Armswiper.co.uk

It never ceases to amaze me how simple it is to upgrade a Wordpress installation. In fact, just how easy it is to play with Wordpress configurations in general.

I’ve now had to upgrade WP twice since going-live with it, due to various bug fixes and security fixes. Each time, it’s been a simple process of downloading the latest version, and copying files across. Nothing major, and nothing taxing. There are a few gotchas, but the documentation tells you precisely what to do and how to avoid them.

Even when I was beta testing WP and importing existing posts in to WP, I was investigating how to move it from one directory to another (so that it didn’t run in a subdirectory). Doing that, I thought, would be a complicated process. Not so. It’s still fairly simple, and most importantly, the WordPress documentation has a document about precisely how to move the files around, what order to do it in and how not to break stuff (although I did, and was quickly able to fix that thanks to the documentation).

That, is precisely how software should be. Simple, as long as you’re not scared about moving files around.

Mark Blogging, Computers Blogging, WordPress

One thing I really hate about watching programme on channels like Discovery or National Geographic is that they are redubbed from the US originals. That means that some things they say do not really have relevance in the UK.

For example, the US measurement of choice, for distance, is “the football field”. I have no frigging clue how big that is. Also, is that an American football field or a proper football pitch? For weight, the standard gauge is “the jumbo jet”. Again, I have no idea what one weighs. Also, is that laden or unladen? Take off weight or landing?

Why don’t they give these measurements in a scale that makes sense? For starters, it makes sense, and secondly it improves peoples understanding of those scales and of the subject matter.

So, please programme makers, use metric or imperial measurements (either is fine.) Jumbo jets and football fields fit into neither.

Mark TV TV

Less than an hour after I post my latest progress as “Doesn’t make much difference”, I’ve managed to fix the problem (Well, it works for me at least).

The secret was written in a post that I linked to in my very first post about this problem. I can’t believe that I didn’t pay it any attention before.

Basically, all you need to do is to run “mythfilldatabase” without any parameters. As well as retrieving new data, it resets the database.

Now this, actually, makes sense to me. I guess the reason that I never encountered this before is that I always used to use the Radio Times grabber for downloading my programme listings, however the other year I switched to EPG (electronic programme guide). That means that I don’t run mythfilldatabase on a regular schedule.

And therefore, that means that I’m not downloading data, and cleansing the database, as much as I should be! I seem to remember something about a few thousand items being marked for something, as it scrolled up the screen. I subsequently ran it again just to check, and this time it showed zero for all items.

I since tested it, and I was able to delete around 10 different programmes, and still didn’t receive any lag in deletions. That’s going to way in around the 15 to 20GB range. That’s pretty damn good, if you ask me.

All I need to make sure is that mythfilldatabase didn’t cock anything up, and then somehow schedule it to run frequently. More than once a year I guess would be a bonus….

Mark MythTV "Cain", MythTV

Having spent bloody ages explaining, and then doing, the defragmentation of a Linux hard drive partition, I’m still experiencing very slow delete times from my MythTV media centre.

To make matters worse, I now get a time out on a lot of different interactions with the box, for example when I escape out of watching a tv programme. The screen will go black and the two minutes later I see a popup telling me the connection to the master backend has ‘gone away’.

I have now done an optimzation on the database through several methods and it does not appear to make life any better. It does appear to make a difference for a while but it soon returns to normal behaviour. Admittedly though I was planning on doing an ‘OPTIMIZE TABLE’ for every table in the database and so far I have only done it on the ‘program’ table.

One tool I did use was ‘myisamcheck –analyze –check-only-changed –quick –sort-index *.MYI’ in /var/lib/mysql/mythconverg

That seemed to spend sometime checking several tables, including ‘program’.

M planning on running a full optimize when I get the chance, but I’m also wondering what else could be going on which would cause this problem. Might need to consult ‘top’!

Mark MythTV "Cain", MythTV

Apparently, I have an unhappy Chinese floor tile in my bathroom.

Mark Humour Humour

Hopefully, the more observant of you will have noticed that this website has changed.

Yup, it’s true, I’ve finally updated this site. As promised previously, it now runs off of a WordPress engine, and has a new theme. I’ve also cleared out the cobwebs and got rid of a load of tat that was unfinished and was lingering around.

The other bonus of this, means that I’m now writing my first blog post on my iPhone.

Brilliant!

Mark Blogging, iPhone Blogging, iPhone