Updates and other Shit

Proud parents...

2009-11-07T18:20:27Z

niftybitch and scsi are proud parents last week and all are doing well. Please send out good thoughts. I thought he would have written about this, but he's been too busy! :)

One year later...

2009-10-09T00:22:31Z

Hi everyone,

Its been one year since DJ changed hands and was moved to a new facility. Bill of Warped moved DJ from 13 servers sitting in a soon-to-be-closed colocation facility in Stockton to one huge virtual instance at Amazon's Cloud Computing Center.

We have paved the road for future expansion.

As cryo said prior, I am working on bringing the current LJ code to DJ. We have both been working hard to make sure that all of your emo-wrist cutting poems and userpics make the journey safely. My work has been cut out for me. With a baby on the way and tons of tests to run on the new codebase I feel like my head is going to explode.

However, all is not that bad, because I do all of this for the paid users of the site. With AdBlock becoming more and more common usage, this site is entirely funded by the paid users who love the site enough to kick a few bucks over for a paid account. Cryo and I cannot express how much we appreciate every dollar that comes in. A million thank yous.

So, saying that, I present to you the DeadJournal test server!

http://www.tardjournal.com (ignore the domain, its one I had laying around.) You may have to shift-refresh a few times if nobody has gone on the site recently due to how the test server is setup (the main site will NOT be like this). Now this test site is slow, Its running out of my closet :).

I am using a very old database snapshot before the site moved over to cryo. Your login/passwords should work as before.

Now some of the features are turned off until we can work the bugs out. Embedding due to the recent LJ security hole, and messaging/email sending are all intentionally turned off until I can run further tests. I am looking for bugs that pertain to the core site usage. Posting, commenting, userpics, and themes. Pretty much what this current site has.

Since there is a new HTML eater on this site, some of your S1 themes may be a bit... modified... in the name of security. Test it out, give it a whirl. cryo will be posting a place to post all of the bugs you find.

Since this is a test server, expect it to be offline and your data randomly loss. Nothing is going to be saved on the test site after testing is complete and we move the main site over, so don't write that Grammy winning wrist splitting entry on it!

If you have any questions or concerns, please let cryo know. I'll be pounding my head against the undocumented code of LJ-Land while I wait for my child to be born.

-Frank

DeadJournal celebrates 1 year of being Warped!

2009-10-02T04:20:35Z

In this past year, we have concentrated on increasing the stability, speed, and reliability of DeadJournal. Recently, scsi has been working on bringing the source code up from 2002 to now, which will give DeadJournal features zombies and ghouls have been wanting for quite a while. We will be bringing this online asap, while ensuring that your existing entries, icons, comments, and other data are migrated.

We've are working on improving the reduction of spambots from leaving anonymous posts in some of your journals. While this may be a tad more work for those who wish to post anonymously, the number of reports of spam have dropped dramatically just in the first 24 hours. We will continue to evaluate and implement methods to control these botnet posts while trying to make the user impact minimal.

scsi and niftybitch are expecting their new baby very very soon, so send out nice thoughts to them!

Remember that paid accounts should have lots of invites to give out to your friends. You can follow us on Twitter at @DeadJournal and @Warped, and the status page at http://status.deadjournal.com or in #deadjournal on FreeNode.

Let us know how we're doing.

DreamWidth conversion progress report.

2009-09-09T04:14:34Z

Hello DeadJournalians!

THIS IS SCSI MAYS HERE TO TELL YOU ABOUT AN IMPORTANT DJ UPDATE!

So as you can tell, I haven't been posting or doing anything public on DeadJournal for the past few months. Thats because I've been working on porting the Dreamwidth codebase to work with our DeadJournal database. We hope to have something working within a few months (fingers crossed). Its a ton of work, but I think the whole 4 people who still use this site deserve it.

Here is the progress:

Posting works.

Commenting works.

Friends/Groups and the DW equivalent of "Friends" is sorta-kinda-asking-for-help on the right track.

Once things get stable, I'll ask a few of the hard-core paid members for help with the testing. The DreamWidth crew are a ton of help and I know a few other old LJ sites are waiting to see how this turns out before they update their sites.

Thanks for your continued support in DeadJournal.

Unplanned emergency maintenance

2009-06-16T06:06:36Z

After zombies (Joey and Ghouly) ran off with DJ, the databases needed to be re-indexed.

After 170 days of uptime, the EC2 instance decided that it didn't like what I said about spammers, and rebelled with the zombies. I hope scsi is enjoying his rest, because he didn't have to deal with this.

Anyway, enough whining. It's back up and will be monitored with a pick-axe.

Make sure you delete + report spam

2009-06-15T23:04:21Z

We dropped the ball catching and blocking the IP addresses of the last batch of spammers, but we're now actively monitoring the spam reports. We were thinking about adding captcha to anon posting to help cut down on this, but only as a measure of last resort. Turning off anonymous replies on your DeadJournal helps, especially in communities that do not want anonymous posters.

Your thoughts are welcomed... and will probably be criticized by scsi.

That is all.

STUFF FOR YOU TO DO.

2009-06-02T05:08:13Z

Since there haven't been any major reports of site problems since we fixed the userpic keyword issue. We'd like for you to test that you can generate new invite codes to give to people that you feel deserve to be here at DeadJournal. To do this, go to http://deadjournal.com/invite/ and Generate more codes (unless you're maxed out). If you are maxed out, make sure that it's because they codes have been used and that you were given more than one.

Then go out and pollute the world with the codes to get more people here.

You've probably also noticed that the site has been fast and reliable and that we are taking stringent methods to reduce spambots as best as we can. A little name dropping of your DJ on other sites, or about how Cool Warped is, always gets you good points with us, and maybe even a few extra trinkets thrown your ways if it's the creative enough.

Otherwise, you can be looking for a girlfriend for cryo because he's been very down since his last one left him. I know you really want to hang out with his coolness, and needs someone who has a heart, low miles, and not a zombie brain.

Database Maintenance 12am-4am EDT

2009-05-04T03:29:53Z

We will be performing some maintenance on the databases during this time. The site may be up in read-only during this time, but probably not while the database consistency checks are happening.

Try not to have the suicide rates increase while this is happening.

[edit: You can follow the gory details on Twitter @deadjournal]

[edit2: Site is back up, and the userpics databases are being upgraded to a newer version to fix the userpic keywords bug (hopefully)]

[final edit: all done. Report any bugs you see (of course, we'll just say you're seeing thing).]

We have improved the detection and prevent of some spambots...

2009-04-28T01:05:29Z

Please continue to report spammers, so we can continue to nail IP blocks.

Also, we are now on Twitter, @DeadJournal so feel free to add us.

We're still here, and improving our service to you.

2009-01-07T17:29:45Z

With the recent news about LiveJournal cutting its staff dramatically, people are wondering whether their journals are still safe under the current regime running LJ. We'd like to take a few minutes of your time and let you know that our service has improved since the acquisition, and we are doing quite a few things to improve DeadJournal even more. To give you some idea about the safety of your journal here, the MySQL database is running on Amazon's Elastic Block Storage on a Linux XFS file system. Together this provides speed and massive redundance, as well as the ability for us to frequent database snapshots which we can roll back to in the unlikely event of a failure. System-wise, we are running on Amazon's Elastic Computing Cloud, which gives us a huge advantage of not having to deal with hardware, plus extremely easy scaling when the load increases.

With your paid accounts, you are ensuring that DJ will continue to grow and provide you better service and features. We also invite you to ... invite those LiveJournal users who are worried to come on over and try us out. We will be increasing the number of invite codes for you to give to them and your friends. I recommend taunting, torturing, and other devices to get them on here.

Whats been in the planning for 4 months.

2008-10-07T05:36:19Z

Before you freak out, read this then read my post at the bottom. Its something that is going to be awesome.

---

CONTENT: PRESS RELEASE
TITLE: WARPED COMMUNICATIONS, INC. ACQUIRES DEADJOURNAL.COM
CONTACT: PRESS@WARPED.COM
EMBARGO: 10/6/2008
BEGIN CONTENT: -- Warped Communcations, Inc. acquires DeadJournal.com --

Warped Communications, Inc., a Georgia corporation, is pleased to
announce the acquisition of DeadJournal.com, a journaling website
started in 2000. DeadJournal provides a darker-themed place for people
to record their lives, images, thoughts, rants and raves.

"Current users and customers of DeadJournal will now find their journals
on a distributed infrastructure with greater speed, security, scaling,
and reliability." said William J. Coldwell (Cryo), Founder and Vice
President of Warped Communications, Inc. "We welcome DeadJournal into
the Warped family, and will provide you with the great service that you
have come to expect from DJ. We enhance the service with our experience
and fantastic support."

Frank Precissi (SCSi), Founder and system administrator of DeadJournal
has joined the Warped executive staff and will continue to administrate
the site, ensuring that the standards set by him in creating the site
will remain. "I am excited over what we are now able to do with the
site. I look forward to concentrating on updating the source code as
well as bringing many more features to DeadJournal.", Mr. Precissi
says, adding, "This will give DJ the resources to improve rather than
just maintain."

DeadJournal supports OpenID, and uses the open-source LiveJournal code
modified with a sardonic and humorous theme towards goths, emo, and
zombies.

Warped Communications, Inc. (warped.com) is a privately held, premiere
web hosting company. Formed in 1994, Warped has provided thousands of
customers with reliable hosting, technical support and customer service.

All trademarks are those of their respective companies. No emo teen goth
zombies were harmed during this press release and transition.

END CONTENT:-- Copyright 2008, Warped Communications, Inc. - All Rights
Reserved. --

scsi's personal feelings are found here

DeadJournal Downtime Notice

2008-10-01T15:31:12Z

Hi Everyone!

I'm Frank, and I run this place.

This coming Friday (10/3) night I'm going to be taking the site down for a few days. This is because we are moving the DJ servers to a new location. Thats right! We're moving on up, to the east side, to a Deluxe colocation in the sky!

Actually we're moving the site to Amazon's EC2 service. Not only will this give DJ huge amounts of bandwidth, but since everything will be ran on amazon's cluster there will be no more disk or hardware failures. Plus it'll take care of the packet loss issue.

Not only that, but we'll be able to add more "servers" just by issuing a few commands which means faster service. Also, since I wont have to "buy" additional hardware, we can look at enabling some features such as embedding youtube and other things. It will take a few days to move/sort things out (since as we speak people in china are retyping your journal entries on the new servers... Kidding) but it'll be worth it in the end. Things may be a bit rocky as we crank the site back up again, but we'll be sure to keep you posted as to exactly what is going on.

This is a huge jump/move for DJ, and I know it means a ton to the whole 10 people who still use this site :)

So this friday night, if DJ is down don't panic, its because we intentionally shut the site down so insure that we don't lose one emo journal entry.

Rocky Road Ahead

2008-07-07T16:01:49Z

Hi Everyone,

Just to squash some rumors - We have been having some major packet loss going into and out of where the servers are housed. Its effecting everyone in the place (few dozen of us), so its not DJ being poopy its the faculity. :)

I have a few trouble tickets open and I hope it sorts itself out soon. Probably a router acting up somewhere or something..

Downtime 6/6-6/7

2007-06-07T07:26:26Z

*sigh* Hello everyone.

You're probably wondering what happened to DeadJournal all day on 6/6/07.

Another server in the same facility as DJ was hit with a distributed denial of service attack. Meaning they flooded the network with so much bogus traffic (80 megabits/sec) that no legit traffic (meaning you) could get to the site. In fact, the entire facility was brought down by this attack.

The attack was NOT aimed at DJ or anything related to DeadJournal. We were just an innocent third party that got hit during the attack. A lot of us were.

I feel awful that I've had to sit all day and watch the site crawl and die. I have not been able to do anything to help anyone but just wait until the attack either stopped or upstream blocks had been put in place.

Again, these attacks did NOT target DJ, you, or your journals. We just got caught up in the flood of traffic.

Thanks everyone for your continued support, and I'm sorry for the downtime.

-Frank

Daylight Savings Time Update, Not seeing your Journal, etc.

2007-03-16T15:39:00Z

Hi Everyone!

Support requested that I publish this notice:

If you are having problems seeing your journal or your friends page, it could be due to an incorrect time on your computer. We are seeing a whole lot of support requests come in since the new Daylight Savings Time kicked in. Here is what support is saying:

Support Volunteers are unable to determine the nature of this recurring issue. However, it should be noted that this problem only appears to occur with users of Windows and Internet Explorer.

Please carefully read and follow the step-by-step instructions below, even if you have tried them previously.

First, please select "Windows Update" from your Start menu, and download all critical updates. Once you have ensured that your operating system is up-to-date, you may have to restart your computer.

Next, double-click the current time displayed in your taskbar. In the panel that pops up, verify that your current date, time, and time zone are correct.

Under the "Internet Time" tab, there should be a checkmark in the box next to, "Automatically synchronize with an internet time server." The time server should read: time.windows.com. Once these settings are correct, click on the button marked "Update Now" to synchronize with the internet time server.

If you are still seeing this error page after following the steps above, it is likely because you are viewing a cached or "saved" version of the page. Please clear your browser's cache and cookies by following the instructions detailed in the following tutorial from the DeadJournal HowTo community: http://howto.deadjournal.com/5193.html

Please note that you will have to close all open windows and restart your browser for these changes to take effect.

Finally, if following the above steps (in precise order) does not resolve the issue, please comment back to this request so that Support Volunteers may further investigate. Alternately, you may wish to use another, non-Internet Explorer based, web browser.

Here is also the link to the Microsoft page that has the Daylight Savings Time Patch on it:
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/928388

new_shit @ 2007-02-05T02:52:00

2007-02-05T11:46:43Z

Hi!

I'm scsi and I run this place (all by my lonesome!).

Around 1:00am Pacific Time one of the database servers locked up. Fixed it, site was down for a little under 2 hours. All of you were probably asleep (like myself) and didn't notice.

new_shit @ 2006-06-01T19:48:00

2006-06-02T02:35:12Z

One of the database servers locked up.

Had to reboot it, repair the database, etc.

Sorry about that everyone, its been a really really bad few weeks for DJ. I hope it gets better.. :(

Trouble with PO Box.

2006-05-31T04:47:08Z

Hi Everyone!

Some of you (but most might not) might get your payment returned to you via our friends at the postal service.

The reason is my fault. I forgot to pay the PO Box. :(

It sat on my desk, got lost in the mess and never got paid. Yeah, i'm an idiot, and I apologize. The new address is:

DeadJournal Payments
834 W Sonoma Ave
Stockton, CA 95204

If you send me your payment with your old envelope, i'll add on a few months for free as a token of my dumbassness and lack of planning.

On the good side, I wont have to put up with the crap the local Post Office has been dishing to me like closing at 5:00pm (when Tiffany and I get off work at 6pm) because homeless people like to sleep in the post office.

Again, i'm sorry this happened, and dont freak out thinking that we're closing up or something... :)

Downtime Report 5/21-22/06

2006-05-22T07:46:53Z

Hi everyone!

I'm scsi and I run this place known as DeadJournal.

As you probably realized, the site was down for some time today (5/21 and 5/22).

Short answer: Blew the power strip in the cabinet where all the servers are. They were all powered off, and I just now got 15+ machines back up and running

Long answer: Power strip blew out causing 1/2 of the machines to get powered off. The surge from the power strip blowing blew out the circuit breaker to the whole cabinet causing the other 1/2 of the machines to get powered off. Had to call some people, search for the tripped breaker, and find a new power strip long before I could start recovering all of the machines.

The site may be slow, and there might be some intermittenant glitches here and there as the memory caches refill. The site is mostly up, however I may need to take it offline in a few days to do some backend work. Both databases checked out fine, so there wont be any issues regarding your entries/comments.

This is also a friendly reminder that you should always backup your journal. If that breaker would of caught fire.. uhh.. lets not think about that.. ;)

Thanks everyone for understanding (extra special thanks to the paid users, you're the driving force behind me doing what I do).

new_shit @ 2006-01-26T19:57:00

2006-01-27T04:13:04Z

Hi everyone!

Apologies in advance for this really not-make-sense update. I'm sick and stressed out. :(

I just upgraded the server code. Some changes include

Schools!

~~Nudge (or as we call it here BitchSlap) a Friend~~ Jury is out on this one. About half the people like it, the other half dont. I'll have to feel this one out.

Also for your account protection:

You'll need your password to add/change an email address.

If you lose your password, a random one will be sent to the email address you have on file

All journal urls (with the exception of accounts that start or end with _) are changed to username.deadjournal.com. This was a paid-only account before on other journal sites, but you get it for free here at DeadJournal. :) If you are one of those people with _'s in your username, if they are in the MIDDLE they will be turned into -'s (like denial-land.deadjournal.com), if they are in the FRONT or BACK (like _cutiepie696969 or butthole_) your journal address will be limbo.deadjournal.com/_username (or username_).

There will be some rough edges, and I apologize in advance for them. Dont leave a bug report here (the'll get missed). Just open a support ticket and the'll be sorted and presented to me for fixing.

I see people posting and commenting, so thats a good sign that the base site is working. All that needs work is the bells and whistles. :)

Blah.. Upgrade status.

2006-01-21T07:20:37Z

Hi Everyone!

The upgrade didnt take place tonight. Turns out the LJ staff is making a bunch of behind-the-scenes changes to the code, and advised me to wait until tomorrow night or sunday so they can work all the bugs out of the code.

Doing the upgrade tonight would probably lead to half of the stuff breaking, etc.

However! I did use the downtime tonight to get some backend work done, so tomorrow night I'll just have to take the site down for 45 min or so (*knock on wood*) while i swap the files out then bring the site right back up.

Sorry about all of this mess, its a rough spot for all the journal sites right now.

Upgrade on Friday the 20th!

2006-01-19T02:52:51Z

Hi everyone! This is scsi (the guy who runs this site and pays the bills).

This is to let you all know that i'm going to be taking the site down for a few hours on Friday the 20th (this friday) to upgrade the site.

Stuff that will be new:

schools!

Nudge (or as we call it here, bitchslap) a friend!

Other neat stuff!

This is a really late notice because of some security stuff, and also because the journal addresses are going to be changing (much like they are on LiveJournal as well).

Since this is a hasty upgrade, there are going to be some rough edges, and some things might not work right off the bat, so just be patient as I work out all the kinks (its only me doing this, not a staff of people like on LJ).

I'll upgrade this post as more info becomes available. I have to work my ass off getting all the bugs out before Friday.. :(

Downtime Report

2005-10-18T06:26:05Z

Hi Everyone,

As you probably found out for yourself, we had some site problems between 7:30pm PDT and 11pm PDT. One of the main database servers decided to lock up, so it had to scan all 11 million journal entries 20 million comments and like 2 million interests for errors before it brought itself back up. That took some time, but everything should be okay (the time may be off for a day, then it'll correct itself). I'll probably be up all night watching the damn thing in case it decides to die again.. :(

Sorry for the downtime everyone. I wish there was a better way to do this, but DJ has no money.. :(

new_shit @ 2005-07-02T09:06:00

2005-07-02T17:34:24Z

Hi everyone!

As you probably have found out already, we've upgraded the server code! Its been almost 2 years since DeadJournal has updated its site, so considering how much stuff changed we are sure to get a few glitches.

Bear with my typing, Ive had less than 3 hours of sleep.. :(

Here are the most notable (point your friends here if they ask you about any of this. Then call them a dumbass for not having new_shit on their friends list).

The HTML cleaner is really really strict about having proper HTML in your styles. If you get a "irrepairable markup" error, its probably because you need to tweak your HTML overrides.

OpenID is turned off, there is a bug that I need to talk to Brad from LJ about before I try fixing it.. You will still be able to use your DJ account to comment on LiveJournal (theres a faq about it), but you wont be able to have people comment on your DJ via LJ until I get this problem sorted out.

We lost a server in the process (disk went out).. I wont have enough time to fix/replace it but there is a redundant one working so you probably wont know a difference (except the DJ banner ads wont work, but those rarely show anyways). Shift-refresh will pull any broken images. I'm redoing the whole server layout, so it shouldnt be much of an issue.

If you dont like the new layout, you can always change it back to the original at http://www.deadjournal.com/manage/siteopts.bml By default it'll show this one, but if you change yours, it'll save a cookie that will display the layout you choose when you use that browser/login. I know some of the HTML is jacked on wide pages, especially up at the top banner.. We're working on this bug (its a minor one at that).

The whole mixup this morning about you going to www.vadept.com (my personal homepage) rather than www.deadjournal.com was a b0rk on my part... I typed 209.142.3.150 when I should of typed 209.142.3.148 at 2am this morning.. Yeah, uhh, sorry? Its fixed now (hopefully)... Nothing was wrong with the server per se, but my mistake made www.deadjournal.com go to someplace else rather than to the server that runs the site... I hope this makes sense.

Things will slowly get better, dont worry.. Have a happy 4th! Dont blow off any fingers! California residents have my sympathy for having the lamest firework laws on the planet.. If you're bored you can click on the google ads to make DJ some money (or just get a paid account) :)

Oh, and remember that its just me who runs the backend for DJ, so cut me a little slack.. :)

Ack, clarification

2005-06-28T05:25:18Z

About S2 and free accounts. There was a bit of confusion (and I worded it poorly).

Free accounts will not be able to CREATE new S2 styles. You WILL still be able to alter the pre-made ones here on DJ (like colors, fonts, etc).. You just cannot make your own.. Since S2 is its own programming language, I doubt any of you will be affected by this.

Basically /customize/advanced will be taken away for free accounts.. Dont worry, you can still change colors and stuff. Just no NEW custom S2 styles for the free accounts (we'll be adding some more S2 styles for the free accounts over time).