January 8, 2012
Sorry for the extended outage last night. It was one of those perfect storm situations: Ordinarily, it would have rebooted on its own and been back up within minutes, but it locked up instead. Ordinarily, I would have been reading my email and seen the alert quickly, but I didn’t turn on my computer until almost midnight, and wasn’t reading it on my phone. Ordinarily, rebooting the webserver manually would have solved the problem, but it couldn’t connect to the DB. Ordinarly, tech support would have responded to my trouble report sooner, but they were doing planned maintenance on another system.
For the techies & tech-curious: Something caused memory usage on the web server to spike and lock up. Rebooting (hours later) solved that issue, but the web server couldn’t connect to the database. As far as I could tell the DB server wasn’t responding, but when tech support got involved, it turned out to be a network issue on the webserver.
It’s really frustrating. There were problems earlier last year, but they’d mostly settled out by late summer. From then on it was a few minutes here, a few minutes there. In fact, there was no downtime at all between early December and last Thursday. And now to be out for ~10 hours? It’s especially frustrating because I just consolidated all my domain names at Dreamhost last week.
In the future, if the site’s down and you want to know what’s going on or whether I already know about it, please check @SpeedForceOrg on Twitter. I’ll post updates on the site status there, and you can read the page even if you don’t have a Twitter account. If you don’t see anything there, please e-mail me at speedforce at pobox dot com. And if you just want to read recent posts, you can always check the Tumblr blog.
December 30, 2011
It’s been a great year for Speed Force, with Greg and Lia coming on board to join Devin and myself as regular contributors. Plus of course the Flash’s profile was raised with this year’s DC mega-event, Flashpoint, bringing in more people curious about DC’s super-speed hero.
Before we continue, I’d like to give a huge thank-you to Devin, Greg and Lia for their work on this site. I’d also like to thank everyone who contributed guest posts, and everyone who’s read and commented.
So, without further ado, here are the top posts of 2011! Read the rest of this entry »
December 12, 2011
I’ve updated the site to WordPress 3.3. WordPress updates usually go smoothly these days, but in case you run into something that looks wrong or doesn’t work, please let me know. Comment here, use the contact form, send a note on Twitter to @SpeedForceOrg, or just send an email to speedforce at pobox dot com.
November 8, 2011
Google has finally opened up brand/group pages on Google+ yesterday. DC Comics was one of the first to sign up, and their second day of posting features a four-page preview of The Flash #3. Last week I got a sneak peek during a conversation with Brian Buccellato at Long Beach Comic Con, and let me tell you: this is only the beginning. The issue looks amazing.
You can also find Speed Force on Google+ now, so if that’s your preferred network, please drop by, say hi, and add us to your circles!
October 22, 2011
The writing was on the wall from the moment Google Plus was announced, but it was only made official last week: Google Buzz is shutting down. Speed Force has been available on Buzz since June 2010, but even now, only 22 people are following it, including me, and when I asked who was reading it through Buzz, only two people answered. For comparison, about 700 people “like” the site on Facebook, and almost 900 follow through Twitter.
I’ve taken down the follow links since they won’t matter soon, but posts will keep going out until they shut it down. If you’re one of those 21 people following through Buzz today, you have a number of other options:
And then there are the other, more active social networks. I haven’t set up Google+ yet because they haven’t launched business/group accounts yet, and everything’s still structured around actual people. (You can find me there, but I don’t post about comics much under my own name.) So your best bet for now is to follow Speed Force using one of the subscriptions above, or on Twitter, Tumblr or Facebook.
UPDATE November: We’re on Google+!
Twitter:
Follow on Tumblr
August 10, 2011
I hate having to spell this out, but I’ve had to delete several comments over the last couple of weeks from people who just couldn’t resist insulting other commenters, or the blog authors, or half the Flash fanbase.
From here on out, this is the official Speed Force comment policy. Ready?
1. Be polite.
That’s it. Don’t insult people. Don’t dismiss their opinions out of hand (for instance, by declaring that they only hold an opinion because they like that Flash better). If someone makes a statement with 5 supporting points, and you disagree, and your response hinges on one of those points being wrong, address it instead of just saying “My ninja just beat up your Flash, therefore your argument is invalid.” Disagreeing is fine. Just be respectful of the other person when you do it.
In short, Don’t be a jerk.
Stolen from Inspired by the Bad Astronomy Comment Policy.
July 5, 2011
I’ve updated the blog to WordPress 3.2. Let me know if anything isn’t working properly using the comments here, or if that fails, the contact form, @SpeedForceOrg on Twitter, Facebook message/wall post, Tumblr question, or email to speedforce – at – pobox – dot – com.
June 30, 2011
In response to last week’s survey, we’re adding a Tumblr blog to Speed Force. Like the Facebook Page and Twitter stream, it’ll automatically pick up updates from the main site, plus there’ll be link & photo sharing and occasional short commentary that fits better on Tumblr.
We’re still settling in — and still working out the kinks in the cross-posting — but feel free to stop by, check it out, and if you see something isn’t working quite right, please let us know.
» SpeedForceOrg.tumblr.com
June 24, 2011
Speed Force is currently on Facebook, Twitter, and Buzz, and by that I mean that updates are pushed to those sites, and I try to post links and respond to comments on those sites. (Well, Facebook and Twitter, anyway. Buzz has kind of fallen by the wayside, but with roughly 750 followers on Twitter, 600 on Facebook, and 22 on Buzz, it doesn’t seem like there’s much demand. Updates are automatic, though.)
In the interest of making it easy for you to keep up with the site, so I wonder what else is out there that might be worth connecting to the blog. Obviously, there are a lot of sites out there, but one key piece of social media advice has stuck in my head: “What’s the best social network to use? The one you’ll actually keep up with.”
So here’s my question:
If I were to add Speed Force to one more social network, what would you want it to be?
June 15, 2011
Wow. Hard to believe it’s been three years since Speed Force launched!
Thanks to everyone for reading and commenting, and a huge thanks to fellow Speed Force writers Devin, Greg and Lia!
