Netcraft noted that Yahoo encountered a bit of a headache today. So I fired up my handy-dandy little performance system and had a look.

Although for an organization and infrastructure the size of Yahoo’s this may have been a big event, in my experience, this was a "stuff happens on the Internet" sort of thing.

Move along people; there’s nothing to see. It is not the apocalyptic event that Netcraft is making it out to be. Google burps and barfs all the time, and everyone grumbles. But there is no need to run in circles and scream and shout.

Yeesh!

Tags: GrabPERF, Netcraft, Yahoo, outage, performance issues, panic, crisis

Tags: app, ARIN, EAD, Google, GrabPERF, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, Internet, Issues, it, Om, One, outage, performance, performance issues, run, Technorati

Ok, we are back from Wasaga Beach. We crossed the border in a ridiculously easy manner — when you have a work visa, you always expect the body-cavity search treatment — and made a run for Syracuse. We picked a hotel out of the air and lucked out with the Comfort Inn near the Syracuse Airport. They said they were dog-friendly and they weren’t kidding. more hotels need to learn how to treat people who travel with pets from this place.

If you are on the New York State Thruway, and need to crash with your puppy, make it to Syracuse and this place will treat you like a normal person, not someone who wants to destroy their hotel.

Tags: Comfort Inn, Syracuse, travel, pets, dogs

Tags: cro, HTML, HTTP, IE, it, normal, Om, One, run, search, Technorati

The Boston Marathon is this weekend, in case you live in a cave. In honour of this event, the CBC has a great story about the man who won the 1907 running: Tom Longboat. [here]

Tags: Tom Longboat, Boston Marathon

Tags: Boston, cbc, HTML, HTTP, it, live, Om, run, Technorati, tn

Photographing Squirrels Photographing Photographers [via FlickrBlog]

Tags: blog, content, HTML, HTTP, ISP, it, LAN, Om, Technorati

Going to Chicago for a client meeting tomorrow. Use Skype to reach me, or show up at Topolobampo tonight around 20:00 (8:00PM) CST.

Tags: client, content, HTML, HTTP, IE, ISP, it, LAN, Om, Technorati

I try and avoid the “me-too” factor that has dominated the land of blogs for most of the time I have been involved in it. Simply aping one persons comments with a slight variation, or personal interpretation doesn’t add much to the initial thrill of finding the original germ of an idea.

Kathy Sierra, someone who has been quoted and analyzed multiple times in this blog, has hit another double to the wall. She talks about the value of serendipity, randomness, in exposing us to new ideas and concepts, ones that we would not have run across in our siloed, standardized lives.

Yesterday was a great example of this for me. Something I read a post on Notebookism that spoke of outsider art or Art Brut. I looked it up on Wikipedia, and spiralled into a 90-minute voyage of discovery into this genre of expression, fueled not by training and ideology, but by a raw, unchecked need to express the world in an artistic way.

I would have never gone down this path unless I had read the Notebookism post, and would have been hard-pressed to find structured explanations (whatever you may think of them) of the topics without Wikipedia.

As I explore myself, and examine the foundations that support my cracked mental structure, I find that I appreciate the random explorations far more than a formal education process. I don’t learn the way that we have been taught.

I prefer to discover.

And when you get right down to the basics of Kathy’s post, that’s what she is saying. People are far more enthusiastic, receptive, and amazed when they discover something for themselves.

It may be an old idea to you. I may not interest you. But when a person gets that gleam in their eye, that rush in their mind, when they get the “WOW!“, then they are committed.

Personally, I am finding that I am having a lot more WOW! moments lately. The combination of therapy, and my medications, has forced me to look at the world that I live in, and the world that I have created, substantially different than I have for the last 15 years.

I am re-discovering the joy and awe of discovery. There is so much out there that gets left behind when your mind is absorbed, consumed, by a single devouring purpose. I am awakening from that period, and finding that my mental indigestion requires the soothing relief of the new and unexpected.

Tags: API, app, blog, book, content, cro, EAD, education, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, IP, ISP, it, LAN, live, Om, One, personal, pr, run, Technorati, the Origin, variation

For those of you who are addicted to the mayhem and destruction of Mythbusters, Buster is a beloved, if unfortunate, member of the cast.

Well, Buster may be out of a job.

Apparently, a guy in Minneapolis managed to prove not one, but two myths in a single 10-12 second period [here]. Namely:

1. A person can break through a piece of tempered plate glass with a single impact, thereby exiting the building above ground-level
2. An awning can slow a person’s a 17-storey fall enough to prevent said individual from being killed after exiting the building through a broken window (See #1 above).

Mr. Savage and Mr. Hyneman, give this damn lucky person an award!

Tags: Americas, app, bbc, content, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, IP, ISP, it, LAN, Om, One, pr, Technorati, window

When I lived in Victoria, BC, there was always a ship idling in the harbour, engine turning over, a low steady hum that was always there when you went to the water.

Well, they have built an on-shore power plant for that ship, and it looks like they may have brought in a new one, but the vessel is always there…waiting.

[Photo: Alistair Howard]

When a cable breaks out in the North Pacific, this ship is gone in an hour. Apparently there are cable repair ships stationed all over the world…waiting.

Here’s Neal Stephenson’s article on the first segment of FLAG, and the whole submarine cable business.

Tags: app, ARIN, business, content, EAD, HTML, HTTP, IM, IP, ISP, it, LAN, live, Om, One, pr, Technorati

It’s always funny when somewhat tech-savvy folks purposely make their bandwidth bills higher than they need to be.

Here’s TechCrunch’s HTTP header response.

HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2007 16:02:23 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.3 (Debian) DAV/2 SVN/1.4.2 PHP/5.2.0-8 mod_ssl/2.2.3 OpenSSL/0.9.8c
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.0-8
X-Pingback: http://www.techcrunch.com/xmlrpc.php
Status: 200 OK
Transfer-Encoding: chunked
Content-Type: text/html; charset="UTF-8"

Port80 Software’s Compression Checker gives us some idea how much bandwidth Mr. Arrington, et al. could save just by activating this little feature, which comes baked into Apache 2.2.x.

Turn. On. Mod_deflate.

Tags: apache, ARIN, bandwidth, compress, compression, content, deflate, EAD, GrabPERF, HTML, HTTP, IE, IM, IP, ISP, it, LAN, Om, performance, PHP, pr, run, server, ssl, techcrunch, Technorati, web, Web Performance

MacYawn

Now, shut up and go back to the interesting stuff.

Thank you.

Tags: API, HTML, HTTP, it, LAN, Mac, Om, One