... when everyone should be watching the footie, and defo not tuning into Radio 1 at 9pm for their show "In music we trust...", which tonight is titled "Radio 1's Ultimate Festival Guide" and will probably include yours truly blabbering on about festies.
I've just had confirmation that something that has been planned as a nice addition to the eFestivals website for the last 18 months is able to go ahead - the current plan is for it to hit the website on 1st May, tho it might slip back a little as there's still a lot of planning to be made.
This is an exciting development, and one I hope that people will enjoy.
I'm going to be keeping the exact details of what this is under my hat for the moment (so those that know, no mentioning what it i
I've just been approached by a major radio station to help them with a long show they're doing about festivals - from what they've said so far, it sounds like there could be me droning on about festivals for around 15 minutes!
Those that know me know that I can talk about festivals for hours and hours and hours, but that doesn't mean it's actually interesting or anything anyone wants to actually hear.
It looks like I'll be spending some time in a recording studio tomorrow to do the piece
eFests stood up well to the hammering of Glasto ticket day yet again ... it slowed down at times, but was never in danger of crashing, and succeeded in breaking the previous forums record by over 50%. The tweaking done since the Reading/Leeds announcement obviously made a good difference.
But I guess that's the last time that eFests will get away without a full-on load balancing system rather than me working a kludge, so I guess I should start saving some pennies for next year.
I've spent much of the last couple of weeks thinking how to get the best out of the efests servers during the mad Glastonbury ticket rush tomorrow, mostly doing little things which combined will add up to something hopefully worthwhile ... but just now I've had a brainwave which will make a great difference to things.
a major bit of performance testing has just been carried out, and given me one set of numbers. I now have to do some re-configuration of the servers, and do the test again to get a another set of numbers.
Hopefully, the second test will give significantly different - and better - results. If that proves to be the case, then the re-configuration will need to be made permanent, and these forums will perform better* on Sunday than they did when the Reading/Leeds announcement was made.
(*actua
This was the first time I've sat thru a licence hearing under the new licencing act, but the procedure was much the same as under the old one. The only noticeable difference is that "interested parties" who are members of the licencing board are no longer allowed to be involved with making the decision.
This meant that a certain Pilton councillor (I won't name him, this isn't meant to be personal) who has been a member of the board in the past was excluded this time around, tho he was still f
Following the problems of last Monday night (when the Reading/Leeds announcement was made) with accessing the forums - they were incredibly busy - I've been looking at how things might be improved before Glasto ticket day.
Some changes have already been made that should see a small improvement of around 5%, and a number of other issues have been identified that should improve things a fair bit more.
Rather than just go ahead and make the changes and then discover that too late that it's ma
Today is the first really busy day since all the recent upgrades were put in place ... there's currently over 900 people on the forums (and many times that number using the green pages of efests), and the servers are ticking along nicely, no stress at all. Good news!
I always get scam emails with false rumours - I've become rather good at spotting them i think (tho a few always get thru) - but one I got last night is just brilliant.
Surely he didn't really expect me to fall for that?
For the last three minutes, I have been working away behind the scenes () to add details about this year's festivals onto the forum calendar and the main forum page.
This is just one of many new developments coming that's the culmination of 3 weeks work - it would have been sooner but we do have to stop to eat a curry now and then, and to whip the hamsters to paint your computer screens that bit faster. Although a project of (not) enormous complexity and scale, we're going to waffle in a pato
Another upgrade was made to the eFestivals servers last night, after a week of false starts, technical failures and cock-ups in trying to put things in place.
Anyway, the new set-up really is the dogs (as is being proved right now with the traffic for V tickets), and come Glasto ticket day I expect things to cope extremely well - the capability of the new servers is massively greater than what was in place two years ago for the last Glastonbury (and even back then eFestivals was the only maj
I keep getting press releases for Global Cool - an organisation set up to help fight global warming thru reducing your emissions and offsetting. At the bottom it always says that they're "one of only four current organisations who reach the Government’s proposed standards for carbon offset schemes".
I was aware that only four organisations have been approved (see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6276305.stm), and I was aware that The Carbon Neutral Company - who eFestivals use for offsetti
I'm pleased to say that eFestivals is now a carbon neutral website.
We're working with The CarbonNeutral Company to offset the emissions created by our business, as well as doing all we can to reduce our energy usage and emissions creation.
Climate change is happening - just look around you. We can wait for governments and businesses to stop pointing the finger at anyone but themselves, or we can take responsibility for our own actions and the consequences of those actions.
The amount o
I woke up this morning and turned on a tap, to have only a trickle of water come out - luckily enough for the kettle. When I went to the shop over the road, I discovered that a main has burst nearby, and this whole area is without water.
It's not like I can't cope without water - I bought a litre of bottled for brewing up, but it's bugging me that I can't flush the loo, do the washing up or put some clothes washing on, even tho I know that there's guys out there working to sort the problem an
eFestivals has been moved to a new server, to help ensure that on the busiest days everything will still cope. Fingers crossed that the new configurations works as well as hoped for.
Now is the time of year when most people seem to think I spend my time sunning myself on a beach. I wish.
Although there's not much festie news at this time of year, now is when lots of little bits and pieces on the website get improvements made to them, the company accounts gets sorted out, deals are made for next year, new servers are installed or upgraded, etc, etc, etc - it all takes time, and normally more time than I think it will (hence me asking for a php programmer to help me out wi
WOW! - Nik Turner's reformed them, and they're playing a gig in Slough in mid-November .... I quite fancy going, but Slough's a bit of a trek ... I guess I'll have to decide soon, I'm sure it'll sell out pretty quick.
I just picked my post up from my doormat.
I opened a letter from DVLA, saying that I hadn't sent them my licence to be endorsed for speeding as they'd requested, and so my licence will be revoked from this coming Sunday.
I open the next letter, and it's also from DVLA .... all it contains is my licence, newly endorsed for the speeding offence.
If the guys at DVLA could add two and two to make four, they'd be dangerous.
I stopped at a garage today to fill up with some petrol, and about a minute later a posh-ish motor pulls in. Out gets Peter Gabriel, and he looked across at me, nodded and said hello.... like I'm his mate.
OK, I had met him earlier in the afternoon at a press conference, but that was there (I don't count something like that for a 'cool list' as I expect to come across such people now and then thru my job), and this was out there, on the street.
BTW, if anyone is wondering if Peter is get
