Testing our page loads and optimizing

K pointed out some excellent page-load speed resources for testing and optimizing:
http://googlepagespeed.com/
http://code.google.com/speed/page-speed/
http://modpagespeed.com/
And for testing, http://www.webpagetest.org/

As suggested by webpagetest.org , I have enabled compression on media.radiosai.org as given in this article: basically
cd c:\InetPub\AdminScripts
cscript adsutil.vbs set w3svc/filters/compression/parameters/HcDoStaticCompression true

cscript adsutil.vbs set W3Svc/Filters/Compression/GZip/HcFileExtensions "txt" "htm" "html" "js"

cscript adsutil.vbs set W3Svc/Filters/Compression/Deflate/HcFileExtensions "txt" "htm" "html" "js"

cscript adsutil.vbs set W3Svc/Filters/Compression/GZip/HcDynamicCompressionLevel 7

cscript adsutil.vbs set W3Svc/Filters/Compression/Deflate/HcDynamicCompressionLevel 7

cscript adsutil.vbs set W3Svc/Filters/Compression/GZip/HcOnDemandCompLevel 7

cscript adsutil.vbs set W3Svc/Filters/Compression/Deflate/HcOnDemandCompLevel 7

I have not enabled the compression for aspx and other dynamic files, I have not disabled for HTTP 1.0 or proxies as given in the last two lines: will do that if problems arise.

Also set in content expiration as 1 day from the IIS Manager. http://www.radiosai.org/ had some difficulty in setting compression, since it is a shared environment under Plesk. Did contact nettigritty team about it anyway.

ssh-add required for Ubuntu 8.04 after ssh-keygen

On the Macbuntu running Ubuntu 8.04, when I attempted to use ssh with RSA key-based authentication like in my old post, ssh returned an error
Agent admitted failure to sign using the key.
Permission denied (publickey).

Googling found this as the first match.
Verified that running
SSH_AUTH_SOCK=0 ssh myuser@myhost
works fine with key-based auth.

Then ran ssh-add as suggested in that thread. From then on, ssh works fine.

keeping Windows and Linux dual-boot times correct

In this old post I had mentioned how to do it with Mandrake 10. In Kubuntu 10, the file to be edited, as per this forum post, is /etc/default/rcS
and by default it is already set to UTC=no

downmixing to stereo

According to these posts on Hydrogenaudio forums, for downmixing 5.1 to stereo I should go with either
Lo = 1.0 * L + 0.7071 * C + 1.0 * Ls;
Ro = 1.0 * R + 0.7071 * C + 1.0 * Rs;
or
Lo = 1.0 * L + 0.5 * C + 1.0 * Ls;
Ro = 1.0 * R + 0.5 * C + 1.0 * Rs;

But I suppose in my case the C will have to be more since I want the commentary to be a bit louder.

direct links to listen to specific radio programs

Explored ways to give direct links to radio programs like the hidden form + javascript like the technique mentioned at this stackoverflow form post. Basically of the type


but all in one line. Tried making a tinyurl link out of the javascript. It works with preview.tinyurl.com, but not with the direct tinyurl link. Other url shorteners like bit.ly did not work with javascript at all. So finally decided on html forms with javascript to auto-submit.

updates on twitter

Started populating the twitter feed by 31 Dec using FutureTweets.com so that a twitter update box could be added to the schedule page by 2 Jan. Maybe it will be added to the home page later. Takes around 10 minutes a day or less to update. The thing to get the hang of is: which timezone to report in the tweet. For AsiaStream programs, IST is the easy choice. Other programs need some thinking.

Earlier, I'd envisaged making some sort of automated twitter posting with code similar to this blog post using php - but the coding is pending with P, and for me spending 5 minutes daily tweeting is easier.