Aww... my bees.

Brigadoon, Or, Marin And The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day

Our heroine doesn't exactly have an easy time of it in this one.*  Though she does get a sweet set of wheels at one point.

Marin's voiced by Kaori, and I could swear that I've heard that ahaaa before, but not in any of the shows listed there.

Also, Lolo is a heckuvalot like Guu.

Highly recommended.

Warning: May** contain traces*** of comedy, tragedy, drama, giant robots, parallel dimensions, Tokyo Tower, giant lolis, mecha-turtles, crazed inventors, psychopathic killers, Richard Nixon, magical girl transformation sequences, Apollo 11, graphic violence, Shinto shrines, the end of the world as we know it, the Osaka World Expo, cat-rabbit-elves, warped daydreams, and full-frontal nudity.

*
** May?  Okay, okay, does.
*** Large traces.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:27 PM | Comments (11) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 131 words, total size 2 kb.

What Happened To The Duchess In Browning's "My Last Duchess"?

She died of moider.

Robert Browning was one of the few writers I studied in high school English that I both respected and enjoyed.  Shakespeare too, though his plays are far better seen than read.  (The performance of King Lear we went to see got a standing ovation from a crowd of teenagers.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:44 AM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 63 words, total size 1 kb.

Sigh Of Relief

For the first time in two weeks I'm not insane.

Trying desperately to fix the failed RAID array (ugh) then finalise the server migration before they turned the old servers off (just made it), shore up the defences of Munuvia against a rising sea of spam (new filter in place), and clean house and tear out some fairly impressive weeds before a maintenance inspection (almost made it, then at the last minute my vacuum cleaner died, leaving my floors looking less than spotless ).

Of course, I also accidentally corrupted some of the tables on the replica database at my day job yesterday, leading to a 3:30AM support call today and some hasty creative thinking on how to repair 100GB of scrambled data.  But I even solved that one, mostly.

This weekend, to celebrate, I plan to sleep for 36 hours.

Update: Yeah, right.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 11:57 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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There Is Such A Thing As Trying Too Hard

Dinged on possible crapbot match for 3.0
Dinged on viagra for 6.0
Dinged on  cialis for 3.0
Dinged on tramadol for 16.0
Dinged on phentermine for 168.0
Dinged on href= for 10.0
Dinged on http:// for 25.0
Dinged on .pl for 1.5
Dinged on /member for 28.5
Dinged on showuser for 15.0
Dinged on vegweb.com for 60.0
Dinged on skepticality.com for 7.5
Dinged on adipex for 47.5
Dinged on livinginperu for 100.0
Dinged on cel.agh.edu.pl for 25.0
Dinged on chatarea.com for 75.0
Dinged on imvu.com for 10.0
Dinged on knittingdaily.com for 31.5
Dinged on esb.ucp.pt for 4.5
Banned 66.189.125.209!
Score 637.0

And just minutes later, it gets topped by this one:

Dinged on viagra for 9.0
Dinged on  cialis for 18.0
Dinged on tramadol for 28.0
Dinged on phentermine for 132.0
Dinged on href= for 10.0
Dinged on http:// for 25.0
Dinged on .pl for 1.5
Dinged on /member for 15.0
Dinged on showuser for 10.5
Dinged on vegweb.com for 112.5
Dinged on skepticality.com for 2.5
Dinged on adipex for 27.5
Dinged on livinginperu for 125.0
Dinged on cel.agh.edu.pl for 25.0
Dinged on chatarea.com for 125.0
Dinged on imvu.com for 5.0
Dinged on  cialis  for 5.0
Dinged on knittingdaily.com for 13.5
Dinged on esb.ucp.pt for 18.0
Dinged on citynet.net for 25.0
Banned 67.60.248.137!
Score 733.0

Why is Skepticality (a popular skeptic's podcast) in my blacklist?  Because they've got spammers infesting their forum, unfortunately.  It's only worth 2.5 dings though, so just mentioning them (particularly if you're a registered user) won't affect your comment.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:13 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 259 words, total size 2 kb.

Smooth Sailing



top - 05:37:40 up 3 days, 21:27,  5 users,  load average: 1.20, 1.56, 2.06
Tasks: 784 total,   1 running, 782 sleeping,   0 stopped,   1 zombie
Cpu(s):  8.4%us,  1.4%sy,  0.0%ni, 89.9%id,  0.1%wa,  0.0%hi,  0.1%si
Mem:  24625940k total, 22981992k used,  1643948k free,  1357892k buffers
Swap:  4192924k total,      416k used,  4192508k free, 16804204k cached

Peace and quiet and dual quad cores.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:38 PM | Comments (9) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 60 words, total size 1 kb.

DNS Fleemishness Resoluted

Been having some odd DNS issues since migrating off the old DNS servers recently.  It's mostly worked, but detailed checks showed nameserver loops, lame resolvers, non-authoritative servers that should have been authoritative, and so on and on.

I run all my DNS servers on CPanel, which handles this for you rather nicely, so I couldn't work out why it had gotten itself into such a pickle.

Um.  Could it be because I set up the authoritative nameservers but didn't copy all the actual domain databases to them?

I'm amazed it worked at all.  Fortunately, CPanel has a nice DNS synchroniser, so the problem is now... resolved.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:03 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 109 words, total size 1 kb.

Die, Spammers, Die!

Dinged on href= for 10.2
Dinged on url= for 0.2
Dinged on http:// for 28.0
Dinged on .ru for 305
Dinged on .biz for 4
Banned 92.46.242.15!
Score 347.4

Yeah, take that, you post-Communist recidivist swinepigs!

The new munu spam filter is live.

Dinged on viagra for 15
Dinged on href= for 4.0
Dinged on http:// for 10.0
Dinged on /member for 20.0
Banned 200.141.184.141!
Score 49.0

One of the things it does is when it sees a sufficiently spammy spam, it just bans the IP address permanently.  So in the future we just need a single IP lookup and bye bye spammer.

If you manage to get your home PC infested by a botnet virus, then you get banned too.  It's tough love.

Dinged on viagra for 2
Dinged on  cialis for 3
Dinged on http:// for 3.0
Dinged on dysfunction for 1
Dinged on erectile for 1
Dinged on levitra for 15
Dinged on /member for 12.5
Banned 201.15.232.96!
Score 37.5

Yeesh.

Dinged on viagra for 4
Dinged on  cialis for 12
Dinged on tramadol for 39
Dinged on xanax for 12
Dinged on phentermine for 90
Dinged on href= for 10.0
Dinged on http:// for 25.0
Dinged on /member for 27.5
Banned 24.0.74.64!
Score 219.5

Pick a product and stick to it!

Ah, this will make some of my bloggers happy:

Dinged on possible crapbot match for 3.0
Dinged on probable crapbot match for 3.0
Dinged on mixed markup for 3.5
Dinged on href= for 0.2
Dinged on url= for 0.2
Dinged on link= for 0.2
Dinged on http:// for 2.0
Score 12.1

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:07 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 261 words, total size 2 kb.

Subverted By Technology

I was just setting up a new database table at the day job when I realised something: If Key the Metal Idol were set in 2009, it would last about fifteen minutes:  Key sets up Facebook & Twitter accounts.  Key gets 30,000 friends.  (Most of them spammers.)  The end.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:33 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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New Spam Filter Ahoy

Not an unsuccessful weekend, even if my back garden looks like a bomb hit it...  Which I suppose is pretty much what happened.

I have a new spam filter ready to go for the Movable Type users, a trial version of hooking MT into Minx's own filters.  That will go live in the morning, and should quickly cut back on spam without me having to mess about with horrible ancient Perl code.  If it works well, I can even expose it as a web service for other blogging apps.  It is written as a web service, just an internal one for now.

And now, a quick level of Fate, then Manabi Straight* and bed.

* Action and fighting and things blowing up!  Albeit mostly inside Manabi's head...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:38 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 131 words, total size 1 kb.

Congratulations, Rebecca & Sid

The latest episode of The Skeptic's Guide to the Universe:

This week's topics are:
Live Recording from TAM 7
News Items: Microbot Plummers, Archeological Dig, Sunspots Return, Blogs vs Journalists, Genie Sued
Science or Fiction
Live Questions
Rebecca's Wedding

Yep, live.

(Rebecca's site, skepchick.org, used to be hosted here at munu.)

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:23 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 53 words, total size 1 kb.

It's Still True

"In any group of four or more cute girls, one of them must be a meganeko. It is required. One hyperactive, one ditz, one practical, and one shy meganeko. It's like quarks."

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 01:21 AM | Comments (6) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 35 words, total size 1 kb.

Naked Naughty Admiral Chicks 'R' Us Part Twelve: Return Of The Revenge Of The Catgirls

Last time I asked for recommendations for recent moeblob shows, and ended up watching Gurren Lagann, which was awesome.

And also Hidamari Sketch (both seasons), which was also awesome, and definitely moeblob material.

So this time I'm looking for an (awesome) action series, with lots of running about and fighting and things blowing up.  And I've already seen Black Lagoon.

Oh, the title?  Well, Firefrog remembers things you've typed into form fields, and when I started typing "New Recommendation Request", as soon as I hit "n" the first part of that title came up.  (SFW, alas.)

Update: I was going to watch Sketchbook Full Color Apostrophes, but apparently I already did.  Huh.  My mind must be going, because I'd completely forgotten that.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:08 AM | Comments (5) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 137 words, total size 1 kb.

Nearly Nearly There

Just rolled the remaining sites off Aoi, the old mee.nu server (mostly system stuff, like the core smilies and images directories).  Naturally, this caused a DNS glitch.

Now I just need to recreate the backup directory and dump a terabyte of stuff on there.

Then install the new mu.nu spam filter, fix Fantastico, fix the font library in Minx, deliver the new search engine at my day job, clean the house, and uproot the garden.  Heck, I've got all weekend, no problem!

Update: By the way, current active servers are Nabiki (mee.nu database), Akari (mu.nu), Azusa (additional blogs), Kodachi (forums), Linilin (mee.nu front end), Pink (mee.nu backend), Sayuri (core sites and email), Kiema (Ace's new comments thingy, a very early version of Minx) and Mikan (backups).  Next up are Kasumi (database replication), Ukyo (search) and Nodoka (Urchin stats).  Oh, and probably Rouge so I can get the mee.nu CDN up and running.

Update: The transfer of the old backups is proceeding well, about 10 million files done so far.  The progress report of the transfer is over 1GB.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:57 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 182 words, total size 1 kb.

SemiAutumnatic

Our latest project is nearly finished.  Possibly one more track, and some minor tweaking.  Then I'll be taking a break for a couple of weeks (from composing, anyway), before returning with Summer Theologica.

Our previous release was Winter Collection.


SemiAutumnatic

Side A - Cities

1. City of Light
2. City of Dreams
3. City of Shadows
4. City of Fire

Side B - Fashionable Nonsense

5. Bioarrhythmia
6. Signs & Portents
7. Unsure Thing

Side C - Life On Hold

8. Waiting Game
9. Empty Rooms
10. Lost Chances

Side D - Nonsensical Fashions

11. Crushed Velvet Underground
12. Deaf Leopardskin
13. Deep Mauve


Extras

Disk 2 Side A - Revolutionary Leaflets Everywhere

1. Geosynchronicity
2. Facts & Fallacies
3. Certainty Principle

Disk 2 Side B - Pet Crematorium (in production)

4. Hamster Love

more...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:17 PM | Comments (12) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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One Last Outage - Around 1AM CDT

Today's outage is proudly brought to you by Adaptec - "The number one name in overpriced RAID controllers with crappy firmware" - and Western Digital - "Our drives are so tough they eat other disk drives!  Also, your data."

This is to replace the insane drive and wipe and rebuild the corrupted RAID-5 volume.  Should be about 15 minutes.  Once it's done, everything should be good - we have a RAID-5 array and a RAID-1 array and an enterprise SSD for the databases.  What could possibly go wrong?

...

No, thanks, I don't want a list.

Update: DONE!

Update: And for some bizarre reason, after the maintenance was done and I'd made sure everything was working correctly, the networking went notworking.  Bleh.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 02:13 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Ninja'd

If anyone's interested in playing a silly online ninja game, Turtle Village needs you!

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:36 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 15 words, total size 1 kb.

No Sugar For You!

Darn.  They've run out of Acer EasyStores.  I had assumed that they were selling off the old model cheap, and that appears to have been the case.

I got Pepper and Salt, but it doesn't look like there'll be a Sugar.

Or at least, not a sugar cube.

They do have a new Intel storage appliance that's not much more expensive and looks a lot better on paper - it has a 1.6GHz Celeron instead of a 500MHz ARM, 512MB of memory (upgradeable to 1GB) instead of just 128MB, and offers eSATA and USB as well as the four internal SATA bays.  But it doesn't look as nice and it's quite literally twice the size.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:53 PM | Comments (8) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 119 words, total size 1 kb.

Another Day, Another Server

Today it's Sayuri, part 16 of the mu.nu take-over-the-world-by-overloading-it-with-virtual-servers brigade.

And here goes my fourth attempt to install CPanel on it.  Been one of those evenings.

Update: Good thing there's no limit on install attempts...  1. Oops, started it, then realised it would take a long time and I needed to take my notebook to work with me.  2. Notebook needed rebooting.  3. Tsunami-related network droput.  4.  Had kmemsize set to 10000000 instead of 100000000, which didn't work too well, or indeed, at all.  Now starting attempt 5.

Update: 5. CPanel installer went insane.  Apparently demanding to be flown to Costa Rica.  Starting attempt 6.

Update 6: Manual pre-install setup of CPAN (not CPanel) fixed the Costa Rica Question.

Update 7: No it didn't.  I fucking HATE the CPanel installer.

Update 43: Despise the CPanel installer.  LOATHE it.  If you get their custom Perl installer, and run that first, and ignore the reams of warnings and errors, and then run the CPanel installer, and ignore the reams of warnings and errors, then maybe it works.  We'll see.

Update 59: Shot Sayuri through the gills.  It just wasn't working right, so I decided to try a 32-bit install, which is better supported than 64-bit.  Then I realised that I needed Sayuri to be a 32-bit environment to run Minx, so I needed to reinstall anyway.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 12:39 AM | Comments (2) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 228 words, total size 2 kb.

It's Been Nice Knowing You

Sydney is going to be hit by a tsunami in about half an hour's time.

For reals.

Okay, it's only a little one, and I'm fifteen miles inland and six hundred feet up, but still...

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 09:34 PM | Comments (3) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Planned Outage 14th / 15th July

We'll be down for about 15 minutes at midnight PDT / 3AM EDT to migrate to the new disk array.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 10:51 AM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 26 words, total size 1 kb.

One Step Further

Yui = Yuno = Nene
Ritsu = Miyako = Linna
Tsumugi = Hiro = Sylia
Mio = Sae = Priss
Ui and/or Azu-nyan = Chika-chan = Mackie
Sawa-chan = Yoshi = ... Leon?

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 08:33 PM | Comments (4) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 36 words, total size 1 kb.

K-Sketch!

Unavoidable comparisons:

Yui = Yuno
Ritsu = Miyako
Tsumugi = Hiro
Mio = Sae
Ui and/or Azu-nyan = Chika-chan
And of course
Sawa-chan = Yoshi

'Course, that mangles some of the relationships, but it's pretty close.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 06:34 PM | Comments (1) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 37 words, total size 1 kb.

Planned Poopages

We're going to be having three short outages over the next week as I repair the damage from last week's drive crash.

First one is early Sunday morning, around 1AM Central time, to add a new RAID-1 array.  About ten minutes, all users.

Second one will vary; I need to migrate all the OpenVZ containers to the new array, so that will happen on a per-container basis.  Expect about five minutes downtime at some point late at night for your site, wherever it might be in the system.

Third one will be to replace the faulty drive and then wipe and rebuild the corrupted RAID volume.  About ten minutes for all users again.

RAID is NOT supposed to do this, but since when have computers ever done what they're supposed to do?

Update: Poopage #1 completed successfully!  That was the only one that had any chance of causing problems, so that's a good thing.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:41 PM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 156 words, total size 1 kb.

Hmm, Maybe

I've been working with The Electric Ant Orchestra* (in between my fighting hackers, spammers, hardware failures, bosses who want every cool new feature in place today**, and random germs*** and their live shows at The Scythe) on a new album, a sort-of prequel to our recent Winter Collection.

Because we came up with a name that was too cool**** not to put something together and get it out there.

It's called SemiAutumnatic.

With any luck, the first section, Cities, should show up here this weekend.  I'm still tinkering with the mixes on two of the tracks, so we'll see how that goes.

* My friends Liz, Harri (never Harriet!) and Su.
** Yes, it's most often actually a cool feature, but today is not always practical.
*** Have come down with some coldy-fluey thing.  Entering the third day, and it's not too horrible so far, so probably just a nasty cold.
**** For... certain values of cool.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:08 AM | No Comments | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
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Akane-iro ni Somaru Saka

This is what you get when you take a hentai dating simulation, remove most of the hentai, and then use the NO! WRONG! ending.

All the girls are insane, except the one who is crazy.  The hero - such as he is - is pretty much the only sane person in sight, and he has the brains of a cheeseburger - or, I suppose, the hormones of a teenager - or he'd run for his life.

Really not recommended.  If you want tsundere romangst, try the far superior Toradora or Shana.  Or even Zero no Tsukaima.  It's all the same character (and the same voice actress) anyway.

Wait.  Rie Kugimiya played Rizel?  Huh.

Posted by: Pixy Misa at 03:02 AM | Comments (13) | Add Comment | Trackbacks (Suck)
Post contains 117 words, total size 1 kb.