Category: Technology

I think diesels are the way to go. Because of that, this is good news.

Google is digitizing old newspapers. it probabaly has libraries up in arms (and those who do microfilm) but it is a good idea. Especially if they can digitize the text and not just do images.

This morning I was going to post about some really neat stuff at Thinkgeek (I thought of my dad, Wallace, Woody, Kevin, and Brian when I saw the stuff.  I’ll give you 2 gueses what it relates to.  🙂  ) so I came to the website to login.  What did I see?  Not my normal screen….nope, I saw this:

 Arg! What’s the matter?!  I was worried something really happened to the site (no, I don’t have a backup I do now).  I had been logged into my hosting providers admin panel a few days ago and noticed I was over my db limit.  I wondered if they did any sort of checking, but everything had been working fine so I decided to leave it be.  Well, I guess they do check it because I had been denied write access to my database.  Here is what I saw in the usage stats:

 Arg.  I was over and needed to fix it.  I figured it was the bsq_sitestats module I had installed because I had a bazillion stats stored.  But, I couldn’t just use the module to clean out the stuff because I couldn’t login.  Well, I’m offered phpmyadmin access to my database so I logged in there.  Sure enough, the stats module was eating up all of my space (plus some):

Sure enough, the bsu_hit table was taking up my quota + some.  And another table was taking up another 24MB!  Wow!  How to get rid of the data?  My first thought was to just clean out stats for things like the googlebot, etc….  Well, I tried that, but couldn’t remember the syntax for the delete command.  I know, I could have looked it up, but…..

I wasn’t sure what would happen and how unreliable my stats would be if I just did that.  So, I decided to start from scratch.  I truncated the tables.  Truncate, for those who don’t know, is kinda like a delete…but kinda not.  It gets rid of the data only it is very fast (on Oracle, if I remember right you cannot rollback a truncate command…that is part of the reason.  On mysql, I’m not so sure).

So i truncate everything, go back to the admin page. Refresh it.  No change in the space I’m using.  ARG.  Try to refresh the website.  ARG.  Same error:

ARG.  I call my hosting company and talk to a guy.  he has an American name, but he isn’t an American.  Probabaly Indian…but speaks english very well.  I explain the problem, he goes off and checks.  Tells me I need to wait 15-30 min for their systems to refresh.  But he’s more than happy to walk me through getting rid of data as the admin tool says I still have -50MB free.  Arg.  I try to explain the situation to him…he’s just following the script.  In the end, I tell him that I can’t delete anything more and I’ll wait.  So, I’m chekaming (чекам means I wait in Serbian.  This is my Englishized version of that word).  I finally check back and everything works.  YAY!

But take a look at the space usage after:

I went from using > 150 MB to < 10.  Gee wizz.  The bsq_sitestats plugin sure is nice…but it uses space.  To be fair, I’ve never done any optimization or scrubbing of my stats (I’ll do that now) so I don’t want to misrepresent the app.  The stats are nice, but it eats up the space.

So, now you know the story of the error.  I’m sorry for everyone who had issues overnight.  You won’t get a seperate post about the thinkgeek stuff.  Follow the links on top.

Ok…I’m trying to figure out how to get my combo of google calendar, thunderbird, lightning, and provider for google calendar to work together like outlook.  I want to put a meeting on my calendar, invite others, have them sent an e-mail, accept/reject, etc…  And the other way around…I want them to be able to invite me and me receive an e-mail.

I remember finding an article about changing an option to allow this, but now I can’t find it anywhere.  it was in a file similar to firefox’s about:config page.  Any ideas? 

[Update 09-04-2008 10:57:20] Found it in this page on the thunderbird site.  The options were calendar.google.enableattendees and calendar.google.sendeventnotifications.  I still need to test this out.  I’ll post an update when I do. 

Well, I downloaded Google Chrome today.  So far, it is ok.  There are things I like (like the fact that you can resize textboxes) and things I don’t like (my windows media player stream of Rush will only open as a plugin in the browser and I can’t figure out how to change it).  I’ll use it more over the next few days and post a follow-up.

[Update 2013-02-02 08:17:01] Information on the chrome comic is here.

Logos is offering a new commentary of Matthew and Mark for free for a limited time. Don’t have the software? They have a free client you can download and use too. I don’t know aything about the quality of the commentary, so you’ll have to get it and make up your own mind…but the price can’t be beat.

….this is cool. It is a new program called ubiquity. It is a very very alpha pre-alpha piece of software to try to help people make mash-ups.

I know not everyone is a geek, but these are some classic programmimg problems that everyone learns about. I was reading this article and was reminded about them.

Dining Philosophers
Traveling Salesman
Eight Queens
Two Generals
Towers of Hanoi

I actually remember the eight queens and towers of hanoi.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again:  technology is awesome.  Before the internet, we probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to listen to English language radio here in Serbia.  But now, we can listen to tons and tons (and not just the 80’s and 70’s music played here on the radio….they love that stuff) of it.

 Here are a few good sites I have found, just in case you are in a similar position:

Word of Truth Radio
Pirate Chrstian Radio
SermonAudio
Shoutcast (tons and tons of music from around the world)
Rush Limbaugh (I need news somehow and CNN international just doesn’t hack it)
Your favorite radio station from the US.

 [Update 08-18-2008 05:13:48] Added Pirate Christian Radio and Sermon Audio

In an update to this post where I talk about ways to contact us, I mention that I’m not using the Gizmo client.  Well, after ditching pidgin and skype and gizmo (the client not the service) for Wengo Phone , I decided to switch back.  Why?  Well, I had forgotten that I was using the pidgin encryption plugin and I started having issues receiving calls with Wengo.  So, I’m back to using the Gaim software and Pidgin now.

But, yesterday, I downloaded and tried the new version of Unbutu (the 64 bit edition).  I think this winter, I’m going to try to get it on my laptop and working.  When that happens, I’ll find a free SIP Phone to use.  Any suggestions? 

[Update 2012-12-26 06:52:08] Wengo Phone is now QuoteCom.  I updated the links.