Good morning all, mid-50s here and damp. See your breath weather….
There have been some site issues with hosting, in the immortal words of the Hitchhiker’s Guide, DON’T PANIC.
Rick is working to fix what broke, and things should be back to normal soon.
In other news, it appears that Austin has one less bomber today. Hooray. There will be some interesting things to learn from this attack, wrt the surveillance state, insurgents, etc. If you are on the other side of that, there are lessons about vulnerability, and resilience to learn too. Got a trauma kit and fire extinguisher in your mail room?
n
Comments don’t seem to be posting.
Third try, maybe this will be the charm.
Old posts are no longer available through the links in my RSS Reader.
Is it not usual that when switching hosts it can take days for the new host’s site location to propagate the internet.
Also, old bookmark links are not working either.
So are we going to be up, down, in, and out for the next few days?
Down again. grrrrrr
Post a few comments critical of Facebook and Twitter and the site goes down. Hmmmm?
The russians did it!
n
It’s not paranoia if they really are out to get you.
29º and cloudy today. Fresh bread & biscuits were made last night. The bread is finally something like repeatable, tasty, and good crumb. Someday soon I’m going to do the tortillas.
I have not noticed any downtime issues, but then I haven’t been watching for them. I shall. If a new host is involved, I wouldn’t be surprised at growing pains. It happens. The nice thing about WordPress is that moving sites is a lot less painless than it used to be. I remember some very painful migrations with older technology.
The Austin bomber reportedly blew himself up. I’m glad he wasn’t as smart as Ted K.
Man I love the internet. The amount of data and just STUFF is amazing.
Case in point.
Our ISD (independent school district) sent out their Board Meeting highlights.
Aside from some vague “trust us” comments on school security, there was an item where the board authorized sale of some “surplus” land “near and around” one of the elementary schools. NO MAP. Item passes without discussion. HMMMMMMMM. Land sale in Houston, no discussion, no map. Hmmmmm.
Happens that the school in question is the school my kids attend, which is surrounded by new development. So I go looking. Can’t find much until I realize I’m looking around the wrong school (they all have names composed of combinations of the same 5-8 words, or so it seems.) What I do find is that the correct school has retained a strip of land surrounding 2 parcels they’ve previously split off. The land is basically easements for big pipelines. I am part owner in one of the parcels, and we’ve had serious disputes over property lines with the other surrounded parcel’s new owner.
Looks to me like the other parcel’s owner went to someone in the district and asked them to sell them the easement land on 2 sides of their parcel. I have NO INTEREST in letting this particular developer sneak in a sweetheart deal that gets them additional land after we settled our claims with them for mere FEET of disputed property. If the school district wants to be rid of the easement land, they can give it to the taxpaying HOMEOWNERS that are on the other side of the easement. I’m sure the 15 homeowners wouldn’t mind bigger back yards at “below market rates” which is what the statutes allow ISDs to sell “narrow strips” of land for, if the land isn’t usable by itself for some reason.
Why this is internet related….
I got email summary of the Board mtg.
Summary linked to official agenda, with supporting docs attached (in this case, none.)
I clicked a link to watch video of the actual meeting to see if any material was presented in person (none was.)
I googled the statute referenced in the item, bang, just like that. No digging thru law books.
I looked at a wide variety of mapping resources online trying to determine what land could be considered. Resources included the City of Houston’s GIS system (property lines, easements), a service that matched and overlayed historical aerial surveys (what is the land in question used for, and composed of), the County Tax Assessor maps (showing property lines and assessed value), and of course Google maps aerial views.
Then I dashed off an inquiry to the Board member herself.
We’ll see what comes of it, but it was very easy to do the research in just a couple hours, from the comfort of my desk. This is HUGELY empowering. If I don’t like the answers I get, or if I get stonewalled, I’ll start using the internet to get personal. I’ll look for connections between the board members and the developer. Pretty easy to file a suit on behalf of the taxpayers in the ISD if the ISD is giving away land to developers in a sweetheart deal. Ditto for the 15 homeowners who should have an opportunity to buy the land abutting their property, especially at ‘below market prices.’
nick
(I don’t know what it would have taken to do the equivalent research before the internet, but at minimum, I’d have had to become aware of the issue somehow, looked up the statute, gone to at least the Assessor’s office, and written letters. Days instead of hours, surely.)
WRT the Austin bomber, reportedly 24 yo local resident. Antifa? Lefty? Age is right… and terror, violence, and bombs have been the province of the left for decades.
n
WRT site issues … and stuff…
Only thehomescientist.com site moved to a new host, with a nameserver change. The ttgnet.com domain did not move, nor did the WP part (ttgnet.com/journal ).
I have not had any problems getting to the ttgnet.com site this morning, nor to this place. All of the ttgnet.com content was not changed.
A good test of things is to start a new private browser instance, then try the site. You could also do a IPCONFIG /FLUSHDNS (on Windows systems) at the command prompt. And/or a browser cache clear.
But all sites work OK this morning for me.
Which is funny, because for the past hour all I got was the justhost.com landing page. Something was going on. I just now (within the past 15 minutes) can get back to the site. Is JustHost hosting this site? Perhaps they’re having trouble?
If it happens again, I’ll flush dns & see what that gets me.
Just looked at the settings on Godaddy. The ttgnet.com site had the justhost nameservers. Don’t think that I changed that….but fixed it back to the dreamhost nameservers.
Verified the correct nameservers for both domains (ttgnet and thehomescientist). All OK now. Just have to wait for propagation.
(Was sure I didn’t change ttgnet…..)
“Nimbus Data’s 100TB ExaDrive Is the World’s Largest SSD”
https://www.pcmag.com/news/359941/nimbus-datas-100tb-exadrive-is-the-worlds-largest-ssd
“A company called Nimbus Data just unveiled what it’s calling the “world’s largest solid state drive” – the ExaDrive DC100, which offers 100TB of storage in a standard 3.5-inch, hard drive-sized form factor. To put this in perspective, the ExaDrive DC100 offers enough storage capacity for “20 million songs, 20,000 HD movies, or 2,000 iPhones worth of data in a device small enough to fit in your back pocket,” Nimbus Data wrote in a news release.”
“On top of that, the ExaDrive DC100 promises to be super energy efficient, using just 0.1 watts per terabyte, or 85 percent less power than its closest competitor.”
Might be a tad expensive.
Just got back from purgatory – JustHost.com.
Just for fun, I took a look at a couple of other websites that are similar (personal or small business sites) and I am not seeing similar things. Just data. Nothing to bank on.
@Lynn- ya think? But I would love to have that kind of storage available. One of our owners is complaining about the 10 MByte limit I put on incoming messages. wants 100 MByte messages for everyone. They typically copy 5-10 others when they send these things. He doesn’t understand why I gripe about adding storage capacity when he’s the one that tries to nix my storage purchases. (/rant). He also thinks I should buy commodity SATA drives instead of enterprise SAS drives. (/rantagain).
The guy who deleted all cankles emails did it.
Being forced to look at JustHost.com today made me do some looking and digging.
I would not use this host. They collect data for all the infamous data collectors and inject ads into your data stream.
I don’t have a clue what caused this morning’s excursions in JustHost.com, I don’t blame Rick, I do blame JustHost.com. Something is not right with them.
As to any connection with GoDaddy, I have used them since their beginning but have changed hosts several times. Each time GoDaddy propagated my new address immediately and there were no delays in connections.
A hosting company whose home page starts out promotion offers for your website raises my suspicions.
DadCooks:
I was not aware of any outside-of-the-usual data collection by JustHost. Their terms of service to not mention anything unusual. I’d be interested in your source of info.
As for the nameserver problem (causing the ttgnet.com site to show the JustHost banner page, it was probably caused by me with the wrong setting at GoDaddy (the registrar for this place). DNS propagation appears to be slow at my place, since I didn’t have the same problems others were having. I verified this morning (and again just now) that the nameservers for the ttgnet.com site are set properly.
Just about any hosting company’s home page has promotion offers for web sites. I’m not worried about JustHosts’ (or BlueHost, which I also use, and is owned by the same company, I believe). And they also own HostGator. All owned by EIG, which owns a lot of hosting places.
I like their unlimited domains/databases/transfer features. Support is good. Uptime is good. I’ve been with them since 2009, and have been happy with them. I also use BlueHost (for Jerry’s sites) and same experience there. So, no issues about them for me.
The nameserver problem was apparently my fault, not the hosting place or registrar. All should be well now (with the usual DNS propagation delays).
One of our owners is complaining about the 10 MByte limit I put on incoming messages. wants 100 MByte messages for everyone.
I have our domain mail record hosted at gmail.com. The gmail file limit is 25 MB outgoing and 50 MB incoming.
A hosting company whose home page starts out promotion offers for your website raises my suspicions.
I suspect that they all do this. I have used Pair Networks for 18 years now for my seven websites. I even have a dedicated server with them. I just have our email hosted over at gmail for the awesome spam detection.
http://www.pair.com
In other news, it appears that Austin has one less bomber today. Hooray. There will be some interesting things to learn from this attack, wrt the surveillance state, insurgents, etc.
The bomber’s house is in Pflugerville. Travis County law enforcement.
If he’s ANTIFA, we aren’t going to find out much, especially if the Travis County Sheriff’s Dept. is lead on the investigation.
I doubt the bomber was extreme right. We would have heard about that already.
@Rick, no one particular site led me to my “anecdotal opinion” regarding data collection, it was just a conclusion I drew from looking around.
I use Site5 for my host (20+ years) and GoDaddy for registrar (since the beginning).
Site5 steers clear of the promotion gimmicks that put the data collection hooks in.
BTW, it took over an hour before hitting the “Post Comment” got me posted rather than a JustHost blank page.
Who knew that SDI signal lines for video also carry audio!
Had a problem with our streaming device where the audio level would sometimes overload the device and it would clip the audio causing clicking. Had to adjust the mixer, which sends audio to a distribution amp, to a lower level. Needed to remember this on each broadcast and sometimes the others doing the directing would forget. Put a compressor/expander in the audio path but there was still occasional issues with the sound. An annoying problem.
In the process of mapping all the connections using VISIO it was discovered that there was no audio going to the digital recorder. Only an SDI connection from the video switcher. Did some more tracking and found that audio is being fed to the switcher and the switcher has an audio mixer. The mixer cannot be accessed on the control surface but can be accessed via the software on the PC. They are all connected together via Ethernet through a network switch on a private network (no outside access) for controlling the switcher. Switcher, control surface, laptop, tally box and digital recorder all communicate via the network.
So I did some testing and found the audio on the switcher using the PC. I then did some changing of the connections and found that audio, along with video, is available on all the SDI outputs, program, preview, AUX1, AUX2 and AUX3. Program is for the broadcast, preview is what is being switched next, AUX1 is used for the display screens in the sanctuary, AUX2 is used for the streaming, AUX3 is not used. The AUX busses can all be changed to any of the switcher inputs or outputs via settings on the laptop.
Program actually has two outputs. One is sent to multiple devices in the system after being converted to analog (thus losing the audio), one of those devices being the modulator for the broadcast. The other program output is being sent to the digital recorder (records on SSD drives) and audio is being seen on the digital recorder level meters.
So I tried the AUX2 output that goes to an SD to HDMI converter to interface with the streaming appliance. Needed to go on the web interface for the device and configure the audio source to HDMI only. Tried a test stream and bam!, there it was audio on the HDMI line.
So I can now eliminate the expander/compressor on the audio line which went to the streaming device, run the streaming audio from the HDMI, and not worry about levels. The audio levels within the switcher are correct. I think the analog inputs for audio on the streaming device are too sensitive. Great that I no longer have to worry about the levels on the stream and get a higher level audio on the broadcast and recordings. And no more clicking in the sound on the stream.
After some research it seems that SDI not only contains SD/HD/4K video but can also carry 16 channels of digital audio. It does require BNC connectors.
I love working with shirt(-r) that I know very little about.
@Rick, it seems that the RSS Feeds are no longer available. Cannot be read by the reader. All my other 100 feeds are fine.
The feed links:
http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/feed/
http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/comments/feed/
http://www.ttgnet.com/journal/the-ofd-project/feed/
Returns a feed not available for all these.
You can get old feed pages, but nothing for the last several hours.
Finally able to see the site again. Was getting a blank justhost.com page all day.
For those that are having ‘blank page’ issues: the nameserver problem was fixed this morning (about 9am PDT). DNS propagation delays (usually up to 4 hours, but can be longer) will cause that blank page for those that have DNS servers that haven’t updated. Them’s the way the internets work.
If you want to change your DNS server to something else, try 8.8.8.8 (ask the googles how to do it). Change back if you want (those are the Google DNS servers, so those of you with tin-foil hats….)
As for the feed problems: those three links in the previous comment all work for me, and provide the latest info. If you aren’t getting the current stuff on those links, blame DNS propagation delays again.
I have verified that all the ttgnet.com pages get a ‘200’ response, which is a non-cached page receipt status. (This in the latest Firefox.) I have also verified that the site works OK in a new private Chrome window (which should not retrieve a cache).
YBPMV (Your Browser Program May Vary).
But, all is well, assuming your DNS provider is current with updates. Changing to a DNS of 8.8.8.8 (or 8.8.4.4) might give you proper results. (Reference here: https://developers.google.com/speed/public-dns/docs/using ).
Added:
You can also do an NSLOOKUP at the command prompt. Should return 64.111.126.127 .
Although, if the people with problems can’t get here, they can’t read this command…..
Hey Rick, got here with OFD’s lappy. No luck on my main pc.
Phone gets thru.
All other websites resolve and connect correctly.
Now I’m wondering if justhost hijacked my browser?
n
ok, another datapoint.
OFD’s lappy uses wifi, all my hard wired pcs get the justhost page. wifi gets to site…
n
and lappy is using 8.8.8.8
@Nick: well, your router might have some DNS settings that are overriding your computer’s hardwired settings.
This shows how to change DNS via command prompt: https://helpdeskgeek.com/networking/change-ip-address-and-dns-servers-using-the-command-prompt/
This has some info on checking DNS settings for the router https://www.lifewire.com/how-to-change-dns-servers-on-most-popular-routers-2617995 .
I installed noscript and so far I can use the site…
n
Many thanks Rick..
All seems ok today..
I left Bluehost when they broke my incoming email and refused to fix it. Somehow I’d thought that when their POP3 server reported “Internal server error”, it’d be pretty clear that the problem was on their end, not mine, but their chat support person kept trying to tell me otherwise.