Twenty Sided

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 19, 2006

Filed under: Links 11 comments

Thanks to everyone who left so many comments on the post earlier today. The big thing that I’ve learned is that bandwidth is much, much cheaper elsewhere. I use HostingMatters, who I chose because they have a good reputation for uptime and customer service. These were my main concerns after leaving ANHosting, who were lacking in both.

Tirgaya linked to Dreamhost, who offers 2TB(!!!!) of transfer a month, for a fraction of what I’m paying at HM. Hang on, let me get the calculator…

Poke. poke. poke.

Okay…

Hosting Matters = $0.52 per gigabyte.
DreamHost = $0.004 per gigabyte. (No, that isn’t a typo, it is really four thenths of a cent per gig.)

I’m speechless. The price difference is ridiculous. If these numbers are for real, then I could easily run this site for eight bucks a month. Without the #@%#@ ads. Without killing my comics with JPG abuse. This… this can’t be right.

Let me run the numbers again…

Okay. The numbers are for real. Really strange. This sounds too good to be true. What the heck? They have a $50 signup fee, so I don’t want to do anything rash, but this looks like it would solve all of my problems if it actually works.

I’m not going to do anything just yet, but it looks like I have lots of options. One way or another, I think I can get back to the days of careless and rampant bandwidth comsumption.

Thanks for the advice, and the numerous offers for help, the offers for spare bandwidth, the encouragement, and everything else.

LATER: Okay, maybe Dreamhost is a bad idea. Still, somewhere between 52 cents and .4 cents there ought to be someone half-decent.

STILL LATER: I get it. The $0.004 per gig is allowed, because what they DON’T tell you on the features page is that you are also limited by CPU minutes per day. It looks like the 2TB limit is a sham, since apparently you’ll hit the CPU limit WAAAY before you get anywhere near the bandwidth limit.

Sneaks.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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11 comments

Session 12, Part 1

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 19, 2006

Filed under: D&D Campaign 14 comments

 Session 11, Part 2Previous Post

Next PostSession 12, Part 2 

Here we are at a pivotal session in the campaign. We played for five hours, and the notes I have cover less than a paragraph. Sigh. I REALLY wish I had the audio of these sessions.

For a refresher, I strongly suggest you read Part III of the Book of Norvus. The history in that book is a big part of this session.

The party awakens in the Mages archives. They spend some time going through the library, and find some books of use. They learn the location of the shaft dug by the dwarves who imprisoned Fiore. They decide this is an interesting find. The site is less than a day from here. It is finally decided that they will go there in search of clues.

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Session 12, Part 1”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Session 11, Part 2Previous Post

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14 comments

Perspective

By Shamus Posted Tuesday Dec 19, 2006

Filed under: Random 22 comments

 This is ChristmasPrevious Post

Next PostProblems: Resolution 

In June 2006 this site burned through 2.4GB of bandwidth.

On Friday, December 8, this site burned through 4.6GB. I’m pretty much doing in a day what I used to do in a month, bandwidth-wise. This is still peanuts compared to a lot of big sites, but this is way more traffic than I planned on using for my little hobby site.

Now I see why people sell coffee mugs and t-shirts and whatnot when their site starts doing well. You need to do that to pay the bills. I’m still not at all interested in asking for money. I don’t want to start running a store. I refuse to accept donations. I refuse to cover this site in ads. I also don’t want to stop making the comic just yet. Can’t bandwidth just be… I don’t know… free or something?

I entertained the idea of putting the strips on Flickr and letting THEM figure out how to pay for all that bandwidth, but I’ll bet my ripped images – while still legal fair use – probably violate the Flicker TOS.

I’m still working on this. All I want to do is make something funny and give it away for free. It annoys me that cold, hard reality keeps intruding on this idea and ruining my fun with boring details like paying for things.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 This is ChristmasPrevious Post

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22 comments

This is Christmas

By Shamus Posted Monday Dec 18, 2006

Filed under: Random 16 comments

 Wordpress Bug?Previous Post

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Geeze. Let’s see, let’s see…

Normal baseline level of Holiday confusion, plus…
Daughter is going to have surgery (Tonsillectomy) this week.
Son is sick with a worrisome fever that has hung around for about five days.
Death in the family. (Not a close relative, but this was someone young – a twenty-three year old woman – and that is always a tragic blow.)
Hectic project at work needs to be done BEFORE Christmas.

This sounds like the set-up to one of those wacky movies where the frantic energy of the holidays acts as a catalyst of healing and reconciliation, and at the end everyone remembers the true spirit of Christmas. Except in this case, it isn’t very hilarious, everyone already has a firm grip on the Christmas spirit, and we were all getting along just fine to begin with.

Sigh.

Maybe my boss will give me a call on Tuesday and say something like, “Shamus, you’re a hilarious guy and I want to see the next issue of your webcomic, so take a day off. Screw the client.”

I’m thinking this isn’t very likely, but this is the season when miracles happen.

If not, then we can catch up with the comic next week.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

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16 comments

Session 11, Part 2

By Shamus Posted Saturday Dec 16, 2006

Filed under: D&D Campaign 3 comments

 Session 11, Part 1Previous Post

Next PostSession 12, Part 1 

The party continues east. Several times throught the trip they see Garret scanning the horizon through a spyglass, looking at it through the wrong end. They have written Garret off as an idiot by this point, so they let it slide without comment. Eventually this gets on Eomer’s nerves and he tries to show Garret how to use a spyglass.

Garret explains that this is how the Mages Archives can be seen. Up close (within a hundred or so paces) it can be plainly seen, but at a distance it can only be spotted by looking through the wrong end of a spyglass.
Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Session 11, Part 2”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Session 11, Part 1Previous Post

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3 comments

DM of the Rings XLII:
Joining the Rebellion

By Shamus Posted Friday Dec 15, 2006

Filed under: DM of the Rings 38 comments

 DM of the Rings XLI:
A New HopePrevious Post

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Rail-Rodian 

Dave as Frodo wants to play Star Wars D&D. Sam wants to be a Jedi. Dave quits. Casey Jones.

Characters come and go, but the relative success of a campaign story can be judged by the number of players who are willing to see it through to the end.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 DM of the Rings XLI:
A New HopePrevious Post

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Rail-Rodian 

38 comments

Yew Tock and it Types Four Hue!

By Shamus Posted Friday Dec 15, 2006

Filed under: Rants 13 comments

 Spam: How to Make Things WorsePrevious Post

Next PostVista, Your new Governess 

One of the ads in the sidebar right now is for “Dragon Naturally Speaking”, a program which allows you to “type by talking”. You know: speech recognition and whatnot. The ad boasts “99% accuracy, can your staff do as well?”

Actually, unless they are just learning English the average person is bound to do a lot better than a mere 99%. Words are lost all the time due to background noise or differing pronounciation, be we are nearly always able to auto-correct for this on the fly, usually before the other person even finishes speaking. If we really couldn’t figure out one out of every hundred words, conversation would be maddening. We would be misunderstanding each other, or asking the other person to repeat things more or less constantly. The average Joe can do better than 99% talking on a cell phone in a noisy room.

So yeah, unless you’re the governor of California, your staff probably does a lot better than 99% accuracy.

(Oh, and a slight disclaimer: You need to train the software for a week before you can attain that less-than stellar 99%.)

LATER: I must add: I don’t have a problem with the software itself, my gripe here is that the ad was trying to pit their software against human beings. Computers are unbeatable when it comes to doing calculations, sorting, and storage of data. But when it comes to deciphering language, they can’t hope to keep up with a human. So, the ad was kind of indirectly insulting, which is why I just wasted four paragraphs on it.

Sheesh. I shouldn’t be this grumpy on a Friday.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

 Spam: How to Make Things WorsePrevious Post

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