We’re slowly closing in on 8,000 posts since the site was started on this server and I’m pleased to say that I haven’t encountered any major mishaps since the tree went down last August. I gotta hand it to the fine folks at HostGator. We’ve been at 100% availability for the longest time. Can’t say the same for Comcast. Hmm. Can anyone?

Every day I visit the site first thing in the morning after bootup and check two things: the site load time and whether the scheduled posts got posted. WordPress did have some problems in the past with missing schedules but that has since been corrected. The latest prob is with the WP-Super Cache plugin. Since the plugin was updated to a new version, scheduled posts don’t get posted. The site cache has to be manually cleared and then the posts go up. So far, there has not been a fix but the WP community is working on it, albeit slowly. We have reverted to the previous version of the plugin and there have been no problems.

YouTube is getting obnoxious with their ads. Every stinkin’ video I view on the site has either a 15-second ad or a longer ad that’s skippable in 5 seconds. Then, in the middle of any video, right where the yellow bar is at the bottom, another ad appears. At the end of each video, even another ad appears. Conceivably, in a 30-second video, one could get offered up 3 ads and spend a total 2 minutes watching them. As a web guy who relies on video for most content, it’s driving me nuts. But… as Karma goes, it’s guaranteed that this will bite them in the ass one day. Luckily, most of the time, the ads don’t show when the videos are embedded in a post. It would be unethical for Google to make money from their ads if they’re shown on my site.

Vimeo, on the other hand is a pure joy. Large format videos of nicely conceived subject matter with no ads. It’s rare that I run across a bullshit stupid people vid. LiveLeak embeds properly on the site with their iframe code, but their final video formatting leaves a lot to be desired when viewed. LiveLeak is the car crash-Middle East war-fail video site. My old favorite, StreetFire, which still delivers some great cars videos, hasn’t updated their embed code formatting to allow for the iframe capability. They’re still stuck in Flash.

Ever since Apple debuted the retina display, the podcasts that I listen to started to rant about how websites should be “retinized” to allow for the greater density images to render properly on mobile devices and computers. SquareSpace web service allows for its customers the feature of having any image or video rendered in multiple resolutions based on the visitor’s device. Is this a real problem? Should I be worried that the site doesn’t show up properly on someone’s monitor? Nope. (StreetFire) If I receive comments and emails about SixPackTech not looking right on monitors and devices, I’ll most assuredly do something about it. But for now, I’ll watch the newsfeeds and sit back while all the tech websites scramble to optimize their sites and their images. If you experience degraded image performance on your desktop or mobile device, please let me know in the comments or via email. I’m not even gonna talk about browser capabilities. You know what you like.

As usual, thanks for stopping by. I still love doing this shit.