Go Terk Yourself

I recently got an HDTV, which causes a bit of a shift in how one sees television. You see, standard definition TV looks like ass on an HDTV. So one ends up looking for as much HD content as possible, which leads to the watching of asinine crap one would never think of viewing if one had an HD Tivo. Usually this crap consists of sub-par, but acceptable fare such as Law and Order: Jaywalking Teenagers but, last night I lowered the bar by watching So You Think You Can Dance. It's your average "lots of people audition causing the judges and other contestants to laugh, sigh and occasionally cheer" talent show - with dancing. But at the end of the episode they showed this:

But wait, there's more!

Dreamhost announced today that they're supporting Passenger (mod_rails) in their Apache installation. Passenger is an old idea (embedding an interpreter and libraries in Apache) applied to the very specific Ruby on Rails scenario. Passenger is touted as a plug-and-play, point Apache at your Rails public directory one step web application deployment solution.

I have to imagine, given Dreamhosts adoption of the technology, that Passenger works more or less as advertised. I'm also certain that this will make deploying Rails applications at Dreamhost much easier. It was never fun figuring out why Apache is randomly getting bad headers from a Rails fastcgi process.

Recently, however, I switched to Slicehost for my Rails sites (I have two). I'm running nginx with mongrel servers for each app, which works very well. There is a noticeable speed increase compared to when the sites were running on Dreamhost (Apache + fastcgi). I highly recommend Slicehost for VPS - they are very nicely priced and everything is easy to use. That said, Dreamhost has good shared hosting, for what it's worth, and their prices are very good.

By the way, if you're looking for shared hosting, sign up for Dreamhost and enter the promo code GOTERKYOURSELF to save $50 (and make me some money). If you're looking for a VPS sign up for Slicehost (I get a referral from this link, too).

I recently ordered some books - The French Laundry Cookbook, Irreligion and In Defense of Food - and they shipped the other day! How very exciting.

The main bit in this order is The French Laundry Cookbook. A couple of weeks ago I stumbled on The French Laundry At Home blog, specifically the entry on Maine Lobster Pancakes with Pea Shoot Salad and Ginger-Carrot Emulsion and thought to myself, "self, you have to make that." So I finally ordered the cookbook and now need only set aside enough time to make the damned thing.

(Via. Pharyngula)

The Kraft Bagel-Ful: