Cookies and Capacitors

Taming the hog

Wed, Feb 15, 2012 at 4:17AM

So earlier today, Dario (of justmakingpancakes fame) was telling me about PogoPlugs being on sale for around $20. Now, I’ve always wanted one, but the MSRP of $100 was off-putting. Astonished at the price, I bought two (the second goes to my brother, so he can control his site’s hardware). It’ll be grand when I get mine installed!

This solves a few problems for me. Most notably, PogoPlugs consume only 4W of electricity. I could have ten installed before it scratches my current server’s power requirements! And, because of it’s low power requirements, it’s fanless, too. It might be hard going to sleep without the bustling hum of my server, but somehow I’ll manage.

At what cost, though, do these benefits come? Well…it needs less-intensive software. Good thing I fiddled with Nginx a few months ago! Yes, yes: I never got Nginx working correctly with WordPress. It’s a good thing I’m throwing WordPress out the window, too! A few months ago, I heard about a little thing called Chyrp, “An extra lightweight and extra awesome blogging engine,” and I installed it a few months ago. Chyrp is a CMS, like WordPress, but it’s a TON less database-intensive, needing only seven queries per post. I’m not sure I’ll cache my posts…I’ve always found page caching to add unnecessary complexity – I’m sure going to be regretting this when my site gets slashdotted again, though, when Rotary Siri 2 debuts.

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the site changes. I may have to order yet a third PogoPlug to completely retire my ‘ol serv'r (or a fourth, or a fifth), but once that day comes, she’ll be missed.

Ammmaaaaazzziinggg graaaaace … (you can tell I’m tired)