Automattic is one of my favorite companies. Not only because they make the best blogging platform but because they are doing it through free software and good ethics. When IDC announced that they would be using Akismet for spam control, I was glad. Now that I know that they are wholly under the umbrella of the Automattic group, I’m stoked!
IDC has already shown amazing support for WordPress. Their new plugin (which I’m testing in the Alpha version) already has awesome features that make your comment managing so much less of a headache. Now that they have the people with the definite wordpress knowledge backing them, the features and integration can only grow better.
I’m getting more excited just by thinking of the possibilities.
One thing that I’m certain will follow from this, is that we are finally going to have ID Comments on WordPress.com. As other have said, the default comment system of wordpress is in dire need of an overhaul. While definitelly superior to blogger’s (not only in comments), it is still lagging behind in necessary features for a good discussion, one of which is good threading.
Unfortunately, due to the limited nature of WordPress.com, it meant that individual users could not install either IDC or any of their competitors but now that Automattic got them, we can all foresee what will follow. WordPress.com is about to get (even better).
The only way blogger can now keep up, is if Google acquires Disqus, which I don’t find as very far fetched to tell you the truth. At least then blogger might get a decent commment system at last.
So, for all of you who have not yet jumped on the IDC bandwagon, especially if you’re self-hosting WordPress, there’s no better place than now to join.
Unfortunately for now, IDC has gone back to invitation only so if you want to try, let me know and I’ll try and get you a code if you can’t wait 😉
The most interesting parts is the Feeds option which allows you to import your favorite feeds into zemanta and have it find posts available there, that are relevant to your content. By using the friends function and simply adding you twitter contacts (yet another reason why you should join the twitter atheists) you can simply select the ones you want to follow. Plus, mybloglog became more useful now 😀
With the huge amount of atheist blogs, this is certainly going to come in handly in facilitating interlinking to others in the Atheosphere (whereas before you just had to have something available). Now I can easily start writing something about ethics, and get some stuff from, say, the Atheist Ethicist to add.
The other one I like is that you can now filter you image results. This was sorely needed as you very often have an idea on what to put as a image but zemanta does not give you the option. This has finally become better than photodropper now since it is both faster, and you get previews and you get to see more sources than simply flickr. Plus, you can tell it to only grab your own stuff if you have a flickr account 😉
I’ve been trying to control and introspect my feelings lately, after the recent event where the Barefoot Bum abruptly terminated his self-hosted blog. This sudden turn of events left me stunned and hurt, very much like a slap in the face.
Thus, I’ve been waiting for the last few days to get an explanation, a reason or something anyway to understand what led to this. But after my emails were ignored and my IM attempts were shot down, I’m starting to believe this is for him, somehow personal.
But why is this a slap in the face for me? Let me give you an analogy.
Lets say that you have an old fashioned bicycle which does not have any speed control but always moves at the same old speed. This bicycle does not have anything fancy but it takes you where you want it eventually but like all bikes missing speed control, when the road gets upward, it makes you struggle and when it goes downwards, your pedaling becomes useless.
I see this and I explain to you that there are new types of custom bicycles with speed control. They takes a bit of time to setup and get used to but give you much more power in your rides. You’re sceptical at first but once I explain the rest of the features and widgets that a custom bicycle can have and that I’ll be glad to set it up or you as a gift (once you buy for the material) you’re sold.
I also explain that I’m trying to convince more people to try these out as I think it’s worth it.
So I spend some time to setup this bicycle and you start using it. The first week goes just fine and while you don’t yet have the perfect understanding of speed control, you can ride it. Sometimes it gets a bit harder as you’re not used to switching the speeds but nothing serious. As far as I know, everything seems to be going fine until…
One sunday, I wake up to find you shouting how much these bicycles suck. You start calling them an absolute piece of crap that only bike mechanics could ever setup and ride, regardless of the fact that many non-mechanics are doing exactly that. Not understanding what changed, I try to explain that this criticism is a bit harsh.
And the next time I wake up and find that you’ve smashed your new bike into millions of pieces. This bike which as a gift I helped you setup, without any expectation of reward and with the best of intentions, is now scrap metal.
How do you think that makes me feel?
All along you knew that as my first attempt to setup a custom bike for, you are the first sample people are going to look at as an example. And yet, you now start saying that custom bikes are not working and that you can’t remove those dynamos I suggested for your old bike either.
You don’t consider that custom bikes may not fit your style. You don’t give me a chance to fix any problems. No, you smash it and then say that they are crap. As if you’re trying to deliberately turn people off and sabotage all I’m trying to achieve.
How do you think that makes me feel now?
If you thought hurt and surprised, you’d be spot on.
Like a slap in the face.
And here I am now. A few days after the “slap”, and I still do not know the fuck happened. I’ve been patiently waiting to see if anything will be explained but in vain. I’ve also been trying to suppress my outburst but I’ve had enough.
All I know is that from one day to the other a succesful migration was trashed and I’m reading impressions that I didn’t expect. At least not from someone I respected. And make no mistake. The migration was succesful. All the posts from the old blog were moved. All the comments, from both blogger and IDC were moved ((Save one post with ID Comments)). Everything was working. The only missing was the moving of the old blogroll and widgets to the new blog, and the only reason I did not do this as well, is because I was not given access.
There was absolutely nothing more complex left to do, than going to your dashboard and clicking on “Write new post”. Others agree.
As for the setup difficulty; do not be confused by my step-by-step process. In that, I went into excruciating detail in order to make it as easy and fool-proof to follow as possible. I could have easily shortened it to half the size.
That’s it then. This post was mostly a rant to take this stuff out of my chest before it easts me up and burst out like an alien of bitterness and anger. I cannot claim to know why BB acted the way he did but for me, it was certainly the wrong way.
For me, it is especially troublesome when we’re talking about atheist activism, solidarity and cooperation to have my first attempt to help others, pissed on like that from the get go.
UPDATE @ 02/11/2009: This post was never posted publicly until now. As a result of recent developments with the Barefoot Bum, I’m making it public as I see no hope of salvage. Make of it what you will.
I’m too lazy and demotivated to write anything interesting, so instead I’m going to post some pics from recent Medieval Market Excursions
Frankfurt Mittelalter markt
The medieval market of Frankfrut happened in Offenbach and it was quite crowded. I guess mostly because so many people could come without traveling far.
There were quite a few interesting items on sale but I especially liked these blobs on sale
And there was also some extreme cuteness
Burghayn
This was the first medieval market I went in germany back more than one year ago. This time the market was much much bigger
I also had a chance to wear some new clothes and there were surprisingly many people in medieval attire as well.
There was also some great swordfighting to be seen and I managed to get some great action pics. I find the last one especially cool.
I also tried to take some artistic photos
And finally, I got to see Schelmish in all their glory again. It was a very short gig however 🙁 Nevertheless, you too can enjoy some pure medieval music now.
I’ve just discovered a little plugin, Zemanta ((h/t sudobash)), that claims it can make my blogging easier and I was wondering how true that might be. Thus this post, which is party a test to check the capabilties.
Apparently what this plugin does it that it finds related pictures, tags, links and articles to your post content and proposes them for you to use. I am already using the Photo Dropper Wordpress plugin which can find for me Creative Commons licensed content in flickr that is related to my post, but Zemanta promises to take this a step further.
Image by Zemanta via CrunchBase
I’ve just discovered a little plugin, Zemanta ((h/t sudobash)), that claims it can make my blogging easier and I was wondering how true that might be. Thus this post, which is party a test to check the capabilties.
Apparently what this plugin does it that it finds related pictures, tags, links and articles to your post content and proposes them for you to use. I am already using the Photo Dropper WordPress plugin which can find for me Creative Commons licensed content in flickr that is related to my post, but Zemanta promises to take this a step further.
Currently it comes in the form of either a browser or a server plugin. The first form would be appropriate for someone who does not want to load up his blogs with extra scripts and generally blogs from the same place always (say, home). The second form, for which I went for, is better for someone who might blog from 2-3 different locations.
As I’m using it, it looks quite good. I especially like the automatic tag suggestions, and while there are other plugins that can do the same, it’s good that you don’t need 4 different installations. The only thing that wasn’t obvious is that you need to save your article at least once before suggestions start coming in. However once they start, they update every 300 words to give you stuff more relevant to what you are typing in.
So I think I’ll keep it. I’ve already installed it in various of the blogs I manage and I think it will be especially useful for people who just don’t have much time to look around for images or think of tags.
There’s quite a bit or worrying lately in Europe about the creeping Islamization that is occurring. We are seeing the slow buildup of tensions between the values that most European hold and the barbaric ones proposed in the Qu’ran and the Hadith.
Many people, including me, are quite annoyed in the way that our governments and international bodies are not only caving in to Islamic demands, but are actually protecting their hateful doctrine. Instead of seeing a strong secular opposition to the demands of religious extremists, they are given even more rights and more entitlements than any other European.
What most appals me is how the politicians who are supposedly representing us, instead cater to the religious extremist vocal minority, simply because it’s a very nice chunk of a voting block. Now that wouldn’t be much a problem if our republics were working as they should, as these pandering leaders could simply be voted out, but this is not really happening.
The same parties who at one point decide to pander to religion, end up simply getting re-elected, if not in the next election, at the one after that. Why? Because people will still vote them up, no matter what they do. It’s because people do not vote with their mind and based on previous events. They vote with tradition.
This is one the biggest failing of the bipartisan system most countries have ended up with.
You have two political parties that are neck-to-neck in each election. This is because the largest part of the electoral body traditionally votes for the same party and most are under the impression that not voting either, is the same as voting for the opposition.
Because these parties are so close in vote-count and because the traditional members of each cannot be swayed, the only ones who can tip the scales are the undecided voters.
Politicians thus tend to focus on appeasing what looks like the largest party of undecided which might make the difference in the next election.
The vocal minorities, always look as if they have a much bigger sway and presense than reality.
Religious extremists tend to be very vocal.
And there you have it. When politicians and political parties know that your vote is certain, no matter what they do, they will not look into your interests. They will try to appeal to the people who’s votes are not certain to go in either way and since they know you won’t dare to do anything else than keep voting for them, they will erode your freedoms, your rights and your society to appease the undecided voters.
The bipartisan system does not work. It has shown it does not work in every country that has achieved it as the only thing that ends up happening is that power passes from one party to the other and society gets a little bit worse with each election.
In Europe, this situation becomes even worse now. With the insertion of Muslims as a voting block, the only way to appease them is to push your society closer and closer to Sharia law as they will inadvertently vote for the party that does.
It is this why I am absolutely opposed to voting for any party that acts or has acted like that in the past. I do not care if not voting for the lesser evil will lead the “larger evil” to take place. I’d rather vote with my conscience than be a party to the dissolution of my freedom.
If we, as Secularists do not withhold our votes from the politicians who will move us towards theocracy in their attempt to appease the very same people we oppose, then we are consigning simply to the slow death of our societies and our eventual marginalization.
And not only is it our duty not to vote for them, but we should be telling them loud and clear, before and after each election why they did not get our vote. Perhaps then they might start listening.
In this article I want to write an easy, step-by-step guide on how you can transfer your blog from a free account hosted in Blogger to a Dreamhost powered WordPress installation. I’m writing this now as my memory is quite fresh from my recent migration and hopefully this will come useful to others who might be thinking of doing this themselves.
Select “Host a Domain” as the other choice is just to get a new domain name through Dreamhost
In Step 2 Select the yearly option as it’s the most sensible for someone with a low budget.
In Step 3 You don’t need to select anything unless you plan to run a lot of heavy scripts and have a bit of traffic.
In Step 4, Uncheck Google Apps if you want to use Dreamhost’s custom options. This is a good option if you just a WordPress blog for now. You can always turn it up later.
In Step 5, leave it as it is, and type the domain name you would like and a username for your ftp access.
In Step 6, fill your information in.
In Step 7 type dbzer0 to get 20$ off or dbzero@gmail.com if you want to be extra nice to me 😉 Check the Box and go to Payment
Go through the payment stuff and wait until you receive the “DreamHost Account Approval Notification!” email.
Follow the email link and put your credentials to find yourself in your Panel.
Setting up your domain
You’ll find yourself in the Overview pane. From here you can follow various links to manage your stuff. Start by clicking the Manage Domains button (Also found in the sidebar under “Domains”)
If you created a new domain in the previous part, you should see it now in the list. Press the “Edit” Button next to the “Delete” button in the middle.
In the next screen the only things you should change are the following
Switch your PHP version to 5.x. PHP 4.x is obsolete and you’ll run into problems with plugins and the like if you keep using it.
Further down where it says “How do you like the www in your URL?” don’t leave it as “both”. Select the “remove www.” as this will help Search engines find you better.
Press “Change fully hosted setting now!” to complete this step.
Installing WordPress
Now that our domain settings are ready, lets go ahead and setup our WordPress installation. Start by heading over to One-Click installs (from the sidebar it’s under “Goodies > One-Click Installs”
Click “Install new software (Advanced Mode)” (Easy mode is similar hosting it on wordpress.com)
Preparing wordpress to be installed
WordPress should be already selected so simply scroll down. You should see an image similar to the screenshot on the left.
In “Install to” you should see your domain. Leave it as it is, unless you want your wordpress site to a subfolder of your domain (ie /blog/). However I don’t recommend this. First because you can later on configure wordpress to show your posts under something like that and secondly because you’ll have to create some kind of splash or home page on your domain root for people falling there. This will probably be different from your site and won’t be counted in your wordpress stats.
In “Select database to use” you should have the option to write your own database name. The default probably will not work so change it to something obvious for you. An example is yourblogname_wp_db
In Hostname, you can just leave it as it is.
In Creating a user for the database, you can simply create the same user as for your ftp access so to cut down on things you have to remember. You’ll probably never use this anyway so it’s easy to forget if you put something new.
Press “Install it for me now”. it will load for a bit and then the page will reload and on the top you should see something similar to this:
Within 5 to 10 minutes, you should receive an email telling you that your installation is ready.
Setting up your WordPress and importing from Blogger
Our Blog Waiting
Now that you’ve received the funky Dreamhost email follow the handy instructions within.
Go to the install link and create your first user.
Login to your site
That’s it. Your first wordpress site is now ready 😉
Lets proceed to import your blogger site now
Go to Import (follow the link in the email or in the admin panel head to “Manage > Import”
Click on Blogger
Click Authorize
Click “Grant Access” in blogger.
You will now see all blogs you are managing in blogspot. Click on the “Import” Magic Button and wait a few seconds to minutes (depending on your old content)
If you’re using feedburner (and if you’re not, why aren’t you?!) go to your feeds, then to your blogger feed, and click “Edit Feed Details”. In the “Original Feed Location” replace your old blogger feed location with the new wordpress one. This is always in the form of http://yourblogurl/feed.
If you’re not using Feedburner, first go and create a feed for your wordpress installation. Then go to your old blogger blog settings > Site Feed. In the “Post Redirect Feed URL” put the new feedburner feed you just created which has your new wordpress feed as its source. This will transparently migrate all your old readers to your new location
Write a new post on your blogspot blog that you have moved and point to your new location. Once we setup your plugin installer, we’ll set up your blog to automatically redirect each post to your new location.
That’s it. You have now successfully migrated from Blogger to WordPress 😉 In a next post I will explain how to migrate Intense Debate Comments as well, since the wordpress importer does not grab those automatically.
There’s one last thing that you might want to do which is to inform your readers that you’ve changed location
Finishing touches
Currently you should have created your wordpress site and migrated from blogger but you are probably at a very basic state. You should at this point configure a few options to make your life and look easier.
Settings
Settings > General
Put a Tagline for your site. This will both be shown on your theme but also probably be seen by search engines as well.
Configure your time so that the times you schedule and post are the ones you expect
Settings > Discussion
Under “Before a Comment Appears”, uncheck “Comment author must have a previously approved comment” This will reduce your management overhead.
Under “Comment Moderation” increase the number of links to 3 since it is not uncommon for a non-spammer to include to links in the same post.
Settings > Permalinks
Here you should set your permalink structure. That is the way your posts will look at your blog. While you can leave it as the default ?p=123, this generally looks ugly, is not rememberable and search engines don’t like it.
Many people select the date based permalinks but I personally do not like that choice. This kind of setup is only appropriate for newspapers really. The only ones who should be using this are the ones who are writing an actual journal.
My advice to you is to use a either a custom structure or a category based one. In a custom structure, you can use the simple /%postname% option which will make all your articles show on the root (ie http://dbzer0.com/this-is-a-post ) or put something in front to make it differ from pages. I prefer /blog/%postname% but it’s up to you.
In a category structure, your posts will show under each category which is nice but if you tag sometimes in more than one category, an article may show under an undesirable one.In any case, whatever you choose does not need to be permanent. Even if you change your permalink structure in the future, wordpress will automatically redirect links going into a post that has changed location correctly so don’t agonize on making the perfect choice now.
Plugins
Plugins are the most exciting part of having your own wordpress installation. I’m not going to go into much depth but I want to mention how to set your installation up to allow you to install and manage plugins from the wordpress admin interface (instead of setting up ftp connections each time). Unfortunately we cannot avoid using FTP the first time.
Use your favorite FTP client to setup a connection to your server. I recommend the excellent fireftp which you can use without installing software on your PC.
Setup your connection in your ftp program of choice. In Fireftp:
Select “New Connection”
Find your webserver name in the
Find your server name. You can find this in multiple locations:
In the automated emails your received
In your dreamhost panel by going to Users > Manage Users and looking at the “Machine” column
At the dreamhost panel, clicking on “Account Status” on the top and looking at “Your Web server”
In server name, put your server name followed by .dreamhost.com (e.g. dodo.dreamhost.com)
In user name, put the user your created for your account
In Password, put the password you created. If you do not remember it, you can change it from Manage Users again by clicking on “Edit”
Press OK.
Connect to your server. You should now be in a folder where your domain exists as a subdirectory. Enter that directory and then navigate to Wp-content > Plugins.
Using your ftp program, upload the plugin directory into your wordpress Plugins directory we navigated before. In Fireftp:
On the left-hand side of the split-screen, navigate to the place where you’ve extracted the zip file.
Make sure that your right screen is showing the contents of youblog.com/wp-content/plugins (you should be seeing other folders and .php files like wp-cache/ and hello.php)
Select the directory and click the little arrow pointing to the right between the split-screens.
Wait until the job is complete.
Go to your plugins admin page (Top right)
Scroll down to where it says “Inactive Plugins” and activate the One-Click Plugin Updater. This will make your plugin page show a little differently. Namely you should see yellow bars next to various plugins.
That’s it. Now you have the ability to install new plugins and themes without using ftp and without even downloading and extracting files on your PC. Just follow the instructions that you can find in the “One Click Updater Miniguide” in your Dashboard.
So that’s it.
Hopefully this guide will help any of you who are thinking about self-hosting but don’t want to trust me or want to learn to do it yourselves.
If you see anything I forgot or something I should include or make simpler, let me know.
In the last two days I’ve been playing Spore which I have, lets say, borrowed from a friend and I must say I quite like it. It’s a pretty addictive game and all pseudo-evolution, make your own monster stuff is cute.
But I’m not going to buy it.
Why? Because the publisher has seriously dropped the ball in regards to what the consumer wants. I was honestly considering bying the game today but then I stumbled onto the reviews of it on Amazon and realised what kind of C.R.A.P. they have in store for me. I will not buy a product who treats me as if I’m a thief already. I will not buy a product which is liable to stop working after I reinstall my machine a few times (and as a techie, this is not that rare). I will not buy a procuct which may stop accepting my activation after a few years. I will not buy a product which uses a copy-protection both known to be disruptive to your machine and taxing on your hardware.
Unless this DRM shit is removed, I am not buying the game. And it seems that most people agree with me on this.
Other than that, there are a few other things that are wrong with the game.
1) Evolution is very misrepresented.
While I understand that the game is mostly meant to be fun, there’s certainly ways you could have made it a bit more realistic. For example, I don’t mind that your creature seems to be growing in real time (especially since in the history view, this is shown as millions of years) but what I didn’t like was that your actions do not affect your evolution at all, other than the generic disposition you have (social vs aggressive, carnivore vs herbivore etc).
However, you actual creature traits have nothing to do with what actions you take. I can start as a carnivore but at any point I can switch to herbivore. I can have 4 spikes and suddenly have 1 big poison gland. I can have 8 limbs and a long body and the next generation can be a little ball with wings.
If nothing more, this seems like the creationist view of evolution where they expect a dog to give birth to a chicken or something similar, as this is exactly how it’s represented in the game. You gather DNA by doing stuff and then you mate and get to redesign your creature. At the this stage, you can pretty much make a totally new thing if you want to.
UPDATE: I think this review adequately explains everything that is wrong with the way evolution is repressented in the game.
2) Some things seem purely cosmetic.
I designed a creature with six legs which was as fast as a creature with one leg. This is because the only thing that matters is what kind of “foot” you have. You can have 10 legs if you want to but it actually hurts you. The only thing that matters is your best type of each limb. Your best hand, your best feet, etc. Multiple eyes don’t make any difference. More than 4 legs or hands are a disadvantage etc.
This is because bonuses don’t stack. You only ever use your best bonus from a specific part. So if you have one set of feet that gives 2 speed, and another that gives 3. Your overall is not 5 but 3. What this means is that there’s no point in getting more than 2 of any item as their bonuses overlap. So some feet give extra speed but less charge, some give jump and some give dance but they all overlap eventually.
There’s also no point in getting the same types of limbs for cosmetic reasons. If I have 3 sets of arms, it is a disadvantage to get all of them as human hands as I will not be getting any extra bonuses.
As a result, your creature ends up as a patchwork of limbs that just give the best bonuses and have no relation to possibly evolve (see part 1 as well).
I don’t really understand why they did this as it would have been very easy to simply allow the stacking of these bonuses. Then there would be a reason to have similar parts. If they also threw in a penalty for switching types (say a penalty from switching from a mouth to a beak) then it would make a bit more sense.
Another thing that bugs me about cosmetic stuff is that all the parts your acquire in the first two stages become irrelevant in the rest. It makes no difference in your abilities if you have 2,3,5 or 6 arms, legs, eyes or whatever. It would be nice if the way each creature was finalized (at the end of stage 2) played some role in the rest of the game.
3) The Creature Stage is too short
By far the creature stage (the 2nd one) is the most interesting as you get to play around with your critter body and limbs and the like. Unfortunately you barely begin to enjoy it when it ends and while you can continue playing in order to gather DNA and the like, there’s no point (unless there is some hidden award in place which I do not know but I imagine there is)
All your body changes (other than speed) become purely cosmetic for subsequent stages of the game.
It would be great if on hard difficulty the DNA rewards were much slower and one had the chance to play around a bit more, get to fight some of the big monsters etc. As it is, I had barely finished migrating one time when I was done and from a previous experience, I knew there was no point in gathering more DNA.
4) Civilization stage is boring
The fourth stage of the game is the Civilization stage which for me was very boring and repetitive. I won’t go much into details in this but basically combat is not really exciting and diplomacy does not exist. It’s best if one just does as much as possible to get past it quickly.
5) It’s not very hard
As an experienced gamer, I found medium difficulty to be very easy and the hard difficulty is barely challenging. If you’re going to make it that easy on hard, at least give us hardcore gamers an “impossible” setting or soemthing so that we can have a bit of fun.
6) No multiplayer
While the game is touted as a massive single-player game, it would be great if they had though of some way to have player interraction. As much fun as it look to be able to trade creatures and buildings with others, the novelty of that will last all of one week. Still, the galactic game seems interesting even though I haven’t managed to play it a lot. However my initial impression is that it might get boring very quickly if it isn’t expanded and the only way this can work is either with user created content or regular updates from the company (like a MMORPG) in the form or new missions, new types of single player experience etc.
Still, for all these things, the game is seriously fun and addictive. I can’t see me playing for too long but I’ve enjoyed it for the last two days. It’s quite fun to make your little critter be as weird as possible and slowly evolve it (realistically) and I’m going to go back and try to make more weird types later on, just for fun.
The creature creator is the best part of the game, as never before have we had so much freedom and fun in creating a new 3D object. What before would take hours of 3D modelling, can now happen in the span of a few minutes.
I truly believe most people will enjoy Spore, even with all its problems but I also believe that it’s not worth bying. Not with horrible DRM restrictions and not with such a low replayability. And if you think I’m being too negative, just check what is going on in the Spore Feedback fora. Perhaps this screenshot will give you some perspective.
Which of the two threads do you think is more popular?
About a week ago I noticed a sudden spike in my Private Hosting memory consumption. And when I say a spike, I mean a spike
Literally within a day I was through the roof and I had absolutely no idea why. I had attributed my previous increase in consumption to a recent traffic increase but a jump like that was ridiculous.
I was fairly certain that this must be a malfunctioning script running somewhere but a quick ps -e didn’t give me any hints. So I turned to Dreamhost support. I fired a quick ticket and got my first reply within 2 days and unfortunately it wasn’t what I wished for.
Basically, the support told me that they cannot know what I am running on my site and thus cannot really help me. I should figure it out myself. Needless to say I was a bit disappointed.
Thanks for the reply Brian but I’m a bit dissapointed. Your reply was basically “we can’t help you. Figure it out yourself” which is a bit of a letdown compared to what I’m used from Dreamhost support.
The thing is, that in the Dreamhost PS information, you mention that 300Mb should be enough for a top 100 blog. I don’t even have a top 100k blog and I do not run any custom code. I run 3 wordpress blogs and 2 galleries and that’s it.
While I can imagine that some plugin is malfunctioning or possibly a site being hacked and running custom code, I’m not an expert on this stuff and without full access it get pretty impossible for me to figure it out.
I can understand that Dreamhost cannot be expected to troubleshoot everyone’s usage, but on the other hand for someone now really knowledgeable this sounds just wrong. From what my point of view, the “usage”, which I cannot verify in any way independently and does not have any visible basis, could just steadily keep increasing to 2000Mb and I couldn’t do anything about it other than just fork out money.
In any case, I’ll see if I can find anything myself
One more day passed and then I had a much better response. Another support person took over and gave me some tips to try as well as some possible command. ps auxe > serverlog
So I gave it a try and, lo and behold, now 4 misbehaving scripts were revealed. One was an instance of my very own complexlife plugin taking up 15% of the ram, while the other 3 where instances of the photodropper plugin, each taking a 10% . Altogether pretty much explained why my usage was so extreme.
So it was time to bring out my good friend –kill– and get me rid of some unruly processes.
Whoop-de-doop, my memory consumption is back to sane levels. This is why it pays to have some good support at your company. I’m happy once more 😀
You could have been so much more America. You could have become a land of great culture, where the free exchange of ideas and created a rich culture of new and interesting art. Instead your copyrights and your intellectual properties have created a culture where the thing it is known for is shallow sensationalism only fit for mass consumption.
You could have been so much more America ((Note that for the purpose of this post, by “America”, I mean U.S.A)). You could have become a land of great culture, where the free exchange of ideas and created a rich culture of new and interesting art. Instead your copyrights and your intellectual properties have created a culture where the thing it is known for is shallow sensationalism only fit for mass consumption.
You could have been so much more America. You could have become a shining bastion of science and progress where the greatest minds in the world moved in to so that they could have the chance to express and create. Instead you are drowning in the murky pool of fundamentalism and new-age mysticism. A large part of your population is actively opposed to knowledge..
You could have been so much more America. You could have used one of the greatest and more progressive constitutions to become the Democracy everyone wants to imitate and thus change the world by example. Instead you have tried to change the world by using your power to create brutal dictators again and again and again, and then topple them when they don’t turn up to be the willing pawns you expected.
You could have been so much more America. You could have used your extraordinary wealth to extinguish poverty and suffering in your society. Instead you are trying so hard to dismantle and prevent any social security and now your poorer people have to live in fear of a sudden illness that might leave them bankrupt. Instead of taking money from the filthy rich and bettering the lives of the poor, you have taken the money from everyone under the guise of foreign aid and siphoned it to the filthy rich.
You could have been so much more America. Yours could have been the land of the truly free, but instead you are the nation of the deluded. You have exchanged away your freedoms for a false sense of security and thus deserve neither.
You could have been so much more America. You could be loved by the whole world for your status, your example or your culture. Instead practically the whole world despises your blatant imperialism, you disregard for conventions and your gun-ho attitude.
You could have been so much more America. You could have the first culture to break free from taboos where the human body is not shunned and sexuality or any orientation is not feared. Instead your puritanical culture goes into bugfuck crazy mode at the mere sight of a nipple.
You could have been so much more America. With mere billions of dollars, if not millions, you could have gone totally energy independent and helped retain our planets survivability. Instead you have wasted trillions fighting a needless war that only serves to make your corporations richer and destabilize whole countries. You have fought for the all-mighty black gold with total disregard of the rest of the world.
You could have been so much more America. You could have given the example of a just and honourable civilization acting responsibly to make the world a better place. Instead you are known as the irresponsible bully who tries to play world police, even though nobody wants you to.
You could have been so much more but you blew it America, and now your time has passed. Soon nobody is going to want to play with you anymore.
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