Pharyngula::Ow.

Pharyngula has moved to http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Ow.

PZ Myers • 22 Comments

I'm just an itty-bitty weblogger. I'm used to being able to just throw any ol' thing I want on this web page and not worry about the server handling the load, because the traffic wasn't that bad. Then the other day Power Line links in, and also drags along some lowlives who try to break in (constantly), and traffic soars, and I have to make my firewall tighter and cut back on some of the graphics. That started to fade away—I didn't expect the creeps sent here via Power Line to stay—and I eased some of the old sloppy stuff back in.

Now Atrios sends me a few links. Whoops, I've got to turn the discipline back on. I'm sorry if you've had trouble getting in here this evening, but the poor server is straining. I'm going to have to sit down with the poor baby this weekend and fine-tune and pare down and streamline.

Trackback url: http://pharyngula.org/index/trackback/1958/3CgVE2bu/

Comments:

#17053: DarkSyde — 02/24 at 11:07 PM
Finally! This place is tight! I was using the back channel from the Co-con screen on that e-mail PZ. Now even that won't let me in and won't recognize my addy or PW. I figure you have your hands full right now. But in a day or to you might need to restore that at your end.

#17055: PZ Myers — 02/24 at 11:41 PM
Yeah, I had to do some emergency fine-tuning. I got a few tips from the fine people at Expression Engine, removed some more of the graphics and sidebar stuff, and just generally got it back to limping along. I'll fix things up a little better this weekend.

It was kind of interesting to see what happens when Atrios links to you. I walked over to the lab to find out what was up when I couldn't get through from home, and the server was just howling. The OS was so sluggish at handling any of my requests that I finally had to yank out the ethernet cable to quiet all the demands from the blogosphere while I patched a few things.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#17057: Chris Clarke — 02/24 at 11:55 PM
Of course, if you make a comment about traffic from Atrios meaning you've "hit the big time" after cruelly refusing to say the same thing about traffic from PauerLein, then that means you're just a big ol' Marxist hypocrite bully.

"I do not think we should antagonize the religious when it is not warranted, though I think we should be willing to do so whenever it is.”
-- Glen Davidson

#17058: PZ Myers — 02/25 at 12:09 AM
<shudder> Getting hits from Atrios is OK, I guess, but I'd never suggest that it means I've hit the "big time", as if it adds something to the quality of the site. May I never, ever become anything like those PL bozos who thought their traffic numbers made them Superior and Important.

What it really is is a bit of a distraction that ate up a few hours tonight while I tried to fix my server. And I was hoping to get something interesting done. At least I learned a few things that will make the server performance snappier, which will be nice even after the rush of traffic fades away.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#17059: DarkSyde — 02/25 at 12:13 AM
You know I mentioned to him you were getting shut down, you were down for hours BTW. He e-mailed me back asking if I wanted to pull the links ... I told him I was just a guest blogger and figured you wanted the links to stay. Hope that was right. That happened right when the X-engine backdoor cut out.

#17060: PZ Myers — 02/25 at 12:16 AM
Oh, that was fine. Everything seems to be working fairly smoothly right now -- I hope it works just as well in the morning, when traffic starts to rise again.

And now I've got some motivation to rummage around under the hood and tighten up a few things, so I guess that's good.

PZ Myers
Division of Science and Math
University of Minnesota, Morris

#17061: DarkSyde — 02/25 at 12:22 AM
Yeah it's running crisper now than it has all week. Good job with the quick fix. It's fortunate this happened to a computer wiz. I'd have been screwed royal if this had been UTI and Brent wasn't around.

#17068: — 02/25 at 01:05 AM
I am grateful that the Pirate Mode still works. Seems appropriate, with the PL lubbers trying to take over the proud vessel, Pharyngula!

#17070: — 02/25 at 01:33 AM
Came over by way of Atrios/Kos and of course eventually the "Koufax awards". Curses...I now have have one more blog on my daily read list. At this rate, I am going to have to quit my day job...especially if I do any more rubbernecking at the traffic jams like your comment threads on your posts on the Powerline guys.

#17072: David Parsons — 02/25 at 01:47 AM
I'll take the contrary view and say that I'm really pleased to see the anti-winger no-graphics version of pharyngula. In the past, your site has been so slow to load (at home, I've got a cablemodem; at work all the traffic loops through a dinky little WebShield box in Chicago; in either case, it takes forever and a day for firewombat to load the page) that I can't really enjoy reading it.

This, on the other hand, is more content, less style. Yum!

#17084: Kambiz Kamrani — 02/25 at 03:50 AM
On the subject of being blogger and blogging, have you come accross what the ALA president, Michael Gorman, said about bloggers? I will side with him about the amount of 'junk' content there is. But equally so, there are diamonds in the rough, like your blog....

Generally, his commentary is outrageous and incredibly ignorant. He rants and rages on the blogging culture and how 'stupid' we are, assuming we don't/can't read full texts.

Check out the link here!

#17085: garth — 02/25 at 04:08 AM
K- It seems most people who rant about how "stupid" blogs are generally have very little discernment in such things. I just stumbled across this site, not even through Koufax-award related fun or Eschaton, and I've managed to stay up far too late already. The problem they have is they get sucked in, wind up at some crummy site, and spend too long boggling over how ridiculous it is. By extension, all blogs are ridiculous. That or someone told them so.

The good news is Futurama comes on again at 0230 PST. So...thanks?

#17101: — 02/25 at 06:52 AM
Maybe Gorman also thinks it's bad that people drive cars rather than ride horses... Regardless of how you spin it, it's more convenient and accessible for books to be available on your computer. Search engines are already extensively used in libraries, and are in general far inferior to Google-style indexing. Digital books are no different from regular books except in what they're read on. You can argue that blogs are a poor substitute for journalism, but digital books to paper books are like typing your dissertation to writing it by hand, or buying books online to buying at a bookstore.

#17103: DarkSyde — 02/25 at 07:21 AM
Agreed Alon. I may be old fashioned though, I still like the look, smell, and feel of books and browsing through bookstores. Probably just Pavlovian Conditioning; that's how I learned most science and math as a younger man.

#17107: — 02/25 at 09:10 AM
Hello? Is this 9-1-1? This is the Pharyngula server. I've fallen down and can't get up...

#17110: Sean — 02/25 at 10:41 AM
PZ, rest assured that we feel very sorry for you for getting all of this traffic. Just like postdocs feel very sorry for tenured professors for being weighed down with all those non-research responsibilities.

#17115: Andrew — 02/25 at 01:11 PM
For what it's worth, I really like the site graphics-free. PZ, I come to your site for the edifying and stimulating text. Keep up the good work.

#17118: DarkSyde — 02/25 at 01:18 PM
Housekeeping Note: PZ is away from his lab and server for a few hours and cannot fix any bandwidth crunches that may crop up as aresult of traffic. Access may be intermittent for some this afternoon.

#17126: Chris Clarke — 02/25 at 01:47 PM
I love this comment to the thread in which Atrios links to you:

Oh, god. They're mixing it up with Pharyngula.

Whoops.

It's like watching a pickup run over a chicken, again and again.
.
Grand Moff Texan | Email | Homepage | 02.24.05 - 9:29 pm | #

"I do not think we should antagonize the religious when it is not warranted, though I think we should be willing to do so whenever it is.”
-- Glen Davidson

#17147: — 02/25 at 04:42 PM
I am with David Parsons and Andrew. I prefer the high performance, low graphics approach. But the content quality (sans visiting PowerLoons) more than outweighs any aesthetic/speed issues.

#17195: Rana — 02/26 at 03:31 PM
As much as I love the squids, I too am grateful about your site now being easier to load (as I type away through my dial-up connection...).

I do believe you when you express distress at the increased traffic load. I myself have never wanted the "popularity" that Atrios has; you get so much more noise that it's hard for the signal to get through. 'sides, I like my blog buddies; I'd hate it if I had to dig through hundreds of comments to keep track of them.

At least you can console yourself that your more idiotic visitors (hordes? swarms?) have short attention spans. ;)

#17275: Chris Clarke — 02/27 at 05:59 PM

At least you can console yourself that your more idiotic visitors (hordes? swarms?) have short attention spans. ;)

Get set for more of them, too. Horowitz has linked to you in august company right between "radical blogger Chris Clarke" and Michael Bérubé.

(Link tinyurled to avoid pushing Horowitz from Oozing Slimemold to Suppurating Pustule at the TTLB Ecosystem.)

"I do not think we should antagonize the religious when it is not warranted, though I think we should be willing to do so whenever it is.”
-- Glen Davidson

Page 1 of 1 pages

Next entry: Maybe bloggers aren't as sexist as I thought...

Previous entry: The real Bush agenda

<< Back to main

Pharyngula has moved to http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Ow.

Info