Monthly Archives: May 2011

General , , , , , , 4 Comments

Life takes precedence over this blog

I haven’t been posting as much as I have wanted to over the past month or so, and this is mainly because I have a life. It seems to be holding me back from doing anything like posting on here. But there will be more posts in the future, once I loose my life again. Basically, when the craziness of high school is over for the year, I will be able to post more, which is good.

Just an update of what I have been doing over the past few weeks:

  • School related activities (like homework and various other duties (yes, duties, and yes, double parentheses)) that go along with tougher classes
  • Band, Marching Band, various other bands, and more band
  • Job hunting
  • Website development
  • and tons of other stuff that I can’t think of right now because my mind is fried…

Can’t wait for Junior year! Harder classes, more activities, SATs, college searching, etc. If there is such a thing as “partial sarcasm”, I just invented it. I am actually excited for Junior year, but I know that I will have to work harder. I can’t wait for it, but I wouldn’t mind waiting either :P . Who knows, it might be better for me. I am one of those weird people who work better under pressure.

Anyways, more posts will be coming relatively soon as things start to calm down (mid-late June).

Technology , , , 4 Comments

CloudFlare: Free CDN and Website Protection

In the beginning of November, I was rummaging through the depths of the internet when I found something called CloudFlare. CloudFlare protects this site from hackers, botnets, most DDoS attacks, and spammers. But it is not just a security solution. It also improves performance by using CDN-like* features;  it keeps a version of my site online if my hosts server goes down; it gives me advanced analytics; it cuts my bandwidth in half it; lessens the CPU load on my hosts server; and the list goes on and on. And best of all… the basic service is free!

Some of you might be thinking that this is too good to be true. I thought so at first, too. But I read more about them and decided to try it out. It is free, so it’s not like I have anything to loose. What blew me away was the fact that it actually worked. Although they boast that it speeds up website loading times by 30% on average, one of my image/css/script heavy sites was sped up by 75% (according to their analytics and my testing). The spam on that blog also went down from 100 spam posts a week to less than 2. The real thing that astonished me is when my host went down for 3 days. CloudFlare really helped there. They kept a cached version of it online while they(my host) were screwing around :roll: .

I could go on about how great CloudFlare is, but I want to talk about them as a company. The CloudFlare network was turned on at TechCrunch Disrupt 2010. It was their 6 month anniversary a week or so ago, and they have grown exponentially since their Disrupt launch in September. They now power tens of thousands of website and 5% of internet visitors land on a page powered by CloudFlare. They have stopped 750 million threats from reaching websites they power, and they have saved 1000 years by speeding up websites. This is pretty impressive for their first 6 months in existence.

I encourage everyone to use CloudFlare, because the more websites use it, the smarter their system gets. The basic service is free, and it really does work. Also, it is very simple to set up and your websites can be CloudFlare powered in a few minutes (excluding DNS prop. time).

P.S. this blog is powered by CloudFlare

Cars 2 Comments

New York Auto Show

My dad and I went to the New York Auto Show today; the closing day. Although we didn’t stay until the end, I think we got our fill of cars we’re never going to buy. They didn’t even seem that exciting. Honestly, none of them seemed so futuristic or revolutionary like some of them have been in the past. Or maybe it was the fact the we skipped a floor without even knowing it. The way they had it set up this year was really awkward and badly planned out. Instead of having the whole floor open, they split it up into two or three sections and there was hardly any signs that directed people where to go. We missed a whole floor because of this.

Even though we missed a floor, we got to see what we wanted to see. I got to look at the new Minis. The Mini Countryman looks really cool. It reminds me of a scaled down SUV. All pictures were taken from my iPhone 4.

Mini CountryMan

Another Mini that caught my eye was the Mini Countryman Kiss version.

Mini Kiss version

 

The last one that I am going to post the SAAB Pheonix Concept Coop. This car is freakin’ cool.

Saab Concept Car phoenix

 

Yeah, so this is what I saw in the New York Auto Show. Of course there were other interesting cars, but these are the cars that caught my eye. Not like I’m ever going to get any of them :/.