Darian

Using Amazon CloudFront to speed up my site

Hare-and-Tortoise-300x156[1] For the first few months of it’s existence, this website was slow. I wasn’t sure what the problem was; I thought that maybe I needed more compute (the site is running on a t2.micro EC2 instance). Fortunately, before I switched instance sizes, I did some reading online.

The most helpful site -found here – lists 15 steps to improve performance. After making many of the recommended changes, I found that the largest impact was due to enabling a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and using caching.

I used W3 Total Cache for my cache changes. For my CDN, I used Amazon CloudFront. CloudFront was easy to set-up. Though W3 Total Cache has an option for enabling CDN, I used the WP Offload plugin (as it was already enabled to access my AWS account).

And, just like that, my response times went from 5-8 seconds to 1-3.

Ten Songs from 2015 that you should be listening to: #2 Kendrick Lamar’s For Sale? (Interlude)

kendrick-lamar[1] What’s been said about Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly has most assuredly already been said: Complex. Ambitious. Avant-garde. There are days when I can listen to it on end; other days, the weight of it makes me turn to something else.

There is one track, however, that I can ALWAYS listen to: Kendrick’s “For Sale? (Interlude)”.

Lucy is all the [things] that I was thinking of that I know can be detrimental to not only me but the people around me, and still be tempted by them. That’s some scary s–t. It’s like looking at a bullet inside of a gun, knowing you can kill yourself with it, but you’re still picking it up and playing with it.
– Kendrick Lamar, as quoted in the Guardian

When I was in college, I struggled to make it to Sunday service. Part laziness, part distance – it just wasn’t a priority for me. That being said, there were days that I needed a word from God. When I was in those moods, I didn’t turn to typical gospel or Christian hymns – I put on John Coltrane’s Love Supreme. His ode to his higher power spoke to me (and still does) in a way that no gospel recording ever has.

Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp a Butterfly isn’t a Love Supreme, but “For Sale?”, speaks to me in a similar way. A morality play in verse, “For Sale?” tells of the temptations of “Lucy” (short for Lucifer) and the promises of material things and the fight to stay true to yourself. Its a struggle I believe we all face and I love Kendrick for being so transparent about it.

“Alright” and “These Walls” rightly get called out as great cuts on To Pimp a Butterfly; I just want “For Sale?” to get it’s requisite shine too.

Kendrick Lamar – For Sale? (Interlude)

Ten Songs from 2015 that you should be listening to: #3 Grip and #4 Grip (Interlude) from Creed

CRD205_000084.tif Full disclosure – as of this writing, I have not seen Creed. But, my brother has. In fact, as soon as he saw it, he bought the soundtrack AND the score – for these two tracks specifically.

I don’t know where in the movie these songs show up. I don’t know why they are called “Grip”. I don’t even know if Creed aka Johnny Storm aka Wallace wins his fight. All I know is that I can power through an extra two or three reps when these songs pop up in my workout playlist.

Both versions were written by Ludwig Göransson. The R&B version, with vocals by Tessa Thompson¹, starts out with a great lyric (“I might give a little / But you can take it all / I might try to run / But just to make you follow“) over a driving beat. Göransson’s euro-smooth-soul-pop-electronic sound is perfect here (and is great for Tessa’s voice). The track almost sounds like something from Zero 7’s Simple Things.

The second track, taken from the Creed Original Motion Picture Score, keeps the driving beat, but replaces Tessa’s lyrics with a humming and synthesizer take on the lyrics.

Tessa Thompson – Grip

Ludwig Göransson – Grip (Interlude)

Ten Songs from 2015 that you should be listening to: #5 Seal’s The Big Love Has Died

91DceG5od3L._SY355_[1] “The Big Love Has Died” is a BIG ballad. Sweeping strings. Hopeless lyrics. A chorus that crescendos to a high, before an unexpected drop.

If anyone could sing this song, it’s Seal. His partnership with producer Trevor Horn gave pop some of its best ballads of the 90s. In fact, I’m not sure anyone except Seal could pull off an epic ballad like this – especially given his very public break with model Heidi Klum. Seal was never one for providing a lot of detail in his music (he doesn’t even put song lyrics in his liner notes¹). Still, he did admit to some influence from his personal life on “Big Love…”:

You try to be adult about [a breakup], be mature and objective and positive about it, but unfortunately that’s not the reality at the time. When that wound is still fresh your immediate reaction is to be damning and final, to want closure, to forget, to move on. To live in denial. That is the immediate emotional survival mechanism. I wanted that song to capture that in a way that people could relate to it.

-Seal, as interviewed in the Daily Telegraph

Trevor Horn gave a more succinct answer: “Over the past few years, Seal has been through the tumble dryer of love. He gets sad on the record. You can hear him being sad, but you can’t hear him being bitter.”

I love the honesty that Seal sings with in this song. Whether it’s about his divorce or a break-up with his high-school sweetheart, it’s a truthful, yet tasteful, take on the sadness and hopelessness that comes from a failed relationship.

Seal – The Big Love Has Died

Fitness Gear Review: Crossrope 2.0 Swift Set

A well-made jump rope system that can be used by experts and novices.

My Rating:

If I were to rank fitness exercises, cardio just beats out squats and deadlifts in my list least favorite exercises. I just have never enjoyed running or biking.

When I first started seriously working out, I only focused on weight training. After 3-4 months, my trainer suggested that I add cardio into my weekly workout plan. At the time he recommended sprints. I tried that for a few weeks, then told him we needed to find an alternative. That’s when he suggested jumping rope. I went only Amazon later that week and purchased a set from Crossrope.

Two years later, I’m still jumping rope with the same Crossrope weighted jump rope. While not perfect, it’s got a lot of good things going for it.

Continue reading “Fitness Gear Review: Crossrope 2.0 Swift Set”