Category: Blog Stuff

Problems…

I don’t blog as much as I used to. So, I don’t keep the back side of this site updated as well as I should. Go Daddy hosting has an incentive to get customers to update. They charge more to let one run older versions.

So this is a quick update to avoid additional charges. I am not particularly happy with the look and most of my plugins no longer work. But the articles are readable. I can post new stuff… if I get round to it.

The problem is in the PHP version I was running. Also, I have some custom pages I built that need some code updates. Seems the new PHP (the software language that the site operates on) has some language differences to improve security. It has been long enough since I wrote my custom pages the less secure commands have progressed from ‘depreciated’ to ‘deleted’. Ouch!

I’ll be working on the site. Getting new versions of my plugins working and eliminating whichever one was crashing my site.

This will take some time.

You can find me in SL and on the SL Forum. I often post in Your Avatar. I think it would be fun to meet you there.

Christmas Shopping 2024

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.

♥
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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 And so…

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 Flickr Sharing vs All Rights Reserved

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 Blog Headaches 2016

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.