A Pipe and a Keyboard

My first venture into the world of animation!

Filed under: General on October 11th, 2009 | 8 Comments »

So the dust seems to have settled on a rather tricky day yesterday.

It started with a cautionary email to warn me that Head Rambles was receiving a lot of traffic and that this was interfering with other sites on the shared webspace.  I had been meaning to move it to its own area anyway so this came as no surprise.

Head Rambles is effectively hosted on three servers – mail, web and database.  The move was simply a matter of moving the files on the web server to a new area.

Simple?

No.

Copying across the files should have worked, as all references to the database should retain their integrity, which they did.  However, Word Press and its ancillary plug-ins isn’t quite so flexible.  It transpired that there were quite a few references in the database tables to absolute paths.

A typical entry in a record could be something along the lines of the following:

/usr/local/pxm/vhosts/115124/webspace/httpdocs/headrambles/wp-content/

However, moving the site files from webspace 115124 to webspace 120566 could have implications for the site, as the record would then have to read

/usr/local/pxm/vhosts/120566/webspace/httpdocs/headrambles/wp-content/

That aside, the site should have functioned normally, with maybe a loss of functionality in a couple of plug-ins.

It didn’t.

For some reason, the site refused to function in its new home.  It was slow, to put it mildly, and while I was desperately trying to find the cause of this, I got another mail from the people in Blacknight. 

I must point out here, that I had been trying to sort the problem out on my own.  Blacknight had obviously been monitoring both Twitter (where there were a few caustic comments about the site being down) and the site itself, as they then stepped in and moved the whole site to a new server.

Anyway, the site ran perfectly in its new location (apart from the few changes that had to be made to the database), and we never did discover the cause of the original problem.

I cannot sing the prises of Blacknight highly enough.  They saw a problem.  They solved it.  As they are a large company, they presumably have a fairly healthy workload, yet they dropped all to help a client in trouble, even though I had not wanted to bother them.

So – a huge thanks to Niall, Nils and especially Paul.  And of course to Michele for running the best hosting company in the business.

Filed under: Blogging, Tech stuff on October 7th, 2009 | No Comments »

Driving through Sarlat in France the other day, it occurred to me just how much technology has changed holidays.

First and foremost, satellite navigation has changed things dramatically.  Part of my preparation for holidays used to be the frantic gathering of maps and then plotting out routes.  Of course if I was going to some new area, this would mean ordering maps for the destination area too.  I would spend hours plotting out the best route to take, frantically jotting down notes to keep by me as I drove.

All that is done away with now.  The first time I took out the maps was the day before we left.  I took no notes and although I brought all my maps with me, I haven’t used them.  I have no need, as if I want to go to a particular spot, I just program the SatNav, and off I go.  Of course there are side benefits too.  If I am running low on petrol, all I need do is ask the SatNav and it will happily list all the nearest petrol stations and how to get to them.  That has been a life saver on more than one occasion and, what’s more, that is something even the best maps can’t do.

The mobile phone has also changed things.  Up to a decade or so ago, if I went on holiday, I was incommunicado for the duration.  No one could contact me, and if I wanted to contact anyone, it meant finding a phone box and making a trunk call.  Now I can instantly text anyone from anywhere.  Apart from that, it makes exploring a town a little easier.  The two of us can separate and go our different ways, and then meet up again after a quick phone call.

The Internet has had a big impact this holiday.  The place where we are staying has high speed wireless access and this has been a tremendous boon.  I have used Google Earth to find the best car parks in a strange town and even found the best areas within that town to visit.  I have used it to find out the opening times of the various shops around.  I have used it as a gazetteer to find out a little more about the places we intend visiting.  Naturally I can use it to keep track of the bank accounts and how the spending is going.  I can even use it to top up my mobile phone.

There is one thing that technology has not replaced though.

I still send postcards!

Filed under: General, Tech stuff on September 19th, 2009 | 2 Comments »