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Neatorama Server Issues
Late last night (two nights ago for our readers in the East Coast), our data center and hosting service SoftLayer was hit with a massive distributed denial-of-service attack. The attack was aimed at their DNS service, which caused many websites hosted at the company – including neatorama.com – to fail to resolve.
For those who don’t know, DNS servers (or name servers) translate domain name (like neatorama.com) into IP address of the website’s server. Without it, your browser wouldn’t "know" where to contact the website’s server.
The DDoS attack caused browser errors for some, but not all of you who try to visit the blog. I had trouble visiting the blog all night yesterday from home (with Comcast cable Internet) and all day today at work (with AT&T DSL). Anyways, the issue was finally resolved late today afternoon.
Softlayer is one of the largest data centers in the world (with over 21,000 servers). It’s DNS servers use anycasting, so I couldn’t begin to imagine what kind of DDos would bring them down for so long.
Mystery Sale – Quickie Update
We’ve shipped out about 3/4 of all orders – if you haven’t received yours
yet, please be patient! It’s on its way! (Again, our thanks for participating in the latest Mystery Sale). We’ll do another update after we’ve completed shipping all of the orders.
Hello everybody - I'd like to take a minute and give you an update on all things Neatorama.
Mystery Sale - Thank you to everyone who participated! We've been working hard to improve the turnaround time. The first wave of shipment has started - we will be sending out packages for the next week or two. Unfortunately, I don't know whose packages will be shipped when. We'll have another update soon!
Upcoming
Queue - We continue to be pleased with your submissions to the
Neatorama Upcoming Queue.
As a token of our appreciation, the top 5 submitters (well, 6 actually
since the last position is a three-way tie) of April 2009 will get free stuff from
the store (oh, let's pick one: the Ice
Invaders Ice Tray).
We will continue to reward top submitters of the UQ. As the feature is still new, you stand a very good chance in being a top submitter (For hints on how to get your posts promoted to the front page, please read the UQ FAQ and Tips).
Round Up - We've never really done any weekly round up summarizing the neatest and greatest posts on the blog, and I think it's time that we start doing that. Since the beginning of May, we've done 155 posts on Neatorama. That's a lot of posts to keep track, so here are a few noteworthy ones in case you missed them:
What do you think? Should we do a weekly round up of sorts?
A quick update about the Mystery Sale: Thank you to everyone who has participated! Your purchase helped a great deal to support the blog.
As many of you know, right after we announced the Mystery Sale yesterday, our servers crashed because of the traffic. While it was a painful experience, this elucidated a weakness in the way we set up the servers which I didn’t realize before. We’ve taken steps to solve the problem (which, of course, involves more and more hardware).
Looking back, we’ve had many of these growing pains – Neato started on a shared hosting platform in 2005 (which cost a few bucks a month). Since then, we’ve had to move to ever larger, more complicated and thus more expensive hosting platforms. Instead of fretting over outages and meltdowns, I choose to view them as milestones in the growth of the blog (and the shop too, now).
All this is because and for you, dear Neatoramanauts! So from all of us here on Neatorama, thank you! We couldn’t have made it this far without the blog’s loyal readers (and hopefully, loyal customers – or soon-to-be one – of the Neatorama Online Shop). I hope you will help spread words about the blog by telling your friends and family about it.
Because of the interruption, I’m extending the Mystery Sale a little while longer – if you haven’t gotten yours, there’s still time. Don’t miss out: Link [Update 5/6/09 - Time's Up! Thank you for all of you who participated in this Mystery Sale! For those who missed it, maybe next time!]
Hi guys! I'm still alive - just really, really busy with work (wow - just checked: I haven't posted nearly anything in about a week!) Regular postings by yours truly will commence soon. Thank you to the rest of the Neatorama authors who picked up my slack :)
Mystery Sale - All mystery sale orders have been shipped as of the Thursday. If you live outside of the US, your package may take up to a couple of business weeks to deliver (the postal service is usually very quick, it's customs clearance that is slow). Interesting discussion at the forum on this topic.
Upcoming Queue - I have a backlog of neat posts from the UQ that should've made it to the Front Page but didn't for some reason or another. If you've recently posted to the UQ but didn't get your post promoted, you may be pleasantly surprised in the next couple of days.
Call for models and designers - Thank you for everyone who submitted their applications! Unfortunately, we have fewer spaces than qualified applicants, so we have to make the painful decision to whittle down the picks to just a few of you. I have the final picks pretty much determined, and will email them in the next day or so.
Neatorama Layout - We're testing different layouts on Neatorama, so you may see new ads, search bar, etc. floating in and out.
Laugh-Out-Loud Cats #1083: Ape
Lad [Flickr]
Laugh-Out-Loud Book Signing - Our friend and favorite
illustrator Adam "Ape Lad"
Koford will be signing copies of his new book The
Laugh-Out-Loud Cats Sell Out
Top 10 Blogs - Gerard Vlemmings of The Presurfer, one of my favorite blogs on the Web, was asked by Blogs.com from Six Apart to pick 10 funny, weird, strange, and interesting blogs. We're honored to be one of 'em. The other 9 are also excellent: Link - Thanks Gerard!
Hello
Neatoramanauts! Just a brief update on the State of the Blog:
Mystery Sale - I'm sure that everyone's been wondering about their packages. Don't worry - they're coming.
We usually ship out orders within one business day, but Mystery Sales are a bit unusual. We've gotten a lot of orders that it took a while for the warehouse to gear up to ship (happened last time, too!)
The first batch of shipments is scheduled for this Friday 3/6/09 - and we will process order and ship continuously for the next week or so. I'll make another update about the Mystery Sale soon.
Many of you emailed me about tracking the progress of the order - you can check the status of your order if you're registered at the Neatorama Online Shop at the time of the purchase. For security purposes, the username and password for the shop are separate from the blog. If you ordered and did a quick checkout, you can't check the status online.
Rogue Ads - Some of you have seen inappropriate (though infrequent) ads on Neatorama. Like I explained in the last update, we've had a rash of rogue ads that should be taken cared of by now. If you see one of these, please let me know (a screenshot would be lovely)
Blocked email - A lot of people who didn't get the automatic email receipt for their orders have @sbcglobal.net email address. It seems like our emails are being blocked (not in the recipients' spam filter and not bounced back to us either) - does anyone know how I can get our emails unblocked by sbcglobal? We have never spammed anyone.
Reading All of Neatorama - Congratulations to James Lim, who has just finished reading all of Neatorama. He email me that it took him 3 months and 2 days to read all 637 pages of the blog (well, so far anyway - it's a never ending journey because we keep on adding posts!). James has just joined a small but growing cadre of Neatoramanauts who have accomplished such a feat.
Caption This - If you'd like to get yourself a free Neatorama T-shirt, go forth to One largeprawn who's running a Caption This contest (with a very strange photo!) If you're a blogger who's interested in running a competition in your blog and want us to spot the prize (a free T-Shirt from the Neatorama Online Store), please email me!
Upcoming Queue: It's Much Better Now. Promise! Neatorama reader CalamityKate wrote this about the much maligned UQ:
Hi Alex, I just wanted to eat a little crow here. I was one of the haters of the UQ and was excited when the feeds became separate. But I still had the original feed on my Bloglines, and I’ve been converted! I think that the changes you made to “tighten up” the process have worked really well, and I rarely see posts from people that seem to just be pushing their own content. Forgive me? :-)
Glad that you've kissed and made up with the Queuebot, CalamityKate! And for the rest of you feed readers, it's time to give the Neatorama Full Front Page feed (with Upcoming Queue posts) another try!
Upcoming Queue Top Submitter for February 2009
As promised, the top submitter for the month of February 2009 will get a free iPod Touch. The rest of the Top 10 will get a free Neatorama T-shirt (since taliesyn30 and scbr are tied for the 10th spot, both will get the prize). Congrats, guys!
As I have written before, I intend to continue to reward top submitters to the Neatorama Upcoming Queue. I wont' tell you what March will bring for them (maybe something, maybe nothing), so it'll be fun ;)
New Funny Science T-Shirts
A
Day Without Nuclear Fusion is a Day Without Sunshine - $9.95
Great
Vocab Didn't Save the Thesaurus From Extinction - $9.95
And lastly, we've added a couple of new designs to our growing list of Funny Science T-Shirts on the Neatorama Online store. Check it out: Science T-Shirts | Science Toys
