Category: admin

Migration

Posted on

Incoming from The Guru:

FYI, the server we’re on will be migrated to a new datacenter, starting 27/12 at around 2am our time. It’s unlikely that anything will break. The process could take as long as a couple of days, but might well be done by mid-morning on the same day. Regardless of duration, sites will be fully accessible while it’s going on, and I’ll let you know when it’s complete. But I’d recommend not posting anything on the 27th itself, and certainly not doing any site changes, as what could happen is that you do something during the transition, and it gets lodged in the old database locations, and then the new database locations don’t contain that data. So it’s entirely possible that a comment or somesuch could get lost between the 2 datacenters.

Thanks, The Guru.

This doesn’t sound anywhere as spectacular as swallows flying non-stop across Europe and Africa or magnificent herds of wildebeest galloping across the Kenyan savannah, but it obviously has implications for me posting anything on the 27th – unless, of course I get it in before the 2am CAT deadline. Which is obviously what I have done if you are reading this.

Please feel free to leave comments during the 27th. I like to live dangerously like that. If your comment does get lost because of the migration, then I will personally head off into the old datacenter (there’s a portal at the back of my wardrobe) and risk my life, Indiana Jones-like, to try and rescue your thoughts.

Otherwise – back tomorrow.

TLH 2010 – some admin stuff

Posted on

As you will have heard, I’m away for a while in the frozen Northern hemisphere – seeing family and friends, but primarily to be at one of a-ha’s final ever concerts in Oslo. Obviously, normal service on the blog (such as it ever is/was) will be somewhat disrupted, but I’d prefer it if you didn’t just forget about 6000 miles… and go and find something of equal or greater quality elsewhere.

For that reason, I’m going to keep posting as much as I can. Apparently, despite its backward reputation, there are some places in Europe where one can access the internet. Of course, many of those posts will involve news and photos from my trip and some may be of a personal nature to my family back in Cape Town.
Not too personal, obviously – you shouldn’t expect to read stuff like “but thankfully, the rash has cleared up now” or anything involving the word “discharge”. I do have some standards.

So, please bear in mind:

  • Comments may be a bit slow to be cleared
  • Emails may be a bit slow to be read.
  • Twitter and Flickr should be updated fairly regularly.
  • It’s difficult to type with frozen fingers.

And I’ll be back at some point in the very near future.

Blogroll clearout

Posted on

Eish.

I hate doing this sort of thing, but if you don’t blog or if you do blog but it’s not very good or if I just don’t read your blog anymore for one of the reasons above or any other, then I’m sorry, but you are about to be removed from my blogroll.

My readers deserve only the best (God alone knows what they’re doing here then) and so I am removing some names from the illustrious list in the sidebar with immediate effect.
On the plus side, there are a couple of new entries as well.

Check the revised list out under what i read in the sidebar.
And please tell me who or what also needs adding.

Thanks.

On this blog

Posted on

A regular reader mentioned today that he checks this blog 6 times a day for updates. He went on to say that he can remember a time when I used to write once a day “but then something happened and it slowed down”.
And he’s right, of course.
Not on the checking the blog thing – that’s just silly – that’s what the RSS feed is for.

But things have slowed down and life has changed. After the excitement of the 2009 election and the 2010 World Cup, things have become much more settled in SA. And added to that, while there’s always the local newspapers to write about (letters pages especially), I’m so busy lately that I can hardly even afford the time to annoy local cartoonists with my entirely justified personal opinions on the latest political issues. Although that’s not so much the writing the actual post as much as always getting the last word in in the comments.

Or “replying” as I like to call it.

Still, at least I’ve never thought of taking a summer break, as some bloggers do. But maybe that’s just because it’s not summer.

Sometimes, I find myself wandering through the internet, looking for inspiration or something to plagiarise. But I’m beginning to get the idea that the internet has shrunk and I’ve seen all the good bits already. I could always fall back on quota photos, but that was really only acceptable during the “post a day” era. Although I’ve done unacceptable things before.

Maybe it’s time to relive those days. Not the unacceptable ones, but maybe it is time to head back to a post a day. I’ll consider it, because after all, those heady times were rather taxing, but the regular reader seemed to enjoy them.

But even he is going to be disappointed 5 times a day.

Lost: 36 hours.

Posted on

Eagle-eyed readers will have noticed that for the first time in well over a year, there was no post made on 6000 miles… yesterday.
There is actually a very simple explanation for this – yesterday didn’t actually exist for me. I went to bed early on Wednesday evening, not feeling too great and, basically, I woke up again on Friday morning. 36 hours – lost.

Regulars will therefore realise just how sick I was, since previously in my efforts to maintain a daily “daily” blog, I have overcome  a multitude of obstacles including weather, wilderness and weally long flights to bring you your dose of daily goodness from Cape Town.

Viruses have a way of hitting me like this every now and again. Who could forget my little brush with meningitis over Christmas 2008? Still, I get my own back with a regular healthy dose of viral genocide in the lab most days.

Tomorrow: Stormers v Bulls. (Assuming I’m up to it.)