Totophe Posts

Totophe Birthday Party

If  you are looking for information about my Birthday party, read your invitation more carefully and type the full url given 🙂

Kinepolis cinema really fail…

Yesterday, I did go to the cinema to see the movie Avatar in 3D. For that, it was chosen to go to the Kinepolis Brussels cinema. Very bad idea !

First, everyone knows that the cinema is very expensive today. Compared to the price of a good installation and DVDs/Blue-Ray, you have to really want to go to the cinema to see the latest movie. Your seat is uncomfortable, you have to share other’s smell and noises, you have to accept that many people arrives during the movie, distracting everyone, etc. Ok, but that you knows. You accept those rules when you go to the cinema.

What is unacceptable is this: 15 minutes after the launch of the movie, when you begin to be in the ambiance, suddenly, the movie stop, all the lights are up and a bunch of guys from the security shows up and tell “There are peoples in the wrong seat ! Please take the seat that is on your ticket ! The movie will not start again untill this is fixed !” MEN ! What’s wrong with you ??? You just ruined my movie ! Kinepolis SUCKS…

And as it was not enough, just for commercial purposes, they have reintroduced the concept of movie break. Again, they stop the movie for 10 minutes allowing you to buy more things. Damned ! I do not pay to have my movie interrupted like on TV ! I can stay home for less !

I think I’ll never will go to Kinepolis again. This cinema really sucks…

[EDIT] Please note that Kinepolis has actually kindly responded to this post. Please read the comments 😉

MacBook Pro superdrive who didn’t recognize DVD-R trick

Since one or two month, my Macbook Pro was systematically ejecting all blank DVD-R that I was inserting. I was afraid that it was broken.

Fortunately, before trying to kill my Mac, I just made some search on the Internet and I found the solution. Simply use an air can and give some “fresh” air to the drive. So did I, and it work just fine now 🙂

Tip found at http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1684759&tstart=0

HowTo: Transfer huge websites with Apache mod_proxy

I was wondering how I should manage the transfer of several huge websites that are regulary updated from one server to another one so the downtime is minimal and the transfer is transparant for users.

Finaly, it came the idea to use the power of Apache mod_proxy and rsync. The downtime of the page could then be minimal and I could ask the customer to change their DNS config before the website is entirely transfered.

Requirements:

  • A website (in this example: www.example.com)
  • Two servers
    • Source should work with rsync
    • Target should run with Apache2 and mod_proxy enabled
  • Good knowledges/understanding of Apache/DNS/Linux

HowTo: Reduce size of a virtual disk in Parallels Desktop

Parallels Desktop is great, but some tools are missing. Especially if you want to decrease the size of a virtual machine. This could be done because you are runing out of space, or because you want to put your OS on an USB key or a SD card, or whatever.

After having try multiple time Parallels solutions, I’ve used another very simple method to achieve that.

Requirements:

  • The very usefull GParted tool (http://gparted.sourceforge.net/)
  • A place where the size of the needed resized partition is free (Yes, I know, if you want to free space, it is not a good start…)