Is there food?

Things are starting to look better for Kris Tate and Thomas Hawk, the unfortunate souls behind Zooomr.

As I’ve written before, things went a bit pear shaped for them earlier this week, and after a fifteen minute launch, their server died. Which might not seem like such a big deal, until you realise that it meant that all Zooomr hosted images went offline. Prior to the database crash, even though Zooomr was offline, the static images were still being served.

Happily, the images are now back online. Which is reason enough for me to repost the hideous picture of me in the cooler bag.

According to reports from the Zooomr.tv chatroom, Dell flew some parts out to fix the ailing database server. In addition to that, Sun have loaned the guys a monster machine to support the increased demand that’s sure to come their way when the site does launch. And Zoho have given them some rack space in which to keep the server.

However, it sounds like the new monster actually consumes roughly the same amount of power as a small third-world country, and the Zoho hosting facility wasn’t geared up for that. This could be nonsense, of course, but it’s the impression I’m getting from the chat. It looks like the final hurdle, for now, will be to get power to the new uber-server, and relaunch Zooomr Mark 3.

Kudos to Kris for continuing to broadcast the Zooomr.tv feed, even while the guys from Sun were installing the new server. His composure and attitude in the face of everything that’s going on is quite inspirational. You can say what you like about their business plan, the downtime, and the future; but you can’t fault the manner in which the two of them are conducting themselves throughout all of this.

Oh, and apparently their blog has died, which would explain the lack of updates in the last couple of days. The priority at the moment is fixing Zooomr, not the blog, which is fair enough really. That said, if either of the guys read this, Twitter is your friend. If the blog’s down, create a Zooomr Twitter account, and throw some javascript onto the holding page at beta.zooomr.com to display the most recent Twitter: instant mini-blog.

Zooomr should be back really soon; as I said, things are looking up.

(MT) have launched (or at least, I can see it) their new GPU monitoring tool today. It’s been [mentioned](http://cavemonkey50.com/2007/06/media-temples- new-gpu-analysis-tool-launching-soon/) on one or two other sites, and seeing as I’d blogged about them before I thought I’d mention it again.

It’s a fantastic tool; way in advance of anything they had before, and has convinced me that I’ll be staying with them as much host for the future. Regardless of the billing implications for GPU calculations, the tool gives you a way of seeing which pages are the most intensive within your hosting environment. So, for example, Gary’s site (Menori) is generating the most load. I’ll be installing wp-cache for him at some point in the not too distant future. Don’t worry Gary, it’s a mostly painless process. Mostly…

I’d still like to see/know a couple of things: the first is the option to buy an extra allocation of GPUs. (MT) have told me they’re not planning this, but I think it could be handy. That said, it’s possible that you’d end up running lazy code instead of optimising, which is always good practice.  The second thing is SQL resource usage; although I’m not entirely sure that this is factored in to the GPU calculation right now, I’d still love to be able to see how efficient (or inefficient) my databases were performing.

So good job (MT)! I’ve seen some positive comments about this from around the web, so hopefully it will dispel some, or all, of the negativity which is surrounding the dreaded GPU statistic.

I borrowed Dad’s screen; he thought it was playing up so wanted me to plug it in here to try to establish whether the problem was with the screen, or his PC.

I think I need to get myself one…

[](http:/ /www.zooomr.com/photos/danielw/2412551/)

Right, the next time someone emails you about some wonderful free offer just bloody ignore it.

My wife forwarded me an email (sad that this is how we communicate now) entitled “Free M & S Vouchers!!!”. It’s clearly an attempt to spam the Andy Curran at Persimmonhomes.com email address. Apparently, there’s this special collaboration between Marks and Spencers and Persimmon Homes; the instructions carefully state that all you need to do is cc him in on the email to ten of your mates, and your vouchers will magically appear in the next few days. Ohmygodohmygod: spam everyone.

So stop. Cleverly, a few people have already blogged about this. Perhaps not so cleverly, they’ve printed Andy Curran’s address in full, so now numerous Internet bots will be furiously spamming the account, along with a large network of gullible Internet users (and, yes, I’d have to include my wife in this group) who want their free vouchers.

I suspect Andy Curran has long since had to change his email address (it sounds like this particular scam has been around for a while), or else Persimmon Homes have invested in some decent spam filtering. In fact, I suspect the “this is a scam” email she got from Message Labs originated from the Persimmon email address; it certainly wouldn’t have come from the assorted gmail, hotmail, and yahoo addresses she forwarded the mail on to.

So today’s lessons:

1) if it sounds too good to be true, it almost certainly is.

2) if you’re asked to spam lots of people with an email, please don’t; I get enough spam as it is.

3) if you can’t be trusted to use email in a tolerable manner please fill your bath with water, drop any Internet connected computer you may own into previously mentioned bath, and leave for approximately the rest of your life. Do not, under any circumstances, attempt to retrieve the computer from the bath.

[](http://www.bbc.co.uk/apprentice/candidate/id/15/type/conte stant.html)I have to confess to being slightly addicted to The Apprentice this series. Despite managing to resist Alan Sugar’s beardy charms for the first two iterations, I’ve been powerless this time.

Up to now, I’ve managed not to blog about it, but I’m slightly stunned and can no longer keep from mentioning what must surely be the BBC’s flagship reality TV offering. Fans of the show will know precisely why I’m stunned: Katie removed herself from the competition at the last possible moment!

For anyone that doesn’t watch the show: Katie has bitched, back-stabbed, pouted, and schemed her way through the entire series. She has a face like a smacked arse, and yet has the most mesmerizing eyes. She’s eminently dislikable, and yet somehow difficult to not be impressed by. And, when faced with the prospect of being in the final, she turned it down because it wasn’t fair to ask her children and parents to support her in the endeavor.

You’d check first, wouldn’t you? Before even applying for the contest, you’d make sure Mum and Dad were OK with the implications of you winning. Unless, of course, you never intended to win. Did Katie just plan on becoming famous, then walking out at the last moment? Perhaps she intends to follow in the footsteps of previous pantomime reality TV dropouts, like Nasty Nick and all the other useless types whose names have long since dropped out of the accessible recesses of my memory, never to return.

Who knows. But it was a twist I didn’t see coming, and perhaps the reason why The Apprentice is a cut above the usual reality TV nonsense. Next weeks final sees the essentially useless Simon up against the impressively organisation Kristina. It’s a forgone conclusion, but the show is always so enjoyable that it really doesn’t matter.

Oh yes indeedy.

Visually stunning and looks scary as all hell. Can’t wait.

And that’s putting it lightly.

Despite having cancelled a domain I registered through them, they’re still sending me letters asking for payment. When a letter arrived this morning stating that they’re going to refer the case to a debt collector, I phoned them (again) to pay the £10 just to get them out of my hair. I’d Googled them when all this kicked off, and they seem to have a bad reputation for this sort of thing.

So, I phoned them, told them I’d just pay it and be done with it. But they can’t take payment over the phone now, because the account has been closed. I have to send them a cheque.

I asked if there was some misguided logic there that I was missing: I cancel the domain but they still insist that I pay, yet I can’t actually pay by conventional means because the domain is cancelled. They can’t “uncancel” the domain either.

Couple that with the fact that they use a totally separate administration system for domain cancellations (you have to visit their “cancel” subdomain), and the whole thing smells like a big con.

In summary: avoid 1&1 (or 1and1) like the plague.

Damn. I need one of these. And one of these. And maybe one of these.

Screw it… I think I need pretty much every one of the men’s t-shirts on this page.

They even have my guilty pleasure…