Urban Mainframe » Weblog http://blog.urbanmainframe.com an oasis for idle minds Fri, 19 Feb 2010 00:26:06 +0000 en hourly 1 Introducing the A4 Microprocessor, Apple’s First CPUhttp://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2010/01/introducing-the-a4-microprocessor-apples-first-cpu/ http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2010/01/introducing-the-a4-microprocessor-apples-first-cpu/#comments Thu, 28 Jan 2010 13:48:40 +0000 Jonathan Hollin http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/?p=3132 Apple A4 Microprocessor

Apple's launch of the iPad didn't really rock my world. But, within the iPad presentation, there was a little something that got my spine tingling: Apple revealed that the iPad is powered by a heretofore unknown CPU - the A4.

To me this is much bigger news than the iPad itself. This is an Apple-developed CPU, which I think is a first for the company. Apple describe the A4 as a "1GHz custom-designed, high-performance, low-power system-on-a-chip." Early hands-on reports of the iPad seem to support this. One thing that is now well documented is that the iPad is very fast. Apple also claim run times of up to 10 hours and a standby time of up to 1 month for the iPad, so it's clear that the A4 is very power-efficient.

So what do we know or can reasonably assume about the A4?

We know it runs at 1GHz which, in the case of the iPad, results in a respectable performance. We know that, as a "system on a chip," it contains both a CPU (initial suspect is an ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore) and a GPU (most likely a PowerVR SGX series 5 - the ARM Mali has also been suggested). So it's multi-core capable and has a high-performance FPU. It's also OpenGL capable.

It's probably reasonable to anticipate that this chip, or its derivatives, will pop up in future iPods, iPhones and perhaps the Apple TV — along with any further mobile devices that Apple conceives — as well as the iPad and its future revisions.

I don't think that the processor, at least in this form, will appear in Apple's desktops or laptops — and it's not needed there either.

What's really exciting about the A4 is that it's a first attempt - yet it competes very favourably with the established mobile CPUs from the likes of Qualcomm, et al.

I'll bet the launch of the iPad has caused concern in the boardrooms of quite a few companies. It's going to be very interesting to see how this plays out.

Apple have finally unveiled a tablet computer, the iPad. The anticipation leading up to this launch and the speculation surrounding it has been truly staggering. Yet I find myself strangely underwhelmed by the device.

Personally I have no need of a tablet computer, none at all. So this essay might appear to be a little negative. I was really hoping for something other than a tablet from this latest Apple event. So my heart sank as soon as Steve Jobs (who still looks awfully thin) mentioned tablets.

I followed the presentation via engadget's liveblog and I twittered my thoughts as the event unfolded. A slightly abridged transcript of my notes follows:

  1. It's called the iPad...
  2. I feel strangely disappointed - I've got no use for a tablet.
  3. There's gotta be more to the iPad than this... surely... come on Steve, what are you holding back?
  4. So far it all looks pretty standard stuff. It's like a big iPhone, but without the phone...
  5. 1GHz Apple A4 chip... whoa, that's new. Where the f*&^ did that come from?
  6. Hmm... this chip could be the big news...
  7. Runs all iPhone apps unmodified... yeah, yeah... blah, blah, blah... what about that chip?
  8. Game graphics are really slick... So what's the A4 - a CPU, a GPU... is it both?
  9. Still unimpressed with the iPad... waiting for the big news...
  10. Unsurprisingly it's an e-book reader too. Nothing so far that hadn't been anticipated.
  11. USB, Wi-fi and 3G...
  12. No contract, unlimited data, deal with AT&T (US) @ $29.99/mnth. Euro deals in place June/July. All models unlocked, use GSM µSIMs
  13. 64GB + wi-fi + 3G = $829 = around £800 here in the UK. Naw, I'm not too keen. £299 would have been easier to swallow.
  14. Ah... keyboard dock is interesting... now you've got a handy little portable terminal... now that's more like it.
  15. Suddenly £800 (± a few quid) doesn't seem so bad. It's almost a netbook!!!
  16. Wonder how well that screen copes with greasy fingerprints?
  17. I'm really underwhelmed. The Apple guys are talking about a "magical device" at an "unbelievable price"...
  18. ... "our most advanced technology" and a "revolutionary device" - I can't help wonder, "am I missing something?"
  19. No cameras, no GPS - so no augmented reality...
  20. A missed opportunity methinks.
  21. Silly me: of course geo-location can be achieved via 3G and GSM. Wouldn't expect that to be as accurate as GPS though.
  22. Specs on Apple's website confirm that there is GPS.
  23. There's Bluetooth too. So wireless sync with PC could be possible.
  24. There is a camera connection kit too. So suddenly there's a few more possibilities.
  25. 1.6lbs and .5" thick - that's pretty good. It'll be easy to transport at least.
  26. Okay. I'm somewhat intrigued. But I don't think I'll be rushing out to buy one. I'd prefer a MacBook Pro.
  27. Back to that camera thing, despite the camera connection kit, augmented reality won't be too good without an integral camera.
  28. So who is the iPad aimed at? What sort of customer does Apple see here, apart from the fan-boyz?
  29. No multi-tasking on the iPad!!! Screen resolution 1024x768. First [hands on] reports tell us that it's really fast and responsive.
  30. engadget reports that the on-screen keyboard is "good, not great. Not quite as responsive as it looked in the demos."

So there you have it. If you wanted a tablet then I'm sure you're jumping through hoops right now. But for myself, well I think I'll keep saving for that new MacBook Pro.

When a web-site has been running since 19961 you would expect it to have enjoyed some evolution, with the odd redesign thrown in along the way. The web-site at apple.com is one such site. Flickr user Kernel Panic maintains a gallery of screen captures of Apple's home page and it represents an interesting journey through the history of the company. It's amazing to me that the basic design of apple.com as it stands today is the same as it was in 1998 — how's that for consistency?

But what would Apple's home page have looked like in the years prior to 1996? Sadly we never got to see an apple.com home page for the launch of the Apple I, Apple II, Lisa, Macintosh or MessagePad… until today! Dave Lawrence of Newton Poetry fame posted a couple of mock-up apple.com home pages for the Lisa and MessagePad machines on his weblog and Matt Pearce answered Lawrence's call for others to add to the meme. Between them, they've come up with a few beautifully crafted and clever images of the home pages that might have been.

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1976: Apple I

Imaginary front page of apple.com, circa 1976

This is where it all started. The clever headline alludes to the generation of personal computers that preceded the Apple I, computers like the Altair 8800 which were programmed by toggling switches on the front panel.

Neat touches on this mock-up include the use of the original "Apple Computer Co." logo and address — 770 Welch Rd., Palo Alto, CA 94304.

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1981: Apple II

Imaginary front page of apple.com, circa 1981

Apple's home page from 1981 shows the 4-year old Apple II, the computer that really catapulted Apple Computer Inc. into the public eye. A hugely successful product for the company, the Apple II sold in huge numbers — by the end of its production Apple had sold up to six million units. The computer became well established in American schools, was extremely popular with the hobbyist and, following the introduction of the popular VisiCalc software, also became a favourite of the business user.

-----

1983: Apple Lisa

Imaginary front page of apple.com, circa 1983

"5MHz processor and 1MB of RAM for blistering speed." Sadly the one thing the Lisa was famous for was it sluggishness. A commercial flop for Apple, unsold stock of Lisa computers were consigned to landfill in 1989 and obscurity was thus guaranteed. However, from tiny acorns do mighty oaks grow… in 1982, Steve Jobs was forced out from the Lisa development group. He immediately joined the Macintosh project and we all know how well that turned out!

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1984: Apple Macintosh

Imaginary front page of apple.com, circa 1984

"You'll see why 1984 won't be like Nineteen Eighty-Four."

Launched with one of the most cinematic commercials of it's era, the Apple Macintosh was the first commercially successful computer operated with a GUI rather than a command line. Inspired by the groundbreaking research in computer-human interfaces undertaken at Xerox PARC, the Macintosh's OS introduced the WIMP concept to the public.

The Apple Macintosh represented a quantum leap2 in personal computing. Perhaps not for its hardware but certainly for the level of abstraction that its OS provided for the user. Apple published Human Interface Guidelines which were largely responsible for maintaining a consistent UI across applications. The resulting standardisation ensured that Macintosh applications generally had an easier learning curve than their contemporaries.

The Mac evolved to become one of the mainstays of the graphics and design industries.

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1989: Apple Macintosh Portable

Imaginary front page of apple.com, circa 1989

The Macintosh Portable is one of only a few Apple products that I have never seen in the metal, yet alone used. It was not one of Apple's more successful products. Despite being advanced and forward-thinking in some areas, the portable was let down by the lack of a backlit display (although this did appear in a later version) and an ill-conceived battery/PSU arrangement. The Macintosh Portable was discontinued just two-years after its introduction.

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1993: Apple MessagePad

Imaginary front page of apple.com, circa 1993

The Apple MessagePad3 is something of an enigma. Acclaimed by some yet criticised by others, the MessagePad was hardly a runaway success during its production lifetime. Yet the device has achieved something of an iconic status since production ended in 1998 and still enjoys a devout following to this day.

I own a MessagePad 2100, the last and most advanced of the range, and I can attest to the enduring qualities of the machine. It is an incredibly useful little device. It boasts great battery life, a delightfully clear, backlit, LCD touch-screen, a range of connectivity and expansion options and a decent suite of integrated applications.

The Newton OS boasts some clever features and an intuitive user interface. The oft-ridiculed handwriting of the earlier models evolved into an uncannily accurate system in the final revisions.

Like many others, I posit that the MessagePad is a device that was ahead of its time. In my opinion, it deserves much more recognition than it is awarded. Interestingly, in 2009, CNET compared an Apple MessagePad 2000 to an iPhone, and the Newton came out on top!

-----

1994: Apple QuickTake 100

Imaginary front page of apple.com, circa 1994

Our final imaginary home-page dates from 1994 and advertises the Apple QuickTake 100 digital camera. This is an Apple product that I'd never heard of before. One of a series of three models, the QuickTake 100 was the first to launch and, by comparison with even the most basic of today's digital cameras, it was woefully inadequate for anything but the most undemanding of photographic tasks.

The QuickTake 100 had a maximum resolution of 640 × 480 pixels — of which its internal storage was big enough for just eight images. The camera had no focus or zoom controls and no means to review an image after capture.

The QuickTake digital camera range was discontinued in 1997.

-----

And so we come to the end of our journey. We've seen a handful of apple.com home-pages that never were and taken an interesting (albeit brief) tour through the company's early product history.

If you have the Photoshop skills, there are still a few home-pages that would really enhance this collection:

  • LaserWriter: In conjunction with the Macintosh and Aldus PageMaker software, this landmark printer contributed largely to the desktop publishing (DTP) revolution.
  • Twentieth Anniversary Macintosh (TAM): A limited-edition version of the Macintosh designed to represent a state-of-the-art futuristic vision of personal computing. The TAM was a gorgeous piece of industrial design and would surely have warranted a very special home-page on apple.com.
  • Pippin: Apple's failed attempt at a games console. Whilst looking remarkably similar to the Nintendo 64, the Pippin was never to achieve anything like the sales of competing products from Sony, Sega or Nintendo itself. The Pippin was shelved following mediocre sales of just 42,000 units.
  • Steve Jobs: Jobs' return as Apple's CEO was big, big news. A home-page homage is sadly missing from the apple.com historical archives.

Sources

  1. Did the first apple.com website appear in 1996? The domain Was registered in 1987. What did the domain point to in the interim? ↩
  2. Not that one! ↩
  3. Often mistakenly called the "Newton" (Newton is the name of the OS the MessagePad runs.) ↩

Everyone's favourite uninstaller for OS X, AppZapper, recently generated a bit of a buzz as it metamorphosed into version 2 and acquired a slick new interface. AppZapper also seems to have grown beyond being a simple uninstaller, several pundits are now describing it as an "application manager."

As an application manager one can view one's applications in a pretty interface, sort them with various filters and even store their license codes within AppZapper. I have to say that license code management seems to me to be an odd addition to an uninstaller. There's no synergy between the tasks of uninstalling applications that are no longer required and retrieving licensing details for those that are.

But that's not my biggest issue with AppZapper. To me, whilst the application itself is extremely useful, the interface is completely redundant and, pretty as it is, it shouldn't be there at all.

the "Trash" icon from Apple's OS X operating system

OS X already has a wonderful, intuitive interface for deleting files and uninstalling applications. It sits in the dock, is non-intrusive and doesn't require the launch of a distinct application to use it. The Trash icon is all the interface one needs for uninstalling applications.

Now there are those who argue that Apple made a mistake with their implementation of uninstall via Trash. The issue is that, while such an operation always works (for well behaved applications), there are often support files left behind (preferences and similar) and these, it is argued, should be removed along with the application. The counter-argument is that Apple did in fact get it right, that the retention of these (usually small) files causes no harm and that, should one ever decide to reinstall a given application, the previously configured preferences will be automagically reinstated from those very same files.

Personally, I'm in the first camp. As a self-proclaimed power user I install a lot of applications on my Mac. I try them and if they have some utility to my workflow and processes then they'll stay. Unfortunately, the vast majority don't. So I end up uninstalling a lot of applications and I really don't want their combined detritus cluttering up my disks — no matter how small their demands are.

Which brings us back to AppZapper… as far as I'm concerned the utility of AppZapper is fine. It performs a task that I've decided I need. However, the implementation is all wrong. It's completely counter-intuitive to me to have to launch one application to delete another. As I've written above, the interface for uninstalling already exists with the Trash icon — a separate interface is simply redundant.

I used AppZapper, in its version 1 incarnation, for some time and was always irritated by its methodology. In the end I went hunting for an alternative — and finally settled on a wonderful little program called AppTrap.

AppTrap performs essentially the same task as AppZapper — it hunts down and deletes an application's support files when that application is uninstalled — but it does it in a different and, in my humble opinion, much more elegant manner.

AppTrap is installed as a Preference Pane and works in the background, silently and unobtrusively. It monitors the Trash can and when one drags an application to Trash, or command-backspaces it, AppTrap intercepts the operation and pops up a dialogue similar to this:

screen capture of the AppTrap dialogue

As you can see, one has the option to leave the support file(s) untouched or to move them to Trash along with their parent application.

This is a much better implementation than that of AppZapper. It runs within the flow of the delete operation and it is omnipresent, not requiring the launch of a separate application. I much prefer this to AppZapper's gorgeous yet unnecessary interface.

There's one more thing worth noting about AppTrap: it also works when an application is being upgraded. When the older version of that application is being replaced AppTrap pops up this same dialogue — giving one the option of retaining the support files, or starting with a clean sheet. Wonderful.

If Apple were ever to add uninstall functionality to OS X I'd imagine that they'd go with an AppTrap-like methodology rather than an AppZapper one.

Finally, AppTrap is free and open-source. Give it a try, I'm sure you won't regret it.

I don’t often write about movies on the Urban Mainframe. That’s odd in itself because I watch a lot of them and consider myself to be something of a movie buff. Having said that, my movie collection, I suspect, is that of a typical bloke. There’s lots of war, action, sci-fi and adventure films. There’s not a lot of drama. There’s only one or two “chick flicks” (oh come on, who doesn’t love Ghost?)

My collection is that of someone who doesn’t demand too much, intellectually, from his entertainment. I watch films to escape for an hour and a half — to be James Bond, Neo or Luke Skywalker. I don’t want to have to think too much when I watch a movie, I just want my imagination stimulated and the day-to-day tedium of life to be replaced with beautiful women, fast cars and lots and lots of explosions and gunfire.

You can probably appreciate then that, on being given for Christmas a sub-titled film with a dialogue spoken entirely in German, I wasn’t exactly filled with delight and anticipation. However, and to my great surprise, The Lives of Others turned out to be one of those rarest of films — one that captures the viewer’s attention from the moment it starts and holds it in a vice-like grip until the final credits roll.

I’m not going to write about the plot, since I wouldn’t want to spoil the film for you. I will tell you only that this is a film set in East Berlin during the dark years of the Cold War and is an insightful and disturbing look into the operations of the Stasi — the East German secret police.

Whilst the historical accuracy of some of the scenes has been questioned, the overall portrayal of life in East Berlin and the effects that the suffocating interference of the Stasi had on the GDR’s citizens, is probably as realistic as it could be.

In a review, American journalist John Podhoretz called the film “one of the greatest movies ever made, and certainly the best film of this decade.” William F. Buckley Jr. wrote in his syndicated column that, after the film was over, he turned to his companion and said, “I think that this is the best movie I ever saw.” Time magazine’s Richard Corliss named the film one of the Top 10 Movies of 2007, ranking it at #2. Corliss praised the film as a “poignant, unsettling thriller.”

As for me, I agree with each of these reviewers. The Lives of Others is a film that touched the very core of me, and its impact will stay with me for long, long time.

The Lives of Others is not a Hollywood-esque blockbuster, nor is it a big budget movie — production costs were apparently only US $2m — yet despite this, maybe even because of this, the emotional involvement that the film elicits is sublime. I found myself unable to break away from it, so compelling is the story and the acting.

According to The Lives of Others Wikipedia entry (which I won’t link to because of the spoilers it contains), a Hollywood remake of the film might be forthcoming. I hope that this project (if it exists) comes to nothing. Hollywood and the inevitable Americanisation of this movie would really ruin it. I can only recommend that you watch this film in its original form, because it’s a real treat.

]]> http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2010/01/the-lives-of-others/feed/ 2 Mockup or Markup: Designer vs. Coderhttp://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2009/12/mockup-or-markup-designer-vs-coder/ http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2009/12/mockup-or-markup-designer-vs-coder/#comments Tue, 29 Dec 2009 19:28:52 +0000 Jonathan Hollin http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/?p=2916

In an article on the web-design advent calendar, 24 Ways, Meagan Fisher advocates setting aside Photoshop and building design comps directly in our preferred flavour of HTML.

That’s how I always work anyway. Only once have I ever built a design in Photoshop before writing the code and that was for the front page of this website — it took ages and felt totally un-natural and counter-intuitive to me. I did it because I understood that that’s how all designers work. I wanted to try it out to see if it made the process any easier for me, it didn’t, at all.

Even so, I think Meagan has overlooked a quite important point: not all web-designers are writers of code.

The vast majority of web “design” work I do isn’t actually design at all. As I have written many times on this blog, I’m not a designer. I’m a coder. I receive designs from the agencies I sub-contract to, almost always in the form of a Photoshop .psd file, and I write the code to reproduce that design in the web-browser. I might write in XHTML or HTML 5, depending on the task and audience. I’ll write the CSS, usually using the CSS compiler LESS.

I’ll almost always end up writing some PHP or Perl code too, either because I’m building within a CMS or blogging platform, or simply because I need some basic templating for the site. There will almost inevitably be some coding to handle form processing and emailing. JavaScript and Ajax work might have to be implemented. There might be a little database work. These days I also tend to find myself producing and parsing XML files with things like customer testimonials, case studies or some other data-based resource. As if that weren’t enough, I might also end up writing Apache configuration files with rewriting rules and other esoterica.

And, of course, everything I build has to be as cross-browser capable as possible, or at least be built with acceptable fallbacks in place - hence there is usually a lot of fine tuning of code and markup.

My point is this: designers are artists. They tend to be right-brain people. I’d imagine that a designer (and this certainly applies to the designers I know and work with) would be way more comfortable in Photoshop or Illustrator than with a text editor and source code. Asking this sort of designer to build their mockups in markup is like asking a decorator to manufacture his paint and wallpaper. It just ain’t gonna work!

Desktop Wallpaper of the Week: I love this image. It was created by “h16” and is posted on deviantART. The monochrome to vivid-colour transition between the two girls is extremely well done and the hand-painted effect is simply gorgeous. I can’t decide if the girl on the right is holding a “fantasy” lover, or the ghost of a dead friend or relative perhaps? One of the comments on the deviantArt site suggested that this image represents good meeting evil — but I’m not convinced — there seems to be me to be too much passion between the two girls for this to be a meeting of such polar opposites.

Either way, it’s a gorgeous piece of art and makes a fantastic desktop wallpaper.

You can download the full-size wallpaper from the deviantART website. You should also check out the rest of h16’s work.

]]> http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2009/12/dwotw-14/feed/ 0 DWotW #13http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2009/11/dwotw-13/ http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2009/11/dwotw-13/#comments Mon, 30 Nov 2009 00:50:52 +0000 Jonathan Hollin http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/?p=2863 Mini

Desktop Wallpaper of the Week: This cool HDR photo of a Mini in an underground parking garage makes a great desktop wallpaper. The vibrant red car really stands out in this grungy urban setting and the camera tilt adds a dynamism that would otherwise be missing. I love how the photographer has positioned the car behind the arrow — suggesting that she’s poised and ready to surge forward.

This photograph, taken by Travel Man, is available in a variety of resolutions on Flickr.

]]> http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2009/11/dwotw-13/feed/ 2 Tyler Durdenhttp://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2009/11/tyler-durden/ http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2009/11/tyler-durden/#comments Wed, 25 Nov 2009 13:28:22 +0000 Jonathan Hollin http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/?p=2851 Tyler Durden: "You are not a beautiful or unique snowflake" Poster

I’ve just found out that I’ve won this great poster from Travis Neilson. How cool is that? I’m thrilled.

]]> http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2009/11/tyler-durden/feed/ 0 Accelerating My WordPress Installation (Redux)http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2009/11/accelerating-my-wordpress-installation-redux/ http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/2009/11/accelerating-my-wordpress-installation-redux/#comments Sun, 22 Nov 2009 01:52:43 +0000 Jonathan Hollin http://blog.urbanmainframe.com/?p=2806 Ferrari 612 Scaglietti

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away… oh sorry, wrong script. I'll start over. In the dim and distant past, I wrote about my efforts to eke a little bit more performance out of the WordPress installation that this glorious website runs upon. What I'd done was fairly basic: content compression, reduced page weights, database tuning… the usual stuff.

I also described how I'd failed to get WP Super Cache working and wrote that I was investigating PHP accelerators. Yet, despite my endeavours, the website's performance continued to be, well, pitiful. Some time later I managed to get WP Super Cache working and things improved, but were still disappointing to me.

I come from a mod_perl background and one of mod_perl's strengths is the speed at which it can run its applications. The PHP app's that I now find myself working with just can't compete. I believed that I'd just have to accept that the performance goals I was aiming for weren't achievable.

However, I was recently forced to reconsider my position when I was contracted to build a website on top of the Zend Framework — because, despite being written entirely in PHP, nursesstore.co.uk turned out to be very fast.

Suddenly, I knew that it was possible to build fast PHP applications. So I turned my attention, once again, to the speed-deficient Urban Mainframe with the fire of the true zealot burning in my eyes.

I'd read about the performance improvements that accelerators like APC can provide and I'd half-heartedly tried a couple of times to get it running on my Media Temple GS server. Yesterday I actually managed to get the thing running and I saw immediate improvements in the speed and responsiveness of the Urban Mainframe.

Whilst I was researching the APC software I came across a reference to something called W3 Total Cache and, as I read about it, I began to get very excited about its features and the apparent benefits it offered. So I installed and configured it and it is now working away in the background — improving the performance of this site with an aggressive caching policy.

W3 Total Cache has the ability to transparently integrate with a CDN to further improve on a website's performance. In order to benefit from this, I set up a sub-domain on this site to handle its static assets and linked that in with the W3 Total Cache configuration.

To summarise then: I've made three big changes to the site's architecture in my quest for a speed boost.

  1. APC bytecode and object cache
  2. W3 Total Cache for cache management and integration
  3. Sub-domain based CDN for asset delivery

There's still a lot of work to do in order to take full advantage of the new architecture — I'm only managing a Grade D in YSlow at the moment — but I'll continue to refine things until I get that Grade A.

Let's see how we're performing at the moment:

Concurrency Level:      10
Time taken for tests:   91.877 seconds
Complete requests:      1000
Failed requests:        0
Write errors:           0
Total transferred:      9861992 bytes
HTML transferred:       9406000 bytes
Requests per second:    10.88 [#/sec] (mean)
Time per request:       918.771 [ms] (mean)
Time per request:       91.877 [ms] (mean, across all concurrent requests)
Transfer rate:          104.82 [Kbytes/sec] received
Connection Times (ms)
              min  mean[+/-sd] median   max
Connect:      168  405 443.4    173    3151
Processing:   414  505  95.6    480    1465
Waiting:      226  305  73.7    285    1272
Total:        589  910 457.9    673    3792
Percentage of the requests served within a certain time (ms)
50%    673
66%    723
75%    911
80%   1548
90%   1621
95%   1669
98%   1827
99%   2586
100%  3792 (longest request)

The output from ab (above) is encouraging. It's still slower than nursesstore.co.uk but it's certainly a lot quicker than it was before and the "10.88 requests per second" is certainly acceptable.

Is it Digg-proof? I suspect not. But it's faster and more responsive than it's ever been and there are still areas where I've got room to improve things.

Still to do then:

  • Implement memcached
  • Transition ALL static files to the CDN sub-domain
  • Achieve the YSlow Grade A
  • Reduce page weight