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This is Why I Use A VPS

February 16, 2013 13:15:10.788

Posterous is closing down:

On April 30th, we will turn off posterous.com and our mobile apps in order to focus 100% of our efforts on Twitter. This means that as of April 30, Posterous Spaces will no longer be available either to view or to edit.

Now, they are letting you download your content, but: what do you actually do with it? Having your own server shields you from this. Sure, the hosting company could go bust, but there are other hosting firms, and you can switch your DNS setup fairly easily.

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posted by James Robertson

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Thanksgiving Break

November 22, 2012 11:14:40.000

There won't be any screencasts for Thursday and Friday, as I'm visiting family for the holiday. The podcast will be taking a weekend off as well. Happy Thanksgiving to all!

posted by James Robertson

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Downtime

April 10, 2012 16:37:28.417

Sometime in the next 24 hours, this site is going to go down briefly - my hosting provider is doing a hardware migration, and my VPS is one of the ones being moved. I've backed everything up in case of raw disaster, but I don't really expect any problems - just a slight hiccup while they do the actual move.

Update: It's been done, so things are back to normal.

posted by James Robertson

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Good News, Bad News

September 6, 2010 2:14:38.205

The Good news? I have the blog working in a 7.7.1 based image. The bad news? It's not auto-tweeting, and I'm not at all sure why. Time for some exciting debugging :)

posted by James Robertson

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Upgrading the Server

September 5, 2010 11:46:56.290

The blog has been a bit unstable this morning - and that's because I'm in the process of updating it from what it was running on - VisualWorks 7.6 - to the latest release, VisualWorks 7.7.1.

I'm finding the same thing that many people encounter when they update - a number of small things that only surface when you actually make the switch. My blog server code has been around since 2002, and it's been updated as I've needed to over time. That means that pieces of it are pretty old though, and every so often one of the older bits surfaces and bites me. This morning, it was an old signal based exception handler that did it to me.

The reason I'm updating? Mostly it has to do with wanting the auto-tweet feature back. I got xAuth working against Twitter yesterday, posted a few test tweets from a workspace, and now I'm just trying to get that wrapped up. I have a party to go to today, so maybe this isn't the brightest timing :)

On the other hand, I have easy access to the VPS from anywhere, and could fire up the 7.6 based sever if I had to. Onward!

Update: Sigh. Not quite yet, apparently. I think I'll leave it on the older version and take a run at it tonight or tomrrow. I don't need to spend the bbq doing sys admin work :)

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posted by James Robertson

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Now On To the Server

September 4, 2010 13:22:37.450

Well, the next step is to upgrade the server. I've tested a VW 7.7.1 based version locally, and it looks ok - now I have to upload the new release to this server, get the configurations done, and have at it. However, I think that can wait for a bit; it's a holiday weekend, and I need to go kill something on the XBox :)

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posted by James Robertson

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Michael's New Site

August 13, 2010 12:08:56.311

Michael Lucas-Smith has moved his blog to his own domain - if we set the rewrite rules up correctly, then you should be redirected there when you go to the old site. Existing perma links to posts - like this one - will still work.

posted by James Robertson

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Take Two

August 12, 2010 15:58:09.824

The daily video I posted earlier had corrupted audio - I'm not sure how it happened, since I worked ahead for tomorrow's video right afterwards, and it came out fine. Then again, a bunch of us are going back and forth in email over some hard to reproduce installation issues, so go figure. Software just sucks sometimes :)

Anyway, I've redone the video and reposted it to the various places you expect to find it :)

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posted by James Robertson

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Redone Windows Media Format

July 20, 2010 8:23:25.655

If you've tried the new Windows Media format exports I've been doing for Smalltalk Daily, you've likely noticed something - they were all screwed up. I'm re-exporting all of the ones I've done thus far, and will be uploading them in a few minutes. As well, all future exports will be done in a way that actually works - so if you need that format, just check back in a few minutes.

Thanks for being patient with me on this.

Update: The WMV files have all been re-uploaded, and going forward, there shouldn't be any more muffed ones.

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posted by James Robertson

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Smalltalk Daily Update

July 14, 2010 10:20:54.187

Today's embedded link is for Vimeo; YouTube seems to be suffering from internal issues at the moment. when those get resolved, today's video will end up there.

In the meantime, you might notice something new in the additional format section of the daily posts - a link to a Windows Media file. It was pointed out to me that some people in locked down corporate environments might not be able to download QuickTime, so I've started producing a .wmv formatted file as well. So - if you can't easily view QuickTime, there you go :)

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posted by James Robertson

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