Category: Tech

Another Major Meltdown

You may have noticed earlier that the homepage was rolled back in time. The exact point, no surprise to me, was the last post before iPower switched me over to the new platform. This notice was posted on iPower’s support page:

DNS issues potentially affecting your Website and E-mail An unforeseen issue with our DNS system caused us to have to restore a backup from 3/16/2008.If your site has been transitioned to the new platform since 3/16/2008, or you have created your account since that date, your website and e-mail may be affected.

Transitioned customers may notice that your website is displaying an older version. We will be correcting this during the course of the day today (Mon 5/26/2008), as we restore our DNS.

New customers that have created their account since 3/16/2008 may notice that their website is offline completely. This will also be corrected over the next few hours.

We deeply apologize for this service interruption, we know that you count on us, and our team is working as quickly as possible to restore full service for all customers.

Everything seems to be back the way it was when I went to bed last night, but I’ll be on the lookout for further trouble. Needless to say, iPower’s shaky reputation can’t withstand any more incidents such as this one.

R2D2 Projector

Bismo has pointed out a rather unique item. An R2D2 DVD video projector. It’s the sort of thing The Sharper Image would sell — if they hadn’t gone out of business. But don’t despair, because you can order one directly from Nikko Home Electronics for only $2900 plus shipping!

[flv:/Video/2008/MAY/r2d2.flv 440 330]

It’s odd that R2D2 isn’t shown projecting scenes from Star Wars. The projector has a typical computer screen resolution of 1024×768. The feature list says it uses DLP, but the spec sheet says LCoS. I’m inclined to assume the spec sheet didn’t get updated when the product was finalized, because DLP is much less expensive and simpler to implement than LCoS.

WordPress 2.5.1 Bug

I’ve uncovered a bug in WordPress 2.5.1. It’s posted on their forum, but I’ll explain it here, too, in hopes of somebody catching it.

I used Add Media to upload a SWF file. Since doing that, when using Add Media to upload an image file the smaller versions of the image aren’t being generated. So the sub-folder within wp-content has only the original file. Deleting the SWF file didn’t help. Very annoying.

This is the second time I’ve found a feature within WordPress that can be broken very easily. The other is the post preview feature in the editor. It just shows the current home page. I’ve been living with that limitation for over a year. None of the updates I’ve done since then has fixed it, and my worry is re-running the update for 2.5.1 won’t fix the problem with the smaller image files failing to be created.

By experimenting with a modified version of the theme I use, I’ve come up with what seems to be a workaround for this problem. I don’t care for some of the changes in the modified theme, so I’m either going to modify it myself, or I’ll find another theme I like that’s more compatible with WordPress 2.5.x

If you happened to visit a little while ago you saw me playing around with a new theme, called Giraffe2. It’s flexible in some ways, but not in others. Still not quite what I’m looking for.

I’ve edited the sidebar so it now shows the five most recent comments, excluding my own. Unfortunately, clicking on one doesn’t take you directly to the comment itself, as it should. “Internal linking” is broken. Don’t know why yet. Also, searching has been enhanced and should now include comments, although it appears you’ll just be taken to the post that contains the related comments.

Problem

As I feared would happen, the conversion of my site to iPower’s new management platform has made a mess of things. My oldest blog post is now my newest. AUGHH! If you click on the individual categories you should be all right. I’ll start the troubleshooting process….

UPDATE: Indeed, there’s been an update. A big one. WordPress is now the absolute newest version, which seems to have fixed the problem. It was no surprise this update was necessary, but I would like to say that the iPower support guys confirmed this for me, in a matter of minutes. So kudos and not brickbats to them.

The only casualties I’ve spotted so far are the “Contact” and “Gallery” pages on the navigation bar, and that seems to be a problem with the theme. I should be able to fix that with some minor code edits, or maybe I’ll finally try a new theme. Please let me know what quirks and blow-ups you come across. Hopefully no blow-ups!

UPDATE update: Well, what I just did seemed to have fixed the navigation bar problem. So if you were hoping I’d pick a new theme, you’ll just have to wait! 😉

Media Matters

Having been, in a relatively small way, in both the broadcast and print media, I’m fascinated by the blurring effects the Internet has had between these industries. Newspapers have been hit the hardest, and they’re doing what they can to adapt, mostly by taking advantage of the Web.

One innovation is to use blogging software, so letters to the editor can now be comment threads. Another approach is to add video. The suburban paper here, The Metrowest Daily News, posts videos on YouTube that are relatively rough, but servicable. Some are interviews, while others capture events, such as this suspicious truck fire at a Bose (the Wave Music System) Corporation parking lot.

Larger newspapers, such as The Boston Globe, are now posting slickly-produced videos to complement their feature stories. The video below goes with the story at this link, and I think it does a good job of helping to get the writer’s point across.

By the way, as I’ve pointed out before, the newspaper business had decades of warning that changes were coming. The very thing that was a great burden and expense, the printing and distribution of paper, was also a primary reason (along with literacy) for the success of newspapers, because it gave them control over access.

Papers liked to promote the idea that a single copy would be read by more than one person, but of course they preferred that not too much of that went on. Readership is only a guess, while circulation is a known number, and it’s always better to sell more copies.