All Things Cahill

Friday Music Video: Assembly of Dust

“Telling Sue” from Langerado 2007 - sounds not awesome, but I really like the energy of the cut…

Tags: assembly of dust, Music Video

04 Jul 08 | Music, Music Video | Comments (0)

MySQL Table Locking & Wordpress Scalability

I ran into an interesting issue recently, and since I had so much trouble finding a solution, I’ll post about it.

We have a very large Wordpress site with somewhere around 32,000 posts. Sometime during may the database (MySQL 5.10) started to randomly crash, taking along with it the Apache server, etc. Every time the crashes occurred, we’d find that the number of users had climbed over the available processes, in this case, 501.

We went through a whole host of possible causes, most notably a quick cleanup of some rather dubious plugins, etc. Then we upgraded our wp-cache to Wp Super Cache, which has been tremendous. Our standard 30-40 mysql connections dropped immediately to an average of 2 or 3. Even though we still had the random database crashes, now the Apache process would continue to run, often serving pages throughout the outage. Actually the whole thing was quite astonishing.

In the end, our DBA Glenn Nadeau suggested we take a look at the size of our tables. Sure enough, our wp-posts table had climbed to 32,000 rows. Apparently when you query over 30,000 rows, MySQL will lock the tables. Hence our issue.

After a little searching we found the get_posts() function was being used in one of our templates to return pretty much everything from the posts table, even though all but 20 results were being discarded in the next line of the script. A simple date limit on the query brought it’s execution time down from 35 seconds to milliseconds.

get_posts() is a standard Wordpress function that we often use in our templates. Be very careful if you have a large site with tons of posts that you limit the query. As they say, be careful what you ask for, you may just get it.

Tags: database problem wordpress, get_posts(), mysql, mysql table locking, Wordpress, wordpress scalability

01 Jul 08 | Blogging, Technology | Comments (0)

Harvard Business Review Criticizes “Long Tail”

Yup, apparently the fine folks at the Harvard Business Review have been looking, and the mantra of web marketing, “The Long Tail” apparently may be long, but it’s also very flat, almost impossible to monetize and it smells really bad (okay, maybe it doesn’t actually smell…).

The patterns that emerge in my research suggest that we won’t soon leave what Anderson calls “the water cooler era.” These patterns are far from new: They were described by William McPhee in the early 1960s, in Formal Theories of Mass Behavior. McPhee’s “theory of exposure” (see the sidebar “Consumers in the Head and Tail”) offers two relevant empirical generalizations: First, that a disproportionately large share of the audience for popular products consists of relatively light consumers, whereas a disproportionately large share of the audience for obscure products consists of relatively heavy consumers; and second, that consumers of obscure products generally appreciate them less than they do popular products. McPhee explored his theories in settings that typically provided fewer than a dozen alternatives. But my research reveals that his findings also hold true for the enormous assortments found online, even when sophisticated recommendation engines aim to stimulate demand for long-tail products.

Yeah, what he said… From what I get, he’s saying that we ought to concentrate on our popular products.  The  folks who by the strange deep catalog stuff are a flash in the pan.  It kind of makes sense to me…

To make it even more interesting, Long Tail author Chris Anderson responded :

Let me start by saying that the paper looks rock solid and I’m sure her analysis is accurate. But there is a subtle difference in the way we define the Long Tail, especially in the definitions of “head” and “tail”, that leads to very different results.

The best example of this is in what she describes as a growing “concentration” of sales around a relatively small number of blockbuster titles. In the Rhapsody data, she finds, the top 10% of titles (out of more than a million in that data sample) accounted for 78% of all plays, and the top 1% account for 32% of all plays. That sounds pretty concentrated around the head, until you reflect, as she notes, that “one percent of a million is still 10,000–[...]equal to the entire music inventory of a typical Wal-Mart store.”

Basically it comes down to the matter of defining “head” and “tail” which Anderson notes in his piece.  I strongly suggest reading both if you’re into marketing. After all. who doesn’t like a good marketing rumble.

Okay, I’m now wondering why I am blogging from my office att 5:45 on a Friday…see ya.

Tags: chris anderson, harvard, harvardbusinessonline, hbr articles, hbsp, long tail, new marketing

27 Jun 08 | Personal, marketing | Comment (1)

Reel-Time.com Acquired By NameMedia

In what has become an utterly bizarre turn of the tables, NameMedia Inc. has bought Reel-time.com - the site I have been working with since 1995 or 1996 as managing editor, head geek and general do-what-needs-to-be-done guy, is now owned by my current employer.

It’s a great thing for Thorne Sparkman, who is now able to repay the investors in the site. David Churbuck (he blogs on this story here)  and I had been almost completely disengaged and had no financial stake in the final buy out. The big winner is honestly the community which now will actually move forward, vs. being in a holding pattern.

Last September, when I posted my final Fishwire Report for the Boston Region (a report of what’s going on for saltwater fly fishermen) I swore it would be the last. Yesterday, I wrote two of them…handling both Boston and Cape Cod. The good news is that I was for the first time able to write them during normal working hours, instead of getting up at 4 in the morning.

Reel-Time.com was a niche online community before anyone had any idea that such a thing could exist. In a lot of ways we invented, identified or were afflicted by, just about anything you now hear about termed as “Social Networking” or “Social Media.”

So as things change, in many ways they stay the same for me.  I’m now back where I began, at Reel-Time.com and after 13 years, I couldn’t be happier.  Now if I can just get some fishing time in.

Tags: david churbuck, reel-time.com, social media, Social Networking, thorne sparkman

27 Jun 08 | Fishing, Online Media, Salmon, Saltwater Fly Fishing, Social Networking, Striped Bass, Web 2.0, herring, media | Comments (0)

Friday Music Video: Grace Potter & the Nocturnals

Yes…again…I love Grace…

Tags: friday music video, Grace Potter and the Nocturnals

27 Jun 08 | Personal | Comments (0)

Yet Another Newspaper Outsourcing Post

Sean Pollay pointed out that the Boston Herald will be outsourcing printing and laying off up to 160 employees.  This from E&P:

The Boston Herald will layoff between 130 and 160 workers under a plan to outsource its printing operations to other locations within the state, the paper reported Tuesday.

The publisher attributes the action to the fact that some of their newspapers have presses that are more than 50 years old, which one would expect are a maintenance nightmare.  This one directly affects the unions:

“Some grim-faced union leaders declined comment as they emerged from a meeting with Purcell in his office late this morning,” the Herald added. “Purcell described the meeting as ’somber,’ even as he praised union leaders for all they’ve done over the years to keep the Herald in operation.”

Some 10 unions would be affected by the printing move, which is expected to start in late September or early October, the paper reported. Workers include pressmen, mailers, engravers and paper handlers.

In the long run, we’re going to see more papers doing this.  Arthur Sulzberger Jr. suggested last year that he could see The New York Times not printing it’s own papers within 10 years.  Think of print as just one delivery means for a newspapers product, and at that, an extremely costly one, and you’ll have a good idea of where this may lead.

Tags: boston herald, newspaper outsourcing

26 Jun 08 | Print Media, Publishing Technology, media | Comments (0)

More on Newspaper Outsourcing

CNBC posted on the newspaper outsourcing issue yesterday, and noted that not only is copy editing going overseas for a trial, one of the OC Register’s parent companies papers is now sending pages to New Delhi for layout.

Mindworks Global Media will copy edit some of the papers stories for a one-month trial starting next week. And a community newspaper owned by the O.C. Register’s parent company–it didn’t name which one–will outsource page layout to Mindworks, which is based outside New Delhi.

This isn’t enabling any layoffs–not yet. The company insists it’s just a test, and it won’t affect reporting or decision making and that O.C.-based editors will continue to oversee the month. Orange County Register Communications has been suffering through a rough patch. As its circulation tumbled, dropping the company from being California’s third largest paper to its fifth largest, the company has done three rounds of layoffs in the past year.

That’s big news - since paginators are typically members of The Newspaper Guild (I am fairly certain that Freedom Communications has a contract with them). And even bigger news is that this story has only been picked up in a handful of spots around the web. Either the stories in stealth mode, or perhaps there just isn’t anyone who cares anymore.

Tags: cnbc, copy editing, global media, layoffs, new delhi, oc register, orange county register, rough patch

26 Jun 08 | Print Media, media | Comment (1)

Newspaper Deathwatch: OC Register Tests Outsourcing Editing to India

When Reuters did this 6 years ago, we all laughed at them. “Want curry with that?” Now respected American daily The Orange County Register has begun a test using a New Delhi firm for editing tasks. From BusinessWeek:

Orange County Register Communications Inc. will begin a one-month trial with Mindworks Global Media at the end of June, said John Fabris, a deputy editor at the Register.

Mindworks’ Web site says the company is based outside New Delhi and provides “high-quality editorial and design services to global media firms … using top-end journalistic and design talent in India.”

So what’s it mean? In the short term, nothing. In the long term its just one more bit of evidence that the print publishing model for newspapers isn’t going to work forever. In fact just minutes ago The Washington Post posted this:

…We wonder and worry, too. Anxiety has intensified this year with an accelerating decline in newspaper advertising, and it has hit home for us in a particularly painful way this spring, first with the early retirements of scores of colleagues and then, this week, with Len Downie’s announcement that he’ll step down Sept. 8 after 17 years as executive editor.

Meanwhile, Bloomberg last week noted that The New York Times has seen it’s biggest Ad Revenue drop of the year during May.

Ad sales at the News Media Group, including the New York Times and Boston Globe, fell to $130 million, the company said in a statement today. Total sales declined 6.6 percent to $227.5 million as increased circulation revenue couldn’t offset drops in national, retail and classified ads.

The deterioration in May advertising mirrors drops at other U.S. newspaper publishers. Gannett Co., the owner of USA Today, reported yesterday that newspaper ad sales fell 14 percent in May. Those declines follow the industry’s worst quarter on record in the three months through March, according to the Newspaper Association of America.

“Expectations were that 2008 would be similar to 2007, but clearly things have gotten worse,” John Morton, an independent newspaper industry analyst in Silver Spring, Maryland, said in an interview. “Classified is in a tailspin, and there’s no hope for newspaper advertising until they win back some of that revenue.”

Meanwhile, in the This Week In Media Podcast this week, Alec Lindsey suggested that 2010 was the year that the model would break for the broadcast television market, stating that it would probably be the first year in which a revenue decline would be seen in the Upfronts. So, Mr. Television, your time is coming…

The real message here is that the traditional media model is utterly broken, and while it may be too late for print, television might still have time. My money is on the new online media providers and the networks slowly cutting their affiliates and the cable outlets out of the loop.

Tags: Add new tag, businessweek, decline, downie, executive editor, global media, new delhi, newspaper advertising, orange county register, print publishing, quality editorial, retirements, reuters, washington post

25 Jun 08 | Broadcast Media, Online Media, Print Media, Publishing Technology, media | Comments (0)

Wordpress Security 101

Last Wednesday I delivered a presentation entitled “Wordpress Security 101″ which got the discussions started in earnest about Wordpress Security among our team.

| View | Upload your own

Here are the takeaways:

• Keep your blog up to date
• Don’t use plugins that aren’t in general public use unless you know who wrote them or have thoroughly reviewed the code
• Forms for reader upload/feedback are the single biggest point of attack - be sure if you code one you use the Wordpress “Nonce” function to keep junk off your server
• Watch out for other programs you may add to your site
• Keep up to date on both OS and DB - if your host doesn’t do this, get a new host
• Keep your Wordpress installation up to date.  Recent versions will warn you that there is an update available
• Remove the XML-RPC file if you don’t use an external blog editing program.

Tags: blog security, Wordpress, Wordpress Security

23 Jun 08 | Personal | Comments (2)

Friday Music Video - My Morning Jacket

The word is these guys utterly kicked a$$ at Bonnaroo last week.  Unfortunately, the videos in circulation from that event aren’t up to even the marginal standards of YouTube.  So instead, I bring you an appearance they did in 2006 with the Boston Pops on the Letterman Show here in the US.  It gives you a real taste of their range.  This is a band I see really going places in the next year.  FYI, for those in the UK, they’ll be at Glastonbury next week (along with every other band on the planet).

Wikipedia Entry

Band Website

Archive.org Live Show MP3 Downloads (these guys have a  signature sound that is high on reverb, hence concert recordings tend to bottom out - you’ll need to be selective to find recordings that will sound okay on your system (and it is worth the extra effort).

Tags: boston pops, letterman show, Music Video, my morning jacket

20 Jun 08 | Music, Music Video | Comments (0)