Meet the Bloggers
February 26, 2002
Ben and Mena Trott, the authors of Movable Type - the blogging software I use and LOVE - will be on the Screen Savers tonight.
Loading ...Growing Pains
February 21, 2002
Success brings its own problems.
When I started this web site in ‘96 or ‘97 there wasn’t much to it, just a few files and sound effects for download, maybe an occasional editorial (see for yourself).
In the last year I’ve added this blog and a message board. Both features have proved much more popular than I ever expected, taxing my puny little server, and the programs I chose to use, beyond their capabilities. To say nothing of my capabilities.
I upgraded the blog to Movable Type and that’s been a great improvement. Now the message boards and the server itself seem to be spinning down the great disposal of life.
Mike Chandler of Annex.com, a regular around here, has offered me server space on a fresh new Dell box with such nice bells and whistles as PHP and MySQL. I think I’ll probably take him up on it.
And I’m looking at alternative message board solutions. With access to MySQL I can try some databased programs that should be more responsive and better able to handle the heavy traffic that the Town Square has developed. One of the possibilities is InfoPop’s UBBThreads. It’s being used by some pretty big sites (including Ms. Magazine and Playboy - strange bedfellows). Ars Technica also uses it. If you’re a heavy user of the Leoville message boards I’d appreciate your feedback on UBB, and I’d like to hear about any other programs you think I should consider.
Moving the server and adopting new software is a major undertaking, and I only want to do this once, so any advice or input you can give me before I begin is much appreciated. Just add them to the comments here on the blog, if you would.
I promise to make this as seamless as possible for you all!
Poor Leo’s 2003 Almanac
February 17, 2002
I met with a bunch of folks from my publisher, Pearson/Que Publishing, on Friday. They were very positive about my book. They said its sales continue to rise, which is very unusual. We’re doing about 100 copies a day on Amazon alone. In fact, I’m currently Pearson’s best-selling book on Amazon.com. Their number 2 book is Strunk and White’s The Elements of Style. Wow! Actually it’s pretty amazing that Strunk and White is still selling so well after five decades. I’ve got my copy and use it religiously. It’s a must have book for writers.
So I’m beginning work on the next edition of Poor Leo’s Almanac. I spent some time talking with them about how I’d like it to be different this time. There will be much more content, including personal tech like cell phones, digital cameras, and MP3 players. It will also be more like an almanac with a table of contents up front and folksier production. They seem to agree that it should be a Leo book - not a compendium of other people’s stuff. They really liked the personality and voice of the book. They also like the page a day idea so it will be somewhat thicker. We may include a CD or DVD, as well. But we all agreed to keep the price where it is.
All in all it was a very satisfactory meeting. They think the book will become a very successful series - with a new one each year. I’m totally thrilled. Thanks for all your support (and putting up with the incessant plugs)!
Darn all spammers to heck!
February 12, 2002
Several of you have emailed me about a spam message you’ve received with the subject line:
Fw: http://www.leoville.com/mt/archives/
I have also received that spam message. The company sending it out, www.trafficbbs.com, is spamming - they have nothing to do with me. Apparently they’re harvesting addresses from blog comments. I will attempt to get them to stop but I don’t have high hopes. The company slogan is:
Offer you great data of 50,000+ search engines & 120,000+ BBS!
Present you to a magic world of instant & effective online communication!
And there’s no phone number on the web page. Just a fax number.
These things happen all the time. The best defense is to not use your email address anywhere on the web. As long as a page is publicly accessible, a spammer can harvest the addresses.
Since most of the time they use automated programs to do the harvesting, it’s possible to use a human readable address that confounds the robots. Something like:
leo at (die spammers die) leoville.com
I’m sorry that that’s necessary, but that’s the way of the web, alas.
Net Facts
February 9, 2002
I was looking at my list of referrals (something new I added to the front page, mostly as a little Perl project) and I noticed a link from NetFactual.com. Turns out they were probing my site as part of a study they’re doing on every first page on the web!
The site itself is kind of interesting if you like Internet factoids. Did you know that 71.8% of web sites are active? Or that .NET is the fastest growing top level domain? Kind of a fun site. I look forward to seeing the results of their latest survey.
Internet Everywhere
February 8, 2002
Can I say it again? I LOVE WiFi.
My daughter has been cast in a community theater production of Peter Pan. She will play two roles: Jane, Wendy Darling’s daughter, whom Peter spirits off at the end of the play, and a Lost Boy
Unfortunately, the theater — and the twice weekly rehearsals — are in San Anselmo, about midway between San Francisco and our home in Sonoma county. Abby is ecstatic about doing it, and Jennifer and I are both thwarted actors, so we couldn’t very well say no, even though it involves a lot of extra driving. We’ve arranged it that Jennifer will drive Abby down and drop her off. Then I’ll pick her up on my way home from work. But she has to rehearse until 9p. I’m pretty good at killing time, but it does mean a couple of extra hours with nothing to do. That’s where the WiFi comes in.
I brought my iBook to the first rehearsal this evening, and, out of habit, I checked for an open Airport network in the rehearsal building. Lo and behold, there was one! I’m using it now. I have no idea whose it is, and I suppose I should try and find out, but it’s awfully nice to have high-speed Internet access while I wait.
I and many others have a dream of free WiFi access everywhere. And, oddly enough, it’s more common than I would have ever thought. I’ve been able to use my Airport equipped iBook in all sorts of unexpected places. The San Francisco Bay Area Wireless Users Group maintains a list of OpenNAPs, freely shared WiFi access points, all over the area. If you’ve never experienced the joy of unexpected, unconnected Internet access, I can highly recommend it.
Rank Vanity
February 5, 2002
Obviously my unwholesome obsession with my book’s ranking at Amazon.com isn’t unusual. In fact, there’s an entire web site devoted to authors’ unwholesome obsessions with their Amazon ranking. Amazonscan.com tracks your book, video tape, or tchotchke over time. And even ranks the top gainers and losers each day. Like a stock ticker.
My personal page shows the hour by hour ranking of my book since it shipped on December 5. But that’s just not enough. I need a chart.
I’m guessing the high peaks after Christmas and 1/12 occurred when Amazon ran out of stock. But I love how it’s hovered below 40 ever since. Hey. I’m not getting any money for this book. I’ve got to get my jollies somehow.
And, no, I haven’t written a Perl program to update the graph yet. It only reflects results through 2/4. Although…
Paul Blog
February 1, 2002
The Executive Producer of a TV show is the man in charge. He determines the direction and style of the show and manages the staff. For a long time The Screen Savers didn’t even have an EP. But for the past year we’ve been very fortunate to have Paul Block in charge. He’s a TV veteran who worked for everyone from Johnny Carson to George Hamilton. And he is one of the few people I’d trust with my show.
We work very well together. While I’m totally oriented toward the geek, he’s a very positive influence to making the show more accessible to everyone. Under his command we’ve more than quadrupled our audience. And I Paul and I both intend to take TSS to the top.
And now I’ve convinced Paul to start his own blog! I’m hosting it here on Leoville. I expect Paul will use it to share his thinking about the show with you and to give you a chance to give him feedback. We’re both really excited about the possibilites and I know you will come to like and respect Paul as much as I do. Make sure to ask him about his past - he’s got some great stories.
So please bookmark Paul Blog and visit regularly. I have a feeling it’s going to be a really fun place to visit.
Referring to Referers
February 1, 2002
Leoville went down earlier today for a few hours. It was out yesterday for about an hour, too. I contacted my excellent web host, Nacio, and they brought it back. Here’s what they said…
We have noticed that 2 IP addresses are consistently opening and not closing connections to your website: 12.xx.xx.xxx and 172.xx.xx.xxx. On average, each IP will have 60 open TCP sessions on a 24/7 basis. Are you familiar with these IPs? If not, we may look in to blocking them, as their irregular activity may be part of the problem.Also, we have been monitoring the disk usage on your site. Currently you are using 1.5GB total–roughly 1.4GB being your discussion board. As you are on a shared webserver–geared toward smaller 40 - 80MB sites–we were hoping that you could remove some content from your site. Would 500MB be sufficient, or do you need more?
I asked them to block the two IP addresses and that’s seemed to help. I’m going to have to cut back on the disk usage, too. Obviously the boards have gotten way out of control. I’m pruning messages older than 90 days and I’ll probably cut the max file size to 50kb. Sorry to have to do that, but I really would like to keep this site running!
On another note, I’ve been playing with Dave Winer’s new Radio blogging software and I have to say it’s wonderful. I’m sticking with Movable Type, but for anyone who wants to create their own web site without having to struggle with the tech this is it. It finally fulfills the web’s promise to be the people’s publishing platform. You can read the temporary blog I set up to play with it at weblogs.com. It literally took me 10 minutes to get it up and running. And it’s free for 30 days - $40 for a year including the web hosting. If you’ve been thinking about blogging try Radio.
While playing with Radio, I noticed that the link to referrers is misspelled on the admin page. No blame to Dave Winer for this. The misspelling dates back to the original HTTP spec which also misspells referrers as “referers.”
This ancient error caused me endless confusion when I was writing my own Perl referers routine (it’s running on Leoville now. To see the most recent 20 referring pages click here). The program failed at first because I kept spelling referrers correctly. It took me a while to figure out where I was going wrong.
But the misspelling poses an interesting problem. Do you perpetuate it, as Dave has done, in public, or do you continue to spell it correctly while using the non-traditional spelling inside your programs? I chose the latter route on the front page of Leoville, but I might be in the minority.
In fact, this is exactly how a language evolves. I suppose, in time, “referers” will become the correct spelling, all thanks to a small spelling error at the W3C. Even though programmers are notoriously bad spellers, I can’t think of another instance where a misspelling has become enshrined in a spec. Can you?
And you can bet I spell checked this post before submitting it.
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Radio Leo (press play)- TWiT 142: I Like Big Pockets
- Daily Giz Wiz 566: Magellan's Eagle Creek Travel Alarm
- Munchcast 30: Mom's Home Cookin'
- Jumping Monkeys 45: Dr. Ruthann Russo
- Windows Weekly 58: Mission Accomplished
- Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy 453
- Daily Giz Wiz 565: Snappy Video Snapshot
- Security Now 143: YubiKey - Sponsored by Astaro Corp.
- Leo Laporte - The Tech Guy 452
- Daily Giz Wiz 564: The Socket Pocket
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