Tag: http://www

Search Engine Load on Servers

Posted on by bobdvb

How odd, I was looking at the statistics for this web site and I see that I get absolutely hammered by the search engines:

Top Total User Agents
#HitsUser Agent
14450235.25%Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp/3.0; http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/ysearch/slurp)
23257125.80%Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Googlebot/2.1; +http://www.google.com/bot.html)
31419011.24%Mozilla/5.0 (Twiceler-0.9 http://www.cuil.com/twiceler/robot.html)
468885.46%Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Vagabondo/4.0; webcrawler at wise-guys dot nl; http://webagent.wise-guys.nl/; http://www.wise-guys.
514811.17%Yandex/1.01.001 (compatible; Win16; I)
614431.14%Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; DotBot/1.1; http://www.dotnetdotcom.org/, crawler@dotnetdotcom.org)

So, this means that 101075 hits are from search engines out of the total 126256 hits or that search engines make up exactly 80% of the traffic to this site. Nice that Yahoo and Google love me so much but the 1GB of content they downloaded over 1GB of content. Would be nice if they could tone it down a bit. I’ve already adjusted my crawl rate on the engines but I seem to have missed Yahoo and now have made some efforts there to correct that.

Tiger Ambitions

Posted on by bobdvb

I love tigers, they are my favourite animal in the world and it is my greatest ambition to see one in the wild. I would also love to meet a tiger in person but I realise that this cannot be practical because this isn’t the way that tigers behave in the real world. I don’t like seeing Tigers in captivity but I understand it is good to look after them in the west for their preservation but I am unsure about socialising them. My greatest challenge however is that even though I love them I worry about preservation tourisms impact on wildlife.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/travel/blog/2010/apr/29/india-bans-tiger-tourism

Identical photocopier based adverts

Posted on by bobdvb

At the weekend I saw an advert on TV while visiting my mothers which was very familiar and so I sought it out to share. The following is the new advert for Mikado chocolate biscuit sticks:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z8kxB3nSTn0

However here is the dutch advert for ‘AA paper’ which is suspiciously identical and predates the Mikado advert on UK television:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_zLDTu4QYtI

A shame that the advertising company didn’t check that their advert was original… It seems ‘AA paper’ do know how to make original adverts:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V7CfGj406u0

Classic cartoon show themes

Posted on by bobdvb

In a fit of nostalgia today we were discusssing different children’s TV series we watched in the 80s.

Bob was recalling the work of Gerry Anderson and I was trying to remember series we saw in Greece.

So here is a list of TV themes of the programmes we have found in reverse order:

Paramithas: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zk9YEDVWmw&NR=1

Tou Koutiou Ta Paramithia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvMy2KN6hsI&feature=related

Froutopia: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=phRykHMbFPg&feature=related

Fraggle Rock: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aky72-gyLLI&feature=related

The Wombles: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qJFx7n9V3Xc

Banana Man: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cNknWT-agT0&feature=related

Superted: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZg74STOfig&feature=related

Around the World in 80 Days: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1nGrYEFG6Ho&feature=related

Dogtanian and the Muskerhounds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P-xO72s5EBY&feature=related

Mysterious Cities of Gold: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcH_ZTF6smY&feature=related

Ulysses 31: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZ4c1X5ene8&feature=related

Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A1c1G24GWDg

Thundercats: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-sOaUAgbB4

Trap Door: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iDs8VMz-cuc&feature=related

Count Duckula: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VthsQVsXwEg&feature=related

Dangermouse: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cw2TDna9NYg&feature=related

King Arthur: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62tsVCxOoO4&feature=related

Stingray: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E06cNv55jTs

Thunderbirds: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDX5Mlz46Vg&feature=related

Captain Scarlett: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=7881044728207551933&hl=en

Nils Holgersson: http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=2013668261524141026&hl=en

If that doesn’t make you feel nostalgic, I don’t know what will.

Not forgetting…

Candy Candy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IALbWtbqqlQ

Heidi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGyBpG3rbXA

 

 

London Black Cabs

Posted on by bobdvb

The London Black Cab, or Hackney Carriage (as they may not always be black) is one of the most iconic symbols of London. This Christmas I was asked by Angeliki’s brother-in-law what company made them (what brand). Oddly enough no one company makes all of them, unlike in cities like Berlin where almost every (yellow) taxi is a Mercedes, the Hackney Carriage is infact a style of vehicle which has been around since the 40s. From Austin, LTI or Metrocab. The most notable thing about the Hackney Carriage is that it has a 25ft turning circle which allows it to turn around in London’s tight streets in one go, I doubt a New York Taxi could achieve such a feat!

London’s Hackney Carrage drivers are the only ones allowed to stop and ply for trade on the streets of London without a booking, so if visiting London only ever hail a black cab otherwise you might not be so safe. The other advantage of a licensed London Cab driver is that he must has passed “The Knowledge”, which is a test which is designed to ensure that the applicant knows every part of London inside and out. They are tested to ensure they can (without the assistance of a map) remember a selection of routes around London and the location of almost any street.

Read more about this fascinating vehicle here:

http://www.lvta.co.uk/history.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackney_carriage

http://www.lti.co.uk/

 

Customer Service Abuse

Posted on by bobdvb

Our call centre isn’t big, but then again it is very efficient and rarely has dropped or missed calls. Plus we have sufficient measures in place to allow us to call people back as soon as things slack off.

However, yesterday a client called to ask about something (which being a broadcast problem wasn’t our problem and wasn’t our fault), and he called during a busy period. After being on old for 4min 31seconds he was offered the opportunity of being called back rather than waiting, he could leave a message with his details and normally we call back within a couple of hours at most. He left this message:

NSFW: http://www.orbit.me.uk/gallery2/main.php?g2_itemId=1206

Pleasent chap to use that kind of bad language to some people who are there to help and who weren’t actually responsible for his troubles. But it’s our box they are using it must be our fault.

He was called back, around 10min later, funnily he hadn’t left his phone number on the message but everything is logged anyway. He was very sheepish and humble; surprised to be called back by someone so helpful.

 

Storage Neutral

Posted on by bobdvb

lol @ http://www.freedom-to-tinker.com/?p=1271

 I love the idea. In fact I love it so much I have decided to work on a strategy neutral lifestyle. For every positive step I make I will make an equally stupid decision. Wait… I think I do that more than I realise already!

Apache Rewrite to deal with code injections in URIs

Posted on by bobdvb

Ok, so because of a potential hole in the Mambo CMS with the PHP rule "RegisterGlobals On" I get people trying to inject code into my website. However I don't actually use the Register Globals On, because I am less of a fool than you might think and I wanted to highlight this problem in my log and block the requests.

Continue reading “Apache Rewrite to deal with code injections in URIs” →