The forums are back online.
Here's the scoop. Apparently, the server we were on was having hardware issues. It kept eating database entries, so randomly topics or messages or members or posts were disappearing. Then, the blogs started to not show up, and longer posts. And then everything went kablooey.
Well, it took some time to get through to our hosting company, and then it took some more time for them to narrow things down, and then it took time to get back to us, and then it took time
It's been an eventful few days around the Bink househould. On Saturday, my wife's brother found a lone Wii console for sale, so he picked it up for us. We met up with him, paid him for it, and got it home and plugged it in. The boys in the household have spent some time bowling, golfing, playing baseball and tennis. And getting sore shoulders (well, at least mine are sore).
All that, and Harry Potter is in the house. A cute little box from Amazon showed up on the doorstep on Saturday, printed
So I got these bricks engraved earlier this year, see, and was going to use them as "extras" for the BZP DVD-ROM project (see an earlier blog entry). But unfortunately, that project got wrapped up in red tape, and doesn't look like it'll get off the ground anytime soon.
But I had the bricks left over.
Some I gave away at BrickFest to BZPower members. I still have most of them left, and I wanted to make sure they went to help BZP. The BrickFest auction and tee shirt sales did OK by us, but
Last night, one of the largest and most popular LEGO enthusiast websites, BrickShelf, was shut down. By now you've probably heard about the fallout, and seen what it's done to other sites, including BZPower - all the broken image links in avatars, sigs, and especially in the creative forums.
(Having just re-read my previous blog entry, I find this topic eerily appropos.)
First, let me say I can understand Kevin Loch's position. It's difficult to build a major web community (like BZPower or
Guilt wracks my body day and night. Night sweats, nervous shaking, and other less pleasant physical ailments assail me and never let me forget just how much I'm letting the LEGO community down. It assults me first thing in the morning: that awful realization of another day where I haven't done my part. Hours and hours later, another evening spent lying awake, exhausted, struggling with the overwhelming guilt of not getting the job done.
And then I think, "Meh, it's only LEGOFan."
For some
As I type this, BZP is currently hosting more than 1,000 concurrent users. This would be unthinkable a month ago. So I guess all the pain has been worth it.
Earlier today, we set a record with 1,250 concurrent users - most of them visitors. but I tell ya, it's a thrill seeing that many people online at once, and not having to babysit the server to make sure it's able to handle them all.
Yep. It's a gooooood feeling.
Edit 7/9/07: We just blasted the old record again, this time to 1,364 c
OK, I'm as done with the board upgrades as I intend to get. Spinnies and other topic-level hacks have been added back in, and the big bugs that have been sent to me have been resolved to the best of my knowledge.
I know there will be people who will want things differently, or will send in more bugs or feature requests, but I'm afraid more changes just aren't going to happen any time soon. Over the last month, very nearly all my "free" time has been sucked into BZP, working one crisis or anot
Well, after a full day, the forum software has been updated. I haven't completely finished putting in all the custom bells-n-whistles (like proto, online/offline, premier header, mod haus, etc.) but those will come.
The skins are being problematic, I'm not sure I like the graphics that are being used, I may revert some of them back to the IPB default. And there's apparently an issue with uploading images for profiles, I think that's probably a permissions issue.
For the inevitable comments
The server itself seems to be doing OK, but we're continuing to get corrupt database tables once in a while. They're causing some minor grief. In an effort to get away from that grief, we've decided to upgrade to the latest version of Invision Power Board. The request has been submitted to our host, so the boards could go offline at any point in the next day or two.
This means the forums will be unavailable for several hours once this process starts. We'll try to put a news story online when
A few weeks ago, no fewer than three completely separate events converged to bring BZPower to its knees. None of them were bad, per se, but they all occured about the same time so it was difficult to determine just what the bloody heck was going on.
I think we've got it all figured and fixed (mostly).
Regular readers of this blog will remember just how desperate I was to get things stabilized. After much angst and many emails and pathetic whining, the server software was stabilized and upg
For the last several days, the server has been running fairly well, except when the database gets corrupted. It's easy to fix, but takes a while. On Sunday, apparently the DB was corrupted and I wasn't available to fix it for several hours. And then again this morning, one of the tables was corrupt, so I had to rebuild.
I did notice that the times when the server gets busybusybusy is when the Hot Topics on the front page are updated. Those used to be updated once every four hours. So now, I'v
Sometimes, the past is a country one just shouldn't revisit.
Two decades ago, I shoved the necessities of life into a heavy canvas backpack and boarded a plane for Europe. The three months I spent trekking around the continent remain vivid more than half a lifetime later.
Some of the most vibrant memories: The beautiful, desperate beggar girl clutching a baby in the Milan train station, grabbing my arm and crying for a few lira. Riding an old train through Austria and absentmindedly loo
Regular visitors might have noticed a little something about BZP yesterday... like the fact that it was offline for about 12 hours. Yep, things were happening behind the scenes.
Our hosting company did some tweaking to the server and repaired some databases (although their repairs took a lot longer than mine usually do). Specifically, they updated the HTTP server (Apache) and installed an accelerator module to help cache the content. Then they repaired some database tables that had been damag
I suppose that the BZP server sitch* could be worse. We could've had our database hosted at Northstar Computers. They host a lot of LEGO-oriented web sites, including many clubs and specialty LEGO sites.
Their database server crashed. As in, CRASHED. Hard, with no parachutes streaming out of it as it vectored into the tarmac at 900 mph. Translation: no backups. (Well, they kinda did, for a few sites, but they weren't any newer than 2006.)
So, even though BZP is working like dogmeat during
The last week has been a nightmare trying to keep this stupid server up and running. I'm still not sure what's going on with it, but I'm ready to pull what little hair that remains on my head out in big clumps.
Right now, I've got the forums offline, since the server was dying every few minutes and not coming back. After throwing a temper tantrum for a while, I dried my tears and wiped the snot away and decided to optimize the database again. Looks like a good thing, too... the members and po
Today, word was passed down through De Bouwsteen that one of the pioneers of AFOLdom, Eric Brok, passed away recently. He had been battling prostate cancer for the last 18 months.
I had the privilege of working with Eric as an Ambassador, and meeting with him several times at various events. His enthusiasm for the hobby was obvious, and his work helped set the tone for future Ambassadors. He was a talented builder and a nice guy. I'd heard he had cancer some time ago, and so this wasn't a com
Jeez, the last week has been harsh. The last time I wrote that I thought it was fixed, the site went down for basically 2 days. So I'm gonna say it's completely broken, life will never be the same, this sucks, and so on.
So it'll never be fixed, I make no guarantees to uptime. Pfeh.
I keep an eye on the server stats - how many people visit per day and month, how many hits we get, how many page views, how much bandwidth is sent out per day, and so on. For the most part, it's fairly consistent over the last year, with peaks and valleys that correspond to new products and announcements or server issues, respectively. With last week's server problems, the stats took a noticeable trip south.
But now that everything's been fixed (or so I believe at this point), we're actually
More boring techie stuff.
Last night I adjusted the database preferences, so the server looks like it's humming along at a nice pace. The slowdowns have been far fewer, and the hour-long offline spell from this morning was due to my fixing the Hot Topics. So I'm pretty happy with that.
The only problem is the mail server is still down. That means email is not being sent through BZPower.com. This is a problem for several reasons: No thread notification emails New Blog entry notification is
Last night I performed scheduled maintenance on the server, at the same time as trying to update some core software. It backfired, and the database server wouldn't load. That's fixed, but now I need to adjust the configuration, and I can't do that at work. So the machine will probably run really sluggishly until I can get home to adjust that.
It's either run it and watch it go up and down, or yank the forums offline and have everybody go into BZP withdrawal. It's an ugly sight, so I'll stress
The BZP server has been yoyo-ing the last couple of days, not sure why. I've rebooted it a few times, kept an eye on things, but still Apache crawls into a hole and stares at its bellybutton for half an hour before coming out of the trance. Seriously thinking about getting some expert help on this, it's getting out of hand. The stats for yesterday showed a marked decrease in page views, indicating it was hanging a lot. Not quite so bad today, but not great, either.
So yes, I know the server's
I usually clean up the database once every couple of weeks... but it's been a couple of months now, I think. So I turned it off and did a low-level optimization, except for the POSTS table (which takes hours and hours). Hopefully it'll help. I did notice several tables had expired locks from improper handler releases, but I reset all those. That might make a difference.
Peak Oil
One of the blogs I regularly cruise, the amusing and quixotic Dilbert Blog by Scott Adams (language warning, so I'm not linking), featured an entry today about Global Warming. Reading the comments, I ran across a couple of interesting links that made me think a lot, and maybe change part of my world view.
(Boringness warning: the following talks about non-Lego, non-toy, end-of-the-world grownup stuff. Skip if you are easily bored or display any symptoms of ADD.)
Now that I've s
Attentive readers (both of you) may have noticed a lack of recent entries on the ol' BinkBlog. As you'll likely have deduced, being the intelligent and handsome folks you are, that's due to my recent vacation in Florida, at Walt Disney World in Orlando. Since I know you wait with baited breath for every morsel of BinkNews™, I'm delighted to present a handful of pictures from my nearly two weeks down south.
Besides, I could waste hours writing pithy and insightful stories about my vacation (an
Ah, vacation time. Writing from my hotel room in Disney World. The sun is hot although the sky is steel gray from hundreds of wildfires pouring smoke into the atmosphere. Spent yesterday at the pool; later today is Epcot (again) for Mother's Day Brunch.
Actually made myself ride Everest at Animal Kingdom, and even with two Dramamine I spent the next several hours looking green around the gills. The rest of the family loved it; I'm a wuss when it comes to rides like that. More my speed is "Spa
