Category: Tech

Feelin’ Blue ’bout hosts

I’ve been blissfully ignorant about self-hosted blogging. With over 250,000 hits per month, shared hosting services consider me to be a heavy-hitter. I have a new appreciation for my old service, iPower, for allowing me to use so much storage and bandwidth for so long.

I’m on Bluehost now, which runs a customized version of Linux that does something called CPU throttling. So if my site gets too busy, it’s automatically taken offline for a while. I don’t disagree with this approach, unless the servers have too many sites, and they’re robbing Peter’s site to service Paul’s site.

I have a few months before I have to decide whether or not to renew on Bluehost. It would be a big, and expensive, step to move to a hosting service that offers Virtual Private Servers. Once again, circumstances are forcing me to contemplate why I’m blogging, now that I’ve done everything I set out to do with it.

Turning Japanese

Some years back, Panasonic had an ISP business in Japan called hi-ho. They had a series of bizarre, addictive, animated commercials that Eric and I enjoyed watching. I remember Eric wasn’t even a teenager yet, so it had to have been a while ago. This one has a winter theme.

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Eric liked this one…

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…and this was my favorite.

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Tech note: these are the first videos I have made using CamStudio.

Plugging a leak product

A week ago I talked about the leak around the water feed pipe coming into the basement, and my clever way of getting the water to go into a bucket.

The seal around the pipe failed during an exceptionally heavy rain that fell on top of snow, so my next challenge was to plug the gap around the pipe. I used Loctite epoxy putty.

All you have to do is cut the amount of putty you need, then knead it to activate the epoxy. Once mixed, you have 10-15 minutes to mold it before it sets. I don’t know yet whether or not the leak is fixed, but if it is all it took was half of a $4 tube of putty.

Streaming Video on Sony BDP-N460

My Blu-ray player is a Sony BDP-N460. On Amazon.com there is some controversy about its streaming video performance with Netflix Watch Instantly and Amazon Video on Demand. I also regularly use a Roku HD for both of these services, and occasionally I watch Netflix with my son’s Xbox 360. Each unit has its advantages.

I have captured 15+ minutes of streaming video from the BDP-N460, so those who may be interested in buying one can see for themselves how it works. There is an old 1 GB flash drive in the back for BD Live, that has no effect on streaming video playback. The Internet service is 25 Mbps Verizon FiOS.

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Follow-up: It has been suggested that a better demonstration would be to compare the BDP-N460 to the Roku HD when playing a HD video from Netflix Watch Instantly. Here is the comparison, taken with a Canon digital camera sitting on top of a Panasonic 720p front projector.

XP BSOD

Microsoft may now have a worse public relations problem than Toyota has:

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9155419/Windows_patch_cripples_XP_with_blue_screen_users_claim?source=CTWNLE_nlt_dailyam_2010-02-11

I don’t automatically take Windows updates. I set XP to notify me and then I click “Advanced” to review them. That way I can ignore Office-related changes that don’t apply to my home computers. But yesterday all of the updates looked like necessary security fixes, so I took them on my desktop and netbook computers. If I have to deal with this BSOD problem I will be very, very unhappy.

Follow-up: It seems that if the first restart of Windows is OK after the update for KB977165, you won’t go BSOD. I updated my Dell Inspiron 530 desktop and Acer Aspire One netbook, and both were OK after restarting. I have not yet updated Carol’s laptop and Eric’s tower PC, and for now I think I’ll leave them that way.

I don’t know how widespread these crashes are. The update was released two days ago, and news of the XP failures doesn’t seem to be in the non-technical media.

Follow-up: Microsoft has pulled the patch.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9156118/Microsoft_stops_serving_Windows_patch_blamed_for_blue_screens

Follow-up: Appears as though the affected machines might have already been infected.

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Bott/?p=1764&tag=nl.e589