In future posts I plan on describing specific pieces of the swap-bot that contribute to a solid setup. Before I get to the specifics, I am going to give a high level overview of the network setup and software packages used to achieve my goals.
Swap-bot.com is a community site that enables users to trade handmade crafts through the postal mail. I started the site with Rachel a few years ago. After four years of reliable service, we have outgrown most single-host solutions.
At its core, Swap-bot is a PHP/MySQL application - it’s really just a basic LAMP application.
A few months ago I started to realize that one server wasn’t enough. I wanted to load balance my webserver and beef up my database server. I also wanted to have freedom to control which packages get installed on my servers.
After some research and setup, Swap-bot now run an nginx load balancer on top of two apache webservers. I also have a mysql server with plenty of memory that I now run memcached, a sphinx search server and my mail server from. In addition to the production servers, I have one administration host that is used as a subversion repository host and a yum/rpmbuild host. I also have a development machine that exactly matches production and another host used for various blogs and small sites.
In future posts I will go into depth on each specific piece with the goal of hopefully helping someone out and better documenting what I have done for my own future reference.
Posted in Uncategorized.
Tagged with development, PHP, Swap-bot.
By Travis
– June 28, 2009
For the last year or so, I’ve been very bad at keeping this site active. At the end of the day, I just can’t think of what I want to share with the world. Rachel has been doing a great job keeping everyone up to date with what we’ve been up to and I couldn’t think of anything technological to report on because I didn’t have the motivation.
Over the last couple weeks I have been doing a lot of work on Swap-bot in my spare time and I have found some inspiration to start writing more here. I have become extremely interested in the release process and performance of Swap-bot and will kick this blog back off with the lessons I have learned from my recent projects.
pI also decided it was time for a new home for my blog. As you probably can see, this blog is now at www.travisj.org. I’ve had the domain for a while and haven’t done too much with it. That will all change now.
On an unrelated note, Crusher has now been with Rachel and me for one year. It was last Mother’s Day (May 11th) that Rachel and I were out for a Sunday drive through the outskirts of Eugene and found little boston terrier/chihuahua puppies for sale. I agreed to to getting a puppy on a few conditions that I no longer remember or would even think about enforcing - he is great to have. I love getting home from work and having Crusher jump all over me welcoming me home. I also look forward to getting up each weekend morning around 7:00 am to take him to the dog park so he can run around with the other dogs. He’s such a loyal guy and it’s been great having him with us.
Posted in Uncategorized.
Tagged with Crusher, rachel.
By Travis
– May 10, 2009
We just finished our second week in New York City and have been enjoying every day more and more. I’ve got about a 25 minute door-to-door commute and look forward to it on both ends of the day. Usually I read while on the the train and when I’m lucky I can get a couple churros from the churro lady on the platform at the Atlantic/Pacific St. station ($1 for two churros!).
I picked a bad night to do my monthly blog post - I don’t really know what else to write about. Work is good. The neighborhood is good. Everything seems to be going well right now.
Posted in General.
By Travis
– April 19, 2009
Get ready for the seventh installment of the Eightfivethree Classic. For those that aren’t familiar with the Classic, it’s the most competitive March Madness bracket you’ll ever participate in. I started the Classic back in college and it has grown into something of a phenomenon - we had over 10 people in last year’s Classic alone.
Signup with the info below:
The Eightfivethree Classic
password: eightfivethree
Posted in General.
By Travis
– March 15, 2009
A lot has happened for Rachel and me over the last few months. The biggest change is that I no longer work at yahoo and now work for another web startup in New York City. Rather than work from Eugene this time, we are moving across the country very soon. Our house will finally go up for sale next week and then we start packing.
I have loved our three years in Eugene more than I ever expected. When we moved here for Rachel to go to school I thought we’d be gone the day after she graduated. Since moving to Eugene, though, we made some great friends and lived in a very comfortable house and neighborhood. Eugene has been a fantastic place to live and we will miss it.
But, life’s next big adventure for us is out east. We’ve been the NYC twice in the last month or so and found a great apartment in the Park Slope area of Brooklyn. We’ll be near many great restaurants, a few minutes from a nice park for Crusher and I’ll have about a 25 minute commute into Manhattan for work.
While I won’t even try to guess how long we’ll be in New York I will say that I think it’s going to be a good place for us. It will be different from any place we’ve lived before and can’t wait to get out there and experience it all.
Posted in General.
By Travis
– February 27, 2009
I gave my dad a USB record player for Christmas so he could transfer all his vinyl to mp3s and CDs. The player hasn’t seemed to work that well, but it got me thinking that I had everything I needed to transfer my vinyl to mp3, also. I’m using a Griffin iMic instead of a USB record player, but the end result is about the same.
Anyways, I thought I’d give transferring a song a try tonight. I didn’t get too fancy, I just used GarageBand and my laptop speakers to sample. I’ll probably try out Audacity sometime soon and then start transferring some of my other gems that I only have on vinyl. Enjoy.
Sweet Black Magic - Ryan Adams - Gold
Posted in General.
Tagged with Music.
By Travis
– January 22, 2009
Rachel and I decided to order a pizza and salad from Mezza Luna this past Friday, like we do most every week. After giving my order and phone number on Friday, the girl on the other end told me she had something good to tell me when I came in to pick up my pizza. When I made it in, she showed me that the cooks named a pizza after me. Apparently they’ve seen my name come through week after week and my name came up when they needed to name a new pizza. If you look closely at the picture below you’ll see a caricature of me endorsing the slice.
Posted in General.
Tagged with Eugene.
By Travis
– December 7, 2008
Bill O’Reilly was Jon Stewart’s guest on last night’s The Daily Show. He’s pretty hard to follow because you never really know what he’s talking about, but the last 30 seconds of the clip sum up Bill O’Reilly.
Billo the Clown tries to call the bear he’s holding a panda bear. It’s clearly not a panda. When Stewart tried to tell him it wasn’t a panda, O’Reilly then insisted it was in a tone that said, “I’m right, you’re wrong and stupid.” This is the way O’Reilly runs his show when discussing matters that actually matter, too. He’ll ramble on and make no sense and then when the guest states something contradictory to him, O’Reilly will belittle, mock and tell them they’re wrong. He’s hard to watch, but sure makes good comedy.
On a somewhat related note, my arch-nemesis was on the treadmills at the same time as me tonight. Hopefully Rachel will post about her nemesis someday in more detail, but hers is this old guy that kind of looks like Wolf Blitzer, smells really bad and uses her favorite machine for two hours at a time. Two hours is not a joke - in the time since he’s reached nemesis status, we’ve seen him lose about 20 pounds. I digress, my nemesis is also old and is usually on the treadmills and loves watching Fox News. Before getting on a treadmill he will always change the channel to Fox without even asking if anyone was watching what was previously on the TV. I know, the nerve of this guy. One time, before he had the chance to change the channel, I had to speak up and say I was watching a rerun of The Steve Harvey Show just so he wouldn’t change the channel. In actuality I wasn’t watching the program (although I’m sure I saw it the episode ten years ago, for some reason I was a big Steve Harvey fan), but it was worth lying just to keep Hannity, Scarbourogh or whatever off the TV. Well tonight, he was there before me and already had Fox on. I watched a little and it was awful. Long story for something that was already known.
Posted in General.
By Travis
– November 14, 2008
Chelsea and Scott sent me a birthday gift and included in it was a button for Crusher.
Crusher really likes Mr. Obama and is very happy wearing his new gift.
Posted in General.
By Travis
– October 19, 2008
I had a great birthday this year. It was so good I had two cakes!
Posted in General.
Tagged with birthday.
By Travis
– October 17, 2008
