Mighty Girl got the hippest 30th Birthday Present anyone could ask for. [here and here]
Bryan, make mine an Orange VW “Thing”.
Author: spierzchala
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Ok, this falls under freaky spam
This was in my mailbox just now. Huh?!?!?
NEW BBC SERIES
Thinking about having a baby?
We are looking for couples to take part in a new BBC series exploring the science behind getting pregnant and pregnancy. If you are thinking about trying for a baby or have already started trying and would like to find out more, please call us on 0141 204 6620 or e-mail: baby@mentorn.tv
PLEASE DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL ADDRESS – REPLY TO mailto:BABY@MENTORN.TV
We’d like to advise you that we got your email address from a mailing list company. Their lists are compiled from those who have agreed, when visiting relevant websites, to receive contact from third parties
If you would like to be removed from our list please reply to mailto:BABYLIST@mentorn.tvI am trying to figure out what list I said yes to to get this email.
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GrabPERF: Yahoo BlogSearch Tuning
The Yahoo! BlogSearch started off showing less than remarkable results in terms of performance (I leave the qalitative judgement to other critics). Over the last 11 days, the team at Yahoo! have realized that there may be an issue, and they have been working on it.
On Thursday afternoon (Oct 20, 2005), they obviously implemented a major change that caused performance to improve dramatically.
CLICK IMAGEThis improvement was due to some back-end changes in the search itself. How do I know this? All the improvement came in first-byte (server response time).
HOUR AVG_SERVER_RESPONSE ------------------- ------------------- 10/20/2005 00:00:00 1.2159322 10/20/2005 01:00:00 1.2658667 10/20/2005 02:00:00 1.3596000 10/20/2005 03:00:00 1.1870328 10/20/2005 04:00:00 1.1672373 10/20/2005 05:00:00 1.2970500 10/20/2005 06:00:00 1.2220333 10/20/2005 07:00:00 1.3705500 10/20/2005 08:00:00 1.4188667 10/20/2005 09:00:00 1.4439000 10/20/2005 10:00:00 1.5772000 10/20/2005 11:00:00 1.4943559 10/20/2005 12:00:00 1.4794426 10/20/2005 13:00:00 1.4017333 10/20/2005 14:00:00 1.6012500 10/20/2005 15:00:00 1.4380333 10/20/2005 16:00:00 1.1326441 10/20/2005 17:00:00 0.5613000 10/20/2005 18:00:00 0.5656833 10/20/2005 19:00:00 0.5766833 10/20/2005 20:00:00 0.5219831 10/20/2005 21:00:00 0.4722131 10/20/2005 22:00:00 0.5022333 10/20/2005 23:00:00 0.4569138
Would love to hear from the Yahoo team, and learn exactly what they did to bring about such a massive improvement.
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Is Web 2.0 Suffocating the Internet?
At my job, I get involved in trying to solve a lot of hairball problems that seem obscure and bizarre. It’s the nature of what I do.
Over the last 3 weeks, some issues that we have been investigating as independent performance-related trends merged into a single meta-issue. I can’t go into the details right now, but what is clear to me (and some of the folks I work with are slowly starting to ascribe to this view) is that the background noise of Web 2.0 services and traffic have started to drown out, and, in some cases, overwhelm the traditional Internet traffic.
Most of the time, you can discount my hare-brained theories. But this one is backed by some really unusual trends that we found yesterday in the publicly available statistics from the Public Exchange points.
I am no network expert, but I am noticing a VERY large upward trend in the volume of traffic going into and out of these locations around the world. And these are simply the public peering exchanges; it would be interesting to see what the traffic statistics at some of the Tier 1 and Tier 2 private peering locations, and at some of the larger co-location facilities looks like.
Now to my theory.
The background noise generated by the explosion of Web 2.0 (i.e. “Always Online”) applications (RSS aggregators, Update pings, email checkers, weather updates, Adsense stats, etc., etc.) are starting to really cause a significant impact on the overall performance of the Internet as a whole.
Some of the coal-mine canaries, organizations that have extreme sensitivity to changes in overall Internet performance, are starting to notice this. Are there other anecdotal/quantitative results that people can point to? Have people trended their performance/traffic data over the last 1 to 2 years?
I may be blowing smoke, but I think that we may be quietly approaching an inflection point in the Internet’s capacity, one that sheer bandwidth itself cannot overcome. In many respects, this is a result of the commercial aspects of the Internet being attached to a notoriously inefficient application-level protocol, built on top of a best-effort delivery mechanism.
The problems with HTTP are coming back to haunt us, especially in the area of optimization. About two years ago, I attended a dinner run by an analyst firm where this subject was discussed. I wasn’t as sensitive to strategic topics as I am now, but I can see now that the topics being raised have now come to pass.
How are we going to deal with this? We can start with the easy stuff.
- Persistent Connections
- HTTP Compression
- Explicit Caching
- Minimize Bytes
The hard stuff comes after: how to we fix the underlying network? What application is going to relace HTTP?
Comments? Questions?
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Colour Printers — “They know when you’ve been bad or good…”
The EFF is letting us know that the US Government (your government, not mine) has secretly collaborated with printer manufacturers to embed a unique tracking code in every document coming from your colour printer. [here]
Via: Travis Smith -
GrabPERF: MSN Search gets snarky
Looks like the folks at MSN Search have decided to block the GrabPERF measurements of the standard search term.
Oh well, doesn’t bother me. I never really considered them a viable contender for any search title. “Too little, too late” is my personal opinion on the MSN Search experience.
Also, it was the slowest of the Big Three.
Average Performance — Oct 1-19, 2005MEASUREMENT AVERAGE NUMBER --------------- --------- ------ Google - Search 0.3524125 18891 Yahoo - Search 0.6395253 18849 MSN - Search 0.7182230 18876
Looking forward to see if anyone from MSN notices…or cares.
UPDATE: MSN Search appears to have fixed their problem. the measurement is now re-instated.
Would sure like to know what happened here.
Technorati: MSN Search, Search, GrabPERF
IceRocket: MSN Search, Search, GrabPERF -
Gutter Helmet: Not alone with installation problems
Hey everybody! Looks like someone else had a bad experience with a Gutter Helmet installer. [here]
Berry was dismayed to discover that his $3,500 gutter-protection system appeared to be inviting one of the very maintenance nightmares it was supposed to protect against: roof rot. Two leaks sprang up after the pricey helmets had been installed, he claimed, which caused rainwater to build up underneath the custom-fitted panels and drip down behind the gutter “for days” after a rainfall.
Hmmm…I sure hope that my local rep manages to find some time in his busy schedule to call me back. Soon.
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Gutter Helmet: An Update
The update on my Gutter Helmet posts (1 and 2) is that there is no update.
We received a phone call from a local Gutter Helmet rep about 2 weeks ago. He spoke to ZenWife who, outlined some of our concerns and issues. I then called and left him a message last week, re-iterating these same concerns, and noting that there was still a leak between the new roof and the new gutters which needed to be fixed by flashing.
Nothing. No response. Silence.
I know it’s Gutter Helmet’s busy season. I know this because the number of hits to my previous posts are increasing.
Maybe some customers are experiencing better installations; I hope so. All I can do is continue to recount my experience to you.
Technorati: Gutter Helmet, gutters, contractors, customer service
IceRocket: Gutter Helmet, gutters, contractors, customer service