Techie :: Techno ::: February 2008 Archives
Adrian Weckler's column this week doesn't mention facebook, but he does cover EULAs and the demise of HD DVDs. (I can't seem to find either article on the SBPost site)
Argos has opened in Carlow, so I'm going to see how bad the traffic is shortly. Hopefully the bypass will help take some of the traffic away from the town, as the commercial centres must be suffering. I'm currently in the market for DVD storage solutions and a new TV stand, so I'll be heading to a few of the shops around the town this afternoon to see what's available and at what price.
AJ has an interesting post about security. His focus is on what the search engines are indexing and highlights some common mistakes.
Tonight is the Oscars. I'd love to stay up and watch them live, but I've got to be awake for work in the morning! The Academy is offering some really cool posters again this year including one celebrating 80 years of best picture. It won't be shipping until after the ceremony (obviously)
While working on one of my quieter blogs I realised that Google Analytics wasn't installed BUT the Google Analytics web interface happily told me that it was. Moral of the story - don't trust them!
I'd love to be able to report some of the odd sales and support queries we get, but this week we've had one that I can mention:
- caller number 1 who wins the prize for odd sales query of the month wanted to know if we ran an escort service
- caller number 2 wanted to apply for a technical role and asked what a PDF was. And no - their native language was English!
Argos has opened in Carlow, so I'm going to see how bad the traffic is shortly. Hopefully the bypass will help take some of the traffic away from the town, as the commercial centres must be suffering. I'm currently in the market for DVD storage solutions and a new TV stand, so I'll be heading to a few of the shops around the town this afternoon to see what's available and at what price.
AJ has an interesting post about security. His focus is on what the search engines are indexing and highlights some common mistakes.
Tonight is the Oscars. I'd love to stay up and watch them live, but I've got to be awake for work in the morning! The Academy is offering some really cool posters again this year including one celebrating 80 years of best picture. It won't be shipping until after the ceremony (obviously)
While working on one of my quieter blogs I realised that Google Analytics wasn't installed BUT the Google Analytics web interface happily told me that it was. Moral of the story - don't trust them!
I'd love to be able to report some of the odd sales and support queries we get, but this week we've had one that I can mention:
- caller number 1 who wins the prize for odd sales query of the month wanted to know if we ran an escort service
- caller number 2 wanted to apply for a technical role and asked what a PDF was. And no - their native language was English!
Maybe it all started being "cool" or "hip" or something to use silly names for companies or products, but when a product has a reasonably sane name, why on earth would you change it?
OpenAds have decided that using a logical name simply isn't good enough.
OpenAds was descriptive and quite clear. Sure it may have taken a while to get used to the change from PhpAdsNew, but the first change of name had a certain degree of logic:
Open - open source
Ads - adverts, ads, advertising
For a banner management suite that made perfect sense to mere mortals like me.
Now they've decided to "rebrand" themselves as "OpenX"
Their explanation is odd to say the least.
Of course their names aren't nearly as bad as some of the ones mentioned in one of Mike Butcher's recent articles
(This coming from a guy who decided to build a brand called Blacknight :) ) *cough* - though in my defence I've never had any thoughts of changing the name ....
OpenAds have decided that using a logical name simply isn't good enough.
OpenAds was descriptive and quite clear. Sure it may have taken a while to get used to the change from PhpAdsNew, but the first change of name had a certain degree of logic:
Open - open source
Ads - adverts, ads, advertising
For a banner management suite that made perfect sense to mere mortals like me.
Now they've decided to "rebrand" themselves as "OpenX"
Their explanation is odd to say the least.
Of course their names aren't nearly as bad as some of the ones mentioned in one of Mike Butcher's recent articles
(This coming from a guy who decided to build a brand called Blacknight :) ) *cough* - though in my defence I've never had any thoughts of changing the name ....
I'm currently working on a new project in the evenings and weekends that involves playing with merchant datafeeds.
The big lesson I've learnt in the last 48 hours is that XML is a pig to work with.
The data from merchant X weighs in at 84 megs as a CSV. If you grab the same data as XML you end up with a massive 261 megs. Sure, hard drives are cheap, but the server load goes through the roof when it has to process the larger XML file...
Moral of the story - stick to CSV
The big lesson I've learnt in the last 48 hours is that XML is a pig to work with.
The data from merchant X weighs in at 84 megs as a CSV. If you grab the same data as XML you end up with a massive 261 megs. Sure, hard drives are cheap, but the server load goes through the roof when it has to process the larger XML file...
Moral of the story - stick to CSV
I signed up for a StumbleUpon account nearly 3 years ago. Of course I lost the login details and ended up creating another account last year, which I then forgot about. Bernie was inviting people to connect with him earlier this evening, so I dugout the original emails...
While I can appreciate that StumbleUpon is free and useful it's got some really annoying UI / "user experience" glitches.
Why does the main page invite me to "join" when I'm already logged in?
Why does the "invite friends" screen insist on sending emails to people instead of actually searching for them? There is an option to find people via their email address, but it's well and truly buried.
The invite friends email isn't particularly well crafted either. Instead of sending you to a page to join OR login it forces you to signup, so Bernie's emails earlier this evening will probably have frustrated a load of other people (unintentionally on his part).
Jaiku has been offline for most of today, which is a pity. It looks like they're having hardware or database issues again. Pity, as its interface is so much nicer to use than Twitter.
Travian UK have restarted server 1, so hopefully I'll fare a bit better. I'm currently being slaughtered on the speed server :(
While I can appreciate that StumbleUpon is free and useful it's got some really annoying UI / "user experience" glitches.
Why does the main page invite me to "join" when I'm already logged in?
Why does the "invite friends" screen insist on sending emails to people instead of actually searching for them? There is an option to find people via their email address, but it's well and truly buried.
The invite friends email isn't particularly well crafted either. Instead of sending you to a page to join OR login it forces you to signup, so Bernie's emails earlier this evening will probably have frustrated a load of other people (unintentionally on his part).
Jaiku has been offline for most of today, which is a pity. It looks like they're having hardware or database issues again. Pity, as its interface is so much nicer to use than Twitter.
Travian UK have restarted server 1, so hopefully I'll fare a bit better. I'm currently being slaughtered on the speed server :(
While I still haven't settled on a multi-region Blu Ray player I did pickup a HD DVD player in the last couple of weeks.
Some people may say I'm insane, but they probably do that already anyway!
To be perfectly honest the only reason I got the HD DVD player was because the price was right. At just over 100 euro it would have been silly to pass it up!
The player I got was a Toshiba HD-E1, which seems to have had reasonably good reviews.
I'm still exploring the possibility of getting an "unlocked" Blu Ray player, but I'm not quite ready to hand over that much cash just yet. Of course I may wake up tomorrow morning and do it anyway, but that's part of the fun! Spontaneous and totally unplanned purchases may make me feel bad when I get my credit card bill, but they're great fun until then!
The other thing I need to sort out is a TV stand.
The one that currently graces my sitting room is simply too small. I won't be able to fit the HD DVD player in it when I take it home (it's currently sitting beside my desk in the office, as I still haven't received any HD DVDs from Amazon)
So I'm currently looking for a TV stand that can hold:
Of course there is a simply huge selection on offer over on eBay.. I just don't know how to narrow it down!
Some people may say I'm insane, but they probably do that already anyway!
To be perfectly honest the only reason I got the HD DVD player was because the price was right. At just over 100 euro it would have been silly to pass it up!
The player I got was a Toshiba HD-E1, which seems to have had reasonably good reviews.
I'm still exploring the possibility of getting an "unlocked" Blu Ray player, but I'm not quite ready to hand over that much cash just yet. Of course I may wake up tomorrow morning and do it anyway, but that's part of the fun! Spontaneous and totally unplanned purchases may make me feel bad when I get my credit card bill, but they're great fun until then!
The other thing I need to sort out is a TV stand.
The one that currently graces my sitting room is simply too small. I won't be able to fit the HD DVD player in it when I take it home (it's currently sitting beside my desk in the office, as I still haven't received any HD DVDs from Amazon)
So I'm currently looking for a TV stand that can hold:
- TV (obviously!)
- Sky Box
- Surround sound / DVD player
- HD DVD player
- Space for at least one more device
- Really ugly
- Overpriced
- Combination of both
Of course there is a simply huge selection on offer over on eBay.. I just don't know how to narrow it down!
I knew that upgrading Ubuntu had been far too easy.
There had to be a "gotcha" and of course there was.
EVMS (Enterprise Volume Management System) is no longer supported as part of the core Ubuntu distribution, but as a couple of my servers were running very old versions of Ubuntu apt did its job all too well and upgraded it for me.
End result - Siracusa, where several of my busier sites live, was very very unhappy and fell over a couple of times. Niall had a look at it for me and thought it was a hardware related issue, which was understandable. Udevd was eating CPU and the load post-reboot was over 10, which, for a relatively quiet machine, is a littled nuts!
A bit of searching this morning led to this post, where someone else had had a similar issue with a laptop. That led me to this page on the Ubuntu wiki. The package has been removed and that page outlines in detail the kind of issues that the software causes. And it fits more or less exactly with the errors in siracusa's logs!
Running a simple:
apt-get remove evms
seems to have resolved the issue - I hope!
I also cleaned up the configurations following Niall's tip:
dpkg --purge `dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | cut -f1`
There had to be a "gotcha" and of course there was.
EVMS (Enterprise Volume Management System) is no longer supported as part of the core Ubuntu distribution, but as a couple of my servers were running very old versions of Ubuntu apt did its job all too well and upgraded it for me.
End result - Siracusa, where several of my busier sites live, was very very unhappy and fell over a couple of times. Niall had a look at it for me and thought it was a hardware related issue, which was understandable. Udevd was eating CPU and the load post-reboot was over 10, which, for a relatively quiet machine, is a littled nuts!
A bit of searching this morning led to this post, where someone else had had a similar issue with a laptop. That led me to this page on the Ubuntu wiki. The package has been removed and that page outlines in detail the kind of issues that the software causes. And it fits more or less exactly with the errors in siracusa's logs!
Running a simple:
apt-get remove evms
seems to have resolved the issue - I hope!
I also cleaned up the configurations following Niall's tip:
dpkg --purge `dpkg --get-selections | grep deinstall | cut -f1`
It looks like one of my personal servers isn't very happy, so my personal email and several sites are currently unavailable.
Oh the joy!
Oh the joy!
Today's Dilbert amused me, but their copyright means I can only link to it...
Today was upgrade Ubuntu day!
For some inane reason I hadn't kept ANY of my Ubuntu servers up to date in terms of releases (they were up to date in terms of security patches).
Part of the reason why I hadn't upgraded was laziness - they were all working properly, so I didn't see any reason to fix something that wasn't broken...
Of course that meant that when I finally decided to upgrade the first server (this one) I faced an interesting dilemma.
Ubuntu has an upgrade path, however it is not direct.
If you are running Dapper and want to upgrade to Gutsy you are going to spend quite a bit of time looking at an ssh session!
The upgrade path is:
Dapper Drake > Edgy Eft > Feisty Fawn > Gutsy Gibbon
And you have to do it in that order. There doesn't seem to be anyway around that...
I'm not a *nix developer, so I can't comment on the logic, but it would be nice if someone were to come up with a method of making the upgrades from $oldish version to most recent a little bit easier and less time-consuming.
On the plus side the upgrades seem to have worked without causing any major headaches. I may regret saying that!
The first step is to verify exactly which version of Ubuntu you are currently running.
You could check your sources.list (/etc/apt/sources.list), but the "sane" way to check is by running the following command as root:
lsb_release -a
Running the upgrade itself involved simply changing the version referenced in sources.list each time and running
apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade
And then following any on screen instructions regarding changes to configurations etc.,
This server and its "relatives" are now all up to date with the latest version of Ubuntu and all the other software that goes with that
Now back to playing Travian ....
For some inane reason I hadn't kept ANY of my Ubuntu servers up to date in terms of releases (they were up to date in terms of security patches).
Part of the reason why I hadn't upgraded was laziness - they were all working properly, so I didn't see any reason to fix something that wasn't broken...
Of course that meant that when I finally decided to upgrade the first server (this one) I faced an interesting dilemma.
Ubuntu has an upgrade path, however it is not direct.
If you are running Dapper and want to upgrade to Gutsy you are going to spend quite a bit of time looking at an ssh session!
The upgrade path is:
Dapper Drake > Edgy Eft > Feisty Fawn > Gutsy Gibbon
And you have to do it in that order. There doesn't seem to be anyway around that...
I'm not a *nix developer, so I can't comment on the logic, but it would be nice if someone were to come up with a method of making the upgrades from $oldish version to most recent a little bit easier and less time-consuming.
On the plus side the upgrades seem to have worked without causing any major headaches. I may regret saying that!
The first step is to verify exactly which version of Ubuntu you are currently running.
You could check your sources.list (/etc/apt/sources.list), but the "sane" way to check is by running the following command as root:
lsb_release -a
Running the upgrade itself involved simply changing the version referenced in sources.list each time and running
apt-get update;apt-get dist-upgrade
And then following any on screen instructions regarding changes to configurations etc.,
This server and its "relatives" are now all up to date with the latest version of Ubuntu and all the other software that goes with that
Now back to playing Travian ....
I am not happy.
Over the last two months I have spent a disproportionate amount of money on Ebay. I should be ashamed, but since that isn't likely to happen I shall condemn eBay.
Ebay - you are evil!
Why do you tempt me with cool and fun ways to spend money?
Why do you let me buy high quality goods at a fraction of their high street value?
According to my eBay control panel I've spent about EUR3000 in the last 60 days!!
What have I been buying?
1 x iMac desktop computer.
Lens for my digital SLR
Bluetooth headset for my mobile phone
Carrier bag holder (thing you hang on your kitchen door for holding plastic bags - couldn't find one in the shops...)
Batmobile - Corgi diecast models
Firewalls - well I do run a hosting company!
Over the last two months I have spent a disproportionate amount of money on Ebay. I should be ashamed, but since that isn't likely to happen I shall condemn eBay.
Ebay - you are evil!
Why do you tempt me with cool and fun ways to spend money?
Why do you let me buy high quality goods at a fraction of their high street value?
According to my eBay control panel I've spent about EUR3000 in the last 60 days!!
What have I been buying?
1 x iMac desktop computer.
Lens for my digital SLR
Bluetooth headset for my mobile phone
Carrier bag holder (thing you hang on your kitchen door for holding plastic bags - couldn't find one in the shops...)
Batmobile - Corgi diecast models
Firewalls - well I do run a hosting company!
Having a proper framework for software makes things a lot easier!
We're going to be using a sane solution to rollout preinstalled scripts on our new hosting platform, so feedback would be nice
Check the company blog here
We're going to be using a sane solution to rollout preinstalled scripts on our new hosting platform, so feedback would be nice
Check the company blog here
You'll have to excuse the horrible photo, but I haven't had a chance to even plugin my new "toy". It arrived by courier late this morning, but I got caught up in client meetings for most of the afternoon...
For the last couple of years I've been forced to maintain a Windows PC in the office so that I could access AIB's online banking service. While it was possible to "bludgeon" it into working with Ubuntu it was a lot "saner" to use Windows. Fortunately AIB finally upgraded to using a proper JVM recently and made their business banking completely cross-platform and cross-browser (it probably doesn't work with lynx, but that's hardly a good example, is it? :) )
So I've no more need for my Windows desktop.
I would have considered simply rebuilding my existing PC with either pure Ubuntu or a dualboot, but since I've become quite fond of OS X I decided that I'd move to it completely. Of course moving to Apple entirely while an attractive proposition isn't exactly economical, as a decent spec iMac can set you back more than several "normal" PCs.
Thank God for eBay!
I hope to start the migration tomorrow... Or maybe Monday (time permitting!)
I finally got round to installing Urchin 6 (beta) this evening.
As my personal servers are running Ubuntu I opted for the source install, however for some reason Urchin sees it as Fedora? It works, but it's a very odd thing to report...
As the software is commercial you have to get a license. Fortunately once it's installed you can simply follow the wizard to get your license key and have the data passed back to your server.
You can then go about setting up "profiles". If you're familiar with Google Analytics then most of the jargon is almost identical.
The key difference is that Urchin can parse physical log files both local and remote ie. on the same server or anywhere else (as long as they can be accessed via FTP, HTTP or HTTPS). Unfortunately it doesn't seem to offer support for SCP or Rsync, which would be very handy.
In my case I'm primarily interested in processing raw logs and don't want to go messing about with Javascript tags (which are an option).
You can easily setup a new site profile by following the online wizard and choose multiple log sources.
The reporting interface is very similar to the old Analytics one pre-upgrade. You can choose from 3 different views, depending on which type of report you want to see.
Nothing too exciting there.
Where it gets interesting is in the speed of the interface. As it's running on one of my machines on our network I don't have to contend with the rest of the internet, so it's way faster.
The simpler UI renders different views a lot faster as well.
As it's working on local log files (my config choice) it can also give me bandwidth usage which is kind of useful. (I didn't realise GoogleBot had used nearly 7 Gigs so far this month on one site!)
The other really cool thing is the update frequency.
One of the major downsides of Analytics, especially since it went "free" is that the data is nowhere near "real time".
With Urchin you can get updates as often as you want.
If you're a stats junky you could choose to have it update every hour if you want. Plus you can choose which minute of the hour (handy if you have multiple profiles on the one machine and don't want CPU meltdown!)
I'll try and setup a few more profiles, schedule updates etc., and see how it handles things.
So far I like it, though some of the interface options are a bit counter-intuitive. Fortunately the contextual help / documentation is pretty clear, so I haven't run into any "show stoppers" just yet!
As my personal servers are running Ubuntu I opted for the source install, however for some reason Urchin sees it as Fedora? It works, but it's a very odd thing to report...
As the software is commercial you have to get a license. Fortunately once it's installed you can simply follow the wizard to get your license key and have the data passed back to your server.
You can then go about setting up "profiles". If you're familiar with Google Analytics then most of the jargon is almost identical.
The key difference is that Urchin can parse physical log files both local and remote ie. on the same server or anywhere else (as long as they can be accessed via FTP, HTTP or HTTPS). Unfortunately it doesn't seem to offer support for SCP or Rsync, which would be very handy.
In my case I'm primarily interested in processing raw logs and don't want to go messing about with Javascript tags (which are an option).
You can easily setup a new site profile by following the online wizard and choose multiple log sources.
The reporting interface is very similar to the old Analytics one pre-upgrade. You can choose from 3 different views, depending on which type of report you want to see.
Nothing too exciting there.
Where it gets interesting is in the speed of the interface. As it's running on one of my machines on our network I don't have to contend with the rest of the internet, so it's way faster.
The simpler UI renders different views a lot faster as well.
As it's working on local log files (my config choice) it can also give me bandwidth usage which is kind of useful. (I didn't realise GoogleBot had used nearly 7 Gigs so far this month on one site!)
The other really cool thing is the update frequency.
One of the major downsides of Analytics, especially since it went "free" is that the data is nowhere near "real time".
With Urchin you can get updates as often as you want.
If you're a stats junky you could choose to have it update every hour if you want. Plus you can choose which minute of the hour (handy if you have multiple profiles on the one machine and don't want CPU meltdown!)
I'll try and setup a few more profiles, schedule updates etc., and see how it handles things.
So far I like it, though some of the interface options are a bit counter-intuitive. Fortunately the contextual help / documentation is pretty clear, so I haven't run into any "show stoppers" just yet!
Urchin announced its acquisition by Google approximately 3 years ago.
I'd been in talks with Urchin prior to the acquisition and had installed a trial version of the software.
The main difference between the Urchin software and the SAAS was that one is installed on your server and reads your logs (a bit like Awstats) while the other uses a bit of Javascript in your pages to track results.
Urchin 6 was "coming soon" back in 2005, but the Google acquisition buried it.
Now, almost three years later, it looks like Google has finally decided to brush off the cobwebs and relaunch the software with a 3 month beta.
They've made available an installable version for Linux, Free BSD and Windows (not Vista - but that's not a server OS, so you wouldn't expect them to).
With a price tag of US$2995 (which will probably be a LOT higher in the EU!) it will be interesting how people react to this "new" venture from Google.
At least they won't be selling it directly, but will instead be relying on a network of partners.
I'm currently downloading the Linux version to see if much has changed in the last 3 years and will hopefully be able to report on my progress (or lack thereof) in the coming days.
It might be a little too late, as products like Sawmill, which offer similar functionality, cost a fraction of the price and can be bought directly from the developers. They also have a better track record of customer support than Google.
In any case an alternative to Google Analytics, be that Sawmill or the "new" Urchin should be welcomed by those who are concerned by Google's "big brother" position. Being able to keep details of traffic private wouldn't be such a bad thing!
I'd been in talks with Urchin prior to the acquisition and had installed a trial version of the software.
The main difference between the Urchin software and the SAAS was that one is installed on your server and reads your logs (a bit like Awstats) while the other uses a bit of Javascript in your pages to track results.
Urchin 6 was "coming soon" back in 2005, but the Google acquisition buried it.
Now, almost three years later, it looks like Google has finally decided to brush off the cobwebs and relaunch the software with a 3 month beta.
They've made available an installable version for Linux, Free BSD and Windows (not Vista - but that's not a server OS, so you wouldn't expect them to).
With a price tag of US$2995 (which will probably be a LOT higher in the EU!) it will be interesting how people react to this "new" venture from Google.
At least they won't be selling it directly, but will instead be relying on a network of partners.
I'm currently downloading the Linux version to see if much has changed in the last 3 years and will hopefully be able to report on my progress (or lack thereof) in the coming days.
It might be a little too late, as products like Sawmill, which offer similar functionality, cost a fraction of the price and can be bought directly from the developers. They also have a better track record of customer support than Google.
In any case an alternative to Google Analytics, be that Sawmill or the "new" Urchin should be welcomed by those who are concerned by Google's "big brother" position. Being able to keep details of traffic private wouldn't be such a bad thing!
Slashdot produces some classic one liners. Keeping up with them all could be a fulltime job..
This one had me knotted:
I don't have the time or the patience to trawl through the thousands of comments on sites like slashdot, so seenonslash works well for me!
This one had me knotted:
*waves hand* "I'm not the file sharer your looking for..."The original article was to do with file sharing obviously..
I don't have the time or the patience to trawl through the thousands of comments on sites like slashdot, so seenonslash works well for me!
