An Amusing Departure
It’s been a slow day, but at least there’s been a reason to smile, courtesy of Mark Cathcart, Director of Systems Engineering and a Distinguished Engineer at Dell, also; distinguished Tweeter and Blogger.
I received a tweet from him just 20 minutes or so ago and it read:
@robinbloor have mac will blog, have blog that doesn’t handle comments well… see prob report http://snurl.com/qlbt2
I’m busy, but I read the problem report, and it appears that my blog misbehaves when people try to post a comment (at least some of the time). Actually it crashes sometimes when the traffic is heavy and this may be related. It seems to crash at least twice a day at the moment, but courageously revives itself after a minute or two. (Traffic has been heavy because of the Words You Dont Know postings). But the commenting capability probably does need some attention. Monsieur Cathcart is also complaining about how it handles ping-backs.
Anyway, allow me to quote:
“One of the most eloquent [surely you mean elegant? ed] parts of blogging is the simple use of pings and trackbacks. It allows blogs to do what the web does best, link related conversations and information.
After writing my most recent blog entry, I noticed something that hadn’t occured to me at all before. Very few IT Industry analysts blogs provide this facility. Variously they require you to fill in forms, answer captchas, register and worse. In deference to Roblin Bloor, he has already posted my comment on his blog. But why might do IT Industry analysts make it so hard, surely not because they want to control the conversation?”
This is followed by:
“… and just a further comment. Robin Bloors blog, has for the second time failed when trying to post a direct comment. Makes you wonder how all these smart industry analysts can’t even get their blog software to work.”
So I reply with the comment:
“Not sure what the problem is. As far as I’m aware all your comments are added and this has been done automatically. They sit in a moderation queue until approved, but apart from that they do update the database. There may be something goofy in the interface my WordPress theme uses. I’ll take a look.
I also have the problem that my web site gets swamped by traffic at times and I need to buy more resource (as well as tune it). However I am my development team so that’s not going to happen quickly.”
I post this comment on Mike Cathcart’s blog and, would you adam-and-eve it, his blog site shows me a blank screen after I post the comment. Is it working? Who knows?
People in Glass Houses Shouldn’t Throw Stones
I’m not sure about that particular proverb. Maybe people in glass houses should have a large collection of very large stones and good catapult technology, built by a distinguished catapult engineer.
Anyway, I return to Mike’s blog and post this comment…
“…and just a further comment. I tried adding a comment to your blog and when I did so, the screen just went blank giving me no message as to whether it had been successful or not. A kind of white screen of death. Maybe you are exhibiting the same WordPress symptoms that I am, or something similar. Makes me seriously wonder about all these distinguished engineers, in terms of what exactly is it that distinguishes them?”
I then tweet back with:
@cathcam You too seem to have a blog that doesn’t handle comments well… Hmmm… Pot – kettle, kettle – pot.
That’s when I get to thinking about ITIL. You see I’m not quite sure what the correct procedure is when you discover a bug in some public-facing software. Do you:
a) Notify the web site owner by email.
b) Blog about it.
c) Tweet about it.
or
d) Blog about it and tweet about it.
If only I knew a distinguished ITIL engineer who could straighten me out on this.
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>>Anyway, I return to Mike’s blog and post this comment…
Ahh yes, that would be someone else’s blog I assume?
ITIL, not me but I know a man that does. I guess what we are suffering from is the browser wars and the way that my wordpress hosted blog handles your browser, and the way you wordpress blog handles mine. Browsers suck, shame then that the industry seems dependent on them at least for the foreseeable future.
I’m pleased you got my prior comments and posted them. That certainly puts you way ahead of most other analyst blogs. And, I hadn’t meant to pick on yours, rather in my blog post was just surprised on a quiet evening, how many didn’t accept any form of comment.
Meanwhile, back to the technology. I really would be interested in relation to your SPARC/SOLARIS piece to understand where IBM is going, or where you think they might go with the QuickTransit/Transitive/Lx86 project. Although only peripherally involved in my last few months at IBM, it is still an area I have a great technical interest in.
I’ll be pressing submit now and hoping for the best
Well, at the recent P Series briefing IBM never mentioned it, but they had a great deal of material to present. It may be a part of the SPARC migration capability, because they made a great deal of how swiftly they could pull off a migration. Well that’s fine when you’ve got portable apps, but we all know that sites consisting of entirely portable apps are as common as hen’s teeth. I will try to find out about it.