks is to route 404s to WordPress. Then you can create whatever outlandish permalink scheme you like and WordPress will happily recognize the request URI and return your golden post.

Here’s my configuration entry for this blog.


server {
listen 80;
server_name todd.is;
root /home/todd.is/public_html;
if ($host ~* "www") {
rewrite ^/(.*)$ http://todd.is/$1 permanent;
}
if (-f $request_filename) {
break;
}
if (!-e $request_filename) {
rewrite ^.*$ /index.php last;
}
include /usr/local/nginx/conf/vs_std.conf;
}


That about does it. Let me know if I’ve omitted anything or if you have any questions.

Google’s release of free turn-by-turn navigation in their newest release of the Android 2.0 operating system for mobile phones has turned the entire GPS industry upside-down. The incumbents’ and would-be competitors’ responses are a case study in desperation.

For example, the VP of Marketing for the makers of VZ Navigator:

The reason it’s sad for me is that Google is attacking the most profitable part of the mobile software development community.
…
And that brings us to the next point, which is that, if they’re going to make this part of the Android platform, who’s going to do all the dirty work? Who’s going to do that integration and porting work for each new device, each new screen, each new chipset, each new set of firmware, each new tweak to the OS.

Networks in Motion: Google Attacking Developer Community

I’d be sad too if Google took over my entire market because their business model allows them to offer my most valuable product free. If you want to read something truly pathetic, follow the link and read the entire article.

Questioning Google’s engineering capacity is also pretty silly, especially since Android runs on standard hardware and handset manufacturers will decide whether to build compatible phones.

[Google is] willing to destroy value just so others can’t get at it, even if it means destroying value for itself.

How Cloudmade Will Deal With Google Navigation Monster

Google’s providing phenomenal value to consumers and handset manufacturers. Unfortunate that you can’t compete.

But the real story here is the pattern behind Google’s disruption. Nokia, HTC, Palm, Samsung, and LG used to pay a lot to develop operating systems for their phones (or pay Microsoft for Windows Mobile). They passed those costs on to Verizon, AT&T, Sprint, and T-Mobile.

Now Google is giving away a OS that can compete with the iPhone and offering to pay partners a percentage of revenue earned on searches conducted on the devices. The same model will apply when their Chrome OS is released for PCs.

This is a total shift. The industry used to spend millions, if not billions, on mobile OS. Now they can EARN money, and in most cases end up with an improved product.

Mobile, the next frontier of personal computing, is an obvious target for this model, but mapping and navigation are natural expansions, too. Whether Google Maps was created as a cool improvement to the then-current best maps available online or a tie-in to search, the potential as a business is enormous.

One solution to diluted advertising dollars is going local. Media giants are experimenting with localized news sites for good reason. Google has long offered advertisers the ability to display ads regionally, because roofers in Albany will probably find sales leads from the Albany Minigazette to be more valuable than leads from the New York Times. Imagine searching for Ethiopian food and being offered a coupon for a restaurant a few blocks away. What could be more powerful?

Google’s investment in geographical services starts to look pretty smart and integral to their core business. Increased relevance leads to more valuable advertising, which leads to higher payouts for device manufacturers and service providers, which leads to increased adoption and search growth.

Look for expansion in areas where Google already has service offerings. Their foray into books is the only other currently-visible service I can see with huge distribution potential. Meanwhile, mobile is the safest of bets.

“Second row from the back.”

“Why?”

“That’s where your odds of survival are greatest.”

He laughs for 30 seconds and asks if that’s really true, and I can’t remember where I read it. I just fired up my laptop to do a little work, and I’d hate to be spreading misinformation, so I look it up.

Shit. “I’ve heard this myth so many times and there’s just nothing to support it,” said Nora Marshall, who’s spent 24 years investigating plane crash survivability at the National Transportation Safety Board, in an ABC News article.

But Nora appears to be wrong. The very next result is a Popular Mechanics analysis of 36 years of NTSB crash data from flights with fatalities and survivors that concludes passengers in the back are indeed more likely to live.

They calculated the average fore-and-aft seating position of fatalities and survival rates for four sections of the aircraft.

“Both analytical approaches clearly pointed to the same conclusion: It’s safer in the back.”

Still wasn’t enough to keep me watching until the end, but it’s a great example.

(via Ignore the Code)

Ever wonder how the big banks consistently make money as the market drops?

• Big budgets afford enormous computing power to identify and exploit trends in real-time
• Electronic exchanges can be manipulated to reveal key market details

Automatic programs began issuing and canceling tiny orders within milliseconds to determine how much the slower traders were willing to pay. The high-frequency computers quickly determined that some investors’ upper limit was $26.40. The price shot to $26.39, and high-frequency programs began offering to sell hundreds of thousands of shares.

So naturally, I google “high frequency trading fund.” I find all sorts of variations on this article, but no information on a fund with similar technology that lets me buy into this strategy.

Opportunity knocks for the enterprising fund marketer.

NYT: Stock Traders Find Speed Pays, in Milliseconds

Only librarians want to live in a grey, motionless, silent world of text, but for a long time, that’s what the computing experience was. Then came icons and windows, and they could move! Quickly this novelty wore off, so today our menus slide, our workspaces spin in three dimensions, and our windows cross the event horizon every time we minimize them. And our iPhones fart.

Moreover, we increasingly expect interfaces to entertain our hands. Touch screens! Multi-touch! Surface top! Gestures! I’ll admit that these developments are exciting, but they’re exciting mainly because we don’t really know what will come of them—our hopes at this point remain still very vague. As clearly as we can define it, our hope is that computer interaction can be made satisfying in the same way that a good hit on a tennis ball is satisfying or in the same way that closing a well made car door is satisfying.

Sadly, these ideas may turn out to be like virtual reality: worlds of possibilities, none of the possibilities very useful. So we may be in just another cycle of the permutations of fashion. Still, aesthetics and feel really do matter to an extent, for a good layout of information and good use of typography tends to be aesthetically pleasing, and good tactile feel, such as proper mouse sensitivity, definitely facilitates usability.

Pretty much every desktop UI convention sucks, according to Brian.

• Icons – less recognizable than words
• Thumbnails – too small to be useful
• Animations – introduce delays
• Desktop – encourages mess
  

  Interface design is largely about rationing precious screen real estate, and…

  …hey, everyone! Here’s this big blank surface going unused! Let’s give it a random assortment of redundant functionality to make up for the inadequacy of our main controls! Sure, the start menu already has a frequently-used program list, but it’s too orderly. And users already have a home directory, but they can’t see its contents at the random moments that their un-maximized windows are positioned just so. Users love messes! Hmm, now we just need umpteen different special mechanisms for hiding all these windows that obscure this precious space.

• Dialogs – editing the object itself is more intuitive
• Toolbars – redundant, one-button size requires dialogs
• Taskbar – scales poorly
• Application windows – float creates meta work, choices about how to access
• Drag and drop – Target and destination must both be visible (see previous entry)

He writes concisely about the principles these conventions violate and the long-term trends we should be avoiding.

Elitism is an essential part of human aesthetics. For instance, while we normally think of the features that make a good-looking person good-looking as objective, much of the attraction towards that person hinges on the rarity of their looks, not the looks themselves, per se. Similarly, gold is shiny, but an essential part of its worth is its rarity.

We see this in graphic design as well: what we consider stylish design hinges a lot on what is simply hard to duplicate. In the 60’s, this meant curved plastic furniture; in the 80’s, this meant cheesy computer video effects; and today, this means web pages with rounded corners and glossy effects.

Check him out. It’s a refreshing, illuminating read.

Reinventing the desktop (for real this time) – Part 1

Immigration is the key to innovation in America.

Immigrants come to the United States and take menial jobs so that their children have a chance at a better future, he told me. While the jobs they take are below their intrinsic capabilities, they’re focused on giving their children a better life, not personal job satisfaction.

Second-generation children, seeing how hard their parents work to give them an opportunity, in turn work hard at school, where, he noted, they often focus on mathematics and science in pursuit of the economic returns promised by careers in engineering and medicine.

Third-generation kids figure the economic return on effort expended is better for business and legal professionals and pursue those professions instead of technical ones.

By the fourth generation, any immigration-related incentives to work hard are largely nonexistent.

Mike Speiser argues that smart immigration policy will shape America’s success more than broad-based science education. While education and research will prepare a workforce and innovation in specific areas, respectively, the ROI for immigration blows both away.

As an aside, Speiser’s comments about preparing a workforce ring especially true for members of a generation increasingly frustrated with formal education. In a world where knowledge is a little passion and a Google search away, more students (fourth-generation, Mike?) realize education’s role is to program a workforce, not propel you past your classmates to champagne wishes and caviar dreams.

Anyway, I agree wholeheartedly with him.

If we get strategic about immigration, I believe the U.S. can preserve its economic leadership position in the world far longer than anyone currently expects.
…
It’s time for a more strategic and aggressive immigration policy, one that targets the best and brightest around the globe and makes it easy for them to become permanent residents. We should be recruiting the world’s best talent the same way top companies recruit the best talent.

America’s Secret Innovation Weapon: Immigration

This phenomenon is best illustrated by a single design tweak to the Google search results page in 2000 that Mayer calls “The Billion Dollar HTML Tag.” Google founders Sergey Brin and Larry Page asked Mayer to assess the impact of adding a column of text ads in the right-hand column of the results page. Could this design, which at the time required an HTML table, be implemented without the slower page load time often associated with tables?

Mayer consulted the W3C HTML specs and found a tag (the “align=right” table attribute) that would allow the right-hand table to load before the search results, adding a revenue stream that has been critical to Google’s financial success.

Rich Miller’s post on the keynote

Yahoo! got the ball rolling a few years ago when some of their engineers started presenting front-end strategy at conferences like SXSW. They advised sites to serve content from multiple domains, set expires headers correctly, include Javascript in ways that wouldn’t pause page loading, etc. Response was excellent and Yahoo! launched their Exceptional Performance team, releasing best practices on their site and making available the YUI CSS/JS framework and Firefox site performance analysis plugin YSlow.

Though Google’s contributed to the public knowledge of site optimization, they lagged badly until recently offering the AJAX library CDN and the excellent Page Speed Firefox plugin. Hey, YSlow never told me that specifying image dimensions in the HTML tag reduces page load time! Converted.

Now Google has also released twenty or so articles on improving your site’s speed by better organizing CSS, using compression, optimizing your PHP/JS, caching, etc.

If you’re in a position to test some of this, it’d be pretty interesting to hear what kind of results you see.

John Gruber, a tech blogger I recommend wholeheartedly, invokes Lord Northcliffe, a visionary British publisher, with this quote in his piece on the WSJ’s unusual lack of sourcing for their article on Steve Jobs’ newly-reported liver transplant.

Regarding the WSJ’s Report That Steve Jobs Had a Liver Transplant
Image: Olivetti Valentine 1