Diana the Valkyrie's Newsletter - July 2005
A hard man is good to beat
This is newsletter number 100! The first Newsletter was dated April 1997, and it was just after this site went from being a free site, to a paysite.
That newsletter, and the others, are still on the site, so you can read our history. I see that, back then, I was connected by an ISDN line at 64kbps. Now it's a Megastream at 2000 kbps, plus six DSL lines at 250/1000 kbps. Back then, the server (there was only one) was in Maryland, USA, connected via a T1 line. Now, there's more than 100 servers, in Watford and Chesham, England, and the primary link is a 100 megabit line, equivalent to 65 T1 links. Back then, I knew nothing about Linux, or perl, or apache. Almost nothing about networking and DNS, almost nothing about html, nothing about how the credit card system worked. I had never built a computer, I had no idea what were the failure-sensitive components of a computer, and wouldn't have been able to repair one. I had to learn fast!
April 1997 is when I announced the first search engine for the site, letting you search for particlar words in the library. And I see that the chat was going well back then (the chats are all archived since year zero).
I also talked a bit about the move to the paysite, and my surprise that people would sign up twice or more. That's not a problem, though, because I automatically dedupe now. But I didn't at that time, because back then, my membership database was something I cobbled together in C, which is *not* an easy language to write this sort of thing in. Not long after that, I switched to perl, which is a doddle for this sort of thing. C is *horrible*, avoid it if you can.
Reading that old April 1997 newsletter, made me remember such a lot. I had no idea then, that eight years later I'd be running one of the biggest sites on the internet.
Galleries added this month.
Stories added this month.
Nothing new
Movies added this month.
I've been using a remotely operated power switch in Watford for a long time - it means that I can do a power-cycle without having to call for the Watford "Hands and eyes" service, which is a good service, but if all you want to do is cycle the power, it's a bit of a long-winded performance. But down in the Valkyrie Data Shed, apart from a couple of 8-way switches for the most sensitive (or problem-prone) machines, I've been relying on rushing over to the shed, in order to do the needful myself. That works fine, and gets me a bit of extra exercise, but it won't work while I'm away. Plus, at 1am on an icy, snowy winter night, I don't really enjoy the trip.
But the APC Masterswitches are about £400 each, and since they control eight computers apiece, I'd need quite a few of them.
Two cheers for the European Common Market, and three cheers for Google. I googled a place that sold 24-way power switches, for about the same price as the APC 8-ways. In Poland! But Poland is now part of the EEC, so importing a couple of these devices from Poland was no trouble at all. Isn't international trade, globalisation and outsourcing wonderful!
At the end of May, Fatim failed. Fatim was running the DtVcam system, which is about to be launched for real soon. Of course, I had a backup - Jodie, and switching over to use Jodie was no big problem. And then I looked to see what computer would be good to use as the backup for Jodie. And there wasn't one!
I did a count. I now have five computers there that have failed (probably the power supply, or a CPU fan, easy to fix, but not from a distance). I have four that work, but crash too often for me to be happy using them (for me, if a computer crashes once every few months, that's too much). And there's three which are so seriously obsolete (for example, using five year old drives, and five years for a drive equates to about 70 for a human being). So I'm planning to visit Watford in the very near future, install thirteen computers, and fetch back the twelve above.
Why so many? Because I try to visit no more than twice per year. Watford is only 25 miles away, but what if my remote data center were in some distant foreign country, like America? I wouldn't want to have to fly the Atlantic every few weeks. So, I'm trying to run this as if it really were a long way away, in case I do ever want to move the main server farm to a faraway country with a strange-sounding name.
Those twelve returning computers will be stripped, tested, refurbished, and gotten ready for my next replacement trip to Watford, which will, hopefully, be just before Christmas.
...
Later ... I've done the install. One computer failed as I installed it, but I was able to get it working again. Another one failed after I left the site, so it's not a bad average.
I've started to examine the ones I brought back. Two of them have failed CPU fans, which is a $1 component, but there's no easy way to stop them failing. One has a failed power supply. Two are failed drives, and I think two more are fans that just aren't powerful enough.
If I were to list my main hardware failures, it would be 1) hard drives, partly because I use so many, and partly because occasionally, I buy a batch of drives that has some weakness that causes more failures than I'd expect. 2) would be CPU fans, and 3) would be power supplies.
Hard drive problems aren't always crucial - I can just leave the umpty drive out of use, and continue to use that computer, using the other drives. But failed CPU fans and power supplies are show-stoppers.
1U power supplies aren't cheap. I've been paying £75 (about $130), but they've just increased in proce by about 20%. So I had a google around, and found some selling for £30. Cautiously, I bought two, because they're only 180 watts, and accepted wisdom is that you need 300 or even 400 watts. Accepted wisdom is, however, wrong. I put an ammeter onto a P4 server with three hard drives, and found that it only used 150 watts, and that was at startup, when it's working hard to get the drives spinning. Once started, it uses about half that, so I'm thinking 180 watts would be enough. And sure enough, when they arrived, I tried them out, and they could handle a P4 and four drives just fine.
I rewrote the video capture software, so that all the data flows out from the computer with the webcam, instead of having my server reaching in to the webcam computer to get it. That sounds like a minor difference, but it makes a huge difference to routers and firewalls, which tend to be configured to stop people on the outside, from reaching in, but are perfectly happy with people on the inside, reaching out. So that makes installing the cam a whole bunch easier.
We launched the system for real at the end of June, with CindyPhillips, Vicki Nixon, Anne Sheehan, Colette Nelson and Britt Miller. For real, means that we weren't doing freebies for test any more, this was the real McCoy.
It was a great success - people enjoyed the chats, and all the technical stuff worked fine (that's always something to be nervous about with a new system).
But the Windmill failed! The electric motor that drives it, developed a fault that brought down my entire electrical system. So, I'm shopping for a replacement. So far, the best thing I've seen is a Ferris Wheel by Meccano, so I've ordered one of those. The Windmill might wind up being replaced by a Ferris Wheel throughout the site. Or maybe I'll just glue a coloured card onto the front of the Meccano Ferris wheel.
I'll repeat some advice I've often given before - just because an email claims to come from Ebay or Paypal, doesn't mean that it does. Imagine if you got a letter, on plain paper, but the return address on the evelope was to Ebay. Would that leave you feeling that it really had come from Ebay? Of course not. Same with emails - it's easy to put any return address or from-address you like on an email - just because it says it came from Ebay, doesn't mean it did.
Phishing is one of the commonest scams on the net. Phishing is when you get sent an email asking for your account details. If you go to the site (which looks *just* like the bank site, or the Paypal site, or whatever - it's really easy to copy files with a computer) and give your details, then ... well, it wasn't actually Ebay's site, and you just gave your details to the scammer.
And the scam is, they take money from you. Good luck in getting it back!
Nothing new.
Nothing new.
I don't make these up, although the comments on the spams are mine, of course. These are actual spams sent to me, which just strike me as funny. I don't include their contact details - go find your own spammers!
By the way, if you're using StoneColdMail
(which is free to web site members) then you won't see most of these spams, they'll be delivered
into your "Spam" folder.
Welcome to the new generation of comfort sleeping
SILK SHEETS
After a days hard work,and straining limbs all one longs for is an extra special comfort sleep
that refreshes one for the day next....
If you are now worrying about finding a sheet
to caress your body...you dont need to WORRY anymore!
You have come to just the right place!!!
No more paying royal prices to experience a royal
sleep! All our speciality linens are made from
100% Egyptian cotton handpicked for the best buds.
Silk isn't made from cotton.
We have learned from the Internet that you are interested in tents. We have
been in the tent manufacturing business for many years and are currently in the
process of expanding and our customer base. We are quite excited about
contacting you and the potential for establishing friendly business relations
with you as well as sharing the mutual benefits.
Yes, I can understand why you'd be excited. It's all so intense.
I think this was the most important email I ever received
replicca bags, watches or whatever..we got it!
I'd love to see your unimportant emails.
important information
unimportant information
Most of the sponsorships now are by giving women server space and bandwidth, so they can operate their web sites without having to pay these fees. There's also photoshoots, which gets some revenue into their hands, as well as the traditional direct-funding sponsorship.
I've agreed to be the major sponsor of the Valkyrie Festival in Vancouver, in September this year.
Here's the full list of DtV family web sites
You can give a Diana the Valkyrie membership as a gift.
Sign up here for the gift that lasts and lasts
Member | Posts |
| tre1313 | 2975 |
| TomNine | 2209 |
| madman3579 | 1835 |
| buffy18976 | 1230 |
| hiram2000 | 1222 |
| gaily304 | 1109 |
| mit19237 | 1097 |
| Diana the Valkyrie | 989 |
| sprds825 | 917 |
| Jerroll | 908 |
| boomerflex | 845 |
| rainer0000 | 807 |
| GrappleJack | 687 |
| drop112 | 636 |
| theman615 | 626 |
| jcc115 | 563 |
| tk000 | 551 |
| shad349 | 519 |
| Brian1958 | 509 |
| Jabber | 507 |
Tre still dominates the chatroom.
This month we had 2324 posts to the boards.
Most posted Board of the month | Poster of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||
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| You can see from the above that this web site is Sports chat, politics and a few other bits and pieces. | Steve and Bill are the big posters this month. |
Mavis is counting the number of times the message list is checked for each board. This gives a very different picture from the one above.
Most listed Board of the month | Most read Board of the month | ||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| It's all about FBBs, movies and mixed action. | The Grinch got the stats! |
This month is the 100th edition of the monthly newsletter. Do the math - more than eight years!
Here's to the next 80 years.
I checked the site statistics that Sandra counts up each night.
At the end of June 2005, there were about 753,000 pictures (50 gigabytes), 159 gigabytes of video, 9400 text files (mostly stories) and a total of about 210 gigabytes. There's over 140 million pictures altogether in Newsthumbs.