Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - March 2002

A hard man is good to beat

February

On March 1, 1997, this web site became a pay site. Up till then, it was free. But the cost of bandwidth meant I had to either close down, find advertsers to pay, or charge the members. At the time, I really didn't know how to find advertisers to pay, and I'm glad now I didn't go that way, because right now, advertising money is as scarce as hen's teeth.

Anyhow, this means that I've been running for five years now. Five years! That's internet years, and you get 200 ordinary years for one internet year, so it's like a millenium :-)

What were things like back then? Well, there were a few sites in this field, not many. The main world hadn't discovered the internet yet, the big internet boom (remember that?) hadn't started.

The site was running on one computer, which wasn't actually mine, it belonged to the ISP and I shared it with their other customers (with *all* their other customers, the ISP was pretty small). I knew nothing about the economics of the internet, I knew nothing about how to write programs to run on servers, I knew nothing about Linux. I was entirely a virgin when it came to TCP/IP, DNS, CGI, SMTP, POP3, and the rest of the alphabet soup. I had no idea how to process credit cards, or how to weed out the frauds. I didn't know how to stop black-hat attackers from crashing a server, how to build my own computers, install Linux and a web server, operate a firewall. If I'd known then just how much I didn't know, I'd have quailed. Quailed, but I'd still have done it, because I believe that if someone else can do something, there's no reason why I can't also. There's still lots I don't know, but I still believe that if I need to know how to do something, I can find out. I strongly recommend the books published by O'Reilly.

That was then, this is now. I build all my own computers (all it takes is a screwdriver, a parts catalogue and a seven pound hammer). It's a *lot* cheaper for me to build than to buy. I install Linux (and that comes at a good price too - Linux is free), configure it, secure it. I write the software that runs the site (which is highly automated), I write and maintain the membership database, administer the Usenet News servers, organise the content of the site. The site uses about 50 computers (more than half of them are backups for the other half, so that I can maintain service when there's a severe problem) spread over two locations, both in England (it's cheaper here). There's about ten terabytes of disk space - this is one of the biggest web sites on the internet.

And we support the women. I say "we", not "I", because the money that I send to the women, comes from the members. Part of every member's subscription, is sent directly to a whole bunch of women who we sponsor (you can read about that each month in the newsletter), plus we also sponsor events like the Jan Tana, the Women's Strength Extravaganza, the Femsport Valkyrie Festivals and the New York Muscle Club. Some sponsorships are ongoing; others are done in the form of specific grants to help women compete at particular events. Some of the women are bodybuilders, some are powerlifters, some are other kinds of athlete. There's still not many people supporting the women, but if you're a member of this web site, you can count yourself as one of the supporters!

Now on to the next thousand years!

New and updated Galleries

Galleries added this month.

The Library

Stories added this month.

Listen with Diana the Valkyrie

Nothing new

The Movie Theatre

Movies added this month.

Shopping Mall

New videos from Utopia! About a dozen new videos from Utopia Entertainment, go check out the descriptions.

Also two new videos from Kasie Cavanaugh, "Endangered Species" and "Sexy When Wet"

Servers

Nothing too bad happened in February.

At the start of the month, I installed Sarah, to replace Bunny in carrying Newsthumbs. Sarah is the first "big data box" that's in a 2U (3 1/2 inches high) case. Sarah has eight 160 gb drives, but because of a limitation in the IDE ATA-100 interface standard, I can only get 137 gb from each drive. Still, that gives me 1056 gigabytes, not too shabby! It would be 1096, but various necessary kibble on the file system takes up about 4% of the space. I needed to put Sarah in quickly, after the failures of Yenta and Bunny, so I didn't have the time to explore how to get past that 137 limit.

So now I've looked into how to get round this limitation, and I found a way. The next 2U box I built, Unity (named for one of the Mitford sisters) has twelve 160 gb drives, giving me 1920 gb, nearly two terabytes, at a cost of about $4000. That box also uses a 2.5 inch drive (like the ones used in notebooks) for the first time. It's cheap, and saves a lot of space. But I had to spend a lot of time experimenting until I found a combination of cards and software that worked. As usual, the documentation was misleading. For example, it said "use driver-1 if you're running an Athlon processor, otherwise use driver-2". I have a Duron in that box, which is kind of like an Athlon Junior. Taking the instructions literally, I would use driver-2. Actually, driver-2 doesn't work with the Duron, and driver-1 does. Life is full of this sort of gotcha. The only defence is to understand a bit about what you're doing. And then I found that the power supply was too wimpy to run 12 drives, and I had to put in something beefier. But when I finally got it working, I got "free space: 1936192585728 bytes" on a single file system. Nearly two terabytes. Grin grin grin.

I'm also using a different motherboard that I found, which gives me a board with a 1200 mHz processor (Duron) for under $150. Also on that board, there's video and networking, which means I don't need cards for those, which means I can put the thing in a 1U (1 3/4 inch high) case. As you can see, space consumption has become a lot more important to me. So, I can get 640 gb in a 1U case (I already tried it). When I started building mass-storage boxes (Judy was the first, in December 2000), I was getting 640 gb in a 5U case. 1 year later, same capacity, 1/5 the space, and half the cost.

Also, I installed another nineteen inch rack. So now I've got the one at Watford, and two here. It really makes the place look so much tidier, and the computers take up a lot less space than they did when they were strewn all over the floor.

I've also located a couple of interesting-looking dual-Pentium motherboards. I need that much processing power to calculate the thumbnails on the Newsthumbs; it takes 3 hours per day even with two processors working on it. It used to take 12 hours, at one time. But I've refined and speeded things up a bit.

But I want to put this into a 1U (1 3/4 inch high) box, to save space. So, I've found a couple of motherboards that might make this possible, because they don't need a video card or an ethernet card.

The server that runs the webcam that you use to view the Bionic Arm, has been a problem since day one. I used an ordinary webcam, and that meant I had to run Windows 98 for the webcam box. But the software that runs the webcam has a memory leak, and after several days of operation, all the memory has leaked out, and Windows stops running. I tried upgrading the software, changing the webcam, nothing helped. For most purposes, if a computer runs for a week without crashing, that's good enough. But not for a web server. I expect my servers to run for at least a year non-stop, unless I have to switch them off to move them or something.

So, I finally tackled that problem, and now the webcam is running off Linux, and I don't have a problem with it crashing every few days. So far, it's been up 12 days, no problem, and no memory leak. Linux isn't for everyone, of course, but, well ... I have to say, from where I'm sitting, Windows 98 is a toy; if you want to run a reliable computer, you'd use Linux.

The Bionic Arm isn't exactly a major feature of the web site, but it was fun to do, and, more importantly, it led to the development of the remote controllers that I use for the servers in Watford, which means I don't need to call out an on-site engineer when I need a button to be pressed.

Maybe now I can run a webcam reliably, I'll think of other things to do with it.

On February 20, Fiona got into a terrible tangle. A bunch of files went missing, and when I did a fsck (file system check) there were a zillion errors. So I decided to wipe clean and start over. This is the whole reason why, for each server that runs the web site, there's a backup. Fiona's backup is Lorna.

First, I switched the load over to Lorna. That meant that folks browsing the site, only saw a minor glitch. Then I re-formatted Fiona, and then copied the 117 gigabytes of the web site from Lorna to Fiona. That turned out to be non-simple, because Lorna couldn't handle the load of both serving the site, and squirting data over to Fiona at a rate of one gigabyte per three minutes. So I had to give her frequent rests to recover. Um. It sounds like I might need to have another backup servers to the main server, just so that I can do this copying when I need to (I already have *another* backup server, at another location, so that if Watford goes dark for any reason, I can switch to there). And with the story about Energis (see below), I'm glad to have it.

February 24, my ISP at Aylesbury had some network problem. Some planned maintenance was done at an unplanned time, as a result, they had a big traffic jam problem. This caused a slow chatroom and message boards for an hour or so, but the main web site wasn't affected. Except that the daily update was some hours late, as a result.

Energis is the company that was created out of the UK National Electricity company, to operate the data communications network that ran over the same pylons that carry electricity around the country. Two years ago, their share price was £8.00, they were one of the 100 biggest companies in the UK (the company was worth about a billion pounds then) and they looked great. That was then, this is now, end-February 2002, the share price was £0.03, they've been firing staff, they've sold their non-UK interests, and they're on the front pages of the newspapers all the time.

One major effect of this, will be on their staff morale. Will the company survive? I hope so. Will they be laying off more staff? I hope not. But if you're working there, then you're asking these questions and you don't have a sure and certain answer. It is possible that they go under. But, even if they do, the lines carrying data will still be there, and owned and operated by someone. Well, I hope they get through this difficult period. Especially as Energis is the company that I buy most of my bandwidth from, and who host one of my server racks (at Watford).

However ... just in case ... I've started making enquiries about possible alternatives.

Cameras

Tre got a D30, he's starting to learn how to use it.

The Newsgroups

No changes.

Spams of the Month

The first one arrived only just in time to get included in this month's crop. But it's one of the finest spams I've ever had.

Would you like to tell you we are manufacturing all kinds of Veterinery,&
Surgical Instruments.Like as follows:-
 
Elastrator        Sheep Shear    Foot Rot Shear
Hair Clipper     Anti-Kick                    Ear Notcher
OB Chain        OB Handle       Pig tooth nipper
Hoof Cutter      Hoof Knives    Hoof Rasp
Hoof Testing    Guillotine        Nose ring applicator
Nose Ring            Bull Holder    Bull Tamer
Mouth Gag            Trocar           Milk Sucking Preventor
Krey Hook            Emasculator Castration Forcep
Dehorner            Teat Slitter    Balling Gun.
Scissors            Forceps       Needle Holder.

Yummy! Could I have one of each please?

If your home is served by a septic system, you will be able to
receive invaluable information on how to eliminate pump outs, maintain the
system properly and cure problems such as backups, wet spots, odor, etc.

Yes! Just what I've been longing for!

DO YOU NEED A SECOND MORTGAGE?
It is 100% money and hassle FREE!

I don't know about it being hassle free, but if you say I won't get any money, I believe you.

You are receiving this email as a double opt-in
subscriber to the Standard Affiliates Mailing List.

As a what? A subscriber to what?

Sponsorships

We currently have several running; Nicole Bass, Andrulla Blanchette, Sheila Burgess, Christine Envall, Marilyn Perret, Julia Santana, Peggy Schoolcraft, Larisa Hakobyan and the Iron Valkyrie.

We're also sponsoring individual events, and funding athletes to go to events with grant dollars.

We're sponsoring Roseanne Blackburn to go to the Canadian West Naturals. Roseanne plans to turn pro in the sport of boxing sometime in the latter part of 2001. Check out her Galleries on this web site.

We're sponsoring Kathy Connors to the USA in Vegas this July.

The Valkyrie Playoffs, second contest. We did an audition, and you can see the pictures of the sixteen women that we shot. And now the fun starts, because you can vote for your favourite (members only). And it's worth voting, because A) the winner of the vote gets a full fee-paid still and video shoot ($$$ in her hands), and B) we get a lot more pictures of her on the web site.

Voting will continue till March 31, and then I'll announce the winner.

The booth that we had at the Arnold was a great success. People came from all over to hang out there, we had a curling competition (Tre's idea) and Fistman and Boomer set up a studio in their hotel suite, and did a lot of shooting. Gaily and LPD were there (they first met at the Arnold, and that led to their marriage) and TKO had his encounter with Sheila. There's some painful pictures of that.

Understanding the Internet

I've put up a Message Board for people to use with computer problems - the idea is that members can help each other.

The Clubhouse

Send a Valkyrie Greeting Card

You can send someone a Valkyrie Greeting Card with a picture and music you choose.

Astonish your loved ones with a Valkyrie Greeting card.

New Message Boards:

• The New York Muscle Club
• Computer questions and answers

In the Chatroom

Venus Chat

Venus has agreed to do live video chats for members of this web site. You can see the schedule here, and you can also visit Venus' web site, and if you like it, you might become a member of her site.

If nudity offends you, don't visit the Venus chat.

Chatter of the month

Shanice takes the top position by a wide margin this month, with TKO (easybreather) in second place, and a small bunch of folks just behind him.

On the Message Boards

There were 3403 posts this month altogether.

Back Page

Another blow struck against world terrorism.

For all the fans of 1920s and 1930s music, and who enjoyed the Dismuke site, you'll be interested in Dismuke Radio

Devotees of Rock Paper Scissors will be interested in the official Web Site of the RPS Society.

You might have heard all the fuss about DVT's (Deep Vein Thrombosis) on airplane flights (or maybe it's only the UK press that's banging that drum?). The main recommendation is to exercise your legs during flight. You've possibly also had the annoyance of a laptop battery running empty during a flight. Well, now you can kill two birds with one stone While you're on the Aladdin site, check out the Bio-tox life shield. Now you can compute as you avoid life-threatening DVT *and* Anthrax!

I checked the site statistics that Sandra counts up each night.

At the end of February 2002, there were about 494,000 pictures (26 gigabytes), 69 gigabytes of video, 5400 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about 95 gigabytes.

Newsthumbs is now 95 million files, 2.6 terabytes. But I'm installing 1.9 terabyte servers now :-)

There's now four newsthumbs servers.

server	Million pictures	gigabytes	Million Text files	gigabytes	Million total files	gigabytes
Latest	1.7	114	2.8	6	4.5	120
Older 1	7.7	471	11.6	29	19.6	545
Older 2	7.5	497	11.2	25	18.7	522
Older 3	12.0	839	19.0	43	31.0	884
Older 4	8.0	573	13.8	29	21.7	603
Total	36.9	2494	58.4	129	95.5	2674

To the Magic Carpet