LINICKX.com

Using Google as a FREE origin pull CDN

nick — Wed, 08 May 2013 19:00:00 +0100

There are bucket load of posts on how to use google application engine (GAE) as a CDN but many of them direct you to hosting static content on a google server. For me that approach isn't practical, every time I did a WordPress update or plugin upgrade I would have to push an update to GAE... annoying!

Origin-Pull is the future then, basically the server acting as a CDN pulls a copy of the original, caches it and serves that to clients. Updates on the main site are easy, just wait for the CDN to age out it's cache or if you are impatient manually purge.

Over the weekend I stumpbled upon SymPullCDN a GAE app, it's a bit out of date so I've pushed a newer version to github. I've made two changes, firstly updated to python2.7 (as per google's recommendation) and secondly I've added a cron job to keep your GAE app snappy :)

Setting up your own copy is simple, start by signing up for GAE and create a new "application", mine's called mygaecdn...

Next get a copy of the Google App Engine SDK for Python also known as GoogleAppEngineLauncher... Install it :)

Once it's running, create a new application... give it the same name as the app you created on google.

Take a note of the directory in which the application is being created, mine is Users/nick/Documents/GoogleAppEngine/mygaecdn

Next download this zip file which has the updated SymPullCDN files.

Delete everything from your Users/nick/Documents/GoogleAppEngine/mygaecdn and place in there the contents of SymPullCDN-master.zip

Open app.yaml in a text-editor and edit line 1 to replace *replace*me* with your application name, e.g.:

application: mygaecdn

Next open main.py in a text-editor and edit line 21 and replace http://replace*me/ with your website, e.g.:

origin = "https://www.linickx.com/"

Make sure you save both files and you are done!

Now, test locally in the GoogleAppEngineLauncher app before deploying to google. Click the green "play" and a GAE application will run on your local machine; from the screenshot above you can see mine is listening on "port 10080", so I can open a web browser to http://localhost:10080 - all things being equal you will see a copy of your website :)

If that works you're ready to deploy.... hit the blue "deploy" button to push you app up to google. When that's finished you should be able to visit mygaecdn.appspot.com... obviously yours isn't called mygaecdn!

Once the deploy is finished you have a GAE ready and willing to serve cached copies of your site.

What you do next will depend on your website. Me, I use WordPress and wp-super-cache, so I can simply enable the CDN feature in that, e.g.:

You might have to install something, or change some URLs, whatever you do, just remember to only change links to static content such as CSS, JS or IMG - anything dynamic is likely to end in a world of pain.

FOOTNOTE: The term CDN is used loosely in this blog post, GAE is more of a content off-load, IMHO a CDN should server you geographically-local content but in all my tests on webpagetest showed all my content coming from Google-USA, not that is really a problem as their servers are still rocket-quick :cool:

Disappointed by google drive

nick — Sun, 01 Jul 2012 19:37:00 +0100

I'm a (very happy) google apps user and when google drive was announced a while back I was looking forward to giving it a spin.

Well I have taken 5min's out of my life to test out the google's doc's on my desktop app only to be quite disappointed; what google have done is taken the worst part of the market leader's (dropbox) cloud storage app, married it to the worst part of google docs and pushed it out!

The worst part of dropbox is the reason for it's success - sync'in files to different machines, now stay with me... I'm a big dropbox user and I've got about 8Gbs of storage with them and I love the app. The issue with the system is that when I link my dropbox account to a new machine it downloads my whole 8Gbs of data, do I need the same 8Gb on every machine, no... I want some of dropbox's other features (cloud-backup, versions, undelete, sharing) associated with that data, yes! What would be nice is to be able to "tag" folders with a "sync to all machines" (or similar) but I reckon I'll be waiting a log time.

The worst part of google drive (docs) is the "lock in", do I want to use google-docs to view all my files, no! I have some very good apps which work just fine locally. Do I want to be able to edit/view/download/share some of my files hassle free from "another machine", yes!

You see, I have a use case for both dropbox & google docs and I was really hoping that google drive was going to marry up the two, but instead what did I get.... a system tray app which fills up my hard drive with shortcuts!!!

What google should have done...

The system tray app should not create anything locally, what it should do is mount my google drive as if it was a local drive! I could then copy/paste/move files in and out of my google drive as if it was part of my local system; when I'm at work/pub/friends/somewhere I can fire up a web browser and edit/view/download those files. If I then load up the system tray app on another machine with the drive-mounting approach there is no need to sync Gbs of data and I can just get started on the few files I'm interested in at that point in time. (I respect that some caching/syncing would be required to create a good user experience.)

This is my rant over, google, I hope you fix it ;)

OS X: Change google Chrome to Search .co.uk instead of .com

nick — Wed, 15 Dec 2010 18:07:00 +0000

I've just gotten around to solving this little niggle; having google search google.com by default instead of google.co.uk was one of those little annoyances that I was just living with.

Today I found a solution on Chrome Bug 1521 on Comment 39

Quit Chrome

Open \~/Library/Application Support/Google/Chrome/Local State in your favorite text editor.

Search for the strings 'last_known_google_url' and 'last_prompted_google_url' adn replace their values to your preferred Google base URL (e.g. www.google.com)

Save and start chrome back up.

Yep, that works!

QR Code - linickx.com

nick — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 13:40:00 +0100

Yep, that QR code should point you back to linickx.com... that's my first play with the google charts API... humm, what next??

LINICKX is now a word!

nick — Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:59:00 +0000

Whilst trying to find something of mine via google I've noticed something new. LINICKX has now been accepted by google as a word, not back considering I made it up!

In the past if you googled for linickx - www.google.com/search?q=linickx - google would suggest "Did you mean links?", but today I've noticed that is gone!

So it appears that my continued internet activity has made an impact on the wold wide web, Very cool!

from: new york to: london - Google Maps

nick — Wed, 25 Apr 2007 14:57:00 +0100

Brilliant !

from: new york to: london - Google Maps
24: Swim across the Atlantic Ocean

Google Reader Notifier - Firefox Extension

nick — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 09:31:00 +0000

This is one of those extensions I couldn't live without !

Google Reader Notifier | Firefox Add-ons | Mozilla Corporation Google Reader Notifier by Mark D.B.D This firefox extension shows you how many unread items you have in your Google Reader account.

Customize Google -- Firefox Extension

nick — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 09:21:00 +0000

An absolute must for anyone who uses a google service, best enhancement is adding https to things like, docs, gmail & calendar !

CustomizeGoogle: Improve Your Google Experience -- Firefox Extension
CustomizeGoogle is a Firefox extension that enhances Google search results by adding extra information (like links to Yahoo, Ask.com, MSN etc) and removing unwanted information (like ads and spam).

Have Firefox & Google Toolbar Merged ?

nick — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 09:04:00 +0100

![Firefox Spell Checker](http://www.mozilla.com/img/firefox/features/spellcheck.png)

So firefox 2 was released yesterday , and I've just been browsing through the features list. The fact that some of the google toolbar features have sneaked in as default functionality doesn't surprise me, for example the spell checker from the google plugin is an obvious feature for mozilla to include in the core.

What surprised me was how the anti phishing feature was just lifted:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- [![google anti-phisinig](http://www.google.com/tools/firefox/common/miniphish6.png)](http://www.google.com/support/firefox/bin/static.py?page=features.html&v=2.0f) [![Mozilla anti-phising](http://www.mozilla.com/img/firefox/features/phishing.png)](http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/features.html) Google Anti-Phising Mozilla Anti-Phising --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This is an excellent example of open source, and it's really good to see google sharing their work , I just hope that anti customize google doesn't sneak in or worse still targeted adversting !

Gmail File Space Extension (gSpace)

nick — Wed, 11 Oct 2006 05:44:00 +0100

For those who can't wait for the fabled gdrive, this is worth a look, you get like an FTP style interface to gmail within firefox, I've found it useful for quick backups.

Gmail File Space
his extension allows you to use your Gmail Space (2 GB) for file storage. It acts as a remote machine. You can transfer files between your hard drive and gmail. This is similar to "Gmail Drive" on windows platform. Your gmail account looks like a FTP host and you can upload and download your files. After you install, you get an option called "GSpace" in your "tools" menu clicking on which opens the window for transfer of folders/files. Works great for photos and music files less than 14MB.