Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with performance

"We're playing Carnegie Hall!"

tabubilgirl — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 17:31:49 -0800

If your small-town choir tells you that they want to perform at Carnegie Hall as part of the MidAmerica Concert Series - how good (polish, presentation, musical standards etc.) do they need to be to get the gig?

What's the best cable for my original iPhone, if I'm using it for live music?

ejfox — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 10:03:24 -0800

I want to play some iPhone music apps live on stage with my band. I'd like to plug my iPhone into an amp. However, I have the iPhone 2G (The original) which doesn't have a normal headphone-out. This output is going bad, anyway. Is there a cable to get sound from the dock connector so I could feed it to the amp? If you play music live with an iPhone (especially the original) how do you do it? Also, have you encountered any problems? Any tips/tricks?

Also any music creation app recommendations would be nice.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Best practices for benchmarking and profiling!

Kwine — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 06:42:13 -0800

Help me develop a performance and concurrency testing and improvement plan for an ecommerce site. IANA DBA, but "Trial by fire is one of the best career paths." My company is developing an ecommerce site that may have up to 50,000 visitors/day when W-2 forms are released in mid-February, but significantly less traffic for the rest of the year-perhaps a few thousand per day when their client companies have payday. My experience (read: the companies experience) is limited to mom and pop sites that are lucky to receive that much traffic in a month. It's a Magento site (php/mysql, fairly resource intensive).

We currently host a few sites on the Rackspace cloud (including some Magento sites), which we are comfortable with after trying a couple of other Magento hosting options, but the cloud limits our configuration control to a .htaccess file, limits our log access, etc. To get more control, I have a virtual dedicated server set up on Rackspace, running a fresh CentOS image (chosen because the documentation for setting up magento on it is better than the other options); I'm going to install php and mysql and move the development site over to it today. (The dev site is waiting for a front end redesign, but is otherwise finished). This server has 256 MB RAM and a 10GB hard drive; it can be resized (with some down time) all the way up to 15872 MB and 620 GB, at additional cost/hour. My rough plan:

1) In a planned, organized, unbiased way, benchmark and profile the performance of the site at the current server size. I need the most help with this. I've read the O'Reilly "High Performance MySQL" book, which was somewhat helpful; I've toyed with ab, and poked at some of the other possible benchmark/profiling mentioned in there, but it seemed like the time required to get up to speed on the more sophisticated options might be too much for this project. I'm aware of the optimization chapter in the MySQL manual, but I haven't looked at it yet. I run OS X 10.5 and Windows 7. Budget is limited: cheap options are good, free is better. I also don't want this to consume my life: we have many other projects in the hopper. I want to think it through in a confident, measured way, and not be having panic attacks on February 10th.
2) Modify server settings and configuration. I DON'T want to be in the business of modifying Magento's core code, potentially putting us out of sync with future upgrades, so things like optimizing individual SQL queries are out.
3) If performance remains unacceptable, resize the server and repeat.

So I guess the main questions are as follows: Is this rough sketch of a plan reasonable? Which tools should I use to benchmark and profile? I could use some guidelines about what constitutes "acceptable performance" as well (I know this is in some sense a ridiculous, hopelessly idiosyncratic question). What am I not thinking of? Our target launch date for this site is January 2nd, but as stated above, the big performance requirements don't arrive for six weeks or so after that. Thanks!

Creative ideas for a party

Kateruba — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 20:56:11 -0800

What short, creative performances can guests put on at my party to entertain themselves? I'd like to have a holiday party. But not just another dinner party or a drinking party. I'd like all of my guests to put on little performances - whether that would be a short skit, dance/music, puppet show, parody, magic tricks, telling some jokes, monologue, poetry reading, juggling, sword swallowing - whatever! I just would like everyone to do something entertaining and creative, my expectations are pretty reasonable, I don't expect everyone to prepare and practice like prima ballerinas...

I am always ambivalent about hosting parties - so much stress in organizing and making sure everyone has a good time! And I am especially doubtful about hosting this one. Even though most of my friends/acquaintances are a creative bunch, a lot of my potential guests find my party idea intimidating. They are either shy or have no idea what to do for this "assignment", and hence are unsure whether they will attend at all :(

I'd love some suggestions for this which I can offer to my friends to make them less intimidated and more enthusiastic. Ideally, they would have all or any of the following qualities: creative, suitable for shy people, do not take much time or effort to prepare for.

And what would I do for my part? I would do something similar to Isabella Rosselini's Green Porno "Nothing Porno about it!" as she says. In the series, Rossellini enacts the mating rituals of various insects and other animals (including the dragonfly, spider, bee, praying mantis, squid, snail and housefly) with cardboard cut-outs and foam-rubber sculptures (wikipedia) - the result is very whimsical and reminiscent of an elementary school play in its aesthetics! If anyone is intrigued, you can view all of the episodes on

How much memorization does art dance performance require?

Joe Beese — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 18:52:35 -0800

How much memorization does art dance performance require? I assume it varies between genres - and between roles within genres. But can useful generalizations be made about how much performance data retrieval per minute is involved compared with, say, playing in a symphony orchestra?

PowerMac life extension

omnidrew — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 12:08:59 -0800

Squeezing a bit more out of a PowerMac G5... I'm seeing the spinning beachball more these days... wondering if spending $85 on 2 more gigs of RAM (from 4GB to 6GB) will make it show up a little less often.

I know I'm not going to be able to move over to Snow Leopard with this machine, but hoping to get a few more years out of this hard-working box.

specs = PPC dual 2gHz / OS x 10.5 Leopard / 4GB RAM currently installed / model came out in June 2003 / upgraded video card

Thanks, hive mind!

How to perform better in public

stenoboy — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:34:51 -0800

How can I better my live performance? Just for explanation, I'm not a musician but a realtime captioner - I make live captions via a shorthand machine that I write live to television programs or for Deaf and hard-of-hearing people in meetings, etc.

The job entails being able to type on the steno machine at verbatim speeds and be able to write cleanly and accurately (choosing correct homophones and conflicts) so the computer can read the steno and translate it back into English via a dictionary I've prepared.

The usual requirement is at least 99% accuracy - and that includes punctuation, correct speaker IDs, etc.

My problem is I'm usually fine, but sometimes I make a load of mistakes. This can be because a speaker can't be heard, I hit the wrong keys, tiredness or difficult material. Once I make a mistake, I often start to go downhill and screw up more. I suppose the job could be best compared to a realtime interpreter in that you only get one go at it and it has to be right the first time.

Does anyone have any tips or tricks to improve accuracy, nerves, and ability to stay on top of a difficult situation mentally? How do performers do it, especially classical performers who have very critical ears listening to them? How do interpreters manage to keep going? How do you cope with a job where people comment more on what you get wrong than what you get right?

How do they fix performance glitches when doing post-production on "live" recordings?

Joe Beese — Mon, 16 Nov 2009 10:18:09 -0800

How do they fix performance glitches when doing post-production on "live" recordings? Assuming that they don't have multiple performances to splice together, how do they correct a singer's pitch or fix an instrumentalist's late entrance?

If they simply record a new part in the studio, how do they approximate the venue's acoustics?

Festival Management 101

divabat — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 05:08:41 -0800

I'd like to start a festival. This time I actually have a plan and possibly some people. Where do I start? After being mildly frustrated at the local alt-arts scene, I made a plan for a fringe/indie/alt arts festival that showcases minority and culturally diverse performers. I've been inspired by the upcoming Shades of Burlesque festival and the Kaleidoscope Cabaret festival (both for burlesque performers of colour; Kaleidoscope has a more queer focus) and basically want to do something similar in Australia. It would be the first of its sort in my area, if not the country. (Kaleidoscope has a pretty good outline of how I want my festival to run)

I made up a quick plan outlining how the festival will run, a wishlist of people and resources, and further questions. I've got a few people interested, and just had a chat this afternoon with someone whose job is to help young people with their creative projects. I've also been collecting advice here and there.

Where do I start? My contact this arvo suggested I write a 1-2 page brief to the organisations whose involvement I'm after outlining the festival idea and what I need. Who should I go after first - venues, presenters, sponsors, all at once? It seems a bit chicken and egg.

I figure the earliest this festival will take place will be mid-late 2010. Right now people are finishing up year-end projects before going on holidays, so any major meetings will only really take place in January. What can I do between now and then that won't take up people's time? I anticipate that some of my presenters and brains will likely be from outside Australia - how do I plan for travel expenses and that sort of thing?

What resources have you found useful in festival planning? Any software, reading material, guides, people that are handy? Any grants or funding bodies that make good contacts? (I'm not a permanent resident yet so 99% of Aussie grants are off-limits to me; however, if I'm auspiced, the auspicing org could apply on my behalf) Any creative methods that have worked well for others?

(The plan is in a public Google document; MefiMail me if you'd like to take a look.)

Professional FAIL x 2

sidd.darko — Sat, 10 Oct 2009 15:24:45 -0800

I have had two major professional failures in a single week. I would like insight into a couple of aspects. Sordid details inside. 1) I was written up by my current manager for performance and attitude issues. Without going into too much detail, I feel like I am taking a larger share of blame than is fair of the current project's direction. I feel there is some justification to some, but not all of his issues. I have been given 60 days to produce high quality code and a major improved attitude or I lose my job. This is a manager who has given me stellar reviews in the past. I do feel like the work I am doing is very good and there are certain technical aspects beyond my control that have caused problems for our project.

2) I was given an immediate interview by a former employer. The job is in a language that I don't have recent experience in, but it is an enterprise platform and I have been working with a close counterpart. I interviewed with three people and took assessment and thought I did really well. BUT they decided to pass.

I can do some aspects of interviewing very well .. but I often find the technical interviews unnerving. I sometimes have trouble articulating the structure and flow of some of my projects. I experience the occasional whiteboard fear. But I have had success and have been a valuable employee for the few companies I've worked for (including this one) throughout my career. I'm excellent at tracking down problems and finding solutions. This is starting to sound like a cover letter .. sorry.

I'm experiencing somewhat of a professional crisis. I've been a software developer for 14 years and these two events have really blown my confidence. So, I have a couple of questions.

How do I recover my confidence and from the humiliation I feel at being written up? I need to perform well enough to not lose my job when my evaluation period is over. I can do the work, but being there I find interactions with my manager to be uncomfortable.

How can I improve my technical interviewing skills? I know the technology, but I often freeze and stumble when listening to questions.

Thanks for insight.

Strange Voices

phrontist — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 23:02:16 -0800

Recommend some music like Bon Iver's Woods, Imogen Heap's Hide and Seek, Beardyman, and some of Jamie Lidell - which feature nothing (or very little) but the human voice modified by electronics. Augmented acapellas, if you will.

Event Production A&R? Corporate theater producer?

lothar — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 17:23:56 -0800

Authors have agents. Musical talent has A&R reps. Startups have VC. What is the category of representative, or who is the aggregator, for my business? We do live interactive performance visualization. It's live in the sense that nothing is prerendered (no video loops).
It's interactive because we hook up wireless controllers and cameras to stuffed snakes, eyeballs, and magic wands.
It's a performance when the audience plays with the snake and sees an onscreen snake mimic the motion they're making.
And it's visualization because the output is high-res, high frame rate, HD on multiple screens, usually large scale projection.

We need to get repped to the production companies and event designers who do corporate theater and live performance. The main "problem" is that we're almost the only folks doing what we do, so clients don't know they need us yet.

Please help us tech geeks find the marketing agency category or people who handle large scale procedural blinky pixels.

Opera N00b Performance Anxiety

hermitosis — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 13:51:53 -0800

I was just cast in an opera! Problem: I have never been in an opera before, and am not really a "musical" person. Please help me keep from falling flat on my face! Though I have landed a major role in an upcoming comic opera production, I don't know how to sing opera -- I have a lot of training as a performer but I haven't done any actual singing onstage in many years, let alone opera. The director and conductor have assured me that they have no problem with my character speak-singing most of his lines a la Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady, and that I was cast because of what I would hopefully bring to the character in terms of acting. I trust the director completely and think everything will be fine... eventually.

The director keeps reminding me that it doesn't really matter what notes I'm singing, it's all really about when I start and stop singing. I have the book, and cd's of both the whole score and the piano music. But really none of this stuff means anything to me. I can sight read enough to pick out a melody, but when I look through all these pages of music notation, I can barely tell what I'm looking at. It's an original opera, so I don't have like a cast recording I can listen to.

By the time we're done rehearsing I'm sure I'll have that down. It's the first week of rehearsal that has me freaked. Tonight is a read-through with the whole cast, all of whom will be real live opera people. I can't help dreading that I'm going to look like a total ignoramus and wind up slowing things down. I'm sure they'll wonder why I was cast instead of an actual tenor. I am planning to go in and be confident and friendly, but I'm a little psyched out at this point.

If you have any advice to help get me through this rehearsal process I'd be happy to hear it. I only have two and a half weeks, I'll do whatever I have to do to ace this.

Stupid Performance Face :\

divabat — Fri, 04 Sep 2009 00:16:03 -0800

Performers, presenters, actors, dancers, models, all related: How do you get over awkward facial expressions and not look stupid? I've been performing on and off but really only got into it this year. I've learnt a lot and have had many opportunities, but there's still something I need to work on: facial expressions.

I'm ok with being neutral, being defiant/angry, and with silly happy acting-type gestures; however, I'm doing a piece that starts off as being this cheesy Bettie Page "omg damsel in distress" thing and I can't seem to pull it off. I tend to focus more on my outfit/apparatus than on the audience, and my face just looks really really weird.

I've asked around and the main thing I hear is "practice" - is there anything in the specific I should practice on? I find it strange looking at my face in the mirror while performing. How else have you gotten over "urgh I look stupid"?

The Juicer List

pmaxwell — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:21:36 -0800

Is there a website that tracks which players are currently serving a suspension for steroids or performance enhancing drugs – one site many/all sports? I've only located this

Monitoring Exchange Performance without admin access

Coolcan2 — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 00:51:38 -0800

How do I monitor ms exchange 2003 performance without admin access? Hi Guys,

I'm trying to log exchange performance on our hosted service. A number of guys around the office experience drop outs, and long outbox queues.

I was wondering to what extent I am able to monitor exchange performance from a lowly user account.

Bonus points if you can recomend a way to do this in *nix. :)

Thanks.

What do you know about sports psychology?

COD — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:42:08 -0800

What do you know about sports psychology? My 15 year old son is a competitive fencer and has a tendency to dwell on the point he just lost, which tends to cause him to lose the next point, which he then dwells on even more, etc. I can't relax on the strip for him, so I'm looking for books or resources I can point him towards to help. To be clear, he is not a raving lunatic on the strip. He is not throwing things, screaming, or anything like that. It's all internal. He has been on the cusp of earning his first national rating for a few months and I think the pressure he is putting on himself to earn that rating is affecting him negatively. And of course, when you are 15, a single bad day is the end of the world. A lot of it is probably just his age.

Has anybody had any success applying specific techniques from a book or class or whatever? I was at best a recreational athlete growing up so I've got nothing to offer him from personal experience. There are hundreds of books at Amazon. I have no idea which ones might actually be useful.

A note to any fencers here. Yes, I know the difference between an E and unrated fencer is mostly being in the right place at the right time to finish high enough to earn a rating. Try telling that to a 15 year old.

Arts and Cultural Appropriation

divabat — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 20:19:50 -0800

How have issues of cultural appropriation, stereotypes, and diversity been tackled in art and popular culture? I'm in the early stages of working on a performance piece on cultural appropriation and identity in the arts, and I'm looking for inspiration from others that have done the same. So far I am only familiar with Guillermo Gómez-Peña and his Living Museum of Fetish/ized Identities, and the SF/fantasy RaceFail debacle.

I am especially interested in these issues as they occur in burlesque, circus, and theatre, since that's what I'm working with, but any creative field would be good too.

Poems of direct address?

Ambrosia Voyeur — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:16:06 -0800

What are some good poems to read aloud, that take the form of direct address? Something about the specific nature of address comes easily to me in performance, and I am looking for poems to read which thus allow me to inhabit the speaker in that particular way. "Daddy" by Sylvia Plath, and "To a Mouse" by Robert Burns were really fun for me to perform, for example.

LARP-making 101

divabat — Sun, 26 Jul 2009 10:36:50 -0800

How do you organise, structure, and run a LARP - particularly one that's a little bit unusual? I'm quite inspired by White Elephant Burlesque, which is part burlesque troupe part LARP. They have a storyline, with characters, and they perform in character.

I would like to do something similar (and they've given me their blessing) - I have a storyline that could work quite well. How do I get it going?

1. The storyline I have in mind has some set characters, and a basic plot, though there is always room for innovation and deviation. How strict should the plot be? How about the characterisations?

2. Do I assign characters to players? Do I cast for certain people to play certain parts?

3. I don't imagine my story will involve a lot of combat or any other points-gathering activity; however, having quests and challenges for the characters sounds interesting (the overall story quest I had in mind centers around the identity of a spirit and their murderer). What are some creative ways of incorporating quests into a LARP like this?

4. From what I can envision, this is something that would likely be played over time - and sometimes online - and many of the players would either be burlesque/performer types that are new to gaming, or people that like to RP but may be new to performing. I'm not out for stage talent here, just a bit of fun. How can I best organise people's time and have them get along with as little conflict as possible?

Any other resources on running and structuring a LARP, or any other related game style that can help (as I write this I realise this has shades of murder mysteries) would be helpful too.

Guitarist with hyperhydrosis and oily skin needs help

sid abotu — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 17:27:22 -0800

I am a borderline professional guitarist who suffers from hyperhydrosis (excessive sweating) and also seems to have developed a very oil-extruding physiology. Is there anything I can do to make it so that I don't have to wash my hands between each and every song? If not, what is the most efficient way to clean up and dry off my hands every five minutes or so? I am 39 years old and I have been playing guitar for 30 years. I play acoustic fingerstyle and I am pretty aggressive/hard in my approach to the instrument (but I don't dance around!). I don't eat an overly fatty or greasy diet and I am overall a pretty healthy person. I live in Ottawa, Canada, and despite what you might have heard this is an incredibly hot and humid location and my problem is particularly acute this time of year. I am open to suggestions of more moderate (and musical!) climates.

During the last decade my physiology has changed or some kind of perfectly awful storm of the extreme sweating I have always had (I think it is getting worse) and oily excretions has combined to make my favourite activity extremely frustrating and frankly it has made the prospect of returning to gigging scary. I wash my hands thoroughly using a standard bar of soap, rinse and dry, pick up my guitar and play a song and by the end of the tune my hands are wet and greasy. Hell, even just typing this question thus far (after having washed my hands for the 20th time today) I can feel the stickiness.

I am not OCD, this is a real impediment. Do any other musicians or folks who have dealt with this kind of situation have any guidance for me re. techniques to cope with this kind of problem? I know that there are dubious (nerve-severing!) surgeries for hyperhydrosis but I am not there yet: I am more interested in coping mechanisms that you might have discovered.

certified hug specialist needs tools

diode — Sat, 18 Jul 2009 11:12:02 -0800

I'm building a bit of performance art that involves testing people for their hug level. I need some kind of funky device that I can use to 'test' people for this. Okay, so this is a game to play with people. I need some kind of toy or device that looks a bit absurd that I can wave around people and test their hug level. Hopefully it makes a noise and blinks or something. It needs to have a level I can set to 'low' so the testee evidently needs a hug.
The more ridiculous, the better. I'm thinking there is some kind of device that measures skin resistance or proximity that I can repurpose to look like a 'hug' meter, relabel the dials and so forth.
Toys that can re-purposed, or inexpensive electronic kits would be good for this.
Those metal detector wands at airport security are something like what I need but are probably beyond my budget.

Pimp my aging Macbook Pro!

bokane — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 05:47:13 -0800

My trusty old first-generation Macbook Pro is nearing the end of its 3-year warranty, and I'm debating whether to splurge on one of the sexy new machines or to see what I can do to put a little bit more oomph into it. It's already at the maximum 2 GB of RAM, so no luck there, and I could swear that it's running significantly slower lately, despite liberal application of Onyx and other 'performance tuners.'
I've looked envyingly at friends with SSD-based Apple laptops, and was thinking that something like that might be worth trying, but would the speed gains I'd get on an older machine be worth the hassle? And is this something I should wait until Snow Leopard for?

While I'm at it: these first-generation Macbook Pros, they're pretty hot. Like, uncomfortable to have on the lap. I'm using smcfancontrol and have that sucker cranked all the way up to 6000 RPM, and my core temperature still never gets below about 55 degrees centigrade. I seem to recall reading something about part of the problem being improperly applied thermal paste, but there endeth my knowledge of the matter. Is this something I could see about dealing with myself, or would I be tempting fate a bit too much?

Sandwiches at the Strathmore Center?

imjustsaying — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 14:20:29 -0800

Will we be allowed to bring a soft cooler with some sandwiches into the outdoor venue tomorrow night when we go to see Last Train Home at Montgomery County, MD's Strathmore Center? This is a "Friday Nights Out Back" event. I did a thorough search of the Strathmore web site and found no policy in place on this.

Salvage or DTMFA and Start Over?

rokusan — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 14:23:09 -0800

I've inherited an older PC from work and would like to turn it into a media center / game-playing box, but I'm not sure if it's up to snuff. I've inherited a Compaq Presario mini-tower, SR1315 (specs). The hard disk died and it wasn't worth replacing, apparently, so they got a whole new PC. I can add a new hard disk myself of course. It has a 2005 manufacturing date sticker on the back.

It's only an AMD Sempron 3100+ CPU, which seems pretty wimpy to me, but it does have 2Gb of RAM. It was last running WinXP SP3 and "seemed" snappy and fast to me the couple of times I used it, but I haven't re-installed Windows or ~~downl~~ purchased any real games yet to push it, since it's due for a fresh setup anyway. I just popped it open and dusted the crap out of it, and I'll be ordering a new HD shortly.

In addition to poor built-in graphics (unused), it has an add-on video card someone threw in there, which (reading the sticker) is a 256Mb GeForce FX5500. It's PCI and not AGP, though there is an open AGP slot. This card was doing 1920x1200 DVI last week.

But I doubt that's enough. Would a better video card bring this beast up to spec enough for Fallout 3 or the Valve games, or will that processor pretty much cripple me? If a video card is enough to do it, which one should I be finding?

The CPU looks soldered-on to me (damn Compaq), so that's not an easy upgrade path. I am guessing that motherboard swaps aren't easy on these "brand name" PCs, since the connectors and cutouts probably won't ever line up.

Other than gaming, HDMI would be nice I suppose, so I could hook it into the LCD in the living room. I assume XP is still the right choice to squeeze the best performance.

So.... is there hope, or is that CPU a killer, which means I should I just junk it and pick up a new no-name case/power supply and start fresh?

Any other related advice is welcome, especially if I'm dead wrong on my assumptions above. If the consensus is DTMFA, I have seen many MeFi threads on spec'ing out a new one so I'm okay on that I think.

(I'm reasonably capable of doing anything technical short of soldering, but I'm not a native Windows person so use small words, please.)