And so…

This is my 4,200th post since March 3, 2009, which is about 10 years and 8 months ago… I came into Second Life™ March 8th, 2008. So, most of my life in SL I have been a blogger.

I am a bit burned out on blogging. When I started in SL I scrambled to keep up with what was happening in viewer development. Blogging about viewers was useful to people and there was lots to write about.

The Linden viewer was version 1.23.0… We had Gemini, Meercat, GreenLife Emerald, and a few other viewers.

♥

Vampires were thick enough we bought cases of Vampire OFF and ate raw garlic.

Things have changed. Now the Linden viewer is the cutting-edge viewer for new SL features. Black Dragon, Catznip, and Firestorm still add neat features but we see the big features like BOM and EEP in the Linden viewer first. Cool VL Viewer is best for viewer-side bug fixes, IMO.

The user interface has stabilized in most viewers. Cool and Singularity have stayed with the version 1.x UI. Others stay with the Linden 6.x UI or very close to it. So, a user can update to the latest version of their favorite viewer and have almost nothing to learn. So, I have little to write about. Black Dragon is an exception. Continue reading

Flickr Sharing vs All Rights Reserved

Rights management is complicated. Photo sharing sites are by necessity complicated. Flickr.com has made it as easy as possible to share and manage rights. But, people still mess up, authors and consumers. Especially in an age where people are moving fast and using technology to speed things up.

Nal's Flickr Channel August 2016

Nal’s Flickr Channel August 2016

A point in debate is whether an image placed on Flickr and marked All Rights Reserved can be shared. That is a different question from WHETHER it should be shared.  Continue reading

Blog Headaches 2016

When I publish a post here, the site overloads in just seconds. Often before the WP editing page can update. Then users are quickly locked out as the site hits CPU, memory, and I/O use limits. The really annoying part is I too am locked out of WP Admin.

Ready For Battle

Ready For Battle

With PHP processes maxed out and being created faster than I can kill them, it’s a problem. The quick fix is to shut the site down. So, you see a page saying the site is temporarily closed. This is not a good option.  Continue reading

The Blog

Yesterday was hectic day for the management of this blog. Between noon and about 2 PM PT the hosting server was overloaded with requests. Memory and I/O maxed out preventing viewing or management of the blog.

The Looking Glass Sim

The Looking Glass Sim

So, new tools have been added and more IP addresses have been blocked. Unfortunately Go Daddy’s metrics tools do not provide the information needed to deal with an attack in real time. So, it is an arduous process of downloading and analyzing logs. But, with I/O maxed out one cannot download the logs…

Also, most of the standard ‘go-away’ tactics weren’t working. So, I had to learn new ways to regain control. So, when I am fighting off an attack you may see a B&W page announcing the site is down for maintenance. I may pretty the page up… or not. I can usually recover in a few minutes once I take the site down. So, if you see the page, check back in an hour or so.

I’ll be adding more tools so I can more quickly find the attack source and block it. Most of these attacks seem to be scrapping the site for content. Now that I’ve blocked image leeching, using my images by linking to this server, the images are being downloaded using up a LOT of bandwidth. I wouldn’t mind that much except like The Flash they try to grab everything at hyper-speed.

WordPress Annoyance

If you have found the new WordPress panel for editing URL/Links annoying join the crowd. Add your voice to the thread at: New WordPress URL Popup Causes More Work.

Annoying new popup url panel

Annoying new popup url panel

This change is a serious annoyance.

Lots of people do not want the links leading off site to replace their page with the destination page. I’m one of those. So, I have do a bunch of clicking to tell the link to open a new tab. It was bad enough with the previous panel/popup. Now it is way worse.

If you too are annoyed, please drop by the WP site (link above) and add your voice.