As someone pointed out — and many others have discovered — the Archives link on the right is broken. Click it and you’ll get a bunch of MySQL gibberish, which is actually the result of a few PHP commands that aren’t doing what they’re supposed to.
The move from the old web host to the new one went remarkably smoothly, but this one section didn’t make the transition. I’m working on it, but it could be a few days. Or weeks. I’ll let you know when it’s back up and running.
I’m back from two weeks in Australia, a country that’s just as great as everyone makes it out to be. While I was gone, there was all kinds of behind-the-digital-scenes drama at johnaugust.com, most of which hopefully wasn’t visible to Loyal Readers.
Basically, the webhosting company moved the site to a “non-production server” because we were suddenly using way too many processing cycles. I hadn’t changed anything about the programming in over a month, which leads me to believe it was an external cause — probably an automated attack by some ne’er-d0-well.
In the movies, Evil Hackers break into defense networks and bring down satellites. In reality, they overwhelm little sites on shared servers, forcing their screenwriter owners to spend Quality Beach Time in tiny internet cafes, trying to figure out what the hell is going on.
Oh, the villainy!
I’m trying to get the situation resolved. I’ll definitely be upgrading the underlying software, and may need to move to a different hosting company. In the meantime, comments will still be turned off (to reduce the load). If the entire site suddenly goes dark, please check back in a day or two. It will be back up shortly.
Happy New Year, everyone!
UPDATE: If you’re reading this, then the move to the new server is complete. Things will be a little wonky for a day or two, so please be patient while the Oompa-Loompas sort things out.
After the [trip to Miami](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/off-to-miami) for the Urban Challenge, and an extended Thanksgiving weekend, it’s finally back to work. That is, if I can avoid the life-destroying forces of [World of Warcraft](https://www.worldofwarcraft.com/).
For those who are curious, I’ll eventually get the full write-up of the Miami race posted. The short version is that we crossed the finish line #31 (of 104), but DQ’d on a soccer question that was many teams’ undoing. Damn those corner kicks. We didn’t win the $50K, but after more than four hours running, there was simply no way we could have competed in the second race. So we were more than happy to drink our free beers and watch much better teams wrap it up.
I’m heading to Miami tomorrow morning for the Urban Challenge championships, so don’t expect any other updates until Monday.
For those who are keeping track, we [qualified for the national race](http://johnaugust.com/archives/2004/back-from-vacation-and-the-urban-challenge) back in July, by placing in the top 10 in the Los Angeles race. The Miami race itself is on Saturday, but we’re spending Thursday and Friday trying to get familiar with the city. I’ve never been there, and our friends who live there are transplants, so there’s a lot to learn. There are also a lot of small changes to the rules, so I’ll consider it a victory if we don’t get disqualified.