I'm using NearlyFreeSpeech for hosting, and the one problem is, they don't do cron.
The preferred solution is to use a web cron service, which is fine by me, except that I have some processes which take a while and I don't want the web cron service to wait for them.
How do I make a quick hit on a URL at mydomain.com/dostuff.cgi, start my processes, send back "Content-type: text/plain\n\nOK" and have the processes continue after the HTTP interaction is over? I have a dim idea that there are such things as threads and child processes but I've never used them.