Month: July 2003

All TTLB functions appear to be back to normal. Let me know if you still see any anomolies, but methinks everything should be OK now…

OK, I’m pretty sure I’ve identified and fixed the problem.
How’s this for obscure: The way the Ecosystem works, at a high level, is that a job is submitted for each weblog which goes out and downloads the text of the blog’s front page, and then parses it to extract links. In debugging that routine, I traced the root problem to the fread command in PHP: instead of downloading the whole page, it appeared to be getting only the first few hundred bytes. Hence: only a handful of links would be found.
Now, I am fairly certain that when Hosting Matters moved servers, the version of PHP being used was updated to 4.3.2. (I can’t prove it, as I don’t have access to the old server now — but it’s definitely 4.3.2 on the new one).
Interestingly, if you read the PHP manual, there’s a note that the behavior of fread has been changed in version 4.3.2. I can’t quite match what I’m seeing with what the note describes, but it seems awfully suspicious.
Especially since I replaced the fopen/fread combination with the new function get_file_contents, and shazam: all appeared back to normal.
Anyway; I’m running a one-off catchup run of the scan routines now, and if all goes well, things should be back to normal in a few hours. Will update again later…

Still not getting the power of the Internet:
FoxNews has debunked the Hunting for Bambi story.
Only problem? They are still running the original story, with no reference to the new piece proving it false. (And even worse, there is a reference from the new piece back to the old, disproven one…)
New link via the recently-returned Spoons….

Blogathon 2003 is on!
So go visit Amish Tech Support, A Small Victory, and Meryl Yourish and throw some pledge dollars in to support Magen David Adom .
You might as well, ’cause nothing works around here. I’ve now debugged the source of the Ecosystem problems down to the actual link-scanning job that hits each blog. It is running perfectly — except for some unknown reason, it is now only returning a tiny fraction of the actual links each blog has. Utterly frustrating…

In case you are wondering why nothing is working around here, my friends at Hosting Matters moved my server (their choice, not mine) over last weekend, and I only just now realized that this meant I needed to reset all of the cron jobs that make the Ecosystem and other TTLB functions work. (To their credit, they did mention that this might be necessary, although not exactly prominently, in their notification of the change).
However, they’ve also blown away the old server’s cron listing, so I need to go figure out from memory what was running when. And that ain’t going to happen this morning.
Sorry — we’ll be back up and running in a day or so.
Update 7/23 pm: OK, I think I’ve got all the cron jobs re-established. If all goes well, the Ecosystem & all our other goodies should be back up to snuff by tomorrow morning. Stay tuned…
Update 7/24 am: Great. Cron jobs ran, but for some reason, the scan job is running — but not picking up everyone’s links. Sorry folks, but it’ll be another day — my day job calls…
Update 7/25 am: No, it’s not fixed yet. And I can’t debug it, because Hosting Matters has disabled my shell access. Again. We’ll see how long it takes them to re-enable it this time.
Update 7/25 am: Much better this time! My shell access was re-enabled within an hour or so of my entering the ticket. Thanks to the HM support folks for the swift response. Debugging to commence … hell, I don’t know when. It’s a busy few days coming up folks, so bear with me…

Christopher Hitchens doing stand-up comedy?
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Starts slow, in my opinion, but stick around for the Q&A session; Hitchens is at his best going off-the-cuff working from the crowd.

Congratulations to The Poison Kitchen for winning this past week’s New Weblog Showcase with the post Now It Can Be Told: Saddam’s Secret Weapons.
Full results are:
The Poison Kitchen: Now It Can Be Told: Saddam’s Secret Weapons
( 10 links)
Sadly, No!: Only 16 words you say?
( 7 links)
American Digest: The Sunday New York Times Lite
( 6 links)
One Little Victory: The Killing Urge
( 5 links)
Wince and Nod: Are You A Dung Beetle, Too?
( 3 links)
Passenger Pachyderms: The News on Tape
( 3 links)
Howard Lovy’s NanoBot: The Hulk, Prince Charles and other scary things
( 2 links)
dr.mani’s remarkably purple spots…: an experiment in selfishness
( 2 links)
In Sheeps Clothing: Liberty
( 2 links)
The Usurer: For want of a fly-swat
( 2 links)
the Federal Examiner: Why Not Tenet?
( 2 links)
Angry Liberal: Tucker Eats His Shoes
( 0 links)
Angry Liberal: Tucker Eats His Shoes
( 0 links)
RobMorris.NET featuring Baby Morgan: Episode 1
( 0 links)
JustCron Report: JustCron Report
( 0 links)
Sarcastic Southerner: Dean’s Hypocrisy
( 0 links)
Interested-Participant: Senator Lieberman and Elmer Fudd
( 0 links)

Is anybody actually reading the Blogosphere Daily News?
I thought it was pretty spiffy when I rolled it out a few weeks back, and still do, mostly. Still doesn’t function quite perfectly, but it does ok.
Haven’t heard much reaction to it, though… thoughts? Feedback? Don’t make me do my Ben Stein impression…

Congratulations to Priorities & Frivolities for winning this week’s New Webblog Showcase!
Complete results are as follows:
Priorities & Frivolities: T3 in 2003: Rise of the Political Machine
( 15 links)
EconoPundit: Noted With Relief
( 12 links)
Who Tends The Fires: The Beauty of Being Mom
( 10 links)
SoonerThought: The General Who Would Be President
( 9 links)
Bad Money: Today’s Graffiti Currency: A Sea Story
( 7 links)
Johnny America: The Royal Tenenbaums
( 6 links)
What Would George Say!: Out of Respect for the 9/11 Victims please contact your Congress members
( 6 links)
BIROCO.COM ~ A way to look at things: A blatant attempt to influence Googlism
( 6 links)
Canucker: No Echo
( 6 links)
One Father For Dean: Many Are Listening
( 6 links)
Vantage Point: Fighting with Our Eyes Wide Shut
( 6 links)
DW-i: “We’re not going to beat Dean.”
( 5 links)
Firefive: Barking Moonbat of the Month Award
( 5 links)
Boots and Sabers: Idealism
( 5 links)
Frogs and Ravens: Finding the Still Point
( 5 links)
Writing in Orange: Living in Orange 1: From Your Window
( 3 links)
Dohiyi Mir: I Get It: Saddam Was Bad
( 3 links)
mythic flow: Individuality and Freedom
( 3 links)
stevedanforth.com – live a little: In pursuit of a dream
( 2 links)
Blog o’RAM: Home Alone
( 1 links)
Eric Poole’s Very Own Punditry: Court Affirms Bush’s Power to Detain Citizen as Enemy
( 0 links)
Dissento’s (Culture) War Journal: Tommy Franks pulls a Cartman
( 0 links)
PunditMania: Quo Vaids Blogs ?
( 0 links)
TerraFirmaDiaries: just because you can does not mean we will
( 0 links)

Spoons is back!

Well, this day had to come: the Ecosystem is now split into multiple pages.
Having all 3,000+ weblogs on the front page was getting just too unwieldy — that single page was over 600 KB, which was killing my bandwidth costs, and not that much fun to wait for to load, either.
So now the front page shows the top 100 (Higher Beings, Mortal Humans, and Playful Primates), with every other category having its own individual page. Hopefully the navigation should be fairly straightforward; I’ve also added a search function which allows you to find weblogs by name.
Feedback is welcome as always…
-NZB

It’s one of the tightest races we’ve seen yet over in the Showcase this week — any one of several blogs could come out on top.
So if you haven’t yet voted, do it! And if you don’t know how, read this.

LT Smash:
It really all boils down to this:
Just about everyone here would rather be at home right now