Something which may surprise you is that many of the articles I've written about the SSD and storage markets for my main publication StorageSearch.com have never made it to the web - even though I edit that publication (which means they would easily meet my standards).
It's not that they weren't good enough to publish - but if they took too long to write then short term daily pressures for fresh content bumped them off my to-do list - and maybe a few days or weeks later they just got abandoned.
The strange thing is that the analysis and thought processes that went into constructing those unseen articles has had an impact on rewiring the synapses and assumptions in my brain. And very often when I'm writing about about a related subject I start the process of linking to an article which no one else has read but me.
I can still find them on my notebook - and because they're in the same directory as live www files (they just never got completed and uploaded) there's a strange feeling of loss and panic when I can't find them online.
Oh yeah - I remember now - it never got that far.
Many of these articles are 95% complete - and even years later seem to fill much needed gaps in the analysis of the market.
The curious thing for me is that I do have the benefit of having written them - even if no one else has yet seen them.
In the thousands of years of writing - before the online world - this must have been a much more common experience. And even though my educational background was electronics, physics and maths (and not literature and all that stuff) even as an ignorant technocrat barbarian I am aware that during the course of history there have been many writers who are popular today - but who never got published in their lifetimes.
I'm not saying that a blog about some ephemeral aspect of a transient market like solid state storage (which no one will care too much about in 50 years time) can be compared to a novel or collection of poetry. (Which reminds me - I do have some novels I've finished which aren't online too. And I reread them when I'm in the right mood and have run out of anything else to read. My wife and I have over 4,000 books in our house - and I've read most of them - except I confees I have skipped several hundred marketing books - because I'm not the one in our household who runs product management master classes.)
I'm just saying that going through the process of writing articles which analyze some aspect of a high tech market helps to improve the quality of thought in later articles even if the original articles were never published. I guess it's like winning a track event. No one sees you training. But you are more likely to do better in public if you have trained.
Shame about the links though.
after 19 years of publishing - the unplanned, unrehearsed blog - by Zsolt Kerekes
Monday 14 February 2011
Tuesday 8 February 2011
what's the life of a web page?
Does a web page have a life?
What about after it's deleted?
What about return on investment?
Why would anyone even ask these questions?
Does Google calculate ROI on the cost of indexing different web pages?
Most people who create web pages don't think about any of the issues I've listed above - but if you're in the business or making money from publishing on the web then they are questions you should ask - even if you can't find any good answers.
When I started publishing on the web in 1996 - it wasn't my first job. I had previously worked in R&D in the electronics market - so I was familiar with the concepts of "life cycles" for software development. I did think about the life cycle of a web page in simple terms which went something like this.
How much is it going to cost me to create a web version of my print publicatuion? Is what I get back going to pay me and make my efforts worthwile? Back then in 1996 the commercial web was little more than a year old. It would have been impossible for me to find any good answers to my questions - because web advertising itself was still a new concept - and we just made the rules up as we went along.
If we guessed wrong - we tried another approach with another customer. It was hard not to make money in those days on the web.
15 years later - I still make my living entirely from selling web ads in my own publications. So the few things I did right must have outweighed the many things I did wrong. And luck plays its part too.
Let's go back to the questions I asked at the start.
Does a web page have a life?
Yes. But the concept of an "average life" for a web page isn't very helpful.
Some web pages - which are created by software- may only last for a fraction of a second. Those Google searches for example which flash up just before you click on something.
Other web pages - which are created by humans - may last for days, weeks, months or years.
What about after it's deleted?
It's comforting to think that after you've deleted a web page - that it's gone. Especially if you said something in that web page which is embarrassing now - or which expresses a business view which is the exact opposite of the view you now hold. For example in 1995 I couldn't understand how anyone could create a business model which made money from web content (rather than selling something via the web). As it happens - because of my strong belief (in 1995) that a print publisher like me couldn't make money out of the web by putting my content online - you can't find a web page designed by me at that time which makes that statement. In retrospect - it was a prejudiced view based on fear of the unknown and the risk of getting things wrong. Within a few months I was kicking myself and wishing that I'd started sooner.
Anyway - your old deleted web pages can often be found in 3 different places for various lengths of time.
1 - on the internet archive - http://www.archive.org/ - upto 15 years later (and still counting)
2 - in cached versions of Google search - for a week or month or so (depending how often Google scans that page)
3 - on 3rd party blogger sites which comment on your content (or steal all of it)
So deletion is not a permanent cure. A better solution is to put a note on the old page saying something like "this was a subject which I used to be interested in - but now my interests have moved elsewhere - plesae click here to see what I'm doing now." I say that - knowing I've still got thousands of web pages which are showing exactly the same as they did 10 years ago. It doesn't really matter if your web stats say that no one is seeing those older obsolete pages.
When it does matter though - is when something you wrote a long time ago becomes a search spike. If you really care about your reputation as an industry guru or blogger you can monitor those random spikes and decide if it's worth redirecting readers to your current projects. There are no hard and fast rules about this.
What about return on investment?
If you look at this from the philosophic point of view you could say - I don't care about the value of my web postings in monetary amounts. If I care about an issue I'm going to create web pages because they satisfy some other needs I have - such as communicating better with my friends and family, educating others to help them learn from my experience, lobbying for a special interest group which I want to support etc etc.
But back to the readers who wondered why I didn't just write ROI....
Here's something to think about. Which of these is worth more?
A single human created web page?
10 software assisted social networking web pages? or
1,000 software created pages?
The numbers I used above are arbitrary - but you probably get my drift. The value of a web page in economic terms is not directly related to the cost of its creation - but rather to the difference between what money you can make from each page (on average) versus the cost.
For example:- if you can create 100 million web pages (using software) for 1 cent each - but can earn 2 cents from each of those pages in a year - even if those pages only live for less than 1 second (average) - you might earn more money than the guy who can earn maybe $3,000 a year from a single hand crafted article - but only has the time to write a limited number of such articles in a year.
The first model - is the one the venture capitalists like - because it's scalable, got big numbers in it and looks like a real business.
The second model is more difficult to assess. It's more like the book or movie business. Everyone knows it's hard to make money as a living author - and the Harry Potter books are the business exceptions rather than the rules.
My answer to the web ROI question is that the founders of Google did think about the cost of a web page - when they made the special effort to make their search software scalable. (Because they were well aware of the costs and performance pitfalls of not doing so - which they could see in the examples of other search companies operating at the time.)
But you don't have to be on the scale of Google or Facebook to have an ROI which makes sense for you.
Maybe your website is collecting money so your local library can buy new books or pay a contractor to mend the fence in your local church cemetary. The ROI is different for everyone.
If your web pages are your CEO's blog then it's probably a bad return on the investment of their time compared to the value of their time spent instead on web advertising. But it could be a good investment if the blog is the main way that people in your company get to hear about the direction your organization is heading.
Why would anyone even ask these questions?
I think about questions related to the value of web pages a lot - because the answers dictate how I prioritize my time. I allocate scores to web pages on my site which have built into them value indicators - like who's going to see this web page today? this week? this year? or in 3 years time?
Getting the right answers to those questions is important for me - because the web pages do have a life - and often a web page I created several years ago earns more money now than a new web page I created yesterday. That's because the old page has more links going to it - and because the topic in the old article has now moved into the mainstream instead of just being of interest to a advanced niche.
Does Google calculate ROI on the cost of indexing different web pages?
I don't know this for a fact - but I would be surprised if they didn't - because the decison of whether it's worth indexing any particular new web page - and how often to go back to it - is at the heart of their cost models.
When making the decision to index a page - the search engine is making an investment in that page. How many times will knowing the contents of that page benefit the advertising model?
What are the risks of skipping a page this time - and maybe redeciding whether to have a look next week or next month instead?
Prebuilt into those value judgements (done by algorithms at the core of web search) are assumptions about the lifetime of a web page.
If it's a new page - a lot of people might be interested in it today. Maybe less tomorrow - maybe nobody at all in 6 months. When the historians come to have a look 10 years later - will the web versions of those news pages still be there?
What if the page is a blog about the life of a web page?
Why would anybody - even a robot be interested in that?
If you are. Or if you were. Thanks for reading.
What about after it's deleted?
What about return on investment?
Why would anyone even ask these questions?
Does Google calculate ROI on the cost of indexing different web pages?
Most people who create web pages don't think about any of the issues I've listed above - but if you're in the business or making money from publishing on the web then they are questions you should ask - even if you can't find any good answers.
When I started publishing on the web in 1996 - it wasn't my first job. I had previously worked in R&D in the electronics market - so I was familiar with the concepts of "life cycles" for software development. I did think about the life cycle of a web page in simple terms which went something like this.
How much is it going to cost me to create a web version of my print publicatuion? Is what I get back going to pay me and make my efforts worthwile? Back then in 1996 the commercial web was little more than a year old. It would have been impossible for me to find any good answers to my questions - because web advertising itself was still a new concept - and we just made the rules up as we went along.
If we guessed wrong - we tried another approach with another customer. It was hard not to make money in those days on the web.
15 years later - I still make my living entirely from selling web ads in my own publications. So the few things I did right must have outweighed the many things I did wrong. And luck plays its part too.
Let's go back to the questions I asked at the start.
Does a web page have a life?
Yes. But the concept of an "average life" for a web page isn't very helpful.
Some web pages - which are created by software- may only last for a fraction of a second. Those Google searches for example which flash up just before you click on something.
Other web pages - which are created by humans - may last for days, weeks, months or years.
What about after it's deleted?
It's comforting to think that after you've deleted a web page - that it's gone. Especially if you said something in that web page which is embarrassing now - or which expresses a business view which is the exact opposite of the view you now hold. For example in 1995 I couldn't understand how anyone could create a business model which made money from web content (rather than selling something via the web). As it happens - because of my strong belief (in 1995) that a print publisher like me couldn't make money out of the web by putting my content online - you can't find a web page designed by me at that time which makes that statement. In retrospect - it was a prejudiced view based on fear of the unknown and the risk of getting things wrong. Within a few months I was kicking myself and wishing that I'd started sooner.
Anyway - your old deleted web pages can often be found in 3 different places for various lengths of time.
1 - on the internet archive - http://www.archive.org/ - upto 15 years later (and still counting)
2 - in cached versions of Google search - for a week or month or so (depending how often Google scans that page)
3 - on 3rd party blogger sites which comment on your content (or steal all of it)
So deletion is not a permanent cure. A better solution is to put a note on the old page saying something like "this was a subject which I used to be interested in - but now my interests have moved elsewhere - plesae click here to see what I'm doing now." I say that - knowing I've still got thousands of web pages which are showing exactly the same as they did 10 years ago. It doesn't really matter if your web stats say that no one is seeing those older obsolete pages.
When it does matter though - is when something you wrote a long time ago becomes a search spike. If you really care about your reputation as an industry guru or blogger you can monitor those random spikes and decide if it's worth redirecting readers to your current projects. There are no hard and fast rules about this.
What about return on investment?
If you look at this from the philosophic point of view you could say - I don't care about the value of my web postings in monetary amounts. If I care about an issue I'm going to create web pages because they satisfy some other needs I have - such as communicating better with my friends and family, educating others to help them learn from my experience, lobbying for a special interest group which I want to support etc etc.
But back to the readers who wondered why I didn't just write ROI....
Here's something to think about. Which of these is worth more?
A single human created web page?
10 software assisted social networking web pages? or
1,000 software created pages?
The numbers I used above are arbitrary - but you probably get my drift. The value of a web page in economic terms is not directly related to the cost of its creation - but rather to the difference between what money you can make from each page (on average) versus the cost.
For example:- if you can create 100 million web pages (using software) for 1 cent each - but can earn 2 cents from each of those pages in a year - even if those pages only live for less than 1 second (average) - you might earn more money than the guy who can earn maybe $3,000 a year from a single hand crafted article - but only has the time to write a limited number of such articles in a year.
The first model - is the one the venture capitalists like - because it's scalable, got big numbers in it and looks like a real business.
The second model is more difficult to assess. It's more like the book or movie business. Everyone knows it's hard to make money as a living author - and the Harry Potter books are the business exceptions rather than the rules.
My answer to the web ROI question is that the founders of Google did think about the cost of a web page - when they made the special effort to make their search software scalable. (Because they were well aware of the costs and performance pitfalls of not doing so - which they could see in the examples of other search companies operating at the time.)
But you don't have to be on the scale of Google or Facebook to have an ROI which makes sense for you.
Maybe your website is collecting money so your local library can buy new books or pay a contractor to mend the fence in your local church cemetary. The ROI is different for everyone.
If your web pages are your CEO's blog then it's probably a bad return on the investment of their time compared to the value of their time spent instead on web advertising. But it could be a good investment if the blog is the main way that people in your company get to hear about the direction your organization is heading.
Why would anyone even ask these questions?
I think about questions related to the value of web pages a lot - because the answers dictate how I prioritize my time. I allocate scores to web pages on my site which have built into them value indicators - like who's going to see this web page today? this week? this year? or in 3 years time?
Getting the right answers to those questions is important for me - because the web pages do have a life - and often a web page I created several years ago earns more money now than a new web page I created yesterday. That's because the old page has more links going to it - and because the topic in the old article has now moved into the mainstream instead of just being of interest to a advanced niche.
Does Google calculate ROI on the cost of indexing different web pages?
I don't know this for a fact - but I would be surprised if they didn't - because the decison of whether it's worth indexing any particular new web page - and how often to go back to it - is at the heart of their cost models.
When making the decision to index a page - the search engine is making an investment in that page. How many times will knowing the contents of that page benefit the advertising model?
What are the risks of skipping a page this time - and maybe redeciding whether to have a look next week or next month instead?
Prebuilt into those value judgements (done by algorithms at the core of web search) are assumptions about the lifetime of a web page.
If it's a new page - a lot of people might be interested in it today. Maybe less tomorrow - maybe nobody at all in 6 months. When the historians come to have a look 10 years later - will the web versions of those news pages still be there?
What if the page is a blog about the life of a web page?
Why would anybody - even a robot be interested in that?
If you are. Or if you were. Thanks for reading.
Monday 17 January 2011
why would you be interested in past data storage news?
As the editor of StorageSearch.com there are many times in the day when I hop backwards and forwards in time like a speeded up and demented pilot of HG Wells's time machine.
You may not be surprised that articles which predict the future of the market are popular. Even though we all know that such predictions are educated guesses rather than reliable facts - it can be useful to get a view of someone else's vison of the future and compare it with your own. Maybe it will mention a factor which you have overlooked completely. No problem. As it's talking about the future - there's still plenty of time to research that subject if you think it might intersect with your own interests.
Why would anyone be interested in past data storage news?
That's a question which I asked myself in the 2nd week of January 2000 - as I was deciding whether I should simply delete old news stories when they rolled to a particular point past the bottom of the viewer's screen - or archive it for future reference. Deletion would have been much easier. And deletion had been what I did before with my vendor product listings. Archiving news stories implied adding to the collection of assets which had to be managed in my web page life-cycle.
Starting a news page in January 2000 was a big decision for me. Before then my news page was simply a list of suggested links to other news pages which were springing up all over the web. I mean - what value could I add? And would enough people be interested - when there were so many other news pages, aggregators, newsfeeds and email updates available? Although I'd been publishing online since 1996 - my thinking had been that news was always going to have a short life and that the effort expended in offering news wouldn't be a good use of time compared to compiling directories. And what did I know about managing a news page anyway? Nothing. But once it started - it seemed like a waste to throw the content way. That's how my news archives were born.
Looking back now - more than a decade later - I'm glad I did it.
News gives readers another reason to come to a web site. In the case of StorageSearch.com it's not the main reason - because my readers are more interested in articles which explain what's going on in the market - and lists of who does what and why. But having news content helps to calibrate the content in the time dimension.
News gives vendors and other stakeholders in the market more reasons to contact me. Although that did happen anyway before - because vendors are always interested in being listed in buyers guides - being featured on our news page is particularly good for new vendors. For startups emerging from stealth mode maybe the first time their new website becomes widely visible on the web is in the hours after Google picks up the links from my news page. That's also benefits me too. When I publish a new article - the first thing I do is mention it on my news page.Of course - when my ftp upload died for a handful of days in 2010 I couldn't do that. So the only way I could let readers know about my new blog - which chronicled those problems - was to use an external newswire. I also informed some vendors via email. But as I hate getting spam myself I've never compiled a bulk email list. And in fact most of my outgoing emails are replies to incoming queries.
Archived news gives me a powerful tool for analyzing and commenting on "new" news stories. That may sound incestuous but here's how it works. Let's say someone sends me a news story claiming they're the first company to offer a product which has a specific size, speed or some other feature. I can quickly look through my news archives and get a feeling for whether the claim is plausible. I can often make an otherwise clone-like story (which you'll see on 100 other sites) more interesting by adding a comment which says something like - another company did this 2 years before. Or if someone is launching a new company - I can use my archives to answer questions like... What did they do before? And does what they did before make it more or less likely that the new venture will succeed too?
For newcomers to the storage market and storage veterans people who are looking at a newsubject for the first time - the archived news pages can quickly give them a flavor for... Who are the main players in the market? What is the state of the art from the technical point of view? and How quickly is the market changing?
At some point in time archived news does become history. In the data storage market which I write about I sometimes find it useful to go back a long way to supply information in market growth articles which answer questions like... How much has the capacity of an SSD grown in the past 10 years? and Were the market predictions made by such and such market analyst wildly out of line with what happened - or about right? Answers to the latter type of question helps me filter new prononuncements from the same sources.
Remember, the web has no memory! is an article I wrote in November 2001 on my Marketing Views web site. Although the Internet Archive had been doing a good job of picking up and saving content from many of the sites I was interested in at the time the situation today in 2011 is that many gaps have started to appear in the data storage market narrative accessible via that route. I've noticed that when the domains of gone-away storage market companies are acquired - many of the new owners kill the old content in the external archive. That makes it hard to rediscover details which might be interesting to people like me who want to check particular facts about the market from years gone by. (I still have a readable email archive which has most of my relevant emails going back to about 1996 sitting on my pc - but the emails don't always contain the full text of press releases - and sometimes just tell me about a product link which was once on the web - but which has since disappeared.)
I think that delving daily into archived news has helped me become a better judge of what is newsworthy today. I ask myself the question - is anyone going to be interested in any of this stuff as a tracket to what happened in the market - next month? next year? or in 5 years time? If not then why mention it? Just as back in January 2000 - there are plenty of news aggregators operating in January 2011. Part of my added value to readers is to ignore what isn't really new and comment more on what is.
That's why I've stopped writing stories which start with "EMC has just spent N hundred million, or N billion dollars acquiring XYZ company" for example. Going back through history EMC has always acquired other storage companies. So that's not news. Unless you are a stakeholder in the acquired company or one of its competitors. But my reader stats show our readers don't expect EMC to do anything new or innovative in the storage market - so the acquisition story gets a low news score with this editor and rarely hits the news pages. Instead - what would rate a high news score would be if EMC announced it had decided to never again acquire another company and instead would be focusing its resources on organic growth and internally developed technologies. But I don't expect to see such a press release until April 1st.
I've never had any illusions about the transient and ephemeral nature of most of the things that have preoccupied my professional thoughts in the 34 years I've worked in the digital electronics market. The burning issues and hot products of one day are shunted into the mental trash pile to make way for the next new thing. Despite all that history sites can now be found all over the web - preserving the nostalgic appetites of generations of people - like me - for whom these past digital crazes were once a big part of their daily lives. Maybe there is a future in past news after all.
You may not be surprised that articles which predict the future of the market are popular. Even though we all know that such predictions are educated guesses rather than reliable facts - it can be useful to get a view of someone else's vison of the future and compare it with your own. Maybe it will mention a factor which you have overlooked completely. No problem. As it's talking about the future - there's still plenty of time to research that subject if you think it might intersect with your own interests.
Why would anyone be interested in past data storage news?
That's a question which I asked myself in the 2nd week of January 2000 - as I was deciding whether I should simply delete old news stories when they rolled to a particular point past the bottom of the viewer's screen - or archive it for future reference. Deletion would have been much easier. And deletion had been what I did before with my vendor product listings. Archiving news stories implied adding to the collection of assets which had to be managed in my web page life-cycle.
Starting a news page in January 2000 was a big decision for me. Before then my news page was simply a list of suggested links to other news pages which were springing up all over the web. I mean - what value could I add? And would enough people be interested - when there were so many other news pages, aggregators, newsfeeds and email updates available? Although I'd been publishing online since 1996 - my thinking had been that news was always going to have a short life and that the effort expended in offering news wouldn't be a good use of time compared to compiling directories. And what did I know about managing a news page anyway? Nothing. But once it started - it seemed like a waste to throw the content way. That's how my news archives were born.
Looking back now - more than a decade later - I'm glad I did it.
News gives readers another reason to come to a web site. In the case of StorageSearch.com it's not the main reason - because my readers are more interested in articles which explain what's going on in the market - and lists of who does what and why. But having news content helps to calibrate the content in the time dimension.
News gives vendors and other stakeholders in the market more reasons to contact me. Although that did happen anyway before - because vendors are always interested in being listed in buyers guides - being featured on our news page is particularly good for new vendors. For startups emerging from stealth mode maybe the first time their new website becomes widely visible on the web is in the hours after Google picks up the links from my news page. That's also benefits me too. When I publish a new article - the first thing I do is mention it on my news page.Of course - when my ftp upload died for a handful of days in 2010 I couldn't do that. So the only way I could let readers know about my new blog - which chronicled those problems - was to use an external newswire. I also informed some vendors via email. But as I hate getting spam myself I've never compiled a bulk email list. And in fact most of my outgoing emails are replies to incoming queries.
Archived news gives me a powerful tool for analyzing and commenting on "new" news stories. That may sound incestuous but here's how it works. Let's say someone sends me a news story claiming they're the first company to offer a product which has a specific size, speed or some other feature. I can quickly look through my news archives and get a feeling for whether the claim is plausible. I can often make an otherwise clone-like story (which you'll see on 100 other sites) more interesting by adding a comment which says something like - another company did this 2 years before. Or if someone is launching a new company - I can use my archives to answer questions like... What did they do before? And does what they did before make it more or less likely that the new venture will succeed too?
For newcomers to the storage market and storage veterans people who are looking at a newsubject for the first time - the archived news pages can quickly give them a flavor for... Who are the main players in the market? What is the state of the art from the technical point of view? and How quickly is the market changing?
At some point in time archived news does become history. In the data storage market which I write about I sometimes find it useful to go back a long way to supply information in market growth articles which answer questions like... How much has the capacity of an SSD grown in the past 10 years? and Were the market predictions made by such and such market analyst wildly out of line with what happened - or about right? Answers to the latter type of question helps me filter new prononuncements from the same sources.
Remember, the web has no memory! is an article I wrote in November 2001 on my Marketing Views web site. Although the Internet Archive had been doing a good job of picking up and saving content from many of the sites I was interested in at the time the situation today in 2011 is that many gaps have started to appear in the data storage market narrative accessible via that route. I've noticed that when the domains of gone-away storage market companies are acquired - many of the new owners kill the old content in the external archive. That makes it hard to rediscover details which might be interesting to people like me who want to check particular facts about the market from years gone by. (I still have a readable email archive which has most of my relevant emails going back to about 1996 sitting on my pc - but the emails don't always contain the full text of press releases - and sometimes just tell me about a product link which was once on the web - but which has since disappeared.)
I think that delving daily into archived news has helped me become a better judge of what is newsworthy today. I ask myself the question - is anyone going to be interested in any of this stuff as a tracket to what happened in the market - next month? next year? or in 5 years time? If not then why mention it? Just as back in January 2000 - there are plenty of news aggregators operating in January 2011. Part of my added value to readers is to ignore what isn't really new and comment more on what is.
That's why I've stopped writing stories which start with "EMC has just spent N hundred million, or N billion dollars acquiring XYZ company" for example. Going back through history EMC has always acquired other storage companies. So that's not news. Unless you are a stakeholder in the acquired company or one of its competitors. But my reader stats show our readers don't expect EMC to do anything new or innovative in the storage market - so the acquisition story gets a low news score with this editor and rarely hits the news pages. Instead - what would rate a high news score would be if EMC announced it had decided to never again acquire another company and instead would be focusing its resources on organic growth and internally developed technologies. But I don't expect to see such a press release until April 1st.
I've never had any illusions about the transient and ephemeral nature of most of the things that have preoccupied my professional thoughts in the 34 years I've worked in the digital electronics market. The burning issues and hot products of one day are shunted into the mental trash pile to make way for the next new thing. Despite all that history sites can now be found all over the web - preserving the nostalgic appetites of generations of people - like me - for whom these past digital crazes were once a big part of their daily lives. Maybe there is a future in past news after all.
Friday 3 December 2010
will Santa be able to land at London Gatwick airport this Christmas?
People who live outside England can't understand our fascination for the weather. (I count myself as English - and I get away with this trick until people ask me my name.)
Anyway WE English people can't get enough of this topic.
A sunny day in Summer, a rainy day in Autumn and a snowy week in December always come as a complete surprise.
A famous writer (famous in my house in the 1960s anyway) called George Mikes - wrote about the English and weather (and other important matters) in his brilliantly observed book called "How to be an Alien."
Back to the present...
When snow hit the south east of England this week (as it did last winter too - could it just be a coincidence?) it caused more than the usual amount of chaos for those hoping to travel around in the non virtual way using planes, trains and buses.
The official capital of England (which is London - unlike the unofficial capital county - which is Yorkshire) overnight became completely disconnected from the seaside city of Brighton - which over 200 years ago was connected by reliable stage coach journeys which took about one or two days.
But in December 2010 - Southern Rail and National Express were unable to replicate these achievements - with no trains or coaches running yesterday on these routes.
Usually I don't care much about what happens in the outside world - as long as it doesn't interfere with my main web site - and being able to update it (the subject of previous blogs).
But this week - my wife Janet - who was working in Amsterdam Wednesday discovered that the airport she was due to fly back to (which is close to us - and called Gatwick) was close(d).
Using her Blackberry she was able to get a flight to another airport we sometimes use - Heathrow. What she didn't know as I was tracking her movements online - in the same way that you do a UPS parcel - is that due to the lateness of the flights it was touch and go whether she would get a train connection into London - and no chance whatsoever of getting back home - here in the once previously connected region near the ancient city of Lewes.
Apparently - before Brighton became famous - it was referred to as "Brighton near Lewes".
But even if were near things - we seemingly couldn't get to them any more - due to 8 inches of snow - which later became more like a foot of snow in the rural area where I live.
Things turned out well. Janet got into a hotel in London just after midnight - and she was due to be working in London next day anyway.
So far so good.
But during the course of the next day (Thursday 2nd) all public transport between London and Brighton ceased. It never even got started.
During the course of the day more snow fell.
Janet carried on working - in London - while I looked at web sites which contained tantalizing information suggesting that services might be resumed any time soon. But they never did.
Meanwhile the tv news channels (BBC and Sky) were showing pictures of a closed snowed in Gatwick, travellers who had been stuck overnight in stranded trains, or in stranded lorries on the roadside.
The police in the area advised - "don't go on the roads unless it's an emergency".
Does getting home count?
In my web trawling I came across things I had heard about - but never seen before - the video feeds and traffic cameras from the main roads which linked Brighton and London. And they also showed average speeds.
There wasn't much traffic - but the speeds looked pretty good to me - in fact better than normal at busy times.
But as I know from experience with the A23 / M23 - it only takes a very small bad event for the whole road to be closed down and delayed - for hours. And hearing that some drivers had been stuck on the M25 for 8 hours - I didn't want to take that risk.
Now unlike the plane, rail and bus transport agencies - we had done some advanced planning - having spent about 6 weeks last winter skating on the frozen country lanes in this area - and on one occasion sliding backwards down a not very steep hill. It doesn't look steep in the summer. You only realize that a slope is involved wen you are trying to get your car up it when it's ground to a halt in deep snow.
So earlier this year we did our bit to boost the economy and bought a car with a "snow" button. It's a Landrover Freelander 2.
Because it's so comfortable inside (even though it just looks like a big ugly box outside) I had been doing more driving than usual this year. Driving down country lanes to reach the shops with my airconditioning on to keep cool. (My previous car was a 2 door Renault Clio.) I hope that removes your stereotype image.
I don't know or care about cars - as long as they go.
Anyway this year I bought one with a snow button (technically it's the same setting for snow and gravel). The man in the car shop said it was the best one for snow.
We bought it after the snow at the beginning of the year had gone.
This was my first chance to test it.
Would it take me on a 30 mile cross country trip to meet up at the closed Gatwick airport - through ungritted roads with snow slush and ice - at night?
We chose Gatwick as the rendezvous - because I can find it. And Janet - on her part had to find a very nice London taxi driver who would risk going so far on the motorway. Because as far as I could see online - that should work OK.
And it did.
My car worked like a dream - and as long as I pretended I wasn't driving a 4x4 beast and stuck to my defensive driving technique acquired from 9 years of driving my little Clio - I was OK.
There were plenty of spaces in the ground floor of Gatwick short term parking when I arrived at 7.30 pm. And it didn't take me much longer than usual to get there - because I passed only 3 other cars moving on the way.
I forgot to look left and admire the Christmas tree lights as I drove past Wakehurst place. (I had been there the Friday before to see them switched on. They do very nice honey and nut cakes and hot chocolate in the cafe.) I was too busy looking ahead.
And Turners Hill has that name for a very good reason. It goes up and down. And it was covered in slushy ice. Would I make it? Yeah - I even stopped to let someone come the other way. (I haven't acquired the 4x4 persona yet - which pushes the other cars off the road. Inside my head I'm still a Clio driver in a very fat car - which is surprisingly easy to park for some technical reason to do with the wheels.)
A few minutes later Janet arrived too. It took us a few minutes to find each other - because I had been chatting to a guy who was sweeping the snow off the road - and he had been there for nearly 2 days fighting a losing battle to keep the airport open.
I had a flask of hot tea in the car.
We got home safely and I cooked supper in my nearly completed kitchen (mentioned in a previous blog). Of couse getting out of the house in the first place meant I had to find some temporary door handles - because they still need another coat of paint.
And what's the point of this story?
I learned a lot of stuff about the problems of travelling around - which make me very glad that I don't get out much.
I'll just stick to looking at web sites and typing fast.
Anyway WE English people can't get enough of this topic.
A sunny day in Summer, a rainy day in Autumn and a snowy week in December always come as a complete surprise.
A famous writer (famous in my house in the 1960s anyway) called George Mikes - wrote about the English and weather (and other important matters) in his brilliantly observed book called "How to be an Alien."
Back to the present...
When snow hit the south east of England this week (as it did last winter too - could it just be a coincidence?) it caused more than the usual amount of chaos for those hoping to travel around in the non virtual way using planes, trains and buses.
The official capital of England (which is London - unlike the unofficial capital county - which is Yorkshire) overnight became completely disconnected from the seaside city of Brighton - which over 200 years ago was connected by reliable stage coach journeys which took about one or two days.
But in December 2010 - Southern Rail and National Express were unable to replicate these achievements - with no trains or coaches running yesterday on these routes.
Usually I don't care much about what happens in the outside world - as long as it doesn't interfere with my main web site - and being able to update it (the subject of previous blogs).
But this week - my wife Janet - who was working in Amsterdam Wednesday discovered that the airport she was due to fly back to (which is close to us - and called Gatwick) was close(d).
Using her Blackberry she was able to get a flight to another airport we sometimes use - Heathrow. What she didn't know as I was tracking her movements online - in the same way that you do a UPS parcel - is that due to the lateness of the flights it was touch and go whether she would get a train connection into London - and no chance whatsoever of getting back home - here in the once previously connected region near the ancient city of Lewes.
Apparently - before Brighton became famous - it was referred to as "Brighton near Lewes".
But even if were near things - we seemingly couldn't get to them any more - due to 8 inches of snow - which later became more like a foot of snow in the rural area where I live.
Things turned out well. Janet got into a hotel in London just after midnight - and she was due to be working in London next day anyway.
So far so good.
But during the course of the next day (Thursday 2nd) all public transport between London and Brighton ceased. It never even got started.
During the course of the day more snow fell.
Janet carried on working - in London - while I looked at web sites which contained tantalizing information suggesting that services might be resumed any time soon. But they never did.
Meanwhile the tv news channels (BBC and Sky) were showing pictures of a closed snowed in Gatwick, travellers who had been stuck overnight in stranded trains, or in stranded lorries on the roadside.
The police in the area advised - "don't go on the roads unless it's an emergency".
Does getting home count?
In my web trawling I came across things I had heard about - but never seen before - the video feeds and traffic cameras from the main roads which linked Brighton and London. And they also showed average speeds.
There wasn't much traffic - but the speeds looked pretty good to me - in fact better than normal at busy times.
But as I know from experience with the A23 / M23 - it only takes a very small bad event for the whole road to be closed down and delayed - for hours. And hearing that some drivers had been stuck on the M25 for 8 hours - I didn't want to take that risk.
Now unlike the plane, rail and bus transport agencies - we had done some advanced planning - having spent about 6 weeks last winter skating on the frozen country lanes in this area - and on one occasion sliding backwards down a not very steep hill. It doesn't look steep in the summer. You only realize that a slope is involved wen you are trying to get your car up it when it's ground to a halt in deep snow.
So earlier this year we did our bit to boost the economy and bought a car with a "snow" button. It's a Landrover Freelander 2.
Because it's so comfortable inside (even though it just looks like a big ugly box outside) I had been doing more driving than usual this year. Driving down country lanes to reach the shops with my airconditioning on to keep cool. (My previous car was a 2 door Renault Clio.) I hope that removes your stereotype image.
I don't know or care about cars - as long as they go.
Anyway this year I bought one with a snow button (technically it's the same setting for snow and gravel). The man in the car shop said it was the best one for snow.
We bought it after the snow at the beginning of the year had gone.
This was my first chance to test it.
Would it take me on a 30 mile cross country trip to meet up at the closed Gatwick airport - through ungritted roads with snow slush and ice - at night?
We chose Gatwick as the rendezvous - because I can find it. And Janet - on her part had to find a very nice London taxi driver who would risk going so far on the motorway. Because as far as I could see online - that should work OK.
And it did.
My car worked like a dream - and as long as I pretended I wasn't driving a 4x4 beast and stuck to my defensive driving technique acquired from 9 years of driving my little Clio - I was OK.
There were plenty of spaces in the ground floor of Gatwick short term parking when I arrived at 7.30 pm. And it didn't take me much longer than usual to get there - because I passed only 3 other cars moving on the way.
I forgot to look left and admire the Christmas tree lights as I drove past Wakehurst place. (I had been there the Friday before to see them switched on. They do very nice honey and nut cakes and hot chocolate in the cafe.) I was too busy looking ahead.
And Turners Hill has that name for a very good reason. It goes up and down. And it was covered in slushy ice. Would I make it? Yeah - I even stopped to let someone come the other way. (I haven't acquired the 4x4 persona yet - which pushes the other cars off the road. Inside my head I'm still a Clio driver in a very fat car - which is surprisingly easy to park for some technical reason to do with the wheels.)
A few minutes later Janet arrived too. It took us a few minutes to find each other - because I had been chatting to a guy who was sweeping the snow off the road - and he had been there for nearly 2 days fighting a losing battle to keep the airport open.
I had a flask of hot tea in the car.
We got home safely and I cooked supper in my nearly completed kitchen (mentioned in a previous blog). Of couse getting out of the house in the first place meant I had to find some temporary door handles - because they still need another coat of paint.
And what's the point of this story?
I learned a lot of stuff about the problems of travelling around - which make me very glad that I don't get out much.
I'll just stick to looking at web sites and typing fast.
Monday 15 November 2010
my ftp died
I've been publishing online since 1996 - so why would I start a blog?
And why this blog - and not one of the others - like WordPress?
It's Monday afternoon. The date doesn't matter. It's likely that the designers of this blogging package will show it somewhere you can easily see it
On Saturday morning - just before going out to shop and eat (even virtual online people do those things) I thought I'd change the title of an article I had recently written on my storage home page. From "SSDs are computer medicine" to "SSDs are tonic medicine" - or something like that.
It would normally take me just a few seconds to make the change - and upload it to my site. That's something I've been doing every few minutes of every working day for over 14 years. It's very quick and painless.
Not this time.
Instead I got a message saying - I couldn't log in.
After checking the web site was still up (that is to say - visible to anyone who wants to see it) - I checked out some of my other sites too.
Same problem - so there was a common cause.
Sometimes these things happen - due to a temporary routing problem - server problem etc. And they fix themselves after 5 to 10 minutes. So it's not a crisis.
It was my day off - and really the change I wanted to make wasn't a big deal either. It could wait.
The web hosting company I use - NTT something or other is the current name - has been very reliable in the past 12 years that I've used them. So for me - contacting tech support has been less than a once every few years experience. All my sites were affected. They're on different servers. I can't remember a time when all sites were affected. Nothing on their web site said anything about a problem. And everything on the web seemed to be working - so I assumed the problem was at my end.
I eliminated some other possible causes - even going so far as to check my firewall settings, reload an alternative version of the ftp package etc. And I had a one on one support session with Norton to see if something had changed with anti-virus settings. That was very helpful - but didn't find a cause. I paused the support session at the point where the next step was to remove and re-install Norton. I needed to get on with other stuff. I had an article to write for another publication - about my favorite topic - SSDs.
The deadline was midnight. I hope they like it. If they reject it - I'll publish it myself.
If and when I can get my ftp to work.
Writing the new article (the future of data storage) for the other publication (Broadcast Engineering - I'm happy to say it did meet their requiremenst for the Jan 2011 issue) kept me busy till just before midnight. I emailed it - did a backup and decided to relax and read a book about SEO (search engine optimization) which is one of the things I had bought in my visit to the shops the day before.
You may ask why does a guy who works online go to a bookshop to buy a book about SEO?
My answer is - I need the exercise - because I sit on my butt all day typing and moving a mouse. And I like books - and because on the few occasions that I have ordered books online - they get lost or delivered late. It's only the books. Everything else - from dishwashers to swimming pool supplies gets delivered without a problem.
What's this about pool supplies? - Does the writing pay so badly that I need a pool guy job as well?
I'm not going to say more on the grounds I may alienate myself from other struggling writers who don't have need of pool chemicals.
And as to the SEO book.... it is the first time in my life that I have ever read a book about search-engine optimization.
You might think that - as selling ads on my own web sites is my primary source of income - I would have read up on the subject a bit sooner. And you'd be right. I do spend a couple of hours each year - in my quieter moments looking at web marketing sites. Those I like are listed on marketingviews.com
Let's forget pool guy for the moment. And let's forget SEO guy too.
I found out this morning that the reason I couldn't upload stuff to my own sites was a technical problem with the ftp stuff on my web hoster's servers. They don't seem to work at the weekend and had only started fixing it a day or so after I had noticed it.
I'm going nuts at this stage.
My working day involves writing stuff and uploading it immediately to my sites- and then reading it from the web - and if I can't think of anything else to do - running a spell checker on it afterwards.
That's not the way I recommend to you budding web authors out there. But it works for me.
Still no ftp - after I've done some filing, paid some bills, talked to builders who have been practising their kitchen building skills in my house. It will look very good one day - if I live long enough to see it finished.
I'm suffering from the web equivalent of cabin fever at this stage. I can't get my content out there.
So I decide to start a blog.
I have a love hate relationship with blogs.
I love it when thousands of bloggers link to my site.
But I hate it when a small number of bloggers - just cut and paste and steal whole articles.
It's a wicked world out there on the web.
No question which blogging package I'll try first... It's WordPress. It's used by CEOs. VPs (or their blogging drones). It's a real grown up package.
But I just want the free one. I've read that it's very good.
I do the sign-up thing.
And wait.
They say wait 30 minutes.
No sign up email.
Sign up again.
Still nothing.
I tried all the sensible things that you can do. Then I thought - well maybe their servers were affected by the same original cyber attack thingy that stopped my own web host.
I don't know. Their support page didn't help.
And it didn't recognize me when I tried to log in.
So what else can I do?
I had lots of good ideas for articles about storage stuff which I was hoping my readers would see today.
Instead - here I am - typing into a little box in my browser screen.
And it's unlikely that anyone will see it - until after my ftp comes back to life - and I can mention it to my readers.
Why would anyone come to see this blog?
I don't even know its address at this point. So why should anyone else find it?
It's exactly 4pm Monday.
ftp is still dead - after a whole weekend and half a working day.
I guess that's what blogs are for. A way of getting around the problem.
There are probably other blogs out there - which talk about the technical problems with blogs..
But that's not a subject which sparc storage goblin guy wants to think about right now.
And why this blog - and not one of the others - like WordPress?
It's Monday afternoon. The date doesn't matter. It's likely that the designers of this blogging package will show it somewhere you can easily see it
On Saturday morning - just before going out to shop and eat (even virtual online people do those things) I thought I'd change the title of an article I had recently written on my storage home page. From "SSDs are computer medicine" to "SSDs are tonic medicine" - or something like that.
It would normally take me just a few seconds to make the change - and upload it to my site. That's something I've been doing every few minutes of every working day for over 14 years. It's very quick and painless.
Not this time.
Instead I got a message saying - I couldn't log in.
After checking the web site was still up (that is to say - visible to anyone who wants to see it) - I checked out some of my other sites too.
Same problem - so there was a common cause.
Sometimes these things happen - due to a temporary routing problem - server problem etc. And they fix themselves after 5 to 10 minutes. So it's not a crisis.
It was my day off - and really the change I wanted to make wasn't a big deal either. It could wait.
The web hosting company I use - NTT something or other is the current name - has been very reliable in the past 12 years that I've used them. So for me - contacting tech support has been less than a once every few years experience. All my sites were affected. They're on different servers. I can't remember a time when all sites were affected. Nothing on their web site said anything about a problem. And everything on the web seemed to be working - so I assumed the problem was at my end.
I eliminated some other possible causes - even going so far as to check my firewall settings, reload an alternative version of the ftp package etc. And I had a one on one support session with Norton to see if something had changed with anti-virus settings. That was very helpful - but didn't find a cause. I paused the support session at the point where the next step was to remove and re-install Norton. I needed to get on with other stuff. I had an article to write for another publication - about my favorite topic - SSDs.
The deadline was midnight. I hope they like it. If they reject it - I'll publish it myself.
If and when I can get my ftp to work.
Writing the new article (the future of data storage) for the other publication (Broadcast Engineering - I'm happy to say it did meet their requiremenst for the Jan 2011 issue) kept me busy till just before midnight. I emailed it - did a backup and decided to relax and read a book about SEO (search engine optimization) which is one of the things I had bought in my visit to the shops the day before.
You may ask why does a guy who works online go to a bookshop to buy a book about SEO?
My answer is - I need the exercise - because I sit on my butt all day typing and moving a mouse. And I like books - and because on the few occasions that I have ordered books online - they get lost or delivered late. It's only the books. Everything else - from dishwashers to swimming pool supplies gets delivered without a problem.
What's this about pool supplies? - Does the writing pay so badly that I need a pool guy job as well?
I'm not going to say more on the grounds I may alienate myself from other struggling writers who don't have need of pool chemicals.
And as to the SEO book.... it is the first time in my life that I have ever read a book about search-engine optimization.
You might think that - as selling ads on my own web sites is my primary source of income - I would have read up on the subject a bit sooner. And you'd be right. I do spend a couple of hours each year - in my quieter moments looking at web marketing sites. Those I like are listed on marketingviews.com
Let's forget pool guy for the moment. And let's forget SEO guy too.
I found out this morning that the reason I couldn't upload stuff to my own sites was a technical problem with the ftp stuff on my web hoster's servers. They don't seem to work at the weekend and had only started fixing it a day or so after I had noticed it.
I'm going nuts at this stage.
My working day involves writing stuff and uploading it immediately to my sites- and then reading it from the web - and if I can't think of anything else to do - running a spell checker on it afterwards.
That's not the way I recommend to you budding web authors out there. But it works for me.
Still no ftp - after I've done some filing, paid some bills, talked to builders who have been practising their kitchen building skills in my house. It will look very good one day - if I live long enough to see it finished.
I'm suffering from the web equivalent of cabin fever at this stage. I can't get my content out there.
So I decide to start a blog.
I have a love hate relationship with blogs.
I love it when thousands of bloggers link to my site.
But I hate it when a small number of bloggers - just cut and paste and steal whole articles.
It's a wicked world out there on the web.
No question which blogging package I'll try first... It's WordPress. It's used by CEOs. VPs (or their blogging drones). It's a real grown up package.
But I just want the free one. I've read that it's very good.
I do the sign-up thing.
And wait.
They say wait 30 minutes.
No sign up email.
Sign up again.
Still nothing.
I tried all the sensible things that you can do. Then I thought - well maybe their servers were affected by the same original cyber attack thingy that stopped my own web host.
I don't know. Their support page didn't help.
And it didn't recognize me when I tried to log in.
So what else can I do?
I had lots of good ideas for articles about storage stuff which I was hoping my readers would see today.
Instead - here I am - typing into a little box in my browser screen.
And it's unlikely that anyone will see it - until after my ftp comes back to life - and I can mention it to my readers.
Why would anyone come to see this blog?
I don't even know its address at this point. So why should anyone else find it?
It's exactly 4pm Monday.
ftp is still dead - after a whole weekend and half a working day.
I guess that's what blogs are for. A way of getting around the problem.
There are probably other blogs out there - which talk about the technical problems with blogs..
But that's not a subject which sparc storage goblin guy wants to think about right now.
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