It appears that something is messing up the blog's formatting all of a sudden. weird. going to look into it when I have a moment... edit- looks like that Chronotrigger youtube video went rogue.  fixed. well the problem was not fixed, I just don't have the video embedded any more... so it's fixed enough.

This blog is over a year old, and for the entirety of that time it has been hosted on Media Temple's Grid. The Grid (from the best I can tell, opened two days before, on Oct 17 2006, so I have been on it since about Day 3. As for me- I am not a professional server admin but have experience with more than a few different hosting services and I have use a number of dedicated servers as well.

I originally started the blog not only to get some thoughts out there, but also to use as a sandbox for web-based ideas and technologies. The Grid seemed perfect for this- cheap, scalable, stable, and easy to use. It is effectively a form of shared hosting so there are some sacrifices that have to be made, but overall the trade-off seemed worth it. For $20 a month with promised stability and the ability to withstand large spikes in traffic it seemed too good not to try. I am guessing a number of people chose it for the same reasons, though I know a number of developers who have used it as a starter hosting account for clients. The Grid is a complex ecosystem which Media Temple has put together in order for people to share the resources of a cloud of servers while keeping prices down to a minimum. It's a interesting idea and one that is theoretically much better than relying on a single server to do the job. The problem is that the scale of the Grid and getting each of the parts to work together has caused a number of problems along the way. Along the way the Grid has had serious problems with databases and email, as well as more than a little downtime and some latency issues. Things have gotten better along the way, but it's been a bumpy ride for a lot of people. [edit- some of these problems occurred on the Grid's Cluster.1 today] Personally I have not experienced any considerable downtime (that I have noticed) since Oct/Nov/Dec 06, but I have talked to people who have. Part of the confusion with talking with other people about the Grid accounts is due to the complexity of the system and the intricacies of the infrastructure, only some of which is ever seen by the user. (For example, each account has it's own subdomain [http://sXXXX.gridserver.com/] and there are different Grid Clusters [for example Cluster.2]). From what I have heard, Cluster.2 has had more problems than the first cluster and customers cannot have their account switched from one to the other. As a side point, I don't use Media Temple's email, so I can't comment on that. I have found the Grid to excel in two areas- stability and ease of use. The cloud design of the Grid means that even under extreme loads (Slashdot, Digg, etc) the site will remain stable and responsive, with no drop in performance. What Media Temple does to account for this is charge you by the GPU (a unit of processor time) and if your account sustains a high load you will be charged for overages. That noted- it is well worth it because what is important to most people is uptime and the more traffic the better, so long as it does not take down the site. As far as ease of use is concerned, the Grid is extremely simple to operate. The backend is slow and somewhat tedious, but does the job without problems or confusion. MT did a great job here, and anyone who is not a server admin should be able to appreciate the simplicity and power of tools available with just a click or two. One problem I have to this day with the Grid is latency. Regardless of what MT's support team says, which is not a periodic problem, the average latency times on the Grid are high and they have been since the very start. The image above, courtesy of Pingdom, demonstrates what I am talking about and it has been very disappointing. I am not sure exactly the cause for this, but my guess it that it is a result of two things- the complexity of the Grid's construction and capacity. The Grid has been a wildly popular service and I am sure that capacity and scaling is an issue. Another major problem with the Grid is backing up. The backup tool that is built into the admin panel is slow and cumbersome, both of which I am fine with- but lately it has been disabled. For some time there was no automated backup solution and after that there was one, but it did not work reliably. Today (and for some time now) the backup tool doesn't work. Their recommendation? Try FTP. Along the way though, the Grid has seen some considerable improvements- enough that even detractors have not given up hope. The SQL containers are a great add-on (even if they do more than double the price of hosting) as are minor, but crucial tweaks, like allowing multiple DB users, an iPhone compatible admin panel, MySQL SmartPool improvements, and better webmail. MT has also been very open about problems and their blog is a great source of information for news and system incidents. So based on my own experience, I would rate Media Temple's Grid highly and I would have no problem recommending it to a colleague, so long as they were choosing it for the right reasons. It does have some incredible strengths, and it can scale to handle high traffic loads (if you don't mind the GPU fees) but it is not a replacement for a dedicated server or multiple dedicated servers. If you have a project that you would not put on a shared server or trust to a $20-a-month hosting solution, you probably should not put it on the Grid. That noted, some very high profile and high traffic sites have been on the Grid (include ReadWrite/Web up until July). Based on what I have heard- mainly the complaints of people I have worked with- I do have some doubts about the Grid. The problems seem to skew more towards Cluster.2 and use under professional circumstances, but these people had problems that should not have happened, especially some downtimes issues. Lots of problems have been documents in angry blog posts. As for my own issues, I'm looking forward to the backup tool to be fixed and I have pretty much given up on the hope of decreased latency. As long as my uptime stays at or very close to 100% I can't really complain too much, especially because the service allow me to very easily host and control a number of sites for just $20 a month. Response times from MT's tech team have been slow (sometimes over 12hrs) but I have not had any mission-critical problems (at least ones that were not happening system-wide) so I can't say for sure how much of a problem this is. The knowledge base is excellent so most of the time problems can be worked around with a little research anyway. Overall, Media Temple's Grid is still the best low cost hosting solution I have ever used. It has problems, but my account does not get pulled when there is a big traffic burst, it's very easy to use, and it's getting better. From the complaints I have read and heard, it seems like my experience may not be representative of everyones, or even a majority of people, but it's hard to say because the most vocal people are generally those who are the most angry and/or disappointed.

I just went through a somewhat challenging upgrade to wordpress 2.3. If you see any problems with the update, please email me...

If you prefer to unsubscribe via postal mail, write to: arghyle, c/o FeedBurner, 549 W Randolph, Chicago IL USA 60661

This is the last line in each email that Feedburner sends out when you subscribe to a feed via email.  Sounds like a joke- but I think they are serious. I have Feedburner send me my posts so I can get to them from Gmail and also so I have an archive of them (which, for some reason, is reassuring). But anyway, at the end of every email they say how you can subscribe via RSS "if your inbox is too full" or you can unsubscribe with a link, but then they throw in the postal mail thing, pretty weird. I may try it, just for kicks. I wonder what the turn around time is...

Finally getting around to install this update. Not only do I have to do it for this blog, but for some other people as well... It's such a hassle to have to upgrade ever few weeks, but at least I had a month or so of piece since the last one. Though this one is the move from 2.1.3 to 2.2 so you have to (should) delete the old files instead of overwriting them. It takes forever via FTP, especially since Media Temple's Grid is completely freaking out this week after a number of DDoS attacks and assorted other problems. I really like Wordpress and I love that it's free, but how is it that these things are not updated automatically yet? Wordpress needs some sort of opt-in feature that allows blogs to do this...

I started this blog for a number of reasons, but one of the most important ones was as a testing ground for services, software, and that sort of thing. Obviously I like to play around with Wordpress, but I also wanted to give Media Temple's Grid hosting a shot, as well as test out some theories on RSS readership, and that sort of thing. Up to this point I have not run advertising on this blog (save for a day or two of Adsense), but I finally got around to signing up for Text Link Ads. A lot of people use them, but this is actually the first time I am giving them a shot so I am really interested to see how well they perform given this blog's limited amount of traffic. My basic set up: - 5 link ads - run only on the homepage (this was recommended) - slightly below the fold (this may have to be changed) - colored to blend I rejected TLA's offer for their Inlinks service because I just wanted to demo their basic sidebar link sales. I am not selling links at the post level or using them for RSS advertising. If I have a positive enough experience with them in order to be able to recommend the service, I might add an affiliate link in a post or two, or maybe somewhere in the sidebar. For the time being I haven't... As for the money, I don't think it can make very much in the current state (they don't even tell you how much your links are selling for) , but after the rev share, if all goes well, I might be able to pay for the site's hosting and maybe go out to the movies (by myself, no snacks or soda). Edit- Okay, already had my first error:

 

WordPress database error: [Table 'dbxxxx_wp.wp_tla_rss_map' doesn't exist] SELECT * FROM `wp_tla_rss_map` ORDER BY post_id DESC LIMIT 10

Update: 11:13am : Looks like this happened because I first installed the Inlinks plugin and then moved over to the normal text link ads one. The support people at TLA are working in it, they have been very helpful and responsive so far. The error only comes up after I publish/save an article, the rest of the site seems unaffected. Update: 1:42pm : The issue is resolved. TLA updated their Wordpress plugin in order to fix the issue that happened when Inlinks was installed and reverted back to the standard plugin. Big thanks to Justin, Patrick, and Drew at Text Link Ads for all the help!

Media Temple is reporting that the upgrade to etheir Grid server (to release1.2) was started on Friday night. The upgrade is "mostly" finished and was performed without any downtime. The move will be quite significant and should bring along performance improvements as well as better site interaction with databases, something the Grid has had major problems with in the past. I  checked this site's MT control panel but I could not tell if the upgrade was made yet. Media Temple is not very clear on the internal distinctions within the Grid although this site is on gs01.gridserver.com.

That's right, Wordpress.com's Blog is reporting that Wordpress 2.1.1 installations from the past few days are not secure. Apparently their server was hacked and the Wordpress master files were changed to open up a security hole somewhere deep in the wp-includes files. So basically, uh, worst case scenario. This blog was not affected as it was using 2.1.1 since a few hours after being released, but I took the time to upgrade to 2.1.2 anyway. Considering how many people use Wordpress and how many major blogs rely on it, this is a major blunder on the part of the Wordpress team. I mean, I can't totally fault them, servers get hacked- it sucks but it happens- but the majority of their business is based around serving two files, they should keep a pretty close on eye these. If either files changes and it was not due to a new version, well then it's a safe bet that something is wrong. Anyway, this blog is safe, at least for now. Hopefully the word will get out and everyone will upgrade their blogs in time. From the post:

Long story short: If you downloaded WordPress 2.1.1 within the past 3-4 days, your files may include a security exploit that was added by a cracker, and you should upgrade all of your files to 2.1.2 immediately.

As of Friday March 2nd Media Temple will begin to run an upgraded version of the Grid hosting service. Version 1.2 (GMR v.1.2) is the latest improvement to the Grid, the most significant being the use of MySQL Grid containers, or private MySQL containers for each account. Other improvements coming to this $20 a month service are more processing power (now over 800 cores), better email, improved FTP, faster storage performance, higher network speed, and more. Overall the upgrade should greatly improve the hosting experience, not just through better serving, but also through better back-end performance and improved controls. As for future upgrades, MT had this to say: "GMR (v.1.3) is already in development and its release cycle is expected to be much shorter than (GMR v1.1) to (GMR v1.2)." Great news...

I don't know how many people noticed, but this blog is running the new version of Snap's Preview Anywhere. This enhanced version has built in links and lots more modification options. It's pretty cool so you might want to play around with it. I am running SPA with these options/settings:

• green bubble
• no search bar
• no logo
• external links only
• triggered by the image only
• load SPA after the page loads
• using the default loading style

The links below show how using div tags you can customize individual links to have different performance, as opposed to just customizing it in the main SPA tags you add to your site's header. triggers by image only (this site's default)

In a few hours I will be going on a short vacation, so I am just wrapping things up before I go. Just the normal stuff- cleaning my inbox, sending out a few emails, finishing my RSS reading, and that sort of stuff. I'll try to post but I just decided not to bring my laptop with me so my access will be limited. I will be rocking a Nokia N800 so hopefully that will be enough to get the job done. If you get bored because of the lack of posts, perhaps you may want to go through the blog's greatest hits or the archives. I should be back Friday or Saturday... Meta Just a quick update- Arghyle has been going quite well. It is a personal blog and makes no money so I did not expect or shoot for explosive growth, but I have been happy with the results. There have been no real big links in, almost one story almost got on Digg, but there have been some very cool links, including from Scoble's link blog. There have not been many comments which is disappointing, but these should come with increase readership. I have been tracking the stats every few days with Feedburner, but just started using Reinvigorate.net's beta for more indepth stats. I am not sure if I am going to stick with this or move to Google, or even have any stats at all (Feedburner is really enough for me at this point) . I just really like to keep an eye on the number of subscribers and what stories are getting the most attention. As far as hosting in concerned, it's been great. Media Temple's Grid has improved dramatically, as I knew it would, and I am glad I was an early adopter and gave it a chance to catch up to people's interest in it. For $20 a month, it is a solid deal.

In a few hours I will be going on a short vacation, so I am just wrapping things up before I go. Just the normal stuff- cleaning my inbox, sending out a few emails, finishing my RSS reading, and that sort of stuff. I'll try to post but I just decided not to bring my laptop with me so my access will be limited. I will be rocking a Nokia N800 so hopefully that will be enough to get the job done. If you get bored because of the lack of posts, perhaps you may want to go through the blog's greatest hits or the archives. I should be back Friday or Saturday... Meta Just a quick update- Arghyle has been going quite well. It is a personal blog and makes no money so I did not expect or shoot for explosive growth, but I have been happy with the results. There have been no real big links in, almost one story almost got on Digg, but there have been some very cool links, including from Scoble's link blog. There have not been many comments which is disappointing, but these should come with increase readership. I have been tracking the stats every few days with Feedburner, but just started using Reinvigorate.net's beta for more indepth stats. I am not sure if I am going to stick with this or move to Google, or even have any stats at all (Feedburner is really enough for me at this point) . I just really like to keep an eye on the number of subscribers and what stories are getting the most attention. As far as hosting in concerned, it's been great. Media Temple's Grid has improved dramatically, as I knew it would, and I am glad I was an early adopter and gave it a chance to catch up to people's interest in it. For $20 a month, it is a solid deal.

Last night a story on this blog was submitted to Digg. It was not a particularly noteworthy post, just some observations about site authentication and how it can streamlined, but it was submitted to Digg by a top user (#7) and over the course of the next 24 hours or so accrued a total of 75 diggs. The diggs built up steadily over the most of the time period (at least from when I saw when checking in now and then), but never made the jump to the front page. Interestingly, at the same time that the story was waiting in the Upcoming section, there was another Tech News and an Offbeat News story ahead of it for most of the time. This image, courtesy of the submitter, shows just what happened. Eventually the two other stories made it to the front page, but for some reason this one did not. It is not a big deal, this blog does not generate any income, but I am disappointed in that I was looking forward to seeing how my host (Media Temple) and it's Grid server held up to a Digg, despite some problems they have been experiencing and recent improvements. I'd like to say that the experience taught us all something about the workings of Digg, but I have to admit it only served to confuse me. It seems like since the story was submitted by a top Digg user, probably someone with a lot of friends, each digg is weighted less, so rather than reach the front page at 40 votes or so, it took the Google/Digg Democracy story at least 115 and the 93-year-old Blogger story at least 107. As of right now MrBabyMan has a number of stories with close to 40 diggs waiting to be promoted, so this seems like a logical conclusion to make (under 20 hours there are one at 36, two at 33, two at 25...). A quick look at other top 15 users generally make this seem to be true but it is hard to tell because they have not all been submitting lately. This can currently be observed in the user webtech who at the time of posting has unpromoted stories at 40, 37, 64, and 71, in at row, with the oldest being 20 hours and 33 minutes. Other theories I have heard that have less proof are that Digg penalizes blogs and that negative actions against posts (buried as lame or spam, etc) make them take more diggs to get to the front page. Also it is said that if the same users share a digging pattern (if they have the same friends for instance) it might take more diggs for items to get promoted. At this point this is all hearsay and conjecture (which are kinds of evidence), but it's the best we have. It is definitely interesting to guess and examine just how the system works and while more transparency my help spammers, it would let the users know just how democratic Digg really is.

I just upgraded to 2.0.6 and then 2.0.7, but 2.1 is finally here! The 2.0.x line should keep going for some time but I will definitely be upgrading to 2.1 this week. Some cool features include autosave, lossless XML import/export, more AJAX, better image handling, and higher tech security through the use of nonces.

Wordpress upgrades are pretty predictable and tend to be painless, so I will be setting aside 45 minutes or so to back up the site and do it. Can't wait...

I had some downtime tonight so I have been toying with the blog a bit, mainly backend customizations but nothing big. One thing I did finally get around to was to add a Feedburner account and to install the plugin in from Ordered List. The plugin simply redirects your original feed to your Feedburner feed... that's it. It's pretty basic, but this way if you ever want to stop using FeedBurner you can and all the people using your feed won't be left with a dead link. I also just stumbled on to the Propelr site, looks kinda awesome.

MediaTemple has finally brought some much needed upgrades to their Grid-Server. This blog has been on the Grid since October and while it has not been that bad overall and the experience has been improving, there have been lots of slow-downs and too many outages. Last week there was a considerable outage that lasted over three hours. During this time the static images still worked so it would seem the problem was with another cluster, but it is hard to say given the intracies of the grid system. Some of the notable improvements on the way:

• Sever count (400+). After the release of (GMR v.1.1), the most active cluster (Cluster1) will have a server count of over 400. This includes physical OS nodes and container OS nodes which increases thin-provisioning safety ratios and performance capacity.
• MySQL improvements. Includes new balancing technology (Tahiti v.0.5) developed by (mt) Media Temple which improves MySQL performance and stability. New auto-relocation features distribute MySQL performance into a newly developed MySQL farm-model inside the Grid. Ongoing development of the Tahiti framework will permit systems engineers to continue improving MySQL in-between GMR releases.
• Improved web segment load times. Numerous tuning and configuration changes enhance the speed in which web requests are processed and delivered.
• GPU report control page. New report within the WebControl panel will include details on current and historical GPU usage.
• New health and wellness monitors. In (GMR v.1.1) administration staff have several new Grid health checks and monitoring sub-systems which increase overall visibility into the system.

These upgrades go live on the 7th, but after that some more are on the way, including improved MySQL, new containers, and improved Mail-Protect. While the Grid has been much better over the last 30 days compared to the 30 days before that, these improvements should help out a lot. I am looking forward to improved reliability/uptime, faster performance, and a more robust backend. MediaTemple seems to be commited to getting the Grid up to our expectactions, which says a lot about them, especially given that it is relatively soon after the start of the project. The one thing that could hurt the system is if too many people start hopping on the $20-a-month bandwagon but I think they will be able to keep up with things so long as these upgrades keep coming.

For the time being I am going to limit advertising on this site to the bare minimum. The goal here is to cover my hosting fees, so I would like the site to make about $0.66 a day. I figure the best way to go about this would be to use Adsense- it's easy to implement and relatively unobtrusive. Until I find a good way to insert Adsense between the posts I am going to put it at the bottom of the first post on the homepage.

Arghyle is hosted Media Temple Grid Server. I decided to put this site on the Grid as opposed to on my personal server because I was really interested in testing out mt's new service. This is a $20 a month hosting solution that using clustered servers so that you should be able to get the security and ease-of-use of shared hosting but with the power of a cluster of servers. The service is new, and seems to be far from perfect, but for $20 a month it's definitely worth testing out. If you are interested in learning more Web Hosting Talk has some really great discussions going on right now...

You have found your way to Arghyle, the personal web site of Sal Cangeloso. This is going to be a casual blog discussing my work, life, and interests. I know I am kind of late to the blog party, but I have been meaning to put together a personal page for some time, so here it is.