Updated the Webpage

Nothing major today, I have made a few changes to the Global Geek Podcast Homepage.

Because the web-page for the Global Geek Podcast was such hard work I have avoided changing anything for fear it would all be ruined. But I can say that now it is all set and basically the way it will be for a while, editing it in a minor way was easy. I just cut and paste the HTML our and into Nvu which is an open source WYSIWYG editor for web pages. It is excellent because as you would know from the podcast Sebastian and I do not try to pass ourselves off as HTML guru’s at all. Quite the opposite; we suck! Nvu is highly recommended by myself, especially if you don’t want to spend any money – it works!

As you might know from Sebastian’s blog, he purchased a domain name: sebrt.com for his blog page, which he has “masked” with that domain. So I thought it only fair that the link to his blog be that, so that done he should now be happy.

The other change is that you will notice that there is a link to The Knightsite. There is a bit of a story behind this one. Another great story of networking, Skype and the community of podcasters, bloggers. Turns out that this Belgian dude called Joe (a.k.a Knightwise) was cruising around the Skype “search for contacts” option in Skype. I don’t know what for but eh, he was there. He happened across Sebastian’s Skype id which detailed his podcasting involvement. So Joe called him up, as it happens Sebastian and I were talking at the time and we invited the Knight into the conversation and we all hit it off. Joe is a top bloke and he has a podcast called the Knightcast. It is a great quality podcast; hell he uses VBR encoding at high bit rates – bandwidth must be cheap in Belgum! Plus I think his accent is cool.

So Knightwise should have a place on our Podcast Homepage. We often talk now and encourage each other with our projects and we are planning some joint ones coming up so that will be fun. It is true that the internet does not know borders or nationality. I am stoked that I have yet another person added to my own community that is mutually moving towards bettering our “space”. There is no way in the world that my own universe would have opened up as much as it has without this wonderful medium called the internet, which is starting to reflect real world interactions and ways of meeting new friends. And that is just plain cool.

By the way please have a listen to the Knightcast, great quality and very impressive editing, he deserves a bigger audience and he is a top bloke.

So that’s about it for the web-page update, but as usual I can talk about anything for too long!

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WordPress Response

I am not going to move the blog. Great response and in a timely fashion impress me, to the point of me totally deciding to stay with WordPress.

I got a response from a previous email that said that we are working on the problem and that it should be fixed now. Well that was before the problems last night. So I wrote a fairly pointed email back saying that in no way was it fixed. In addition there have been a few mentions in the blogosphere about the issues.

Seems that WordPress has grown at a rate that they were not expecting and that they have had some difficultity keeping up. This has resulted in servers slowing down and being unreliable. I got a response from my email in under an hour, you can not get better than that! The first thing I got was an apology. The second thing was that I was informed that they have purchased more bandwidth which should speed up things around WordPress. I have been informed also that as fast as they install new hardware (by that I presume hard-drives) it fills up. I think this is just a reflection of the growth of the blogosphere, it is growing at a phenomenal rate and doesn’t look like slowing down. However this week it looks like they are having a mass install of new hardware in their data centres and that will make a world of difference, I hope it does.

This is evident in the WordPress Blog so that’s good to hear:

We’re in the very final stages of bringing the new systems online, just waiting the last few bits of configuration to come online. As we’re more than doubling the servers we’re using, it should address all performance issues and help us prevent any for a long time to come.

Finally, I was told that they are working very hard at making WordPress a great domain that just works. The response also said that they have not been achieving that recently and that they have dissapointed their users. But they have the solution and they are working on it. So hang in there bloggers there is light at the end of the tunnel.

Interestingly Sebastian and I mentioned in the podcast last week that the ping times for WordPress to Technorati are terrible and that bloggers need to manually ping Technorati to see some benefits from it. This is a problem with Ping-O-Matic and Technorati recognised by WordPress as Matt has been talking to Technorati about resolving the issue. My advice keep doing it manually as this has not been resolved yet, I will try to keep you posted.

Great response from WordPress and I hope that I can continue to support WordPress as I like their style and they are excellent in the support stakes.

Global Geek Podcast #002 & WordPress Down

We have the second Global Geek Podcast done and dusted and available for download. The second thing is that I am contemplating moving the blog due to technical problems at WordPress. [This is the second attempt at uploading this post!, the “published just failed… again]

Sorry that I have been all silent for the last 48 hours. This has been due to WordPress being down. Well not completely down. Sure I was able to login and I was able to view my statistics, I could even write another page for the website! But do you think that I could write a blog entry? No. This has been the situation for the last 48 hours. I tried last night, this afternoon and now and now is the only time I was able to do so. The other thing of note is that the whole site is as slow as a duck in treacle and that’s bloody slow! It takes ages to log on, it takes ages for the pages to display, it takes ages to do anything and I am not the only one! I am not even sure if this entry will “work”.

To say that I am a bit peeved would be an understatement in the least. I am genuinely disappointed as well. As I write this blog Sebastian is trying to publish a blog and what do you know WordPress is down… again; failed to reach server error!

I rely on this blog to let everyone know whats going on and publicise the Global Geek Podcast. The other thing is that some of my posts are generating some interest in the wider blogging community. This is a real let down.

The fact is that WordPress have an obligation to provide a reliable, stable service and thus far this has not been the case. I am seriously considering moving to a payed service like TypePad, I would not mind the US$4. 95 a month for reliability and stability; a small price to pay.

WordPress should be a bit concerned about this as blog entries such as this will quickly tarnish their reputation and they will be known as unreliable. For those of us that have bugger all understanding of PHP or HTML or maintaining a server; they rely on services such as this. Please WordPress make good on providing us a more reliable service, I don’t want to have to cross my fingers every time I click “publish”.

Just as a side note I notice that the RSS Feed widget for the Global Geek Podcast isn’t working, don’t know why; the RSS is valid… another thing that’s not working I guess…

Rant over. Please head on over to Global Geek Podcast and take a listen to the latest podcast; which is I do say so myself isn’t too bad. A much better poodcast, the audio is better and the content quality is high. I urge you guys if you have not got an aggregator to subscribe to the podcast (and any others that you might want to) then drop me a line and I do not mind pointing you in the right direction. By the way when I say subscribe – don’t worry it is free!

Published the First Podcast

Well we have arrived. Today I published the first Global Geek Podcast!

The editing was a chore as it is the first time I have seriously used Audacity for a serious project. I am sure that I did everything the hard way and that there were quicker and better ways to do some of the things I was wanting to do. But that aside I think the result was a passable first attempt. I was pleased with the fading of the songs and the fact that I managed to clean up the audio somewhat in regards to me being too soft and Sebastian being quite loud. But the songs that were included were really loud! So I was pleased that after using the compressor a few times and normalizing it it is OK.

So head on over to Global Geek Podcast and at least have a listen on the site. Preferably, subscribe to the RSS and listen to the evolution of the podcast.

Recorded First Podcast!

Well we have recorded the first Global Geek Podcast.

It was fun and we had a blast. The only thing that kept going through my brain was I hope this is OK. Yes I was nervous and I am not sure how it came across. In fact we both had fun, and I guess that’s what podcasting is all about; for me anyway.

Technically, Hot Recorder behaved itself so that was good, we didn’t loose the whole show with that barfing. Sebastian had some trouble with his microphone initially. Mine was set and sounded good. But then Sebastian “hacked” Skype to allow him to control the audio settings so that his audio was loud enough. But the big mistake on my part was not then doing another test to make sure I was loud enough compared with me. I wasn’t. I was not inaudible though just a lot softer then I would have like to be. But I guess if that’s the biggest mistake we made then it did not go badly at all.

This show was basically an intro show, nothing too hard or challenging. We talked about what we have been doing and what we had done to prepare for the show. Played a bit of music which is cool. While we joked around a fair bit I hope that we can talk about some serious topics when we need to. But it was a blast and a good way to ease into the whole thing. Just don’t know if people will listen to the whole thing! I hope they do. I guess that’s what it is like for anyone that does anything public; an author hoping that their book will get read, a musician hoping that someone will buy the album.

Anyway be kind, the first show so don’t hammer it too badly! I am hoping to have the show up in the next 24 hours.