Help Save This Site

OK, this site is starting to push the limit of what my shared host can do, and they’re requiring me to move to a dedicated server, starting at $150/month — which I can’t afford. And I was going to go with these guys, but in the week I last checked on them, most of their VPS accounts are gone. Lovely…

I’ve got an e-mail into the folks at Dinix (which is run by former execs at my current host) to see what they have to say, and I plan on tweaking the templates and turning off anything unnecessary for this site as soon as possible to lessen the CPU load on the server (it really doesn’t help that MovableType is a bit of a processor hog).

In the meantime, does anybody have a dedicated box just sitting somewhere that could host this site until I can afford a dedicated box? Or does somebody have a crap-load of money they’d like to donate? Hopefully I won’t have to take this site down, but if I can’t round up SOMETHING soon, then it might have to come down while I figure out something.

I’ll keep you posted.

Update on 3/4: Talked to my Web host, as well as the folks at the potential new host. The new host is going to get more VPS servers today, and will e-mail me when they get some.

But for the folks in the comments who were asking for raw stats, here were my Webalizer stats for last month:

Hits: 2368587

Files: 1368094

Pages: 65380

Visits: 22917

KB: 10988373

So my bandwidth isn’t excessively high, it’s my hits, claims my host. Yes, 2-mill is a good pile of hits, but most of that is little small graphics on each page, as well as external calls to various files. In other words, all things considered, it could be a lot worse. And a lot of folks were linking to my images directly, causing me to implement link protection (though it doesn’t work all that great sometimes). But every time an image gets blocked, it still sends a hit through to the logs, and a hit gets counted, despite the fact that only a minimal amount of HTTP headers is getting sent.

They said it wasn’t a particular script or anything that caused them to decide to move me, and they couldn’t really tell me the exact reason for the move, other than the hits issue. Regardless, I’m still planning on doing some tweaks to this template, hopefully speed things up a bit, make rebuilds and comments faster, etc… . I’ve already made PHP includes out of most of my stuff (there are very few MT include tags, if any, on this site, and I’m using MT tags as little as possible), and I’m using the MySQL-version of MT. I’m going to make fewer entries show up on the front page, as well as tweaking my archive options, and probably remove the random quote thingy for now. I’m probably going to tweak my front page a bit to cater towards the shorter entries I generally post, but we’ll have to see how that will work.

Hell, maybe I’ll just revert back to the default MT templates, and start using a kick-ass stylesheet, and maybe that will help things along.

But I will keep everybody here posted as to what’s going on.

Update again: I’ve redone the template, and removed a lot of the extra crap. No more stats bit, no more random quote, replaced or got rid of EVERY graphic file on the page, other than the logo, moved some stuff around, got rid of weekly archives, so things should go fine for now. I’ll update my helpdesk ticket to see if this will keep them at bay for a while until I can get things moved.

March 4, 2004

Trackable RSS

RSS feeds are great as a spam-free tool for publishers to distribute information. However, the biggest problem is that, unlike Web hits, statistics on who’s reading the feeds aren’t available. There’s no tracking features apparent in RSS.

A couple of firms are trying to change this:

A couple of marketing firms, IMN and RSSads, recently debuted what they claim to be trackable RSS feeds that go along with their services. How does it work? IMN president Kathleen Goodwin told ClickZ, “We’ve encoded all the links — usually with an RSS feed you get a subject of an article and a link. Every link provided is a unique trackable link. When you open up the feed we know it. Every time you refresh the feed we count it. And when you click to read a particular article we register that.” Apparently, RSSads take a different approach, by embedding a transparent GIF in the feed. It will be interesting to see customer reviews on how accurate or useful these statistics really are.

I can see this, if this works, as the major stumbling point for adoptions by other major media outlets, especially now that ads are appearing in RSS.

March 3, 2004

And you thought the TeleTubbies were weird

Have you seen BooBah? It’s a show that appears at 7:00 AM here on PBS, and if you thought the Teletubbies was a bad acid trip, wait until you’ve seen this show. I thought nothing could get more cosmic and out there than the TeleTubbies, but I was wrong.

Needless to say, my youngest daughter loves it. I don’t know what to think about it. I’ve yet to be able to sit down and watch a whole episode, let alone a few of them, to be able to make a decision about it, but I do know what I’ve seen freaks me out.

But I guess I’m not their target audience, so it’s doing its job. A quick search for the title on Google came up with an article slamming it, as well as a FAQ as to what the hell it is, as well as an interview with its creator.

March 3, 2004

The movement’s heading North

First the city of San Francisco was giving away marriage licenses to gay couples, and now Multnomah County (Portland for you folks who don’t live here) is planning on doing the same thing. Meanwhile, Bush is trying to ban gay marriages. This could all prove interesting, come election time.

Update on 3/3: They’re discussing this issue locally in Bend as well.

March 3, 2004

The Girl Who Feels No Pain

She’s three years old, and she could fall off a cliff and not feel it:

Gabby Gingras has a disease so rare she’s the only person her parents and doctors can find in the U.S. suffering from it. Like any other three-year-old, Gabby takes her share of slips and falls. Her reaction to each is predictable — at least for her family.

For no matter how hard Gabby hits the ground, she will not shed a single tear. Hard as it is to fathom Gabby Gingras feels no pain. There is no cure, nor will she outgrow it.

March 2, 2004

How To Write Unmaintainable Code

Programmers out there will appreciate this:

In the interests of creating employment opportunities in the Java programming field, I am passing on these tips from the masters on how to write code that is so difficult to maintain, that the people who come after you will take years to make even the simplest changes. Further, if you follow all these rules religiously, you will even guarantee yourself a lifetime of employment, since no one but you has a hope in hell of maintaining the code. Then again, if you followed all these rules religiously, even you wouldn’t be able to maintain the code!

Priceless.

March 2, 2004

Another Unfortunate URL

And it’s for a Baptist Church, of all things. Link via Davezilla, who also links to a pile of other great ones, like Speedo Fart.

March 2, 2004

I need one of these in my server

Not only is the Pentium Xeon MP getting bumped up to 3.0 ghz, but it’s getting a 4 megabyte L3 cache. However, the thing’s going to run nearly $4,000, while the AMD Opteron can be had for less than half that.

March 2, 2004

Building Servers and Moving Hosts

Been a busy day. Finally got my parts and such to build my new server here at work, so I’ve been spending all day troubleshooting it all playing nice with each other, getting the RAID array setup properly, etc… . It’s been a barrel of laughs, let me tell ya, as it’s killed my entire day, and I don’t even have the OS installed. Ugh… .

I am still looking for a few more parts, especially a Slotket (a Pentium III Slot 1 to Socket 370 adapter) that will work in a dual CPU configuration on a Tyan Tiger 100 motherboard. If you have the parts, e-mail me your asking price.

On a related tech note, I’m going to probably be moving Web host companies later this week to hopefully resolve some speed issues that have come about on this site as well as the others I host. I’m also looking into redesigning the template for UtterlyBoring.com to make it a little less of an intensive load, but that’ll probably be coming down the line. I’ll keep you posted.

March 1, 2004

“I f**ked a RealDoll”

(None of the following links are safe for work, if you’re like me and stuck at work on a Sunday.)

Talk about some gonzo journalism. This journalist, curious what sex with a RealDoll feels like, decides to find out for himself, and document and take pictures of the whole thing. Anything in the name of Science, indeed. Link via b3ta.

February 29, 2004