Somewhere Only We Know
Quick apology to everyone who’s struggled to access ye olde sidepodcast for the past 12 hours. During the night our hosting company appeared to be playing the twisted, but familiar game - “best of luck getting out of this one”.
Did you miss us?
Luckily it was just the blog affected, podcasts continued to download unabated, although yesterday’s F1 Minute was slightly delayed for anyone using the new shared site version - big apologies to anyone affected there.
As it happens, we’re already deep into the process of building a more reliable Sidepodcast for next season, one that should hopefully withstand irresponsible hosting companies messing with our minds.
Just for kicks, enjoy the following system status notifications, both raised late last night (within an hour of each other), and see if you can’t spot the deliberate lack of joined up thinking here:
21:46: Some customers may find they are experiencing ‘timeouts’ when downloading email.
22:46: Customers may find they are unable to access their databases. All customers affected will be emailed shortly with further information and instructions.
Real tears, let me tell you. Real tears.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:38 amChristine said:
I can feel a Behind The Scenes rant coming on.
November 30th, 2007 at 8:47 amme said:
oh lordy yes.
of note, two other uk hosting companies went belly up in separate, unrelated incidents yesterday. am thinking england isn’t the best place to host a website any more.
just like the national football team, hosting companies have gotten themselves into a loosing streak mindset, where poor performance and failures are acceptable, everyday occurrences.
November 30th, 2007 at 9:14 ambrendan stallard said:
“am thinking england isn’t the best place to host a website any more.”
Me,
You betcha. There are too many cowboys who don’t have the first clue and are really ranchero’s for outfits from the east interested in nothing but a quick buck or two.
While I don’t work for ‘em: I can heartily recommend the services of hostmonster.com who have been a revelation to me in terms of service, quality and size.
They’re based in TN, you could do worse than give ‘em a try.
brendan
November 30th, 2007 at 12:56 pmOllie said:
To echo Brendan, you betcha. I went stateside recently and the customer service improved along with uptime and monthly costs came down considerably. So more for less - makes me wonder how some UK hosts manage to stay afloat.
November 30th, 2007 at 1:11 pma.k.a. the Blue Orange Lion said:
It (the disappearance) came as a complete shock to me, I thought ‘Oh, dear! Sidepodcast disappeared off the radar in the best Renault F1 weblog style! Every time I start posting somewhere the thing goes “belly up”, must be some kind of curse!’ Anyway, I keep asking myself - what’s better, the electronic source of information or physical source, like a book or a magazine or a sculpture, that sort of thing? Both have strong sides and both have weak sides, but how interesting it would’ve been to watch ancient Roman chariot racing on DVD or a reportage on Caesar’s killing? Yet all we have is a bunch of stones with inscriptions, I guess you can say the ancient Roman websites went belly up a long time ago!
Speaking about Rome, did you read Fisichella’s open letter to Ecclestone? Super fun just like Bernie’s interview!
November 30th, 2007 at 4:45 pmbrendan stallard said:
“It (the disappearance) came as a complete shock to me”
Blue Orange,
I was convinced they’d won the lottery and had run off to sunnier climes to live on a constant diet of il vino collapso and hot and cold running servants.
Ole Fisi has a sense of humour and irony: good luck to him.
brendan
November 30th, 2007 at 7:42 pma.k.a. the Blue Orange Lion said:
Yeah, but my guess is that sidepodcast is to stay and with global warming England can soon become “sunnier clime”… or have “sunnier clime”? It should have two meanings.
November 30th, 2007 at 9:22 pmbrendan stallard said:
“sidepodcast is to stay”
Blue,
I certainly hope so.
“global warming England can soon become “sunnier clime””.
Its a vile rumour. After nearly five months continuous of the heat of Atlanta this summer, when I was out walking for miles most days in 90 + temps and wicked humidity: I got used to both the heat and the wonderful, life affirming LIGHT. Atlanta will be a standard 1400 lumens on most days, the UK hardly ever gets above 700.
While when I lived here: I had become inured to it, but having become used to Atlanta’s light: I have to guard against depression here: because the light is such a lift to your spirits, and the grey cloud over London hardly ever seems to go away.
I left Atlanta on 20th October: and the temps were 78 degrees and just beautiful. I arrived to Gatwick on the 21st to -2F, and my warm jacket in my checked luggage. I was frozen solid for about three weeks:)
A lot to be said for living south of the Mason-Dixon line…..or lahn.
brendan
November 30th, 2007 at 11:09 pma.k.a. the Blue Orange Lion said:
The sun is important, but I’d gladly leave Portugal for London any time (and I may do so in the future), even though it’s cloudy and all. The southern light is quite unique, it’s true. Adrian Maben (pink floyd live at pompeii director) mentioned it once, it’s really amazing, intense, joyful; and autumnal colours are simply sublime, winter is very mild, around +20 to +25 degrees Celcius during the day, maybe a breeze from the ocean, but that’s it. But London, come on, the swinging 60s, punk thing in the 70s, not a big fan of the 80s, britpop in the 90s, it’s the place to be if you’re an artist and it’s just cool. I think. Prove me if I’m wrong.
November 30th, 2007 at 11:46 pmScott Dryden said:
Loved reading about Fisi getting stuck in. The verbal battering of Ecclestone was witty, not to mention unprecedented. When was the last time we heard a member of the F1 community tearing strips off Mr E? Admiration and respect I can cope with, but grown men brown-nosing is just plain wrong.
December 2nd, 2007 at 2:16 pmme said:
you know that if we won anything, we’d build a podcast studio and hibernate anyhow.
cheers for all of the hosting info, we’ll see what solution we can come up with.
long term Amazon’s EC2 seems to offer exactly what we need - the ability to scale as big as you need, pay only for bandwidth used etc. the downside is the system is still pretty new, and missing important things like static ip addressing.