I noticed some slowness when reaching this server, this morning. Logging in, there was no heavy CPU or swap usage. Looking at netstat, I saw the reason: the Department of Homeland Security was poking around.
I didn’t set anything up with the Digest and tumblr… Please speak up, if you did it. (found via Google)
Thanks to the urging and help of Matthias Schmidt and Saifi Khan, posts on the DragonFly Digest now also show on Twitter, as @dragonflybsd. (well, except for this one, as it would be redundant.)
I’m suddenly having trouble with the machine that hosts this site (random crashes, hardware disappearing), so there may be some surprise downtime over the next few days until a replacement motherboard arrives…
Sorry for the downtime today – shiningsilence.com is now running DragonFly 2.4 and Hammer, so I’ll be able to complain testify first-hand.
If you aren’t familiar with the phrase “eating your own dogfood”, here’s what it is.
I’m upgrading hardware, so this site will be down for a bit today. This is separate from anything happening with dragonflybsd.org systems.
The main page of the dragonflybsd.org site now has a feed of the most recent 10 articles from this Digest.
There’s now a counter in the sidebar to this site (look under my email address) that shows how many posts have been made, ever. Not necessarily helpful for you, the reader, but it makes me feel good.
Also, all those posts, back to 2003, are reachable via the archive page.
This machine, shiningsilence.com, is having some issues. I had to power down because of unrelated problems, and the system couldn’t find the kernel on the next boot, though the issue disappeared on the next boot. That’s enough of an excuse to build new…
Any hardware recommendations? I’m interested in hearing what chipsets/disks/RAID setups/etc. and/or hardware suppliers worked well for people.
My apologies, folks – the site is going up and down, along with my network connection. It’s probably because of Time Warner (my network provider) trying and failing to correctly implement bandwidth measuring tools for their upcoming volume cap. (I keep getting passed a private IP.)
Testing software upgrade for this blog; pay no attention.
Fluff for the article: Dear Santa Claus: buy me this flash storage. Most older men buy a sports car for their midlife crisis; geeks buy overpowered computer hardware.
This Digest turned 5 a little while ago, and here’s another milestone: this is post 3,001. There’s 1,300 comments or so, too.
Sorry about a week without posts! I was in the wilds of Canada and without any Internet access, for probably the longest period for me since 1995. It was weird. Regular posts resume tomorrow.
Upgrading WordPress to 2.6 yesterday broke the direct links to articles on the Digest. It’ll be updated in the 2.6.1 release of WordPress, but until then I’ve changed the links to correct for the issue.
This post on the “gentrification of geek communities” is interesting, and somewhat relevant to what I’m trying to do with the Digest. However, the author seems to have more of a concern about which sites appear the most hip, rather than viewing them as secondary mechanisms for reporting on the actual news items found there. (Via)
Perhaps that’s the sign a geek news site has ‘jumped the shark’: when appearing on it is more exciting than reading the news articles present. e.g. the Slashdot Effect rather than the Slashdot News.
I updated this DragonFly system from 1.12.1 to 1.12.2 Sunday night, and PHP (and therefore this WordPress-based Digest) stopped working. Dion (dblazakis in #dragonflybsd) found the reason and fixed it, for which I am very grateful.
I had a number of posts I had made ahead of time, so there’s no actual gap in posts from when the server wasn’t responding. Make sure you catch the past few days of articles.
I’ve added the various BSD-related links from an earlier story over on the sidebar to this site. If you have more suggestions for BSD-related site, please tell me at justin@shiningsilence.com, or in the comments.
For some reason, I’ve had more material for posting in the past few weeks than just about ever. I’ve had a 2-3 day backlog of news all this time. I’m not complaining, mind you, I’m just thrilled that there’s this much going on.
According to Google image search, this very Digest has something to do with boobs. If this trend continues, I predict a significant increase in traffic. And disappointed visitors. (via Joerg Sonnenberger, who is apparently the common thread)
