Stream of Consciousness
Digital Media and whatever else flows through my head…
Feeds have been moved to the new server
Sep 12th
All feed generation and delivery has been moved to the new server. You do not need to make any adjustments to your frames, they will automatically switch to the new server over the next few hours.
The web site is still running on the old server so will continue to experience slow response until I finish moving that as well.
This should resolve several issues with sporadically missing photos, invalid RSS feeds and general wonkiness. Please let me know if your frame is still unhappy.
I’ve fallen and I can only sorta get up!
Sep 11th
FrameAlbum is a victim of it’s own popularity. The tiny server I have running the service isn’t up to the task now that there are several hundred people on the service. This is the reason that some of your frames are reporting ‘invalid RSS feed’ or ‘cannot contact service’ or similar messages.
My bad, sorry about that.
The server I’m using is based on Amazon’s EC2 service. This matters not to most of you but will be interesting to the .5% of you that are are geeks like me. The ‘tiny’ instance type is a small fraction of a ‘real machine’ and when someone else on the same physical machine as my instance runs something heavy it takes away from me. Well, it seems that someone is almost always running something heavy on the same machine as the FrameAlbum service. As a result, the service is a bit wobbly. I’ve tried stopping/starting the server a few times to get on a different physical machine but the problem persists.
I’m moving the service to another machine that is not shared. This will cause the service to be a bit bumpy for the remainder of the day but will result in a much more stable and responsive service.
Thanks for your support and patience!
More pictures!
Sep 1st
I’m running the FrameAlbum service on a very modest server. I limited all the channels to a maximum of 100 photos to reduce the load on the server.
I’ve moved parts of the service to a new, more capable server. I’ve increased the limit to 200 photos to see how this new machine performs. Assuming it performs well I’ll bump it up again in the near future.
Enjoy!
Did your Toshiba frame stop working?
Aug 29th
While Irene was busy stripping the leaves from my trees I was working on the feed generator. Somewhere along the way I managed to change it in a way that my borrowed Toshiba frame does not like — it reports ‘Connect to online service failed’ errors. <sigh>
Anyone else getting that on your Toshiba frame? (My Kodak frame is working just fine.)
Weather Radar? Anyone?
Aug 27th
I’m testing a new channel type to add weather radar images to your frame feeds. It isn’t ready for integration into the website but considering the weather on the ‘right coast’ I thought I would make this offer:
If you would like to have a weather radar image added to your frame drop me an email at framealbum at gmail dot com with your FrameAlbum username and your ZIP code. I’ll manually add it to your channels.
Stay safe!
