Server Insanity

My main server running torontotech.net, interfree.ca, steeleseast.ca, and some other subdomains, has gone insane. The database server at mysql.interfree.ca was riding the struggle bus yesterday, too, but I hugged it and made it feel better. If you’re using mysql directly, you should be fine. But anyone using stuff on the main server: I gave us some more memory, and stopped wordpress from throwing php related tantrums, but we’re still up and down like a yoyo. Stuff effected includes websites, shells, mailman mailing lists, subversion, and more. Basic email should be fine, as that’s on yet another server. If things are still broken, they can stay that way until Christmas. Because I haven’t got time for this nonsense. Cope with it.

Apparently, BusinessCreditCardProcessing.com is interested in invisible links

This is the third or fourth link exchange request I’ve gotten in the last week! Huh? It’s not like I even update once a day! Far from it. I guess now that I’ve killed off comment spam, this is the next attempt to get spamvertising on my blog.

The full text of the email follows; is anyone else getting this random nonsense? Or is it just me? Read and laugh at the complete targeting failure:

Delivered-To: samuel@interfree.ca
Received: by 10.114.108.3 with SMTP id g3cs135103wac;
Tue, 9 Jun 2009 05:58:28 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.114.13.20 with SMTP id 20mr137758wam.83.1244552307511;
Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:58:27 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path: Received: from hostname63682.50.344a.static.theplanet.com ([74.52.80.74])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 33si601953pzk.11.2009.06.09.05.58.27;
Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:58:27 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 74.52.80.74 is neither permitted nor denied by best guess record
for domain of linkmanager@gomsg.com) client-ip=74.52.80.74;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 74.52.80.74 is neither permitted
nor denied by best guess record for domain of linkmanager@gomsg.com)
smtp.mail=linkmanager@gomsg.com
Received: from localhost ([127.0.0.1] helo=localhost.localdomain)
by hostname63682.50.344a.static.theplanet.com with esmtp (Exim 4.69)
(envelope-from )
id 1ME0uI-0004im-L0
for samuel@interfree.ca; Tue, 09 Jun 2009 05:58:26 -0700
Date: Tue, 9 Jun 2009 06:58:26 -0600
To: samuel@interfree.ca
From: James Subject: Link Exchange Request from BusinessCreditCardProcessing.com
Message-ID:
X-Priority: 3
X-Mailer: PHPMailer (phpmailer.sourceforge.net) [version 2.0.0 rc1]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=”b1_c3e27c21d1f368c580524f73ff75a7e7″

–b1_c3e27c21d1f368c580524f73ff75a7e7
Content-Type: text/plain; charset = “iso-8859-1″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Hi,

I visited your site http://www.interfree.ca and found some interesting information. We think our
visitors will benefit from your site’s content and we are interested in exchanging links with you.

Please consider listing us here:
http://interfree.ca/samuelp/2009/03/08/the-problem-with-invisible-links/ using the following link
info:

Anchor text : Credit Card Processing

URL : http://www.businesscreditcardprocessing.com

Description : Enjoy the benefits of using credit card processing from MSG, including low rates,
quick funding and free paper supplies.

Please send me the exact URL where I can find my link and send me your text link info so I can add
your link to our site.

We are looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Regards,

James
BusinessCreditCardProcessing.com
6901 Jerico Turnpike, Suite 240
Syosset, NY 11791

If you would like not to receive any further communications from me please paste this link into
your browser: http://www.emailremovalsystem.com?id=c9QAm7Tqq2a
Or simply respond to this email with Remove as the subject.

–b1_c3e27c21d1f368c580524f73ff75a7e7
Content-Type: text/html; charset = “iso-8859-1″
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit

Hi,

I visited your site http://www.interfree.ca and found some interesting
information. We think our visitors will benefit from your site’s content and we are interested in
exchanging links with you.

Please consider listing us here:
http://interfree.ca/samuelp/2009/03/08/the-problem-with-invisible-links/ using the following link
info:

Anchor text: Credit Card Processing
URL: http://www.businesscreditcardprocessing.com
Description: Enjoy the benefits of using credit card processing from MSG,
including low rates, quick funding and free paper supplies.

Please send me the exact URL where I can find my link and send me your text link
info so I can add your link to our site.

We are looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Regards,
James

BusinessCreditCardProcessing.com
6901 Jerico Turnpike, Suite 240
Syosset, NY 11791

Note: If you would like not to receive any further communications from me,
please paste this link into your browser: src="http://i367.photobucket.com/albums/oo119/cactive/em-1.gif" align="absmiddle">?id=c9QAm7Tqq2a

Or simply respond to this email with Remove as the subject.

–b1_c3e27c21d1f368c580524f73ff75a7e7–

Chat Catcher is going away, Backtype Connect Can Replace It

Those of you who were using Chat Catcher: it’s going to be shut down, shortly. I just got an email in my inbox this morning. Unfortunately, it didn’t have chat catcher, or a domain I would associate with Chat Catcher, in the to: header, so I at first took it for spam. The front page of the website doesn’t seem to say anything about the impending shutdown, either. I discovered, after getting the email, that it was discussed in a blog. Every single service I use has a blog. I already read hundreds of blogs. It’s unreasonable to expect every single user of a service to even know the blog exists, never mind read it. Perhaps, if I had been notified via email, I would have donated in time to save the service; but that never happened. The owner says that the other services she runs will be remaining up. Uh, Shannon? Based on the lack of professionalism shown in your shut-down announcement, I don’t intend to begin using anything you run in the future. Couldn’t you at least send the notice from admin@chatcatcher.com or something? I doubt Chat Catcher users know you from John Q. Public; I’m not even absolutely positive that you’re employed by Chat Catcher! I wonder how many people will block the shut-down note as spam? I whitelist the domains of services I use, and I would expect that announcements about those services would, at minimum, come from the domain the service uses! As well, why didn’t you take the tiny amount of time required to include a one sentence note pointing your former users to an alternative service? Thankfully, I remembered reading about Backtype Connect on Tech Crunch several months ago. If I hadn’t, I’d be completely lost. A Google search for chatcatcher alternative returns nothing useful. If you’re a user as lost as me: backtype connect does everything Chat Catcher did and more, and it has a wordpress plugin, too.

For the record, the email I got follows:

Delivered-To: samuel@interfree.ca
Received: by 10.220.46.149 with SMTP id j21cs407755vcf;
Tue, 5 May 2009 12:15:40 -0700 (PDT)
Received: by 10.216.18.205 with SMTP id l55mr472962wel.194.1241550939079;
Tue, 05 May 2009 12:15:39 -0700 (PDT)
Return-Path:
Received: from gv-out-0910.google.com ([172.21.170.4])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id q9si2011798gve.2.2009.05.05.12.15.37;
Tue, 05 May 2009 12:15:38 -0700 (PDT)
Received-SPF: neutral (google.com: 172.21.170.4 is neither permitted nor denied by domain of
shannon.whitley@gmail.com) client-ip=172.21.170.4;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=neutral (google.com: 172.21.170.4 is neither permitted
nor denied by domain of shannon.whitley@gmail.com) smtp.mail=shannon.whitley@gmail.com; dkim=pass
(test mode) header.i=@gmail.com
Received: by gv-out-0910.google.com with SMTP id s4so270070gve.40
for ; Tue, 05 May 2009 12:15:36 -0700 (PDT)
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha256; c=relaxed/relaxed;
d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
h=domainkey-signature:mime-version:sender:received:date
-google-sender-auth:message-id:subject:from:to:content-type;
bh=oZppK+v9zU0uC+MgEZhL9usUKBbyNNX6EgARLnt572g=;
b=ng85g0Z5hV2o4t/EPLnRR+sh7PobhHhcCZ6Ot2Lk4WJ72VIYhBLMs1SPVEkW8yg5Y+
wUh4CJ85usIRFmeYXNzp/TPn3faZzc+nfLW7HLx1CrZ8MFmsO8t+LabKkbh10HD0Eb87
cmMiKqLtOhKA6OtHkHTVP9bZ6ayOMd10a6+EA=
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1; c=nofws;
d=gmail.com; s=gamma;
h=mime-version:sender:date:x-google-sender-auth:message-id:subject
:from:to:content-type;
b=eD4v7bhcyK4GiytnC7nS+clvHB2NfEdD1TR9Seh55OHWOvtR0g4UqPBAJ8CqaZfghh
FQrGAv4kLq7CmFj0nL0/gPALeLAefRRPZa8+2uxoaU+N/YSBwnlKUgW1Ckp0BTe0kYFW
mc384+rXwAJumoiSJ6PRKKfU6lQhulOKoPgVY=
MIME-Version: 1.0
Sender: shannon.whitley@gmail.com
Received: by 10.220.97.1 with SMTP id j1mr689432vcn.90.1241550909882; Tue, 05
May 2009 12:15:09 -0700 (PDT)
Date: Tue, 5 May 2009 12:15:09 -0700
X-Google-Sender-Auth: 2440a623e9fd595c
Message-ID: <4e4a64f20905051215r6a0837a1v6da09d33aa237bb5@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Chat Catcher Shutting Down
From: Shannon Whitley
To: swhitley@whitleymedia.com
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary=0016e6480854f471f104692f18de

–0016e6480854f471f104692f18de
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit

As Twitter has grown, so has the volume of data that needs to be processed
by Chat Catcher. I don’t have the resources to keep up with it any longer.

Thank you to everyone who pitched in last week when I requested donations to
keep Chat Catcher running. Unfortunately, it just isn’t enough and the
server costs are quickly mounting. Within the next few days I will turn off
Chat Catcher completely. All donations will be returned.

If you are running the WordPress plugin or the PHP script, you will not need
to take any action. You will still have the comments that were posted to
your blog. If you happen to be displaying the RSS feed on your site, you
will want to remove it.

Chat Catcher represents a huge investment of my time and money. I am not
taking this action lightly. I am also sorry to disappoint the many people
who were happily using the service.

I do not plan to provide an open source version of Chat Catcher. It’s just
not that type of application. I would be open to a purchase of the code or
a sponsorship of the service if someone wants to step in as a white knight.
(Just so you know, I am not holding my breath.)

I will continue to work on my other projects which are not in danger of
folding. My Tweeple, Twit Connect, Real-time Chatterbox (and more) will
continue to operate and will continue to be improved. See
http://www.voiceoftech.com/swhitley/ for details.

Thank you for all your support and help. I wish you the best.

– Shannon

–0016e6480854f471f104692f18de
Content-Type: text/html; charset=ISO-8859-1
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable

As Twitter has grown, so has the volume of data that ne=
eds to be processed by Chat Catcher. =A0I don't have the resources to k=
eep up with it any longer.

Thank you to everyo=
ne who pitched in last week when I requested donations to keep Chat Catcher=
running. =A0Unfortunately, it just isn't enough and the server costs a=
re quickly mounting. =A0Within the next few days I will turn off Chat Catch=
er completely. =A0All donations will be returned.

If you are running the WordPress plugin or the PHP scri=
pt, you will not need to take any action. =A0You will still have the commen=
ts that were posted to your blog. =A0If you happen to be displaying the RSS=
feed on your site, you will want to remove it.

Chat Catcher represents a huge investment of my time an=
d money. =A0I am not taking this action lightly. =A0I am also sorry to disa=
ppoint the many people who were happily using the service.

div>

I do not plan to provide an open source version of Chat Catcher. =A0It=
's just not that type of application. =A0I would be open to a purchase =
of the code or a sponsorship of the service if someone wants to step in as =
a white knight. =A0(Just so you know, I am not holding my breath.)

I will continue to work on my other projects which are =
not in danger of folding. =A0My Tweeple, Twit Connect, Real-time Chatterbox=
(and more) will continue to operate and will continue to be improved. =A0S=
ee http://www.voiceoftech.=
com/swhitley/ for details.

Thank you for all your support and help. =A0I wish you =
the best.

– Shannon

–0016e6480854f471f104692f18de–

Playing With The Blog Again

Hey, guess what? I’ve been playing with the weblog again! Just off of yesterday afternoon’s high of making a new page for the Christmas letters, I decided to completely change my blogs layout. Just six months after the last layout. What can I say? I like fiddling! But honestly, I like this new theme a lot better. It’s less complicated, not as full of crappy hacks to make things work, the blogroll is less messy, etc. I’ve also deployed Google Analytics over everything on interfree, so I’ll have even more stats to play with. Go me! And, of course, you can now subscribe to my updates via email. BIG WIN!

Hello world!

Yay! This weblog is open for business at wordpress! Now I just need to categorize everything, and finish the sidebar, and get email subscriptions going. It’ll happen, folks. No worries.

time to leave livejournal?

Why does every online service I've ever joined go to pot about 6 months later? What with livejournal starting to delete pretty much any and all journals the right-wing wacko group Warriors for Innocence (no link; the website is offensive and fulll of spyware…google it yourself) ever complains about, removing journals that have pictures of nipples (even in the context of breast feeding), refusing to allow trackbacks, constant database crashes (what is it, 6 over the last 2 weeks?), voiceposts not working and refusing to accept 1-800 calls from Canada, constant problems with LJ Bot and lj posting, ownership by the corporate androids of Six Apart, the unfair way Russian users were (and are still? I'm not Russian so wouldn't know) treated, etc, etc, etc, I am getting sick unto death of the petty games LJ Administration and Six Apart are playing with us (the LJ users) at the behest of money, political organizations, and advertisers. How long until one of my favourite syndications, bash, is removed from the website on grounds of…well, have a look at bash; I'm sure you can come up with an excuse LJ (or WFI) could use to remove them without my help. Unfortunately, I like my friends page, and my communities. I also like my entries to show up on the friends pages of all you fine folks; without that, I wouldn't have any readers. I also like the way livejournal reads with jaws. This is lock-in worse than Microsoft! But the technical problems and drama are quickly getting to be too much for me. Anyone have any ideas? I need a solution that will let me edit the template easily (unlike blogger; it's ugly, no matter what you do to it), something that can use API's to keep my livejournal in sync with the new blog, and is cheap. It would also be nice if the administration of this service would just leave us all alone, and not push us to use service updates (like that awful, awful livejournal sidebar thing) that we don't want and never will want. Anyhow, whatever happens, when my paid status expires in a few months, I will not be renewing it at any price; the journal will revert to a basic ad-free account.
Six Apart is obviously not putting the money it's getting from paidmembers into servers and stability; I don't know what it's doing with it, and at this point, I don't care.

what's up with voiceposts?

I made one half an hour ago with the Canadian number, and it's gone missing. Spinvox broke things, methinks.

a userpic

After much to-do, eventually involving my mom, , having to log in to my account and upload things, and livejournal not wanting to accept a log-in from that machine, and other things breaking, I finally have a working userpic! From a blue square, to a black square, to a propper picture…I'm going up in the world, or something. I suspect I could've gotten the thing to go myself, but I have images turned off (in both firefox and IE), so whenever I upload a userpic things seem to have problems. Oh well, it works now. I'll go get back to whatever it was that I was doing. Although I forget what that was, now.

an update

We can't have two days without an update anymore; it's not allowed. So: this is an update. I reorganized my rss feeds today, and moved all my feeds to my friends page. Now I just have to set my rss reader to get my friends rss feed; down from several feeds to one. This means less CPU, disc space, and bandwidth. This is good. Also, it makes my friends page more interesting. Check it. I was going to post an article I wrote called _how to be anoying on irc_, but it needs further editing. That'll probably come tomorrow or the next day. Also, have a link to mp3tag, a program for semi-automaticly tagging your music. Despite the name, it can do mp3/ogg/flac/mpc/etc. Looks up data on discogs, freedb, and amazon. Can get everything from publisher to copyright date to the obvious artist, album, and genre. I didn't realize you could use freedb on files you'd already ripped, but yup, you can. I wish, though, that it had support for bitzi ticket and music brains. Then the tagging datastorm of mega music organization would be complete! Oh, and mp3tag can rename files based on tags or update tags based on file names. So one could easily kill dupes with a little work. Oh, and you *can't* find metadata for indi artists (example) no matter what you do. Nobody in the entire world has published a tracklist for _ready to fly_. Type it in? Type it in? What do you *mean* type it in? If I wanted to type it in, I'd use *vinal*! It's all you other monkeys who are responsible for typing it in! That's what FreeDb is *for*: other people typing in tracklists for me.

new style

The look of the livejournal friends page finally pissed me off one too many bloody times. What's with no heading for each entry? So…I fixed it. Now each subject is a heading. For you lazy bumbs who can't be bothered to put a subject on your entry, your entries on my page get titled “(no subject) from username”. This way I can skip a couple of people who *insist* on writing long entries with loads of links and no LjCut and go back and read them later. Ooh, and I've got a combined rss feed for my friends page, now. For those of you who just check in every once in a while, I changed round the colors and layout a bit on my main journal page. And if you don't like it, that's just too bad. Also uploaded a userpic, but It needs cropping and anyway it's the wrong picture. Maybe I'll get drop9 to fix it later. As soon as I find the picture that I actually want in the first place. Oh, if there's lots of demand for this style, I might make it public. But there's some other stuff I need to fix before I do that. First I need to get it to be valid xhtml, and I've got loads of other web work I should be doing, so don't expect that project to occur any time near soon. I was just doing this bit to save time and as a filler until I can continue with my other jobs. I mean, better to play with styles than actually have to write something! Heaven forbid. Now, I bet this post is way too long to be posted via LjTalk. We'll find out…

a quick test

So, I'm back from vacation, now. Been back for a while, in fact. Livejournal released it's messenging platform yesterday; I'm now making a live journal post right from the messenger. Mostly, in fact, to see how it works. I don't like how the default client works, so I'm using exodus instead. That's the beauty of live journal's system: it supports a standard protocol. This could be the long awaited msn-killer!

more ad interestingness

You know my article I posted the other day about the problems with America? Well, I figured I'd click to leave a comment, in order to see what ads would show up. The first one was this gem:
Lose 9 lbs. Every 11 Days
Learn the 10 Idiot Proof Rules of Dieting & Fat Loss.
FatLoss4Idiots.com

Well, yes. That is one of the problems with The U.S come Washland; I just didn't want to be the one to break it to you guys. Thanks, google!