Tweak Dial up with Proxy Caching – QUESTIONS!? + answers!

Okay so I’m going crazy trying to come up with an ideal tweaked setup for my mom’s new laptop.  I must get it perfect before I send it out to the middle of nowhere 24kbps dialup country.

Using a localhost DNS server probably does improve performance, but i’m not sure about a proxy.

These are my questions in response to THIS Tweak guide:

I’ve been attempting to do proxy caching technique using Squid, but I really am wondering exactly how it functions and I have some doubts as to whether or not it really works.

So from my understanding this is how it all works:

1. User clicks link on a webpage:
2. Client contacts DNS server (ideally localhost, if DNS entry isn’t there it pulls it slowly from the net ISP or OpenDNS server)
3. Client browser requests webpage from browser cache, if not found, it asks for it from localhost proxy cache, if it’s not there it pulls it slowly from the net.
4. Files are slowly downloaded and written to proxy cache, then written to browser cache creating an unfortunate redundant data and drive usage? 😦
5. Webpage is rendered in browser.

Next time user goes to that page, ideally the content is cached locally and it will load quickly from the harddrive.

Now my major question is –
I can see how a localhost proxy cache would be useful if you had multiple people logging into the same machine where their browsers have seperate caches – but is there any benefit to proxy cache in a single user setting?

Well, I’ve concluded that proxy cache is the way to go, despite it’s added difficulty for two reasons:
1. Mozilla Firefox has the TERRIBLE habit of ERASING the entire disk cache every time it crashes or closes improperly…This renders making a huge disk cache in firefox pointless since it will likely be lost.
2. The proxy cache provides much more in terms of configuration options and works for multiple users and multiple applications.

Does the browser cache and the proxy cache function in the same way? Do they save everything?  .JS, .SWF, .PNG, etc… ?  Wouldn’t it be best to then disable the browser cache to avoid redundant disk usage?

Yes, it seems to cache everything, even cookies.  As far as I can tell the browser disk cache can be disabled when using proxy cache.

What happens if a dial up user clicks Stop – does the proxy server continue to load the files for that page – actually causing their internet speed to slow down??

Well, I’ve only dealt with Polipo caching proxy and apparently it when the user clicks Stop, Polipo stops loading the file but caches the partially downloaded file so that it continue downloading it later in case the user requests it.  However, I think I read that many other proxies do not cache incomplete files…

Haha sorry for the rant but if anyone knows the answer to any of these questions.. please please post 🙂  Thanks!

Winter Vacation, To-Do List Placation

Well, the madness of the end of semester is over.  An uneventful (which is good) Christmas has passed – all I did was sit back and watch Slumdog Millionaire, which is a surprisingly awesome movie.

It feels as if I’m making no progress at chipping away at the long to-do list of things I wanted to catch up on during this vacation..  I’m suspecting that to-do lists really do not work.  It seems like, despite the fact I’m barely working two days a week right now during break, I still am falling behind.  There’s so much to do on my list and yet, bam, suddenly tons of bills come, birthdays, holidays, other responsibilities, etc.. The original ToDo list just sits there and pretty much now there’s a NEW ToDo list of more urgent tasks.

I need to somehow pay for tutition which means generating $1k in two days which doesn’t seem possible – this would not have been a problem if my winnings from QuakeCon 2008 QuakeLive had been what they were supposed to be.. They told me that I won $2000, but the check that arrived in the mail was $1000..it’s hard to complain since it’s prize money but still I was really counting on that money for school.  Oh well, guess it’ll be a high interest payment plan for this semester.

I need to learn Adobe AfterEffects well enough to start a level 2 course even though I’ve never taken level 1.. I suspect that during my sleep deprived final two weeks of classes I managed to totally forget to go to my Science of Color and Light final and so I recieved an INCOMPLETE.. Ugh, so disappointing, don’t know how..I thought I went.. I did.. didn’t I?  I don’t remember anything really from the last weeks of school.  It’s kinda frightening.  Next semester I need to make sure that I sleep no matter what happens.

Anyway, so the good thing is I’ve recovered my home built desktop computer from it’s neglected, virus riden state.  What really did it under was a virus that I aquired during an epic two day attempt  at installing the patch for  Resident Evil 4 / Biohazard.  This is a patch that is necessary since the PC port of the game was a total hack job and should never have been released without more work.  I failed miserably in the end at patching the game (trust me, building a computer and setting it up as a headless linux server is easier than patching this game).  And well.. the good news is, now the computer is all fixed up again as a dual-boot machine with a minimal install of WindowsXP sp3 (just for games) and LinuxMint 6 (for everything else).  It’s still not tweaked as nicely as my old Ubuntu Studio setup, but it does the job for now and I found this FlickR group of 360 degree photos to use for the fully rotatable skybox.

Well.. time to enjoy some gaming at long last.. Enemy Territory Quake Wars and HalfLife: Episode One (FINALLY!)

PSP to PC with RemoteJoy Lite

So my final animatic is due tomorrow at 9am for storyboarding class and as per usual, I ended up procrastinating till past midnight.  Tonights form of procrastination was an attempt to capture video and audio from my PSP (fat) to my PC (at school – AMD 64bit).

Requirements: (google them) are:

• A PSP running custom firmware ( i.e. 5.00 M33-4 )
  
• RemoteJoy Lite v0.19
• RemoteJoySDL 2007 (if you’re using 64bit)
  

RemoteJoyLite Installation Instructions
(THIS IS ASSUMING YOU ARE RUNNING CUSTOM FIRMWARE)

• Extract both archives.
• Copy the remotejoylite.prx from the RemoteJoyLite package into a folder called seplugins/ in the root of your memory stick.
• Completely reboot your PSP, hold R-trigger to access recovery menu.  Under Plugins, enable the remotejoylite.prx plugins. Exit to XMB.
• Connect the USB cable, the PC should recognise a new PSP Type B device.  In the install wizard browse for the appropriate libusb0.dll – I believe you can find the driver in the RemoteJoyLite package, but if you’re using a 64bit PC like I am, you’ll need to install the 64bit libusb0.dll from the RemoteJoy SDL package.
• Then you can simply run RemoteJoyLite_en.exe! Double click it for fullscreen 🙂

Game compatibility seems to be sketchy, here’s my list so far:

• Starwars Battlefront Renegade Squadron – WORKS PERFECTLY!
• Monster Hunter Freedom 2 – WORKS PERFECTLY!
  
• Prince of Persia – Rival Swords – Doesn’t work!
• Syphon Filter – Logan’s Shadow – Works Partially (Glitchy sound or textures)
• PSone games – Don’t seem to work..

Here’s an experimental screencapture I did of Syphon Filter – Logans Shadow (Episode 3 part 3 – Nowhere to Run) (hard difficulty)
You’ll notice the odd glitchy sound that occurs when running RemoteJoy with this game.. too bad, it would look great on a big screen 😦

Pocrastination! Smarty Pance – Epistemology Boxers

So, I was attempting to do my Flash portfolio and website projects that are due TOMORROW morning and got distracted… My friend got me looking at Benford’s law on wikipedia and then Don mentions “epistemology” – the theory of knowledge, which I proceed to look up.. and then I somehow become convinced that it is absolutely imperative that the  bubble chart from epistemology’s wikipedia be on a pair of boxers… and after 40 minutes of searching google image search for “underwear”, “monkey wearing underwear”, “panties”, “butt”, “ass”, and “boxer brief” I found this image and the photoshopping ensued!

Pocrastination of Po

Alright, now that this shameful moment of my life has passed, it’s time to get back to work!