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  • What presentation software suits my needs?

    - by claws
    Background: I'm teaching biology to 12th grade students. The syllabus I'm teaching is huge. I mean literally, very huge. There is a lot for students to remember. There are no less than 1000 facts (weird names, dates etc) for students to remember. They'll have to remember all of them, they don't have a choice. The notes I compiled for their learning itself is upto 80 printed pages(Just the bullet outline & facts). That's just one chapter. We have 34 chapters. Also my students are very hardworking, they study upto 8-10hrs per day (Yeah! we are from India :). So, I want to ensure maximum retaining by the students at each and every stage (Teaching & Learning). I'm trying to as many memory training techniques as possible. I'm trying to incorporate, mnemonics, strong visual aids (pictures, 3D-animations, real videos etc.), spaced repetition etc. I think MS powerpoint is not suitable for my needs: There are about 200 slides per chapter. Its very easy for students to get lost while teaching. Because the problem with powerpoint is that it gives facts (as bullets) but it doesn't exploit the association & organization (Concept Map) of the content, which helps students learn quickly. I found an amazing software called XMind. You can see the screenshot here. Problem is that it is not as powerpoint in terms of powerpoint. This software can be used for just for concept maps. In the above screenshot, each topic occupies a single slide. I have an Image/picture(Detailed huge picture) and about 5-10 bullet points and probably a video or an animation of somethings. And this XMind is not good at presenting, in terms that it doesn't allow me to set what to present after what. I want to present a top down view, with a slide for each topic. PS: I Don't like prezi.com. I tried but it simply is too confusing for my students. It zooms here and there. I didn't tried it but I've seen few presentations.

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  • Windows Server 2003 W3SVC Failing, Brute Force attack possibly the cause

    - by Roaders
    This week my website has disappeared twice for no apparent reason. I logged onto my server (Windows Server 2003 Service Pack 2) and restarted the World Web Publishing service, website still down. I tried restarting a few other services like DNS and Cold Fusion and the website was still down. In the end I restarted the server and the website reappeared. Last night the website went down again. This time I logged on and looked at the event log. SCARY STUFF! There were hundreds of these: Event Type: Information Event Source: TermService Event Category: None Event ID: 1012 Date: 30/01/2012 Time: 15:25:12 User: N/A Computer: SERVER51338 Description: Remote session from client name a exceeded the maximum allowed failed logon attempts. The session was forcibly terminated. At a frequency of around 3 -5 a minute. At about the time my website died there was one of these: Event Type: Information Event Source: W3SVC Event Category: None Event ID: 1074 Date: 30/01/2012 Time: 19:36:14 User: N/A Computer: SERVER51338 Description: A worker process with process id of '6308' serving application pool 'DefaultAppPool' has requested a recycle because the worker process reached its allowed processing time limit. Which is obviously what killed the web service. There were then a few of these: Event Type: Error Event Source: TermDD Event Category: None Event ID: 50 Date: 30/01/2012 Time: 20:32:51 User: N/A Computer: SERVER51338 Description: The RDP protocol component "DATA ENCRYPTION" detected an error in the protocol stream and has disconnected the client. Data: 0000: 00 00 04 00 02 00 52 00 ......R. 0008: 00 00 00 00 32 00 0a c0 ....2..À 0010: 00 00 00 00 32 00 0a c0 ....2..À 0018: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........ 0020: 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 ........ 0028: 92 01 00 00 ... With no more of the first error type. I am concerned that someone is trying to brute force their way into my server. I have disabled all the accounts apart from the IIS ones and Administrator (which I have renamed). I have also changed the password to an even more secure one. I don't know why this brute force attack caused the webservice to stop and I don't know why restarting the service didn't fix the problem. What should I do to make sure my server is secure and what should I do to make sure the webserver doesn't go down any more? Thanks.

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  • Lag spikes at full CPU usage, maybe video card

    - by Roberts
    I am posting this thread in hurry so few things may be missed (I will update tomorrow). My PC specs: Motherboard Name - Gigabyte GA-945PL-S3 CPU Type - DualCore Intel Core 2 Duo E4300, 1800 MHz (9 x 200) OS - Microsoft Windows 7 Ultimate OS Kernel Type - 32-bit OS Version - 6.1.7601 I bougth a new video card one month ago. GeForce 210. I didn't have any problems. I wanted to overclock it, in other words: "Play with it". So I installed Gigabyte EasyBoost from CD and overclocked the GPU 590 + 110 mhz, memory to max to 960mhz from 800mhz. Benchmarks showed a little bit bigger score. Then I overclocked shader clock from 1405 to [..] (don't remeber really). So I was playing Modern Warfare 2 when off sudden computer froze when I wanted to select team, I was afk before that. I had to reset CMOS. After that I had problems with Skype: unread messages and no sound. Then I figured it out that when ever I open EasyBoost - Skype starts to glitch again. Now I use EVGA Precission X. Now after a month, I cleaned computer and closed the case, it was open all the time. I started to overclock GPU clock only (just a bit) because there was no problems that would stop me. So sometimes on heavy CPU load graphics starts to lag. Dragging a window is painful to watch too. Sometimes the screen freezes for 5 to 10 seconds (I can see that hard disk activity is maximal). You may say that CPU fault it is, isn't it? But sometimes lag spikes starts randomly when CPU load is at maximum. All 3 benchmark softwares (PerformanceTest, NovaBench and MSI Kombustor) shows that performance of my video card has dropped about 25%. BUT! CPU score is lower too. I ignored these problems but when I refreshed Windows Experience Index I was shocked. Month before (in latvian language but not so hard to understand): Now (upgraded RAM): This happened when I tried to capture Minecraft with Fraps on underclocked GPU to 580mhz (def: 590mhz): All drivers are up to date. Average CPU temperature from 55°C to 75°C (at 70°C sometimes starts these lag spikes). Video card's tempratures are from 45°C to 60°C (very hard to reach 60°C). So my hope is that the video card is fine, cause this card is very new and I want to upgrade CPU anyways. Aplogies for my mistakes in vocabulary (I am trying to type this as fast I can).

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  • Event ID 17890 (A significant part... paged out.) with SQL Server 2008

    - by Godeke
    I have a machine that has SQL Server 2008 Standard installed. Periodically (about once an hour) I am getting Event ID 17890 several times in a row. An example: 6:28:54 "A significant part of sql server process memory has been paged out. This may result in a performance degradation. Duration: 0 seconds. Working set (KB): 10652, committed (KB): 628428, memory utilization: 1%%. 6:34:27 "A significant part of sql server process memory has been paged out. This may result in a performance degradation. Duration: 332 seconds. Working set (KB): 169780, committed (KB): 546124, memory utilization: 31%%." 6:38:55 "A significant part of sql server process memory has been paged out. This may result in a performance degradation. Duration: 600 seconds. Working set (KB): 245068, committed (KB): 546124, memory utilization: 44%%." This pattern repeated at 7:26 - 7:37, 8:26 - 8:36, 9:24 - 9:35 and so with the same increasing working set and memory utilization pattern. I don't have any (known) background tasks running at this time. Backups run at 2:00 This subsided from 11:00 at night until it resumed at 4:00 in the morning and has been continuing the intermittent 10 minute glitch periods. As this server has plenty of RAM (the commit charge has peaked at 2,871,564 of 4,194,012 physical) I disabled the paging files after reading several items I dug up searching Google and not finding any of them changing the situation. This pattern I am documented is after removing the paging files, so I'm not even sure where we are paging the SQL process could be going. I also changed the SQL process memory to have a minimum of 500MB and a maximum of 2GB of RAM (as this is a light duty database server serving only a small workgroup). Has anyone encountered this? Prior to disabling the page files this error would cause 5 minutes of disk thrashing that disabled access to the databases, files, IIS webs and so on. Since disabling the page files it just logs strange things, but I'm not seeing a performance drop at least. Any suggestions would be welcome.

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  • Adaptec 5805 not recognized after reboot

    - by Rakedko ShotGuns
    After rebooting the system, the controller is not recognized. It only works if the computer is shut down and turned off. I have recently updated the firmware to "Adaptec RAID 5805 Firmware Build 18948". How do I fix the problem? Configuration summary --------------------------- 1. Server name.....................raid_test Adaptec Storage Manager agent...7.31.00 (18856) Adaptec Storage Manager console.7.31.00 (18856) Number of controllers...........1 Operating system................Windows Configuration information for controller 1 ------------------------------------------------------- Type............................Controller Model...........................Adaptec 5805 Controller number...............1 Physical slot...................2 Installed memory size...........512 MB Serial number...................8C4510C6C9E Boot ROM........................5.2-0 (18948) Firmware........................5.2-0 (18948) Device driver...................5.2-0 (16119) Controller status...............Optimal Battery status..................Charging Battery temperature.............Normal Battery charge amount (%).......37 Estimated charge remaining......0 days, 16 hours, 12 minutes Background consistency check....Disabled Copy back.......................Disabled Controller temperature..........Normal (40C / 104F) Default logical drive task priority High Performance mode................Dynamic Number of logical devices.......1 Number of hot-spare drives......0 Number of ready drives..........0 Number of drive(s) assigned to MaxCache cache0 Maximum drives allowed for MaxCache cache8 MaxCache Read Cache Pool Size...0 GB NCQ status......................Enabled Stay awake status...............Disabled Internal drive spinup limit.....0 External drive spinup limit.....0 Phy 0...........................No device attached Phy 1...........................No device attached Phy 2...........................No device attached Phy 3...........................1.50 Gb/s Phy 4...........................No device attached Phy 5...........................No device attached Phy 6...........................No device attached Phy 7...........................No device attached Statistics version..............2.0 SSD Cache size..................0 Pages on fetch list.............0 Fetch list candidates...........0 Candidate replacements..........0 69319...........................31293 Logical device..................0 Logical device name............. RAID level......................Simple volume Data space......................148,916 GB Date created....................09/19/2012 Interface type..................Serial ATA State...........................Optimal Read-cache mode.................Enabled Preferred MaxCache read cache settingEnabled Actual MaxCache read cache setting Disabled Write-cache mode................Enabled (write-back) Write-cache setting.............Enabled (write-back) Partitioned.....................Yes Protected by hot spare..........No Bootable........................Yes Bad stripes.....................No Power Status....................Disabled Power State.....................Active Reduce RPM timer................Never Power off timer.................Never Verify timer....................Never Segment 0.......................Present: controller 1, connector 0, device 0, S/N 9RX3KZMT Overall host IOs................99075 Overall MB......................4411203 DRAM cache hits.................71929 SSD cache hits..................0 Uncached IOs....................29239 Overall disk failures...........0 DRAM cache full hits............71929 DRAM cache fetch / flush wait...0 DRAM cache hybrid reads.........3476 DRAM cache flushes..............-- Read hits.......................0 Write hits......................0 Valid Pages.....................0 Updates on writes...............0 Invalidations by large writes...0 Invalidations by R/W balance....0 Invalidations by replacement....0 Invalidations by other..........0 Page Fetches....................0 0...............................0 73..............................10822 8...............................3 46138...........................4916 27184...........................15226 20875...........................323 16982...........................1771 1563............................5317 1948............................2969 Serial attached SCSI ----------------------- Type............................Disk drive Vendor..........................Unknown Model...........................ST3160815AS Serial Number...................9RX3KZMT Firmware level..................3.AAD Reported channel................0 Reported SCSI device ID.........0 Interface type..................Serial ATA Size............................149,05 GB Negotiated transfer speed.......1.50 Gb/s State...........................Optimal S.M.A.R.T. error................No Write-cache mode................Write back Hardware errors.................0 Medium errors...................0 Parity errors...................0 Link failures...................0 Aborted commands................0 S.M.A.R.T. warnings.............0 Solid-state disk (non-spinning).false MaxCache cache capable..........false MaxCache cache assigned.........false NCQ status......................Enabled Phy 0...........................1.50 Gb/s Power State.....................Full rpm Supported power states..........Full rpm, Powered off 0x01............................113 0x03............................98 0x04............................99 0x05............................100 0x07............................83 0x09............................75 0x0A............................100 0x0C............................99 0xBB............................100 0xBD............................100 0xBE............................61 0xC2............................39 0xC3............................69 0xC5............................100 0xC6............................100 0xC7............................200 0xC8............................100 0xCA............................100 Aborted commands................0 Link failures...................0 Medium errors...................0 Parity errors...................0 Hardware errors.................0 SMART errors....................0 End of the configuration information for controller 1

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  • Can't save screen resolution setting.

    - by Searock
    Hi, My screen resolution in windows and previous version of Ubuntu (9.04) was 1152 x 864. But in Ubuntu 10.04 it gives me an option of 1024 x 786 and 1360 x 786. I have some how managed to add 1152x684 resolution by using xrandr command. searock@searock-desktop:~$ cvt 1152 864 1152x864 59.96 Hz (CVT 1.00M3) hsync: 53.78 kHz; pclk: 81.75 MHz Modeline "1152x864_60.00" 81.75 1152 1216 1336 1520 864 867 871 897 -hsync +vsync searock@searock-desktop:~$ xrandr --newmode "1152x864_60.00" 81.75 1152 1216 1336 1520 864 867 871 897 -hsync +vsync searock@searock-desktop:~$ xrandr --addmode S-video 1152x864 xrandr: cannot find output "S-video" searock@searock-desktop:~$ xrandr Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1024 x 768, maximum 4096 x 4096 VGA1 connected 1024x768+0+0 (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) 0mm x 0mm 1360x768 59.8 1024x768 60.0* 800x600 60.3 56.2 848x480 60.0 640x480 59.9 59.9 1152x864_60.00 (0x124) 81.0MHz h: width 1152 start 1216 end 1336 total 1520 skew 0 clock 53.3KHz v: height 864 start 867 end 871 total 897 clock 59.4Hz searock@searock-desktop:~$ xrandr --addmode VGA1 1152x864_60.00 But the problem is when ever I restart my computer I get this message. Could not apply the stored configuration for the monitors. Could not find a suitable configuration of screens. And then it comes back to 1024 x 786 My graphic card details : Intel(R) 82945G Express Chipset Family. Is there any way I can fix this once for all ? Thanks. Edit 1 : rumtscho has suggested me to modify xorg.conf file. But I am not sure what HorizSync means? is it Horizontal frequency ? My monitor model is Acer v173. Here's my specification. So what should be HorizSync and VertRefresh ? Edit 2 : I have edited my Xorg.conf file as follows : Section "Monitor" Identifier "Configured Monitor" HorizSync 30-80 VertRefresh 55-75 EndSection then I added the resolution and restarted my computer and still I am facing the same problem. Is there something that I am missing? Edit 3 : For now I have edited /etc/gdm/Init/Default(gdm startup scripts) to include following xrandr commands, just below line initctl -q emit login-session-start DISPLAY_MANAGER=gdm xrandr --newmode "1152x864_60.00" 81.75 1152 1216 1336 1520 864 867 871 897 -hsync +vsync xrandr --addmode VGA1 1152x864_60.00<br/> xrandr -s 1152x864_60.00 This has solved my problem, but this commands have increased my computer's boot time. I think I will have to edit xorg file properly. Edit 4 : Instead of adding this files to gdm startup scripts I have created a shell script and added it to startup (System - Preference - Startup Applications) #!/bin/bash xrandr --newmode "1152x864_60.00" 81.75 1152 1216 1336 1520 864 867 871 897 -hsync +vsync xrandr --addmode VGA1 1152x864_60.00 xrandr -s 1152x864_60.00 And don't forget to add execution rights. (Right Click - Properties - Permission - Allow executing file as program)

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  • How to rate-limit concurrent sessions with nginx or haproxy?

    - by bantic
    I'm currently using nginx to reverse-proxy requests from web clients that are doing long-polling to an upstream. Since we're doing long polling (as opposed to websockets), when a client connects it will make multiple http connections to the server in serial, re-establishing a connection every time the server sends it some data (or timing out and re-establishing if the server has nothing to say for 10 seconds). What I'd like to do is limit the number of concurrent web clients. Since the clients are constantly making new HTTP requests instead of keeping a single request open, it's a little tricky to count the total number of web clients (because it's not the same as total number of concurrently connected http clients). The method I've come up with is to track http requests by the originating IP address, and store the IP address somewhere with a TTL of 20 seconds. If a request comes in whose IP isn't recognized, then we check the total number of unexpired stored IP addresses; if that's less than the maximum then we allow this request through. And if a request comes in with an IP address that we can find in the look-up table that hasn't yet expired, then it is allowed through as well. All requests that are allowed through have their IPs added to the table (if not there before) and the TTL refreshed to 20 seconds again. I had actually whipped something together that worked correctly this way using nginx along with the Redis 2.0 Nginx Module (and the nginx lua module to simplify the conditional branching), using redis to store my IP addresses with a TTL (the SETEX command), and checking the table size with the DBSIZE command. This worked but the performance was horrible. nginx and redis ended up using lots of cpu and the machine could only handle a very small number of concurrent requests. The new stick-table and tracking counters that were added to Haproxy in version 1.5 (via a commission from serverfault) seem like they might be ideal to implement exactly this sort of rate limiting, because the stick-table can track IP addresses and automatically expire entries. However, I don't see an easy way to get a total count of the unexpired entries in the stick table, which would be necessary to know the number of connected web clients. I'm curious if anyone has any suggestions, for nginx or haproxy or even for something else not mentioned here that I haven't thought of yet.

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  • how do i install intermediate certificate

    - by getmizanur
    I have installed private key (pem encoded) and public key certificate (pem encoded) on amazon load balancer however when i check the ssl with site test tool (http://www.networking4all.com/en/support/tools/site+check/), i get the following error Error while checking the SSL Certificate!! Unable to get the local issuer of the certificate. The issuer of a locally looked up certificate could not be found. Normally this indicates that not all intermediate certificates are installed on the server. i converted crt file to pem using these command from this tutorial openssl x509 -in input.crt -out input.der -outform DER openssl x509 -in input.der -inform DER -out output.pem -outform PEM during setting up of amazon load balancer only option i left out was certificate chain (pem encoded) however this was optional. could this be cause of my issue? and if so i how do i create certificate chain? for the last question i have tried googling however i'm getting more confused than before. please help many thanks in advance. UPDATE @all thanks for the helpful advice. if you make request to verisign they will give you a certificate chain however this chain includes public crt, intermediate crt and root crt. make sure to remove the public crt from your certificate chain (which is the top most certificate) before adding it to your certification chain box of your amazon load balancer. if you are making https request from an android app then above instruction may not work for older android os such as 2.1 and 2.2. to make it work on older android os [https://knowledge.verisign.com/support/ssl-certificates-support/index?page=content&id=AR657&actp=LIST&viewlocale=en_US]. on this link click on "retail ssl" tab and then click on "secure site" "CA Bundle for Apache Server". copy and past these intermediate certs into certificate chain box. just incase if you have not found it here is the direct link [https://knowledge.verisign.com/support/ssl-certificates-support/index?page=content&id=AR1409] if you are using geo trust certificates then solution is much the same for android devices however you need to copy and past their intermediate certs for android. PS: sorry for the long urls however "new users can only post a maximum of two hyperlinks"

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  • How to circumvent ISP Limiting "Unknown" traffic - (SSH)Proxy, VPN

    - by connery
    I am having issues with using a proxy/VPN, with my current ISP (Comenersol, Spain). From my point of view they limit traffic by protocol or by traffic they "know" and "dont know". I'll explain my findings so far below. Internet connection in Spain: ~400-420KByte/sec (speedtest.net) OpenVPN Server in Sweden(pfsense): 100/100Mbit. LZO Compression. TCP. Tun. Aes128 Squid Proxy server in Sweden (pfsense): 100/100 (same box as the vpn server). Plain, no encryption. Runs in stealth mode to hide the use of proxy. NOT running OpenVPN or Squid Proxy, this is my findings: When I download a file from my pfsense box in Sweden, I get maximum speed When I run speedtest.net and choose any european server (including Swedish), I get max speed When I download a torrent (with non default port above 10K), I get limited to ~100KByte/sec. Encryption is turned off If I download something through https, I get max speed Running either Squid Proxy or VPN, this is my findings When I download a file from my pfsense box in Sweden, I get ~100KByte/sec When I run speedtest.net and choose any european server (including Swedish and Spanish), I get ~100Kbyte/sec When I download a torrent, I get same limitation ~100KByte/sec When I download something through https, I get ~100KByte/sec I verify the speeds above with speedtest.net measure, firefox measure in addition to having bmon running in terminal in the background. This way I am certain that the speeds I get presented, are in fact correct. If I connect through a different ISP with VPN or Squid Proxy, I get better speeds (400KByte/sec ++) In short: Whenever I tunnel my traffic through Sweden, my SPanish ISP throttles the traffic. I thought tunneling it through Squid would solve the issue, since I then would no longer hide my traffic through encryption. This does not seem to be the case. Wget and fetch gives same result. I did not try 'nc', but I assume this would give the same result. Does anyone know how to circumvent this issue? I would very much like to be able to get full speed with Swedish ip, as this would make me able to stream TV at higher quality than today. 100KByte/sec just does not cut it quality wise. Thanks for reading. Looking forward for your help.

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  • New-ManagedContentSettings - not working properly under Exchange 2010

    - by mfinni
    I have a client that is divesting a business unit into a new AD forest, Exchange org, etc. We're using Quest tools to migrate users and mailboxes. However, I have to build the new infrastructure to match the old one. In the old one, we're using Managed Folder Mailbox Policies to limit (or allow) retention. They started with Exchange 2007 and never upgraded to Retention Policies; oh well. So, in the old environment, when you use a 2007 server to define a new Managed Content Setting, you can pick "Email" from the dropdown for MessageClass. This is a display name; the actual MessageClass values are thus: MessageClass : IPM.Note;IPM.Note.AS/400 Move Notification Form v1.0;IPM.Note.Delayed;IPM.Note.Exchange.ActiveSync.Report;IPM.Note.JournalReport.Msg;IPM.Note.JournalReport.Tnef;IPM.Note.Microsoft.Missed.Voice;IPM.Note.Rules.OofTemplate.Microsoft;IPM.Note.Rules.ReplyTemplate.Microsoft;IPM.Note.Secure.Sign;IPM.Note.SMIME;IPM.Note.SMIME.MultipartSigned;IPM.Note.StorageQuotaWarning;IPM.Note.StorageQuotaWarning.Warning;IPM.Notification.Meeting.Forward;IPM.Outlook.Recall;IPM.Recall.Report.Success;IPM.Schedule.Meeting.*;REPORT.IPM.Note.NDR If I take that and try to mangle it into a new cmdlet for Ex2010 in my new environment here's what I get New-ManagedContentSettings -Name "Delete Messages older then 90 days" -FolderName "Entire Mailbox" -RetentionEnabled $True -AgeLimitForRetention 90 -TriggerForRetention WhenDelivered -RetentionAction DeleteAndAllowRecovery -MessageClass "IPM.Note","IPM.Note.AS/400MoveNotificationFormv1.0","IPM.Note.Delayed","IPM.Note.Exchange.ActiveSync.Report","IPM.Note.JournalReport.Msg","IPM.Note.JournalReport.Tnef","IPM.Note.Microsoft.Missed.Voice","IPM.Note.Rules.OofTemplate.Microsoft","IPM.Note.Rules.ReplyTemplate.Microsoft","IPM.Note.Secure.Sign","IPM.Note.SMIME","IPM.Note.SMIME.MultipartSigned","IPM.Note.StorageQuotaWarning","IPM.Note.StorageQuotaWarning.Warning","IPM.Notification.Meeting.Forward","IPM.Outlook.Recall","IPM.Recall.Report.Success","IPM.Schedule.Meeting.*","REPORT.IPM.Note.NDR" -whatif Invoke-Command : Cannot bind parameter 'MessageClass' to the target. Exception setting "MessageClass": "The length of t he property is too long. The maximum length is 255 and the length of the value provided is 518." At C:\Users\MFinnigan.sa\AppData\Roaming\Microsoft\Exchange\RemotePowerShell\pfexcas02.fve.ad.5ssl.com\pfexcas02.fve.ad .5ssl.com.psm1:28204 char:29 + $scriptCmd = { & <<<< $script:InvokeCommand ` + CategoryInfo : WriteError: (:) [New-ManagedContentSettings], ParameterBindingException + FullyQualifiedErrorId : ParameterBindingFailed,Microsoft.Exchange.Management.SystemConfigurationTasks.NewManaged ContentSettings So, the config object can store all that mess, but I can't fit it in through the cmdlet to create the object. Lovely. Any ideas?

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  • SQL Server suddenly using only a small portion of CPU.

    - by hermiod
    We've got a Windows 2008 R2 server running SQL Server 2008. All of a sudden, the SQLServer process is refusing to go above 20% CPU usage. As of last week, when running a heavy query against the db it would rise to 100% usage as I would expect. We've had this server for a while and it seems strange that it would just suddenly have this limit. This limit is causing our queries to take a lot longer than they normally would. No one has (knowingly at least) made any changes to the server configuration. After a bit of investigation, I discovered the sys.dm_os_sys_memory view. This shows 'available physical memory is high' bu at the same time the available physical memory is 339552kb where as the total is 4193848kb. It is worth noting that this is a virtual server running on vmware. Is there a setting somewhere with in SQL Server that sets the maximum CPU usage? I've found the settings in resource governor, although this is currently off as it always has been. We have recently started using Spotlight for SQL Server by Quest Software. It's playback database was located on this server for a short time this morning, I first noticed the problem shortly afterwards, although I hadn't been doing any queries prior to this so I don't know if this is the point at which the problem began, however the database was working as expected on Friday afternoon. The Windows log shows that the following settings were applied to the SpotlightPlaybackDatabase when it was created. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option TORN_PAGE_DETECTION to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option MULTI_USER to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option READ_WRITE to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_UPDATE_STATISTICS to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_CREATE_STATISTICS to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option ANSI_WARNINGS to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option CONCAT_NULL_YIELDS_NULL to ON for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option RECOVERY to SIMPLE for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option QUOTED_IDENTIFIER to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. 02/21/2011 08:45:02,spid60,Unknown,Setting database option AUTO_CLOSE to OFF for database SpotlightPlaybackDatabase. Could any of these settings changes modified the settings applied to the whole server?

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  • Low FPS in some games, but hardware not fully used

    - by Mario De Schaepmeester
    I just did a little funny experiment in the game/sim "Train Simulator 2013". I normally have good FPS in it (around 30) at full settings. What I did was make a really, really long train so that the calculations the sim needed to make were enormous (the sim is quite realistic, it takes all things into account like speed/acceleration, G-forces, comfort levels, possible wheel slip and many more, and most of those things on each carriage seperately). This resulted in only 14FPS as reported by the game, but it felt more like 8FPS or so. I have a Logitech G15 keyboard which has an LCD, and it allows me to monitor CPU/RAM and video card load on it. The strange thing is, all CPU cores were busy, but the total load was only about 60% maximum at all times. The video card was only on 30% load (possibly an important note, the memory was full, which is however not unusual for the game in question). The RAM had plenty of room and there weren't many operations as it didn't grow or shrink much. I just have the feeling that the game would run smoother if it used more of my hardware power. Why is it not doing so? I had the same in another game, The Elder Scrolls: Morrowind when using more than 100 mods (that all use scripting) and a few high res texture mods, + a full-on graphics improvement program. The engine is very old (2003), and so I thought this might be the cause (not being optimised for multithreading). I had thought of possible causes, like: The operating system doesn't let the games use all the resources. It doesn't make use of multi-threading appropriately. To eliminate the former, I tried a CPU stress tool and that got 100% CPU juice as I let it run, so the OS is not the problem. I gave its thread the "higher" priority though. My actual question In both games, I did things the engine was not really built to do or support. Can those games' framerate be limited cause of their own engine not being able to cope? What is the real reason and more importantly, can I help it? And in any case, could something actually be wrong with my hardware? It's all reasonably new, a couple of months, and I (almost) never experience any other trouble. Modern and much more demanding games work absolutely fine. Specs CPU: AMD Phenom II 965 X4 @ 3.4gHz RAM: 8GB of DDR3 RAM Video: MSI GTX560 (nVidia chip) with 1GB of GDDR5 memory OS: Windows 7 Ultimate 64 bit Nothing overclocked.

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  • Linux: find out what process is using all the RAM?

    - by Timur
    Before actually asking, just to be clear: yes, I know about disk cache, and no, it is not my case :) Sorry, for this preamble :) I'm using CentOS 5. Every application in the system is swapping heavily, and the system is very slow. When I do free -m, here is what I got: total used free shared buffers cached Mem: 3952 3929 22 0 1 18 -/+ buffers/cache: 3909 42 Swap: 16383 46 16337 So, I actually have only 42 Mb to use! As far as I understand, -/+ buffers/cache actually doesn't count the disk cache, so I indeed only have 42 Mb, right? I thought, I might be wrong, so I tried to switch off the disk caching and it had no effect - the picture remained the same. So, I decided to find out who is using all my RAM, and I used top for that. But, apparently, it reports that no process is using my RAM. The only process in my top is MySQL, but it is using 0.1% of RAM and 400Mb of swap. Same picture when I try to run other services or applications - all go in swap, top shows that MEM is not used (0.1% maximum for any process). top - 15:09:00 up 2:09, 2 users, load average: 0.02, 0.16, 0.11 Tasks: 112 total, 1 running, 111 sleeping, 0 stopped, 0 zombie Cpu(s): 0.0%us, 0.0%sy, 0.0%ni,100.0%id, 0.0%wa, 0.0%hi, 0.0%si, 0.0%st Mem: 4046868k total, 4001368k used, 45500k free, 748k buffers Swap: 16777208k total, 68840k used, 16708368k free, 16632k cached PID USER PR NI VIRT RES SHR S %CPU %MEM TIME+ SWAP COMMAND 3214 ntp 15 0 23412 5044 3916 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 17m ntpd 2319 root 5 -10 12648 4460 3184 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 8188 iscsid 2168 root RT 0 22120 3692 2848 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.00 17m multipathd 5113 mysql 18 0 474m 2356 856 S 0.0 0.1 0:00.11 472m mysqld 4106 root 34 19 251m 1944 1360 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.11 249m yum-updatesd 4109 root 15 0 90152 1904 1772 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.18 86m sshd 5175 root 15 0 90156 1896 1772 S 0.0 0.0 0:00.02 86m sshd Restart doesn't help, and, by they way is very slow, which I wouldn't normally expect on this machine (4 cores, 4Gb RAM, RAID1). So, with that - I'm pretty sure that this is not a disk cache, who is using the RAM, because normally it should have been reduced and let other processes to use RAM, rather then go to swap. So, finally, the question is - if someone has any ideas how to find out what process is actually using the memory so heavily?

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  • Server to server replication and CPU and 32k\ corrupt doc

    - by nick wall
    Summary: if database contains a doc with 32K issue or corrupt, on server to server replication it causes marked increase in CPU in nserver.exe task, which effectively causes our server(s) to slow right down. We have a 5 server cluster (1 "hub" and 4 HTTP servers accessed via reverse proxy and SSO for load balancing and redundancy). All are physically located next to each other on network, they don't have dedicated network\ ports for cluster or replication. I realise IBM recommendation is dedicated port for cluster. Cluster queues are in tolerance and under heavy application user load, i.e. the maximum number of documents are being created, edited, deleted, the replication times between servers are negligible. Normally, all is well. Of the servers in the cluster, 1 is considered the "hub", and imitates a PUSH-PULL replication with it's cluster mates every 60mins, so that the replication load is taken by the hub and not cluster mates. The problem we have: every now and then we get a slow replication time from the hub to a cluster mate, sometimes up to 30mins. This maxes out the nserver.exe task on the "cluster mate" which causes it to respond to http requests very slowly. In the past, we have found that if a corrupt document is in the DB, it can have this affect, but on those occasions, the server log will show the corrupt doc noteId, we run fixup, all well. But we are not now seeing any record of corrupt docs. What we have noticed is if a doc with the 32K issue is present, the same thing can happen. Our only solution in that case is to run a : fixup mydb.nsf -V, which shows it is purging a 32K doc. Luckily we run a reverse proxy, so we can shut HTTP servers down without users noticing, but users do notice when a server has the problem! Has anyone else seen this occur? I have set up DDM event handlers for many of the replication events. I have set the replication time out limit to 5 mins (the max we usually see under full user load is 0.1min), to prevent it rep'ing for 30mins as before. This ia a temporary work around. Does anyone know of a DDM event to trap the 32K issue? we could at least then send alert. Regarding 32K issue: this prob needs another thread, but we are finding this relatively hard to find the source of the issue as the 32K event is fairly rare. Our app is fairly complex, interacting with various other external web services, with 2 way data transfer. But if we do encounter a 32K doc, we can't look at field properties, so we can't work out which field has issue which would give us a clue as to which process is culprit. As above, we run a fixup -V. Any help\ comments on this would be gratefully received.

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  • Tips for maximizing Nginx requests/sec?

    - by linkedlinked
    I'm building an analytics package, and project requirements state that I need to support 1 billion hits per day. Yep, "billion". In other words, no less than 12,000 hits per second sustained, and preferably some room to burst. I know I'll need multiple servers for this, but I'm trying to get maximum performance out of each node before "throwing more hardware at it". Right now, I have the hits-tracking portion completed, and well optimized. I pretty much just save the requests straight into Redis (for later processing with Hadoop). The application is Python/Django with a gunicorn for the gateway. My 2GB Ubuntu 10.04 Rackspace server (not a production machine) can serve about 1200 static files per second (benchmarked using Apache AB against a single static asset). To compare, if I swap out the static file link with my tracking link, I still get about 600 requests per second -- I think this means my tracker is well optimized, because it's only a factor of 2 slower than serving static assets. However, when I benchmark with millions of hits, I notice a few things -- No disk usage -- this is expected, because I've turned off all Nginx logs, and my custom code doesn't do anything but save the request details into Redis. Non-constant memory usage -- Presumably due to Redis' memory managing, my memory usage will gradually climb up and then drop back down, but it's never once been my bottleneck. System load hovers around 2-4, the system is still responsive during even my heaviest benchmarks, and I can still manually view http://mysite.com/tracking/pixel with little visible delay while my (other) server performs 600 requests per second. If I run a short test, say 50,000 hits (takes about 2m), I get a steady, reliable 600 requests per second. If I run a longer test (tried up to 3.5m so far), my r/s degrades to about 250. My questions -- a. Does it look like I'm maxing out this server yet? Is 1,200/s static files nginx performance comparable to what others have experienced? b. Are there common nginx tunings for such high-volume applications? I have worker threads set to 64, and gunicorn worker threads set to 8, but tweaking these values doesn't seem to help or harm me much. c. Are there any linux-level settings that could be limiting my incoming connections? d. What could cause my performance to degrade to 250r/s on long-running tests? Again, the memory is not maxing out during these tests, and HDD use is nil. Thanks in advance, all :)

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  • Concerning persistence size in the Linux Live Creator

    - by user63085
    Message : Hello everyone! I have ,for the last several months, used the Linux Live USB Creator which it is a very useful app to make portable OS on to flash drives. I mostly use this application to test and try out new OS's as they are released, before I decide to make a hard disk installatio on to the computer. In many cases, the application developers will allow the “persistence” feature in the flash-drive-installed OS, which is just another way of saying that after multiple boot-ups and shutdowns, all the changes made to the OS will be saved in the flash-drive. But I have a question about the limit of the Persistence size in Linux Live USB Creator (currently version 2.6). I install Super OS 10 on to a partition on my external drive which has 30 GB. I wanted to reserve 10 GB for the persistence so that I can install more applications and space will not run out as I update the installed applications or when I do system updates. But why is it that only 3950 MB can be put for persistence? It would be great if, when desired, as much more persistence space could be set aside so that the space will not run out soon. Also, as I have installed the OS on a 30 GB drive, I tried to see how much space is left. But it seems only the remaining of the Persistence space is displayed when I click on the File System folder. For example, after I have just installed it now, there is 3.5 GB of free space. Where can I access the remaining 26 GB or so drive space which is in the same drive? How do I access it Sir?? It would be helpful if any one could explain and help me with this. Most importantly, it would be a big relief if the persistence can be somehow expanded by a work-around so that I can continue using my SuperOS 10.04 (now heavily customized) OS, which unfortunately has just over 576 MB of space left now, after I removed OpenOffice.org and installed the Libre Office earlier today. This is what remains from the maximum allowable 3950 MB of space for persistence at set-up. Thanks in advance!

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  • The Challenge with HTML5 – In Pictures

    - by dwahlin
    I love working with Web technologies and am looking forward to the new functionality that HTML5 will ultimately bring to the table (some of which can be used today). Having been through the div versus layer battle back in the IE4 and Netscape 4 days I think we’re headed down that road again as a result of browsers implementing features differently. I’ve been spending a lot of time researching and playing around with HTML5 samples and features (mainly because we’re already seeing demand for training on HTML5) and there’s a lot of great stuff there that will truly revolutionize web applications as we know them. However, browsers just aren’t there yet and many people outside of the development world don’t really feel a need to upgrade their browser if it’s working reasonably well (Mom and Dad come to mind) so it’s going to be awhile. There’s a nice test site at http://www.HTML5Test.com that runs through different HTML5 features and scores how well they’re supported. They don’t test for everything and are very clear about that on the site: “The HTML5 test score is only an indication of how well your browser supports the upcoming HTML5 standard and related specifications. It does not try to test all of the new features offered by HTML5, nor does it try to test the functionality of each feature it does detect. Despite these shortcomings we hope that by quantifying the level of support users and web developers will get an idea of how hard the browser manufacturers work on improving their browsers and the web as a development platform. The score is calculated by testing for the many new features of HTML5. Each feature is worth one or more points. Apart from the main HTML5 specification and other specifications created the W3C HTML Working Group, this test also awards points for supporting related drafts and specifications. Some of these specifications were initially part of HTML5, but are now further developed by other W3C working groups. WebGL is also part of this test despite not being developed by the W3C, because it extends the HTML5 canvas element with a 3d context. The test also awards bonus points for supporting audio and video codecs and supporting SVG or MathML embedding in a plain HTML document. These test do not count towards the total score because HTML5 does not specify any required audio or video codec. Also SVG and MathML are not required by HTML5, the specification only specifies rules for how such content should be embedded inside a plain HTML file. Please be aware that the specifications that are being tested are still in development and could change before receiving an official status. In the future new tests will be added for the pieces of the specification that are currently still missing. The maximum number of points that can be scored is 300 at this moment, but this is a moving goalpost.” It looks like their tests haven’t been updated since June, but the numbers are pretty scary as a developer because it means I’m going to have to do a lot of browser sniffing before assuming a particular feature is available to use. Not that much different from what we do today as far as browser sniffing you say? I’d have to disagree since HTML5 takes it to a whole new level. In today’s world we have script libraries such as jQuery (my personal favorite), Prototype, script.aculo.us, YUI Library, MooTools, etc. that handle the heavy lifting for us. Until those libraries handle all of the key HTML5 features available it’s going to be a challenge. Certain features such as Canvas are supported fairly well across most of the major browsers while other features such as audio and video are hit or miss depending upon what codec you want to use. Run the tests yourself to see what passes and what fails for different browsers. You can also view the HTML5 Test Suite Conformance Results at http://test.w3.org/html/tests/reporting/report.htm (a work in progress). The table below lists the scores that the HTML5Test site returned for different browsers I have installed on my desktop PC and laptop. A specific list of tests run and features supported are given when you go to the site. Note that I went ahead and tested the IE9 beta and it didn’t do nearly as good as I expected it would, but it’s not officially out yet so I expect that number will change a lot. Am I opposed to HTML5 as a result of these tests? Of course not - I’m actually really excited about what it offers.  However, I’m trying to be realistic and feel it'll definitely add a new level of headache to the Web application development process having been through something like this many years ago. On the flipside, developers that are able to target a specific browser (typically Intranet apps) or master the cross-browser issues are going to release some pretty sweet applications. Check out http://html5gallery.com/ for a look at some of the more cutting-edge sites out there that use HTML5. Also check out the http://www.beautyoftheweb.com site that Microsoft put together to showcase IE9. Chrome 8 Safari 5 for Windows     Opera 10 Firefox 3.6     Internet Explorer 9 Beta (Note that it’s still beta) Internet Explorer 8

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  • Parallelism in .NET – Part 1, Decomposition

    - by Reed
    The first step in designing any parallelized system is Decomposition.  Decomposition is nothing more than taking a problem space and breaking it into discrete parts.  When we want to work in parallel, we need to have at least two separate things that we are trying to run.  We do this by taking our problem and decomposing it into parts. There are two common abstractions that are useful when discussing parallel decomposition: Data Decomposition and Task Decomposition.  These two abstractions allow us to think about our problem in a way that helps leads us to correct decision making in terms of the algorithms we’ll use to parallelize our routine. To start, I will make a couple of minor points. I’d like to stress that Decomposition has nothing to do with specific algorithms or techniques.  It’s about how you approach and think about the problem, not how you solve the problem using a specific tool, technique, or library.  Decomposing the problem is about constructing the appropriate mental model: once this is done, you can choose the appropriate design and tools, which is a subject for future posts. Decomposition, being unrelated to tools or specific techniques, is not specific to .NET in any way.  This should be the first step to parallelizing a problem, and is valid using any framework, language, or toolset.  However, this gives us a starting point – without a proper understanding of decomposition, it is difficult to understand the proper usage of specific classes and tools within the .NET framework. Data Decomposition is often the simpler abstraction to use when trying to parallelize a routine.  In order to decompose our problem domain by data, we take our entire set of data and break it into smaller, discrete portions, or chunks.  We then work on each chunk in the data set in parallel. This is particularly useful if we can process each element of data independently of the rest of the data.  In a situation like this, there are some wonderfully simple techniques we can use to take advantage of our data.  By decomposing our domain by data, we can very simply parallelize our routines.  In general, we, as developers, should be always searching for data that can be decomposed. Finding data to decompose if fairly simple, in many instances.  Data decomposition is typically used with collections of data.  Any time you have a collection of items, and you’re going to perform work on or with each of the items, you potentially have a situation where parallelism can be exploited.  This is fairly easy to do in practice: look for iteration statements in your code, such as for and foreach. Granted, every for loop is not a candidate to be parallelized.  If the collection is being modified as it’s iterated, or the processing of elements depends on other elements, the iteration block may need to be processed in serial.  However, if this is not the case, data decomposition may be possible. Let’s look at one example of how we might use data decomposition.  Suppose we were working with an image, and we were applying a simple contrast stretching filter.  When we go to apply the filter, once we know the minimum and maximum values, we can apply this to each pixel independently of the other pixels.  This means that we can easily decompose this problem based off data – we will do the same operation, in parallel, on individual chunks of data (each pixel). Task Decomposition, on the other hand, is focused on the individual tasks that need to be performed instead of focusing on the data.  In order to decompose our problem domain by tasks, we need to think about our algorithm in terms of discrete operations, or tasks, which can then later be parallelized. Task decomposition, in practice, can be a bit more tricky than data decomposition.  Here, we need to look at what our algorithm actually does, and how it performs its actions.  Once we have all of the basic steps taken into account, we can try to analyze them and determine whether there are any constraints in terms of shared data or ordering.  There are no simple things to look for in terms of finding tasks we can decompose for parallelism; every algorithm is unique in terms of its tasks, so every algorithm will have unique opportunities for task decomposition. For example, say we want our software to perform some customized actions on startup, prior to showing our main screen.  Perhaps we want to check for proper licensing, notify the user if the license is not valid, and also check for updates to the program.  Once we verify the license, and that there are no updates, we’ll start normally.  In this case, we can decompose this problem into tasks – we have a few tasks, but there are at least two discrete, independent tasks (check licensing, check for updates) which we can perform in parallel.  Once those are completed, we will continue on with our other tasks. One final note – Data Decomposition and Task Decomposition are not mutually exclusive.  Often, you’ll mix the two approaches while trying to parallelize a single routine.  It’s possible to decompose your problem based off data, then further decompose the processing of each element of data based on tasks.  This just provides a framework for thinking about our algorithms, and for discussing the problem.

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  • Linux-Containers — Part 1: Overview

    - by Lenz Grimmer
    "Containers" by Jean-Pierre Martineau (CC BY-NC-SA 2.0). Linux Containers (LXC) provide a means to isolate individual services or applications as well as of a complete Linux operating system from other services running on the same host. To accomplish this, each container gets its own directory structure, network devices, IP addresses and process table. The processes running in other containers or the host system are not visible from inside a container. Additionally, Linux Containers allow for fine granular control of resources like RAM, CPU or disk I/O. Generally speaking, Linux Containers use a completely different approach than "classicial" virtualization technologies like KVM or Xen (on which Oracle VM Server for x86 is based on). An application running inside a container will be executed directly on the operating system kernel of the host system, shielded from all other running processes in a sandbox-like environment. This allows a very direct and fair distribution of CPU and I/O-resources. Linux containers can offer the best possible performance and several possibilities for managing and sharing the resources available. Similar to Containers (or Zones) on Oracle Solaris or FreeBSD jails, the same kernel version runs on the host as well as in the containers; it is not possible to run different Linux kernel versions or other operating systems like Microsoft Windows or Oracle Solaris for x86 inside a container. However, it is possible to run different Linux distribution versions (e.g. Fedora Linux in a container on top of an Oracle Linux host), provided it supports the version of the Linux kernel that runs on the host. This approach has one caveat, though - if any of the containers causes a kernel crash, it will bring down all other containers (and the host system) as well. For example, Oracle's Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 (2.6.39) is supported for both Oracle Linux 5 and 6. This makes it possible to run Oracle Linux 5 and 6 container instances on top of an Oracle Linux 6 system. Since Linux Containers are fully implemented on the OS level (the Linux kernel), they can be easily combined with other virtualization technologies. It's certainly possible to set up Linux containers within a virtualized Linux instance that runs inside Oracle VM Server for Oracle VM Virtualbox. Some use cases for Linux Containers include: Consolidation of multiple separate Linux systems on one server: instances of Linux systems that are not performance-critical or only see sporadic use (e.g. a fax or print server or intranet services) do not necessarily need a dedicated server for their operations. These can easily be consolidated to run inside containers on a single server, to preserve energy and rack space. Running multiple instances of an application in parallel, e.g. for different users or customers. Each user receives his "own" application instance, with a defined level of service/performance. This prevents that one user's application could hog the entire system and ensures, that each user only has access to his own data set. It also helps to save main memory — if multiple instances of a same process are running, the Linux kernel can share memory pages that are identical and unchanged across all application instances. This also applies to shared libraries that applications may use, they are generally held in memory once and mapped to multiple processes. Quickly creating sandbox environments for development and testing purposes: containers that have been created and configured once can be archived as templates and can be duplicated (cloned) instantly on demand. After finishing the activity, the clone can safely be discarded. This allows to provide repeatable software builds and test environments, because the system will always be reset to its initial state for each run. Linux Containers also boot significantly faster than "classic" virtual machines, which can save a lot of time when running frequent build or test runs on applications. Safe execution of an individual application: if an application running inside a container has been compromised because of a security vulnerability, the host system and other containers remain unaffected. The potential damage can be minimized, analyzed and resolved directly from the host system. Note: Linux Containers on Oracle Linux 6 with the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 2 (2.6.39) are still marked as Technology Preview - their use is only recommended for testing and evaluation purposes. The Open-Source project "Linux Containers" (LXC) is driving the development of the technology behind this, which is based on the "Control Groups" (CGroups) and "Name Spaces" functionality of the Linux kernel. Oracle is actively involved in the Linux Containers development and contributes patches to the upstream LXC code base. Control Groups provide means to manage and monitor the allocation of resources for individual processes or process groups. Among other things, you can restrict the maximum amount of memory, CPU cycles as well as the disk and network throughput (in MB/s or IOP/s) that are available for an application. Name Spaces help to isolate process groups from each other, e.g. the visibility of other running processes or the exclusive access to a network device. It's also possible to restrict a process group's access and visibility of the entire file system hierarchy (similar to a classic "chroot" environment). CGroups and Name Spaces provide the foundation on which Linux containers are based on, but they can actually be used independently as well. A more detailed description of how Linux Containers can be created and managed on Oracle Linux will be explained in the second part of this article. Additional links related to Linux Containers: OTN Article: The Role of Oracle Solaris Zones and Linux Containers in a Virtualization Strategy Linux Containers on Wikipedia - Lenz Grimmer Follow me on: Personal Blog | Facebook | Twitter | Linux Blog |

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  • Seriously, It’s Time to Get Your Content Act Together

    - by Mike Stiles
    Branded content, content marketing, social content, brand journalism, we’re seeing those terms more and more. Why? The technology tools are coming together. We should know. We can gather big data, crunch it, listen to the public, moderate, respond, get to know the customer intimately, know what they like, know what they want, we can target, distribute, amplify, measure engagement and reaction, modify strategy and even automate a great deal of all that. An amazing machine, a sleek, smooth-running engine has been built such that all the parts can interact and work together to deliver peak performance and maximum output. But that engine isn’t going anywhere without any gas. Content is the gas. Yes, we curate other people’s content. We can siphon their gas. There’s tech to help with that too. But as for the creation of original, worthwhile content made for a specific audience, our audience, machines can’t do that…at least not yet. Curated content is great. But somebody has to originate the content for it to be curated and shared. And since the need for good, curated content is obviously large and the desire to share is there, it’s a winning proposition for a brand to be a consistent producer of original content. And yet, it feels like content is an issue we’re avoiding. There’s a reluctance to build a massive pipeline if you have no idea what you’re going to run through it. The C-suite often doesn’t know what content is, that it’s different from ads, where to get it, who makes it, how long it should be, what the point of it is if there’s no hard sell of the product, what it costs, how to use it, how to measure it, how to make sure it’s good, or how to make sure it will keep flowing. It could be the reason many brands aren’t pulling the trigger on socially enabling the enterprise. And that’s a shame, because there are a lot of creative, daring, experimental, uniquely talented entertainers and journalists chomping at the bit to execute content for brands. But for many corporate executives, content is “weird,” and the people who make it are even weirder. The content side of the equation is human. It’s art, but art that can be informed by data. The natural inclination is for brands to turn to their agencies for such creative endeavors. But agencies are falling into one of two categories. They’re failing to transition from ads to content. In “Content Era, What’s the Role of Agencies?” Alexander Jutkowitz says agencies were made for one-hit campaigns, not ongoing content. Or, they’re ready and capable but can’t get clients to do the right things. Agencies have to make money, even if it means continuing to do the wrong things because that’s all the client will agree to. So what we wind up with in the pipeline is advertising, marketing-heavy content, content that was obviously created or spearheaded by non-creative executives, random & inconsistent content, copy written for SEO bots, and other completely uninteresting nightmares. Frank Rose, author of “The Art of Immersion,” writes, “Content without story and excitement is noise pollution.” In the old days, you made an ad and inserted it into shows made by people who knew what they were doing. You could bask in that show’s success and leverage their audience. Now, you are tasked with attracting, amassing and holding your own audience. You may just want to make, advertise and sell your widgets. But now there’s a war on for a precious commodity, attention. People are busy. They have filters to keep uninteresting and irrelevant things out. They value their time and expect value back when they give it up. Joe Pulizzi, founder of the Content Marketing Institute, says, "Your customers don't care about you, your products, your services…they care about themselves, their wants and their needs." Is it worth getting serious about content and doing it right? 61% of consumers feel better about a company that delivers custom content (Custom Content Council). Interesting content is one of the top 3 reasons people follow brands on social (Content+). 78% of consumers think organizations that provide custom content want to build good relationships with them (TMG Custom Media). On the B2B side, 80% of business decision makers prefer to get company info in a series of articles vs. an ad. So what’s the hang-up? Cited barriers to content marketing are lack of human resources (42%) and lack of budget (35%). 54% of brands don’t have a single on-site, dedicated content creator. And only 38% of brands have a content marketing strategy. Tech has built the biggest, most incredible stage for brands that’s ever been built. Putting something on that stage is your responsibility. Do a bad show, or no show at all, and you’ll be the beautiful, talented actress that never got discovered. @mikestilesPhoto: Gabriella Fabbri, stock.xchng

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  • Difference between LASTDATE and MAX for semi-additive measures in #DAX

    - by Marco Russo (SQLBI)
    I recently wrote an article on SQLBI about the semi-additive measures in DAX. I included the formulas common calculations and there is an interesting point that worth a longer digression: the difference between LASTDATE and MAX (which is similar to FIRSTDATE and MIN – I just describe the former, for the latter just replace the correspondent names). LASTDATE is a dax function that receives an argument that has to be a date column and returns the last date active in the current filter context. Apparently, it is the same value returned by MAX, which returns the maximum value of the argument in the current filter context. Of course, MAX can receive any numeric type (including date), whereas LASTDATE only accepts a column of type date. But overall, they seems identical in the result. However, the difference is a semantic one. In fact, this expression: LASTDATE ( 'Date'[Date] ) could be also rewritten as: FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Date'[Date] ), 'Date'[Date] = MAX ( 'Date'[Date] ) ) LASTDATE is a function that returns a table with a single column and one row, whereas MAX returns a scalar value. In DAX, any expression with one row and one column can be automatically converted into the corresponding scalar value of the single cell returned. The opposite is not true. So you can use LASTDATE in any expression where a table or a scalar is required, but MAX can be used only where a scalar expression is expected. Since LASTDATE returns a table, you can use it in any expression that expects a table as an argument, such as COUNTROWS. In fact, you can write this expression: COUNTROWS ( LASTDATE ( 'Date'[Date] ) ) which will always return 1 or BLANK (if there are no dates active in the current filter context). You cannot pass MAX as an argument of COUNTROWS. You can pass to LASTDATE a reference to a column or any table expression that returns a column. The following two syntaxes are semantically identical: LASTDATE ( 'Date'[Date] ) LASTDATE ( VALUES ( 'Date'[Date] ) ) The result is the same and the use of VALUES is not required because it is implicit in the first syntax, unless you have a row context active. In that case, be careful that using in a row context the LASTDATE function with a direct column reference will produce a context transition (the row context is transformed into a filter context) that hides the external filter context, whereas using VALUES in the argument preserve the existing filter context without applying the context transition of the row context (see the columns LastDate and Values in the following query and result). You can use any other table expressions (including a FILTER) as LASTDATE argument. For example, the following expression will always return the last date available in the Date table, regardless of the current filter context: LASTDATE ( ALL ( 'Date'[Date] ) ) The following query recap the result produced by the different syntaxes described. EVALUATE     CALCULATETABLE(         ADDCOLUMNS(              VALUES ('Date'[Date] ),             "LastDate", LASTDATE( 'Date'[Date] ),             "Values", LASTDATE( VALUES ( 'Date'[Date] ) ),             "Filter", LASTDATE( FILTER ( VALUES ( 'Date'[Date] ), 'Date'[Date] = MAX ( 'Date'[Date] ) ) ),             "All", LASTDATE( ALL ( 'Date'[Date] ) ),             "Max", MAX( 'Date'[Date] )         ),         'Date'[Calendar Year] = 2008     ) ORDER BY 'Date'[Date] The LastDate columns repeat the current date, because the context transition happens within the ADDCOLUMNS. The Values column preserve the existing filter context from being replaced by the context transition, so the result corresponds to the last day in year 2008 (which is filtered in the external CALCULATETABLE). The Filter column works like the Values one, even if we use the FILTER instead of the LASTDATE approach. The All column shows the result of LASTDATE ( ALL ( ‘Date’[Date] ) ) that ignores the filter on Calendar Year (in fact the date returned is in year 2010). Finally, the Max column shows the result of the MAX formula, which is the easiest to use and only don’t return a table if you need it (like in a filter argument of CALCULATE or CALCULATETABLE, where using LASTDATE is shorter). I know that using LASTDATE in complex expressions might create some issue. In my experience, the fact that a context transition happens automatically in presence of a row context is the main reason of confusion and unexpected results in DAX formulas using this function. For a reference of DAX formulas using MAX and LASTDATE, read my article about semi-additive measures in DAX.

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  • Compress Large Video Files with DivX / Xvid and AutoGK

    - by DigitalGeekery
    Have you ever recorded home video on a camcorder only to find the video size is enormous? What if you wanted to share a video clip on YouTube or another video sharing site, but the file size was bigger than the maximum upload size? Today we’ll look at a way to compress certain video files, such as MPEG and AVI, with Auto Gordian Knot (AutoGK). AutoGK is a free application that runs on Windows. It supports Mpeg1, Mpeg2, Transport Streams, Vobs, and virtually any codec used for an .AVI file. AutoGK will accept as input the following file types: MPG, MPEG, VOB, VRO, M2V, DAT, IFO, TS, TP, TRP, M2T, and AVI. Files are output as .AVI files and are converted using the DivX or XviD codecs. Installing and Using AutoGK Download and install AutoGK (link below) Open the AutoGK. You’ll need to navigate a few wizard screens, but you can just accept the defaults.   Choose your video file by clicking on the folder to the right of the Input file text box.   Browse for and select your video file and click “Open.”   For this example, we’ll be working with an .AVI file that’s 167MB in size.   The output file is copied into the same directory as the input file by default, but you can change this if you choose. If the input file is also .AVI, AutoGK will append an _agk to the output file so that the original is not overwritten. Next, you’ll see any audio tracks listed. You can unselect the check box if you’d like to remove the audio track. You can choose one of the Predefined size options… Or, select a Custom size in MB or Target Quality in percentage. For our example, we’ll be compressing our 167MB file to 35MB. Click on Advanced Settings. Here you can choose your codec, if you have a preference, as well as output resolution and output audio. If you’d like to use the DivX codec, you’ll need to download and install it separately. (See link below) Typically you’ll want to keep the defaults. Click “OK.” Now you’re ready to add your file conversion job to the Job queue. Click Add Job to add it to the queue. You can add multiple files conversions to the job queue and  convert them in one batch. Click Start to begin the conversion process. The process will begin. You’ll be able to see the progress in the Log window on the bottom left. When the conversion is complete you’ll see a “Job finished” and the total time in the log window.   Check your output file to see it’s compressed size. Test your video just to make sure the output quality is satisfactory.   Note:  Conversion times can vary greatly depending on the size of the file and your computer hardware. Files that are several GBs in size may take several hours to compress. AutoGK is no longer being actively developed but is still a wonderful DivX/XviD conversion tool. It can also be used to compress and convert non-copy protected DVDs. Downloads AutoGordianKnot DivX (optional) Similar Articles Productive Geek Tips Use Your Mac Mini as a Media Server Part 2Make Disk Cleanup Compress Older(or Newer) Files on XPMysticgeek Blog: Exclusive Look Inside Vreel – Including Interview With Vreel Founder!Friday Fun: Watch HD Video Content with MeevidConvert a DVD Movie Directly to AVI with FairUse Wizard 2.9 TouchFreeze Alternative in AutoHotkey The Icy Undertow Desktop Windows Home Server – Backup to LAN The Clear & Clean Desktop Use This Bookmarklet to Easily Get Albums Use AutoHotkey to Assign a Hotkey to a Specific Window Latest Software Reviews Tinyhacker Random Tips DVDFab 6 Revo Uninstaller Pro Registry Mechanic 9 for Windows PC Tools Internet Security Suite 2010 Penolo Lets You Share Sketches On Twitter Visit Woolyss.com for Old School Games, Music and Videos Add a Custom Title in IE using Spybot or Spyware Blaster When You Need to Hail a Taxi in NYC Live Map of Marine Traffic NoSquint Remembers Site Specific Zoom Levels (Firefox)

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  • How to Troubleshoot TFS Build Server Failure?

    - by Tarun Arora
    Ever found your self in this helpless situation where you think you have tried every possible suggestion on the internet to bring the build server back but it just won’t work. Well some times before hunting around for a solution it is important to understand what the problem is, if the error messages in the build logs don’t seem to help you can always enable tracing on the build server to get more information on what could possibly be the root cause of failure. In this blog post today I’ll be showing you how to enable tracing on, - TFS 2010/11 Server - Build Server - Client Enable Tracing on Team Foundation Server 2010/2011 On the Team Foundation Server navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Application Tier\Web Services, right click web.config and from the context menu select edit.          Search for the <appSettings> node in the config file and set the value of the key ‘traceWriter’ to true.          In the <System.diagnostics> tag set the value of switches from 0 to 4 to set the trace level to maximum to write diagnostics level trace information.          Restart the TFS Application pool to force this change to take effect. The application pool restart will impact any one using the TFS server at present. Note - It is recommended that you do not make any changes to the TFS production application server, this can have serious consequences and can even jeopardize the installation of your server.          Download the Debug view tool from http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896647.aspx and set it to capture “Global Events”. Perform any actions in the Team Explorer on the client machine, you should be able to see a series of trace data in the debug view tool now.         Enable Tracing on Build Controller/Agents Log on to the Build Controller/Agent and Navigate to the directory C:\Program Files\Microsoft Team Foundation Server 2010\Tools         Look for the configuration file ‘TFSBuildServiceHost.exe.config’ if it is not already there create a new text file and rename it to ‘TFSBuildServiceHost.exe.config’         To Enable tracing uncomment the <system.diagnostics> and paste the snippet below if it is not already there. <configuration> <system.diagnostics> <switches> <add name="BuildServiceTraceLevel" value="4"/> </switches> <trace autoflush="true" indentsize="4"> <listeners> <add name="myListener" type="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TeamFoundationTextWriterTraceListener, Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" initializeData="c:\logs\TFSBuildServiceHost.exe.log" /> <remove name="Default" /> </listeners> </trace> </system.diagnostics> </configuration> The highlighted path above is where the Log file will be created. If the folder is not already there then create the folder, also, make sure that the account running the build service has access to write to this folder.         Restart the build Controller/Agent service from the administration console (or net stop tfsbuildservicehost & net start tfsbuildservicehost) in order for the new setting to be picked up.         Enable TFS Tracing on the Client Machine On the client machine, shut down Visual Studio, navigate to C:\Program Files\Microsoft Visual Studio 10.0\Common 7\IDE          Search for devenv.exe.config, make a backup copy of the config file and right click the file and from the context menu select edit. If its not already there create this file.          Edit devenv.exe.config by adding the below code snippet before the last </configuration> tag <system.diagnostics> <switches> <add name="TeamFoundationSoapProxy" value="4" /> <add name="VersionControl" value="4" /> </switches> <trace autoflush="true" indentsize="3"> <listeners> <add name="myListener" type="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.TeamFoundationTextWriterTraceListener,Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Common, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a" initializeData="c:\tf.log" /> <add name="perfListener" type="Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client.PerfTraceListener, Microsoft.TeamFoundation.Client, Version=10.0.0.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=b03f5f7f11d50a3a"/> </listeners> </trace> </system.diagnostics> The highlighted path above is where the Log file will be created. If the folder is not already there then create the folder. Start Visual Studio and after a bit of activity you should be able to see the new log file being created on the folder specified in the config file. Other Resources Below are some Key resource you might like to review. I would highly recommend the documentation, walkthroughs and videos available on MSDN.   Thank you for taking the time out and reading this blog post. If you enjoyed the post, remember to subscribe to http://feeds.feedburner.com/TarunArora. Have you come across an interesting one to one with the build server, please share your experience here. Questions/Feedback/Suggestions, etc please leave a comment. Thank You! Share this post : CodeProject

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  • SQL SERVER – Solution to Puzzle – Simulate LEAD() and LAG() without Using SQL Server 2012 Analytic Function

    - by pinaldave
    Earlier I wrote a series on SQL Server Analytic Functions of SQL Server 2012. During the series to keep the learning maximum and having fun, we had few puzzles. One of the puzzle was simulating LEAD() and LAG() without using SQL Server 2012 Analytic Function. Please read the puzzle here first before reading the solution : Write T-SQL Self Join Without Using LEAD and LAG. When I was originally wrote the puzzle I had done small blunder and the question was a bit confusing which I corrected later on but wrote a follow up blog post on over here where I describe the give-away. Quick Recap: Generate following results without using SQL Server 2012 analytic functions. I had received so many valid answers. Some answers were similar to other and some were very innovative. Some answers were very adaptive and some did not work when I changed where condition. After selecting all the valid answer, I put them in table and ran RANDOM function on the same and selected winners. Here are the valid answers. No Joins and No Analytic Functions Excellent Solution by Geri Reshef – Winner of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers (India | USA) WITH T1 AS (SELECT Row_Number() OVER(ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID) N, s.SalesOrderID, s.SalesOrderDetailID, s.OrderQty FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail s WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663)) SELECT SalesOrderID,SalesOrderDetailID,OrderQty, CASE WHEN N%2=1 THEN MAX(CASE WHEN N%2=0 THEN SalesOrderDetailID END) OVER (Partition BY (N+1)/2) ELSE MAX(CASE WHEN N%2=1 THEN SalesOrderDetailID END) OVER (Partition BY N/2) END LeadVal, CASE WHEN N%2=1 THEN MAX(CASE WHEN N%2=0 THEN SalesOrderDetailID END) OVER (Partition BY N/2) ELSE MAX(CASE WHEN N%2=1 THEN SalesOrderDetailID END) OVER (Partition BY (N+1)/2) END LagVal FROM T1 ORDER BY SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID, OrderQty; GO No Analytic Function and Early Bird Excellent Solution by DHall – Winner of Pluralsight 30 days Subscription -- a query to emulate LEAD() and LAG() ;WITH s AS ( SELECT 1 AS ldOffset, -- equiv to 2nd param of LEAD 1 AS lgOffset, -- equiv to 2nd param of LAG NULL AS ldDefVal, -- equiv to 3rd param of LEAD NULL AS lgDefVal, -- equiv to 3rd param of LAG ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID) AS row, SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID, OrderQty FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ) SELECT s.SalesOrderID, s.SalesOrderDetailID, s.OrderQty, ISNULL( sLd.SalesOrderDetailID, s.ldDefVal) AS LeadValue, ISNULL( sLg.SalesOrderDetailID, s.lgDefVal) AS LagValue FROM s LEFT OUTER JOIN s AS sLd ON s.row = sLd.row - s.ldOffset LEFT OUTER JOIN s AS sLg ON s.row = sLg.row + s.lgOffset ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID, s.SalesOrderDetailID, s.OrderQty No Analytic Function and Partition By Excellent Solution by DHall – Winner of Pluralsight 30 days Subscription /* a query to emulate LEAD() and LAG() */ ;WITH s AS ( SELECT 1 AS LeadOffset, /* equiv to 2nd param of LEAD */ 1 AS LagOffset, /* equiv to 2nd param of LAG */ NULL AS LeadDefVal, /* equiv to 3rd param of LEAD */ NULL AS LagDefVal, /* equiv to 3rd param of LAG */ /* Try changing the values of the 4 integer values above to see their effect on the results */ /* The values given above of 0, 0, null and null behave the same as the default 2nd and 3rd parameters to LEAD() and LAG() */ ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID) AS row, SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID, OrderQty FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ) SELECT s.SalesOrderID, s.SalesOrderDetailID, s.OrderQty, ISNULL( sLead.SalesOrderDetailID, s.LeadDefVal) AS LeadValue, ISNULL( sLag.SalesOrderDetailID, s.LagDefVal) AS LagValue FROM s LEFT OUTER JOIN s AS sLead ON s.row = sLead.row - s.LeadOffset /* Try commenting out this next line when LeadOffset != 0 */ AND s.SalesOrderID = sLead.SalesOrderID /* The additional join criteria on SalesOrderID above is equivalent to PARTITION BY SalesOrderID in the OVER clause of the LEAD() function */ LEFT OUTER JOIN s AS sLag ON s.row = sLag.row + s.LagOffset /* Try commenting out this next line when LagOffset != 0 */ AND s.SalesOrderID = sLag.SalesOrderID /* The additional join criteria on SalesOrderID above is equivalent to PARTITION BY SalesOrderID in the OVER clause of the LAG() function */ ORDER BY s.SalesOrderID, s.SalesOrderDetailID, s.OrderQty No Analytic Function and CTE Usage Excellent Solution by Pravin Patel - Winner of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers (India | USA) --CTE based solution ; WITH cteMain AS ( SELECT SalesOrderID, SalesOrderDetailID, OrderQty, ROW_NUMBER() OVER (ORDER BY SalesOrderDetailID) AS sn FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail WHERE SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ) SELECT m.SalesOrderID, m.SalesOrderDetailID, m.OrderQty, sLead.SalesOrderDetailID AS leadvalue, sLeg.SalesOrderDetailID AS leagvalue FROM cteMain AS m LEFT OUTER JOIN cteMain AS sLead ON sLead.sn = m.sn+1 LEFT OUTER JOIN cteMain AS sLeg ON sLeg.sn = m.sn-1 ORDER BY m.SalesOrderID, m.SalesOrderDetailID, m.OrderQty No Analytic Function and Co-Related Subquery Usage Excellent Solution by Pravin Patel – Winner of SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers (India | USA) -- Co-Related subquery SELECT m.SalesOrderID, m.SalesOrderDetailID, m.OrderQty, ( SELECT MIN(SalesOrderDetailID) FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail AS l WHERE l.SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) AND l.SalesOrderID >= m.SalesOrderID AND l.SalesOrderDetailID > m.SalesOrderDetailID ) AS lead, ( SELECT MAX(SalesOrderDetailID) FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail AS l WHERE l.SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) AND l.SalesOrderID <= m.SalesOrderID AND l.SalesOrderDetailID < m.SalesOrderDetailID ) AS leag FROM Sales.SalesOrderDetail AS m WHERE m.SalesOrderID IN (43670, 43669, 43667, 43663) ORDER BY m.SalesOrderID, m.SalesOrderDetailID, m.OrderQty This was one of the most interesting Puzzle on this blog. Giveaway Winners will get following giveaways. Geri Reshef and Pravin Patel SQL Server Interview Questions and Answers (India | USA) DHall Pluralsight 30 days Subscription Reference: Pinal Dave (http://blog.SQLAuthority.com) Filed under: Pinal Dave, PostADay, Readers Contribution, Readers Question, SQL, SQL Authority, SQL Function, SQL Puzzle, SQL Query, SQL Scripts, SQL Server, SQL Tips and Tricks, T SQL, Technology

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  • Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts

    - by jkauffman
    From a consumption point of view, tech blogging is a great resource for one-off articles on niche subjects. If you spend any time reading tech blogs, you may find yourself running into several common, useless types of posts tech bloggers slip into. Some of these lame posts may just be natural due to common nerd psychology, and some others are probably due to lame, lemming-like laziness. I’m sure I’ll do my fair share of fitting the mold, but I quickly get bored when I happen upon posts that hit these patterns without any real purpose or personal touches. 1. The Content Regurgitation Posts This is a common pattern fueled by the starving pan-handlers in the web traffic economy. These are posts that are terse opinions or addendums to an existing post. I commonly see these involve huge block quotes from the linked article which almost always produces over 50% of the post itself. I’ve accidentally gone to these posts when I’m knowingly only interested in the source material. Web links can degrade as well, so if the source link is broken, then, well, I’m pretty steamed. I see this occur with simple opinions on technologies, Stack Overflow solutions, or various tech news like posts from Microsoft. It’s not uncommon to go to the linked article and see the author announce that he “added a blog post” as a response or summary of the topic. This is just rude, but those who do it are probably aware of this. It’s a matter of winning that sweet, juicy web traffic. I doubt this leeching is fooling anybody these days. I would like to rally human dignity and urge people to avoid these types of posts, and just leave a comment on the source material. 2. The “Sorry I Haven’t Posted In A While” Posts This one is far too common. You’ll most likely see this quote somewhere in the body of the offending post: I have been really busy. If the poster is especially guilt-ridden, you’ll see a few volleys of excuses. Here are some common reasons I’ve seen, which I’ll list from least to most painfully awkward. Out of town Vague allusions to personal health problems (these typically includes phrases like “sick”, “treatment'”, and “all better now!”) “Personal issues” (which I usually read as "divorce”) Graphic or specific personal health problems (maximum awkwardness potential is achieved if you see links to charity fund websites) I can’t help but to try over-analyzing why this occurs. Personally, I see this an an amalgamation of three plain factors: Life happens Us nerds are duty-driven, and driven to guilt at personal inefficiencies Tech blogs can become personal journals I don’t think we can do much about the first two, but on the third I think we could certainly contain our urges. I’m a pretty boring guy and, whether or I like it or not, I have an unspoken duty to protect the world from hearing about my unremarkable existence. Nobody cares what kind of sandwich I’m eating. Similarly, if I disappear for a while, it’s unlikely that anybody who happens upon my blog would care why. Rest assured, if I stop posting for a while due to a vasectomy, you will be the first to know. 3. The “At A Conference”, or “Conference Review” Posts I don’t know if I’m like everyone else on this one, but I have never been successfully interested in these posts. It even sounds like a good idea: if I can’t make it to a particular conference (like the KCDC this year), wouldn’t I be interested in a concentrated summary of events? Apparently, no! Within this realm, I’ve never read a post by a blogger that held my interest. What really baffles is is that, for whatever reason, I am genuinely engaged and interested when talking to someone in person regarding the same topic. I have noticed the same phenomenon when hearing about others’ vacations. If someone sends me an email about their vacation, I gloss over it and forget about it quickly. In contrast, if I’m speaking to that individual in person about their vacation, I’m actually interested. I’m unsure why the written medium eradicates the intrigue. I was raised by a roaming pack of friendly wild video games, so that may be a factor. 4. The “Top X Number of Y’s That Z” Posts I’ve seen this one crop up a lot more in the past few of years. Here are some fabricated examples: 5 Easy Ways to Improve Your Code Top 7 Good Habits Programmers Learn From Experience The 8 Things to Consider When Giving Estimates Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Posts These are attention-grabbing headlines, and I’d assume they rack up hits. In fact, I enjoy a good number of these. But, I’ve been drawn to articles like this just to find an endless list of identically formatted posts on the blog’s archive sidebar. Often times these posts have overlapping topics, too. These types of posts give the impression that the author has given thought to prioritize and organize the points as a result of a comprehensive consideration of a particular topic. Did the author really weigh all the possibilities when identifying the “Top 4 Lame Tech Blogging Patterns”? Unfortunately, probably not. What a tool. To reiterate, I still enjoy the format, but I feel it is abused. Nowadays, I’m pretty skeptical when approaching posts in this format. If these trends continue, my brain will filter these blog posts out just as effectively as it ignores the encroaching “do xxx with this one trick” advertisements. Conclusion To active blog readers, I hope my guide has served you precious time in being able to identify lame blog posts at a glance. Save time and energy by skipping over the chaff of the internet! And if you author a blog, perhaps my insight will help you to avoid the occasional urge to produce these needless filler posts.

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