UPDATE: if anyone knows of a non-broken syntax highlighting plugin for wordpress that supports bash or some other shell syntax, let me know :-/ Apache logs, database backups, etc., on busy web sites, can get large. If you rotate logs or perform backups regularly, they can get large and numerous, and as we all know,…
Category: Web Services
Explosion at The Planet Causes 9000-server Outage
Here’s the email I received on Saturday from The Planet, where I have some dedicated servers hosted: Dear Valued Customers: This evening at 4:55 in our H1 data center, electrical gear shorted, creating an explosion and fire that knocked down three walls surrounding our electrical equipment room Thankfully, no one was injured. In addition, no…
Multisourced Production Infrastructure: History, and a stab at the Future
Startups are pretty fascinating. I work for a startup, and one of my good friends works for another startup. I’ve also worked for 2 other startups, one during the first “bubble”, and another one a few years later. Oh my, how the world of web startups has changed in that time! 1999: You must have…
Social Media, The Future of News, and Data Mining
I went to a very good panel discussion yesterday hosted by the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University. There has been a conference going on there that covers a lot of the overlap between technology, law, and journalism, and the panel discussion yesterday, Data Mining, Visualization, and Interactivity was even more enlightening than…
Spring Means Blooming Flowers… and Ideas
I seem to have found a pattern in my own internal workings. In the fall, I work furiously and get a lot done. Around the time of the winter holidays, I almost always do major personal web site changes and upgrades according to a mental list I’ve compiled over the previous year. In the spring,…
New web host: check!
If you’re reading this post, it means that the DNS entries have propagated, and you’re viewing my blog at it’s new location: WebFaction! Thanks to everyone who left comments in response to my cry for web host recommendations. Almost everyone mentioned webfaction in the comments, and I got a few emails with that recommendation as…
Can’t find the Ruby Kool-aid
I picked up the Apress book about Ruby for Systems Administrators, because I plan on learning enough about Ruby to make it a viable tool that I can use if I have to use it at some point. I still plan on doing that, but in reviewing the first couple of chapters, I don’t think…
Open Source, Microsoft, and the Future
Last week, I read a great blog post (and even better comments), and then this week I read something else that made me think more about Microsoft, open source, and Microsoft’s direction going into the future. By way of disclaimer, I’m indifferent to Microsoft. I don’t use their products if I don’t have to, but…
Is this thing on?
Since the recovery from my recent outage, I’ve noticed that none of the normal feed sites where my posts normally show up caught the last post, so this is a test post to see what’s going on, if it was a temporary glitch, or what. If you didn’t see the post linked above, please read…
Need a new web host
Ok, this blog is currently hosted by 1and1.com, and I think that needs to change, which is sad, because up until recently, I’ve been pretty happy with the performance. However, I recently had an issue, and some things came to light about my package that I wasn’t aware of. First of all, the maximum time…