Blog@Case Topics: blog@casehttp://blog.case.edu/topics/blog@caseGregory Szorcgregory.szorc@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/gps10Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithSandy Pideritkristin.piderit@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/kep22006-10-20T10:43:39ZMovable Type Scalinghttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2007/02/26/movable_type_scaling2007-02-26T19:23:17Z2007-02-26T19:22:56Z
There has been a little bit of a dust up regarding Movable Type and its ability to scale. I thought I would add to the conversation with my experiences. I run the blog.case.edu system. It runs on a semi-modified installation of Movable Type. You can check on its web server stats here. There's some more stats here and here. Here are some summaries of some of the actual numbers: Approximately 50 GB/month is served over the wire on average (for February 2007, we're doing about 2.3GB/day for a total of 60.7GB so far this month) 446 entries were created in the last 30 days 5303 comments were made in the last 30 days (this number does include spam that got past the anti-spam measures), which is an average of 177 comments per day (the median number is 166 comments per day) That would be a general summary of what we're serving here. We haven't had to "scale" it. It runs on one Dell 1850 with nothing fancy going on -- no mod_(perl|FastCGI) or advanced caching mechanisms -- it's a MySQL install, Apache install, and the Movable Type CGIs 1 all running on the Dell. This isn't to say we've never had performance problems. It's a constant war with the spammers; one that is constantly fared with any large installation of weblogs or wikis. Sometimes we are on the losing edge of the battle, but that's mostly due to lack of engineering man-hour resources to implement all of the recommended anti-spam measures, and that blame should not be totally shouldered by MT. The CGIs aren't as responsive as I would like them to be, and we've been working to alleviate that problem. But overall, the performance of the system is good. I'm not saying there is not room for improvement, but in general, the system has held up. In the original article questioning MT's ability to scale, they don't post any actual numbers of where its limitations begin to reveal themselves; so I'm not sure if the loads they are seeing are significantly higher than the numbers I'm talking about here. That may be the case. 1We are currently beginning the work on building the replacement for the blog.case.edu system, which will include performance enhancements such as running the CGIs in mod_fastCGI, running the comment and trackback handlers with a separate Apache instance, all new anti-spam counter-measures, and a host of other tweaks and improvements that we've been able to identify by running the system in production and analyzing server logs and load times. Our findings and tweakings may well deserve a separate blog entry.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithToo Much Spam on Blog@Casehttp://blog.case.edu/gps10/2007/02/02/too_much_spam_on_blogcase2007-02-02T07:38:30Z2007-02-02T07:43:22Z
I've been getting a lot of spam recently on this blog system. One of my posts has roughly 340 spam comments! I know the site administrator has done lots to prevent spam from getting through and lots of spam is being prevented, but these levels of spam are almost too unbearable. It makes one consider switching to another blog host...
Gregory Szorcgregory.szorc@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/gps10Mena Trott evangelizes personal blogshttp://blog.case.edu/kep2/on_the_working_world/index#0117052006-10-20T10:14:53Z2006-10-20T10:43:39ZThis is a quick, reflective post in the role of the web in general, and blogs in particular, in how adults learn, make and keep connections to friends and family, and get things done (both for heir hobbies and avocations and in their paid work).
This is a quick, reflective post in the role of the web in general, and blogs in particular, in how adults learn, make and keep connections to friends and family, and get things done (both for heir hobbies and avocations and in their paid work). Yesterday, I taught a MGMT 250 class session on the training design process. Twelve different student teams prepared and delivered 3-minute impromptu speeches on different training methods. The list of 12 different methods included: distance learning, learning portals, and at least one other method that involved the use of technology in some way. I was really struck by how differently this semester's group of 40 students respond to the different training options, in terms of their perceived advantages and disadvantages, than the group of students I taught back in 1998 or 1999 when I first came to Case Western Reserve. I think I first started using blogs as one way of getting students to capture and share their reflections with me and with their classmates sometime around 2002 or 2003. Lots more students, this fall, have some previous experience with blogging. But there are still some who don't blog, and may not read any blogs on a regular basis. At the other end of the spectrum, there have been a few students in my class who were very internet-savvy in high school, learned to do web design for fun, and then converted their new skills into a way to make money. Things are clearly changing. And yet, our local paper of record still seems to portray the dominant culture image of blogs -- they're just personal diaries on the web, they're not worth reading, they aren't going to change the entire media industry.... all while developing their own site for the newspaper, which now includes blogs by a few reporters. I just came across Mena Trott's blog recently (click through to read more) And will someone please post a comment on this entry, so I can be reassured that the Blog@Case spamfilter isn't overfunctioning again?
Sandy Pideritkristin.piderit@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/kep2Another semester of students begin a blogging experimenthttp://blog.case.edu/kep2/teaching/index#0107102006-09-08T11:19:04Z2006-09-08T11:30:05Z
Yesterday, Jeremy Smith gave a fabulous presentation on blogging using the Blog@Case system to interested students in MGMT 250 and 251 this fall. He discussed why it is useful for professionals to maintain a blog, explaining the merits of controlling one's online brand. He also walked through how to start up a blog on the Blog@Case system, how to categorize or tag a blog entry, and how to manage comment spam. Many thanks to Jeremy for a well-organized, crisp, and informative presentation! If any of my readers are interested in following the MGMT 250 students' blog entries, here's a link that will aggregate all entries that are tagged "MGMT250" (note the lack of space in that tag): topic=MGMT250 Here is the equivalent link for students in MGMT 251: topic=MGMT251. This fall, students in 251 will be starting topical blogs, in pairs or trios... the assignment has been modified slightly, so that there will be more than one student contributing on the same approved topic. I hope that the added number of entries on the same topic will help students find ways to draw traffic to their blogs. I will post later in the semester introducing the topic of each of those focused blogs, once they have an initial effort at relevant entries under their belts. If you are curious about why I encourage my students to learn how to blog, you might be interested in reading this entry of mine from about one year ago.
Sandy Pideritkristin.piderit@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/kep2online impression managementhttp://blog.case.edu/kep2/blogcase/index#0100832006-07-28T11:19:04Z2006-07-28T15:13:06Z
I attended a UCITE seminar yesterday given by Jeremy Smith and Heidi Cool. It included a brief overview of how to use websites and blogs to help raise your online professional profile. While the audience for the session was primarily faculty and administrators, I believe that much of the same ideas apply for management students. Jeremy promises an audio file of the session soon, and I hope my students will listen to his pitch, which focuses on the importance of understanding and shaping the information that potential employers will find about you if they google you before inviting you in for a job interview. Many students do not understand that things they write on their social blogs or on facebook may be visible to employers and help shape others' impressions of them. Heidi has also provided some useful tutorials on the Web Development blog, including this on how to learn HTML and this followup on how she completed her suggested homework assignment. Heidi has also made a number of other valuable contributions to the Web Development blog, so if you are thinking about developing your own website, be sure to poke around! What do you think -- is it important for a prospective employee to have an online presence? Why or why not? Do you google prospective employees? When and why?
Sandy Pideritkristin.piderit@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/kep2I'll Be Giving a Presentation Tomorrow on Blogginghttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/07/26/ucite_blogging_presentation2006-07-26T19:37:00Z2006-07-27T18:42:19Z
Tomorrow at noon in the Herrick Room at Allen Library Building, I'll be giving a presentation for UCITE. From the description:
This is the age of the internet and those who are most adept at using it are the ones who get noticed. Personal and professional websites and blogs and other internet formats can make more people aware of your work and raise your profile, provided those are done well enough and take advantage of the kinds of things that search engines use when people look for information.
Stop on by if you want to see it. I'll be posting the slides and my notes here afterwards. Update: The slides are online at Blogging at Case. Notes for the slides are available in the print out version. Audio of the presentation should be coming soon ( Murphy willing).
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithI'm Doing It!http://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/07/21/im_doing_it2006-07-21T19:23:59Z2006-07-21T19:56:44Z
Just helping to take back Planet Case. You may have seen the announcement about spammers and trackback. Our increasingly complex anti-spam setup really deserves a blog entry to describe it. It's getting surreal. I, also, promised to do an entry on my switch from Windows to Apple. Maybe I'll do that entry today. Have you seen that Apple blog? He really did a great job on the templates. Also, did you see Greg's post on 5 Things You Probably Didn't Know About PHP? Everybody and their brother linked to that thing.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithPlanet Planet! Powered Planet Casehttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/06/09/planet_case2006-06-09T22:13:00Z2006-06-09T22:14:29Z
I spent a little bit of time hacking on Planet Planet! to see if I could get it to power Planet Case. I was able to whip out a slightly "weeded" OPML file located at http://planet.case.edu/opml and generated this site using Planet Planet! — Planet Case Beta. Not sure what to do now, though. That's the defacto skin, and I don't particularly care for its organization. I'd like to change that. Also, comment/trackback counts don't propagate through, and getting that to work will take some serious hackery. I don't plan on getting rid of the original Planet Case, but I may regulate that over to http://planet.case.edu/old or something and replace it with Planet Planet! Planet Planet! will provide a bit more flexibility. I'll be able to weed out some blogs from appearing; I'll be able to include external blogs to participate; better control over the sorting of entries and such. It's just going to take me a little more time than I had hoped because of the comments/trackback counts. If you have any comments, feel free to chime in. If you have any design skills, HTML/CSS prototypes are welcome for the design of the new Planet Case. All right, I've gotta get back to the stuff I put to the side while I spent a couple of hours and indulged myself in this.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithCase Conversationshttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/04/26/case_conversations2006-04-26T19:43:37Z2006-04-26T19:44:16Z
There has been a lot of great comments and discussions happening at http://blog.case.edu/alumni/ and http://blog.case.edu/casepoint/. And I keep meaning to point at them. So here it is. A recent comment on Resignation of President Edward M. Hundert, M.D. goes as follows:
As a CWRU (Law) graduate who does not live in Ohio, I have been anxious to learn more about what was going on at CWRU ever since Dr. Hundert's resignation tipped me off to the fact that all was not well with the institution. I'm grateful for this BLOG because it has helped me get a sense of what led to Hundert's resignation and what the pressing issues are now at CWRU (as opposed to the carefully-worded letters from him and the Board Chair, etc., which told us outlanders very little about the actual situation). As a contributor, I'm interested in knowing that my donations are being spent wisely. It sounds as if some accounting is called for now - it also sounds as if the current Board of Trustees is too large, unwieldy and therefore incapable of real oversight. It needs to be comprised of individuals from all parts of the country -- who will be less parochial and more interested in making CWRU a nationally recognized institution. And indeed more board members should be alumni - the people who are the greatest stakeholders with respect to CWRU's reputation and future prospects.
I like see all of the fostering of discussions and the community empowerment. It's good stuff. The conversations happen all over the place.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithHaving Fun with Spammershttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/04/07/having_fun_with_spammers2006-04-07T09:23:23Z2006-04-07T09:23:07Z
So, yeah, we're getting hit from all over. Spammers, right now, are greeted with this when trying to perform a Trackback. The message isn't what is important, it's the sleep in the code there slowing down their bots. Unfortunately, this will do little to dissuade them (it's not like they're hunkered over their computer watching the return status of each of their controlled zombie computers' requests). But it makes me a little happy. Throttling will come next. Along with some other measures.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithLots of Prospective Doctors Check Out Blogshttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/03/23/premed_students2006-03-23T22:31:41Z2006-03-23T22:33:53Z
The blog system gets a lot of referrers from forums.studentdoctor.net. Case, also, tends to do well in votes there, too.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithIncorporating a Blog into your Web Presencehttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/03/17/incorporating_a_blog_into_your_web_presence2006-03-17T22:07:01Z2006-03-17T22:13:11Z
Heidi just posted an excellent article, To Blog or not to Blog, which gives an overview of incorporating a weblog into your department's, college's, institution's, or organization's web presence.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithBlog Minerhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/02/23/blog_miner2006-02-23T17:23:31Z2006-02-23T17:22:43Z
Blog Miner Sounds interesting. Once the project gets going, will there be a feed located at http://vorlon.case.edu/~mxh147/eecs439.htm that I can subscribe to and follow the project along?
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithCase Wiki Hits 1000 Usershttp://blog.case.edu/gps10/2006/02/20/case_wiki_hits_1000_users2006-02-20T06:24:52Z2006-02-20T06:44:35Z
I just noticed that the Case Wiki has hit the 1000 users mark! Since the wiki can log you in automatically if you are logged in to CAS, I thought these numbers might be a little deceiving, so I decided to do a little analysis... Of the 1025 people in the user table as of this post, 301 have contributed at least 1 revision, of which there are about 7500. For comparison's sake, the Case Blog system has 1013 authors and 920 blogs. The 5962 individual posts have been made by 374 distinct people. The Case Wiki was launched in June of 2005 and this blog system in December of 2004. From these numbers, it appears the Case Wiki is growing faster than Blog@Case, at least from a user-contribution perspective, as it should be. Since the Case Wiki is a "factual" nexus about Case, one would expect people to find it quicker, as the content of a wiki would theoretically yield more search results than opinions, which are commonly made in blogs. Also, the barrier to publishing in the Case Wiki is much lower. There is no need to create your blog. You just click the "edit" link and you are there. I would be misleading if I neglected to mention the actual "popularity" of each service in terms of unique page hits. The numbers of hits in the past three months to the Case Wiki is roughly 1.281 million. Blog@Case has 3.58M, almost 3x more. Blog@Case is definitely a more popular service. ( Case Wiki stats, Blog@Case stats). I believe both these services have only scratched the surface when it comes to usability potential. Many people still do not know Case has a Blog or Wiki system. Until these services get prime-time exposure, it will probably remain that way. It makes me start to wonder about how to best advertise an IT service. It would be interesting to see the usage graphs for IPTV and the My Case Portal after their posterings last semester. As a teaser, I can say that the next product from SIS will attempt to address the problem of people not knowing about service availability. If you are a good internet sleuth, you will have no trouble finding the test site(s) for this product.
Gregory Szorcgregory.szorc@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/gps10Wednesday's GB Bandwidth Boosthttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2006/01/26/wednesdays_gb_bandwidth_boost2006-01-26T17:37:07Z2007-01-22T17:20:35Z
Something weird is happening on Wednesdays with persons/things accessing the blog system. I wonder what user/robot is out there that decides that Wednesdays are a good day to read lots of data from the system?
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithPublishing from Performancing for Firefoxhttp://blog.case.edu/gps10/2006/01/05/publishing_from_performancing_for_firefox2006-01-05T06:53:24Z2006-01-05T07:05:15Z
This entry was composed using Performancing for Firefox, an extension for Firefox that allows you to compose blog entries using a WYSIWYG directly in your browser.  The interface is very intuitive and beats the pants off the MT interface for normal entry composition.  I suggest you check it out at http://performancing.com. For instructions on how to use this extension, see CaseBlog/FAQ/HowTo#Using_Performancing_for_Firefox.
Gregory Szorcgregory.szorc@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/gps10Upcoming Anniversaryhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/12/09/upcoming_anniversary2005-12-09T23:03:04Z2005-12-09T23:04:50Z
January 10th will be the one year anniversary of when the Blog system was opened up. I keep meaning to start now on a big presentation of lessons learned, statistics, what works v. what doesn't, what makes a successful blog, graphs, graphs, graphs. Knowing me, I'll be putting it together Jan. 9th.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithPlanet Case Mac Widgethttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/12/05/planet_case_mac_widget2005-12-06T04:47:47Z2005-12-06T04:53:51Z
Casey Kearns creates a Mac widget for Planet Case. Nice!
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithNew Experimental Feature: Tracking Commentershttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/10/10/follow_case_blog_comments2005-10-10T22:53:03Z2005-10-10T22:52:23Z
Yet-Another-New-Experimental-Not-Officially-Supported feature — http://blog.case.edu/comments. Track the newest comments made on the Case blogging system. You can break it down by commenter according to his or her email address: http://blog.case.edu/comments/jeremy.smith@case.edu Keying in via email address comes with two problems. 1) Users have multiple addresses. 2) There is no guarantee that the user posting under jeremy.smith@case.edu is actually me. But, it may be of slight use to some; so go ahead and play with it if you would like. Send email if you have any feedback. And, of course, you can subscribe to those URLs in your favorite news aggregator in case you want to track all of the comments someone makes on the system.
Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smithFirst Case Blog Podcast!http://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith/2005/10/07/first_case_blog_podcast2005-10-07T21:31:19Z2005-10-07T21:31:34Z

Awesome! Blog@Case's first podcast! — The Freedman Center in Kelvin Smith Library: Podcast. And, it worked!

Check out the RSS feed for the Freedman Center blog. It includes the following little snippet where the magic happens:

<item>
    <title>Podcast</title>
    <link>http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/2005/10/07/podcast</link>
    <description>Testing a podcast & learning how MoveableType enclosures work on our blog system......</description>
    <guid>http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/2005/10/07/podcast</guid>
    <pubDate>Fri, 07 Oct 2005 14:51:19 EST</pubDate>
    
<enclosure url="http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/podcasts/10-07-05.mp3" length="4412159" type="audio/mpeg" />
</item>

Go head. Check it out in iTunes. Just point your podcast subscriptions to http://http://blog.case.edu/FreedmanCenter/rss20.xml and watch the magic happen.

Jeremy Smithjeremy.smith@case.eduhttp://blog.case.edu/jeremy.smith