((((((((((((((((((((((((( Leoville Blog Update )))))))))))))))))))))))))

February 1, 2002


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http://www.leoville.com/mt/archives/000284.shtml#000284



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Leoville went down earlier today for a few hours. It was out yesterday
for about an hour, too. I contacted my excellent web host, <a
href="http://www.nacio.com" target=_blank>Nacio</a>, and they brought
it back. Here's what they said...

<blockquote><i>
We have noticed that 2 IP addresses are consistently opening and not
closing connections to your website: 12.xx.xx.xxx and 172.xx.xx.xxx.
On average, each IP will have 60 open TCP sessions on a 24/7 basis.
Are you familiar with these IPs? If not, we may look in to blocking
them, as their irregular activity may be part of the problem.

Also, we have been monitoring the disk usage on your site. Currently
you are using 1.5GB total--roughly 1.4GB being your discussion board.
As you are on a shared webserver--geared toward smaller 40 - 80MB
sites--we were hoping that you could remove some content from your
site. Would 500MB be sufficient, or do you need more?
</i></blockquote>

I asked them to block the two IP addresses and that's seemed to help.
I'm going to have to cut back on the disk usage, too. Obviously the
boards have gotten way out of control. I'm pruning older content and
I'll probably cut the max file size to 50kb. Sorry to have to do that,
but I really would like to keep this site running!

On another note, I've been playing with <a href="http://scripting.com/"
target=_blank>Dave Winer's</a> new <a href="http://radio.userland.com/"
target=_blank>Radio</a> blogging software and I have to say it's
wonderful. I'm sticking with <a href="http://www.movabletype.org"
target=_blank>Movable Type</a>, but for anyone who wants to create
their own web site without having to struggle with the tech this is it.
It finally fulfills the web's promise to be the people's publishing
platform. You can read the temporary blog I set up to play with it at
<a href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0102957/"
target=_blank>Weblog.com</a>. It literally took me 10 minutes to get it
up and running. And it's free for 30 days - $40 for a year including
the web hosting. If you've been thinking about blogging try Radio.

While playing with Radio, I noticed that the link to <a
href="http://www.dictionary.com/cgi-bin/dict.pl?term=referrer"
target=_blank>referrers</a> is misspelled on the admin page. No blame
to Dave Winer for this. The misspelling dates back to the original <a
href="http://www.w3.org/Protocols/HTTP/HTRQ_Headers.html#z14"
target=_blank>HTTP spec</a> which also misspells referrers as
"referers."

This ancient error caused me endless confusion when I was writing my
own Perl referers routine (it's running on Leoville now. To see the
most recent 20 referring pages click <a
href="http://www.leoville.com/refpr.shtml" target=_blank>here</a>). The
program failed at first because I kept spelling referrers correctly. It
took me a while to figure out where I was going wrong.

But the misspelling poses an interesting problem. Do you perpetuate it,
as Dave has done, in public, or do you continue to spell it correctly
while using the non-traditional spelling inside your programs? I chose
the latter route on the front page of Leoville, but I might be in the
minority.

In fact, this is exactly how a language evolves. I suppose, in time,
"referers" will become the correct spelling, all thanks to a small
spelling error at the W3C.

Even though programmers are notoriously bad spellers, I can't think of
another instance where a misspelling has become enshrined in a spec.
Can you?

And you can bet I spell checked this post before submitting it.


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