Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/01/weekend-inspiration/
Weekends when the wife is not around I enjoy a visit to my favorite coffee shop. On this occasion while one patron was transcribing musical notation another regular started to work on the math of an idea about solar power generation.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/02/maggie-pencil-sketch/
My camera is dead so it is all about the Android phone now. This is Maggie, played with in PicSay Pro.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/03/lake-point-tower/
Lake Point Tower rising majestically from the trees. Mei-Lin sais she thinks Oprah lives there, has four floors to herself. She doesn’t like to feel crowded, I guess.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/04/bee-at-millenium-park/
There were a lot of these ladies at the park, and they were very busy.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/05/american-airlines/
I am flying Virgin but this scene of silver-cylindered beauties struck my fancy.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/09/netem-test-tcp-performance/
While diagnosing why an internal web site is slow for some users, I got data that our overseas colleagues see ping latency to the web site of around 200 ms. This is not unreasonable. Some web sites that attach a lot of additional objects cause remote clients to have to open several connections and make several round-trips to load and render a web page. What might work fine at 20 ms latency can really drag at 200 ms.
How to test this out? As a Linux user, I can use netem to induce added latency on my network interface:
# ping -qc 2 google.com PING google.com (74.125.224.145) 56(84) bytes of data. --- google.com ping statistics --- 2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 5009ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 4.136/4.197/4.258/0.061 ms # tc qdisc add dev wlan0 root netem delay 200ms # ping -qc 2 google.com PING google.com (74.125.224.144) 56(84) bytes of data. --- google.com ping statistics --- 2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 5474ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 205.006/205.034/205.062/0.028 ms # tc qdisc change dev wlan0 root netem delay 0ms # ping -qc 2 google.com PING google.com (74.125.224.50) 56(84) bytes of data. --- google.com ping statistics --- 2 packets transmitted, 2 received, 0% packet loss, time 5011ms rtt min/avg/max/mdev = 4.117/4.182/4.248/0.092 ms
Note, I’m on wireless, so I’m tuning wlan0. you’ll want to hit eth0 or whatever is appropriate to your configuration.
The YSlow plugin or the Google Chrome Developer tool Network tab can be helpful to see what is going on:
Google Chrome's Developer Tool Network view without extra latency.
Google Chrome's Developer Tool Network view with extra 200ms latency.
So, with my web site, an added 200 ms latency doubles total page load time from 0.8 seconds to 1.6 seconds.
Here’s what I see when I visit the problem web site:
A problem web site at normal latency.
A problem web site at additional 200ms latency.
Total page load time at 7.5 seconds is nearly three times slower than without latency.
A very crude way to measure things is with wget on the command-line.
The wget man page mentions the -p (page requisites) option, then the author suggests wget -E -H -k -K -p <URL>. (You’ll need to RTFM yourself…) So I do:
$ cd /tmp $ sudo tc qdisc change dev wlan0 root netem delay 0ms $ time wget -q -E -H -k -K -p http://google.com real 0m0.160s user 0m0.010s sys 0m0.000s $ sudo tc qdisc change dev wlan0 root netem delay 200ms $ time wget -q -E -H -k -K -p http://google.com real 0m3.832s user 0m0.010s sys 0m0.000s
Of course, even with all those options, wget behaves very differently from a modern GUI web browser: there’s no caching, it doesn’t parse the DOM and it will blindly download requisites it doesn’t actually need. (Even a large font file found in a CSS comment.) And it does all its requests serially, whereas a modern GUI web browser will fetch several objects in parallel. And whatever web browser you use over a connection with induced latency is not going to replicate the experience of remote users pulling page requisites from zippy local CDNs.
At the end of the day, I proposed the following advice to my remote colleagues:
I also tweaked the web application to make it possible to show a more lightweight “dashboard” screen with fewer objects hanging off of it. This seems to improve load time on that page about 50%.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/10/911-ceremony-in-mountain-view/
Civis Center Plaza, 11am
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/11/911-ceremony-mountain-view-ca/
Tenth anniversary of the attacks. A bit difficult to recite the Pledge of Allegiance with that knot that still forms in the back of the throat.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/11/squirrel-cat/
I heard a squirrel clomping up a tree. I looked and looked and couldn’t find him. But then I saw Maxwell was climbing higher than I had ever seen him climb.  He climbed as high as the second floor, hoping to sneak up on the Mourning Doves. The doves were wise to his approach, but he ascended and descended safely.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/19/gag-me-quickster/
Left a comment on the Official Netflix blog:
What I have always liked about Netflix is that it was a one-stop shop that knew what kind of movies I like to watch, and could make smart suggestions. Netflix had a huge selection and could send me just about any movie I could want. The streaming was a nice addition, but you lose a lot of control that you have on the DVDs like selecting aspect ratios or subtitles. Sometimes the instant gratification is nice but what was important wasn’t a red envelope versus a streaming video, it was that one way or another, Netflix would get me movies I wanted to see.
Then you decided that what I really wanted had little to do with movies or brand loyalty and everything to do with having a medium preference shoved down my throat.
If the streaming is such a fundamentally new business model start a new business and be done with it. Call it Streamstr. Partner with old-fogey Netflix and their stupid red envelopes so their retarded users can stream a few videos. Better yet, be the Netflix I knew and loved so many years: deliver movies I want to me. If I have to pay more for postage or more for some streaming movie that is really “hot” that is totally cool.
But what you are doing right now is some sort of bizarre unsettling brand seppuku. Why is such a great company working so hard to come up with new and innovative ways to scare away its loyal customers?
Netflix used to be about people watching movies. End of story. Movies. Movies. Movies. Its not about picking the winner between VHS and Beta, its about your customers and their love of movies and about your love of getting the movies to your customers. No nonsense, no bull, no false choices. And now? You’re tossing that advantage aside, and I am just as well served by your competitors.
Making the experience more complex for your customers is just plain dumb. =(
Good luck with your brave new spin-off model. It was a nice ride while it lasted.
-danny
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/21/chicago-architecture/
We were in Chicago this past Labor Day. Here are a few photos taken with my G2 Android phone . . .
Trump's Tower in Chicago
Marina City, a distinctive pair of residential towers built in the sixties.
The Merchandise Mart, once the largest building in the world, as seen looking South down Wells St, on the Chicago Architecture Foundation's model of downtown.
Under construction . . .
Shimmering Alleyway
Chicago Remembers: with its own Vietnam War Memorial
The profile of stairs leading down to the Vietnam War Memorial on the Chicago River are mirrored in the skyline.
The Old republic Building smiles at the sun.
Mei photographs the Bean, as all visitors to Millennium Park are obliged to do.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/22/hot-milk/
HOT ITEM of the week! milk $3.49
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/23/high-plains-couch-potato/
Watching "High Plains Drifter" via Amazon.com on the Roku, and on the laptop. On the one hand, the laptop can do high definition. On the other hand, it has to sit on my belly.
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/27/tenagra/
A note board in an abandoned cubicle records a last message. Some time back I added a note regarding Darmak’s location. Today I noticed that someone caught on to my note and put in an annotation for Jilad.
Sweeet!
Link: https://dannyman.toldme.com/2011/09/28/orthodontia-for-america/
At the beginning of our current economic crisis, I embarked on an infrastructure project to make needed improvements to my existing jaw line, and to stimulate the economy through orthodontic stimulus spending. This spending was completely paid for by my personal revenues, and did not contribute to any deficit spending on my part. At least three orthodontic professionals, one oral surgeon, one x-ray technician, and countless support staff received their paychecks as a result of this infrastructure program.
This morning, we took the scaffolding off to unveil my new and improved smile.
The economy could use a little more stimulating, though. With any luck I can make a contribution to consumer confidence by smiling at people.
Arrr!
. . .
Avast!
Site Archive
Danny Howard is 100% responsible for the content on this site, except some of it is stolen. (Sorry about that.)
Intellectual property on this web site is reserved for re-use under the terms of the Creative Commons license. Derivative works may be created for non-commercial purposes, with proper attribution.
You can contact me via e-mail: dannyman@toldme.com
Most of //dannyman.toldme.com/ is powered by WordPress.
If you're hip to RSS and whatnot, you can subscribe to this site.
Mastodon