Is Typo Really a Pig?
This blog is currently running on Typo. After setting up my account, and getting Typo running, I noticed that it had unexpectedly high memory usage. After some initial research, I saw some of the textdrive admins complaining that typo is a pig (several times...if I'd seen these posts before choosing a host, it probably wouldn't have been textdrive).
I ran some experiments, and determined that Typo runs significantly larger on the server at textdrive then it does on my local system, given the same code and data. Basically, when the app is started on my home system (before any web access), the largest dispatcher uses 26MB, and on harwood (the textdrive server), it uses 80MB. After a single access to the '/' page of each site, the difference was even more dramatic, 27MB on my local system, and 105MB on harwood!
I don't believe this is the result of a leak. Hitting the site multiple times does not result in the size of the process(es) on either system increasing continuously (after a few hits, the sizes stabilize).
My system has the i486-linux build of ruby (1.8.4), and harwood runs amd64-freebsd5 (1.8.2).
It makes sense to me that a 64bit app would take more space than a 32bit app, but 3-4x is a lot more than I expected. I think there's a design flaw here somewhere. Is 64bit ruby this wasteful, is it rails, or is typo really a pig?
Note, I also posted this in the textdrive forum.
Chicken Feet are Quite Tasty
I came to the realization that I've been avoiding the chicken feet. We eat dim sum regularly (read: twice a month or so) at China One in Durham, and like all good dim sum shops, they serve chicken feet. Whenever the carts come by and the server asks us whether we want anything, they usually gloss over the chicken feet (typically with just a quick gesture) and move on to things they think we're more likely to buy.
Until lately, that's been fine with me. Strange foods have long interested me, and I've tried to expand my culinary horizons in the last few years. I visit ethnic groceries to try new things, and whenever on vacation, we go to the "off the beaten path" restaurants and try their fare. Lately, we've managed quite a few odd foods. We've been buying all sorts of delicious things from Grand Asia Market, including baby pigeons, tripe and, of course, durian (I have been addicted durian, the King of Fruit, since my first trip to singapore).
Anyway, I realized that I'd never had chicken feet, and that they were regularly offered to me. The idea of eating chicken feet is fairly alien in American culture, but after further thought, I realized something important: they are made of chicken.
Today, I ordered them.
They were quite good. There isn't a lot of meat, but what meat is there was very tasty. There is a fair amount of connective tissue in feet, and they were sort of gelatinous, but it had that same sticky texture that makes ribs so good. Chicken feet have a lot of bones, and it made the process a little difficult, but it is definately worth it.
I'll definitely order them again.