Unexpected Errors

The new server somehow got disconnected from the distributed cache; if you got an unexpected error while posting or commenting (or whatever), that's why. 

Your post or comment (or whatever) would be saved successfully, but you wouldn't see the result because the server was trying to update the cache with.

Restarting the local cache manager fixed this, but that shouldn't be required.

Update: And if you got an error logging in, that was due to the same problem.  I've fixed a bug in the code that I think was behind this.  (It was certainly a bug, and it's certainly fixed; I'm just not 100% sure it was the cause of the problem we experienced.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 05:02 PM | Comments (6) | Add Comment
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No Outage Required!

After a certain amount of fiddling, we are now running on two, count them, two web servers.  Which web server you are directed to is essentially random, but you will get exactly the same pages regardless.

We don't (yet) have automatic failover, so if one server dies, 50% of people won't be able to access the site until I redirect the traffic.  We will be enabling additional servers in the coming weeks to balance the load further, and also working on the automatic failover stuff so that our technical guys can take a bathroom break now and then...

In the meantime, enjoy!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:48 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Planned Outage - Saturday 9th June, 2AM GMT

This outage should be fairly brief, probably less than ten minutes. I'll be switching us over to the production database cluster in preparation for our launch.

After that, we'll be activating additional web servers.  There shouldn't be any downtime involved in that at all, and I'll be monitoring for problems.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:59 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Imagery

It's been a while since the last update, but I have been busy.  Here's the first of the new features uploaded today:

Automatic Server-Side Image Scaling and Thumbnails (ASSIST!)

Shrink to 200 pixels wide - side-by-side with a browser-scaled image for comparison:
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg size=200x]

Shrink to 200 pixels tall:
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg size=x200]


Fit inside a box 100 pixels square, keeping proportions:
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg size=100x100]



Resize to 100 pixels square, regardless of proportions:
[thumbnail=/images/Benten.jpg resize=100x100]


Accessing this directly from HTML:

<img src="/images/Benten.jpg?size=200x" border="0" />

This is intended to make it easy to produce image galleries and photo albums where you need to produce images in multiple resolutions.  Also, it will be used for user avatars: Since mee.nu users have complete control over their site layouts, there won't be a single fixed size for avatars, and resizing in the browser produces ugly images.

The advantages (apart from the improved quality) is that it makes it very easy to keep the image proportions, and it produces smaller files for fast loading times.  (And less strain on your bandwidth.)  Doing high-quality image processing is fairly CPU intensive, but we already have 16 CPUs at our disposal, so that is not anticipated to be a problem.

One hitch: This doesn't currently work for animated GIFs.  Neither does the image processing function in the file module; the GIF library I'm using is lacking in several respects.  This will be resolved in the next month or so.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:56 PM | Comments (2) | Add Comment
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Changes!

Hi everyone.

You'll see changes happening to the edit screens over the next two days, with a number of new features popping up.  It will take me a little while to put all the updates in place, so if you try some of the new links and they don't do anything, that's why.

Once I've finished with the updates, I'll put a longer post up explaining where everything is and what it does.  And then, if something isn't working, feel free to tell me about it.

Okay, the update is in!  We are now running on version 1.0.  I still have to do some tweaking, and enable some of the features, but we're here!

And then... The documentation.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:57 AM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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Planned Outages - June 2nd, 3rd and 4th, 10AM GMT

This weekend, I'll be rolling out the update to version 1.0, and switching to the production servers, so expect half an hour or so of downtime each day.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:59 AM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Someone Let The Magic Smoke Out

Not, on the whole, a fun weekend.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:00 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment
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Planned Outage - 3rd May 2007 - 8 AM to 10 AM GMT

Hi everyone.

We're having an outage to upgrade our server hardware; this will be taking place between 8 AM and 10 AM GMT (2 AM to 4 AM CDT) on Thursday May 3rd - which is today! (At least for me.)

We'll be moving from those slow old Core 2 Duo chips* to shiny new Core 2 Quads.**

Yay!

Update: This server has been upgraded.  The production servers are still being worked on, but the beta test is back in action.

*  Xeon 3060's to be precise, and they're actually very fast.
** Xeon 3220's, and they're very very fast.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:03 AM | Comments (7) | Add Comment
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Pullquote CSS

Here's the sample CSS for the new [pullquote] tag. Note that the rainbow scheme is meant as an example, and not as something I'd recommend anyone actually use.
more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 04:11 PM | No Comments | Add Comment
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Quote Me On That

Pullquotes

The pullquote tag makes for easy and attractive magazine-style pullquotes. You can place the pullquote to the left or right of the text, set your own colour schemes, control the line breaks yourself or let the system handle it for you, and select different text for the quote and the main body.

Code: [pullquote left strip scheme=orange]The pullquote tag|makes for|easy and attractive|magazine-style|pullquotes.[/pullquote]

Usage: [pullquote {left|right} {strip} {nobody} {scheme=scheme_name}]

• The quote can be
  placed either left or right
  placed either left or right (the default) of the body text.
• Markup in the body text may cause problems in the pullquote. The strip option removes any markup from the pullquote, leaving it in the body.
• This text appears only in the pullquote.
  When needed, the pullquote text can be different to the body text. To specify that the contents are to appear in the pullquote only, specify the nobody option.
  
• Schemes can be user-defined in your CSS. The standard schemes include
  red, orange, green, blue, and purple
  red, orange, green, blue, and purple. The default scheme (if no scheme is specified) is black and grey.  The CSS code for the blue scheme, for example, is simply:
  

  .pullquote-blue-1,.pullquote-blue-5  { color: #55D; }
  .pullquote-blue-2,.pullquote-blue-4  { color: #339; }
  .pullquote-blue-3  { color: #004; }

• Pullquotes are automatically split into five sections, unless you specify the break points using pipes | as shown in this example.
  

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:50 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment
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