If you have any ideas or suggestions for preventing further incidences of this nature, drop us a line or post a comment below.

In this case, we discovered that while moving the site to a virtual hosting provider, we'd somehow set a setting equivalent to APACHE_TAKES_UP_ALL_OF_YOUR_RAM = 1. In reality, somehow the per-thread RAM limit for Apache had been set to 4GB. (it should be in the hundreds of kilobytes!) In theory, this was causing us to run out of RAM and start swapping to disk, making everything so slow it might as well have been down.

To exacerbate the problem, we have a script that automatically checks that the site is up and that apache forwarding (siafoo.net -> www.siafoo.net, for example) is working correctly. While robots and real users back off when a site is swamped, our script isn't that smart, and so by opening up more connections probably just made things worse.

Anyways, we've tweaked the RAM settings and futzed with some timeout values... hopefully giving you a faster and more responsive site.

The silver lining here though is that even without this swapping occuring though, we were probably using way more RAM than we should have been (it always seemed to us that the site shouldn't need so much RAM). So these new settings might dramatically lower our RAM usage, letting us spend less money on web hosting and therefore (probably) more time improving Siafoo. Moral of the story: if something seems wrong, it probably is.

optimized menu layout (eg. the My and Browse menus have been merged),

support for several new programming languages (ABAP, Prolog, Modelica, Rebol, MXML), and various performance improvements.

We have also moved to a different development methodology which will result in smaller but more frequent site updates. The idea is to keep the "trunk" stable at all times and only work on disruptive features in branches. (Strictly speaking since we switched to Mercurial there really isn't a trunk per se but you get the idea.) This approach, apparently called it's always summer in the trunk, will allow us to implement nifty little tools and improve existing features more rapidly and with less drama than before.

As usual, comments and suggestions are welcomed and appreciated.

Oh and we forgot to edit the "Siafoo has been updated e-mail" so everyone was sent the update e-mail from last time. Doh!

Anyway it has been fixed now and I wanted to remind everyone about the sweet power of mathematical typesetting contained within Siafoo.

Physics trivia anyone? The following [almost] 100 year old equation [in a way] fixed a law that no one thought was broken and predicted effects we are just beginning to confirm, even so most people are only familiar with its special version.

What is it?

Oh and incidentally one of the main features in the next Siafoo update will be a reST pastebin... along with a vastly improved performance (especially of the home page).

We were always reluctant to switch servers because iCapsid runs a lot different services and moving them would've been a giant pain (and it was). However since the co-location contract is expiring this week we finally decided to get it done.

Anyway iCapsid.net has already moved to the new host and Siafoo.net will be moving in a day or two. We have quadruple checked everything but we appologize in advance for any (possible but unlikely) unexpected down-time or weird behavior...

There are many changes in this release among them is the ability to create any number of individual or group blogs and post to them (on them?) using reStructured Text from Siafoo or an offline client. Although since the current blogging architecture does not [yet] support drafts, mostly because we couldn't find a good place for them in the interface, so if you save as draft from your blogging client the entry will be published instead.

We also implemented a simple Forum, improved the activity feeds, and added many new languages. Check the What's New page for more detailed information. As usual please report any issues you encounter either by contacting one of us... or using the feedback link in the footer.

It has been a looooong time since we have made a significant update to Siafoo. Well, the last ticket has been closed and if all goes well this Friday night at around 1am PDT we will start updating the site to R9. The new release features many visual improvements along with several new languages and features you've asked for, so check it out on Saturday.

Oh and we won't send out the update e-mail until Monday in order to give us a chance to catch any last minute issues.

Hi all, a quick note to let you know that we've updated a bunch of the help pages. Notably the reStructured Text page is much better now, it contains a lot more examples and should be more logically organized. Here's a list of the significant updates we've made, feel free to peruse at your leisure:

• reStructured Text
• Charts - cleaned up
• Flow Graphs - cleaned up, more examples
• LaTeX Style Math - cleaned up
• About the Ads - updated info on the advertising we're using these days
• About Licenses - cleaned up, now has a cool chart on it!

We've also updated our Privacy Policy to better explain the third-party services we use for analytics and advertising.

Random side note: it is possible to directly import Python snippets from Siafoo into your Python programs. I think this could be really cool; right now it is just a proof-of-concept though: Import Python straight off Siafoo

Until next time. Which with any luck will be the R9 release. :)

EDIT: We also updated the Frequently Asked Questions page.

We've recently been integrating the ads better with the rest of the site. You'll see these changes soon when R9 is released.

Advertising is tricky: you don't want to annoy your users, but you want them to notice the ads, and annoying ads get noticed more. We've tried to walk a fine line, placing the ads in places where they will be noticed but not get in the way.

Privacy is also a concern when advertising, and is a harder problem to solve. As webmasters we're allowing advertisers access to our site and our users; we have little control over what information they collect or how they use it. When I first heard about Google new 'interest-based' advertising, I was worried about the privacy implications: Google learns about your "interests" by tracking every Adsense-based page you visit. After some research, I discovered that many, if not most, advertising companies already do this; at no point do they conspicuously notify you of this, much less ask your permission.

This information about you could be sold to other companies. It could be released to the public accidently or purposefully. It could be hacked or subpoenaed by law enforcement. As the AOL Search Data Release showed, peoples' identites can be reconstructed from their web searches alone. With the knowledge of many of the sites you visit, your identity could be reconstructed just as easily.

This might not seem like a big deal right now, but imagine having your car insurance rate go up because you browse racing forums, or being denied a loan because you play online poker. One could make an argument that privacy protects us from abuses of power. Whoever controls your information has some power over you, even if you aren't doing anything wrong.

Because our business relies on advertising revenue, we have to show ads. Ideally we could choose our advertisers based on the information they collect, but there don't seem to be significant differences.

We have opted out of Google's "interest-based" advertising. This means that while you will still see advertisements on Siafoo based on your browsing history, no information will be recorded by Google about your visit to Siafoo. If you want to prevent Google from collecting any data on your "interests", you can start by opting-out.

There are bills in the works in the United States and the European Union to restrict the information that advertisers can collect, and to require labeling of ads that collect such information: if you are concerned about internet privacy, I would recommend that you look into how you can help such legislation succeed.

We'd welcome your comments regarding these matters. You can comment below or send us feedback privately.

Oops. Apparently the bystander effect got us and the Contest Winner announcement was never posted. So here it goes: we have a tie between the Lasting Carpet Bomb and Jumping window snippets. However because nobody bothered suggesting prizes the authors of these delightfully malicious snippets get: "mad props"

Also it seems that only a couple of people submitted ratings... is it because the rating widget is difficult to use? Would you prefer an up/down, or maybe a star based rating system?

On a slightly related note, a new release is coming very very soon and with it we will start another, more legitimate, contest (with a tangible prize) but in the mean time if you have any suggestions for contests, features, bugs, or whatever send us feedback or comment below.

Just a quick note to let you all know that the Delightfully Malicious Code Contest ends tomorrow. Let's say at midnight Pacific Time (GMT +08:00).

Entries are posted in the library Delightfully Malicious code.

If you haven't posted anything, now's your chance. And if you don't have time to post, you can still check out what is there and rate other people's submissions – that's how we're deciding the winner.

We have another contest waiting in the wings for you guys, and hopefully a new release soonish! (We keep getting distracted with other stuff... more news on that when we're ready.)

I know the news is supposed to be posted on Mondays but some things weren't finished (and it was David's birthday)

Anyway you should noticed that we made the snippets and code blocks cleaner and thus the articles easier to read. The yellow is gone from the line numbers and so is the '90s 3D effect. The admonitions have also been flattened and cleaned up.

There is also a new tool for translating from HTML to reStructured Text. It is not perfect, and the content still needs to be proofread, but it will save you a significant amount of time when converting HTML to reST. As a demo of what the translator can do (and also to increase my user ranking) I converted Ryan Tomayko's Dynamic Superclassing in Python article into reST, check it out. The translator is totally self contained so as soon as I overcome some of it's limitations I will post the code on Siafoo.

On an unrelated note since no one seems to be inviting their friends and colleagues I was going to threaten to run:

1DELETE FROM snippets
2       WHERE id = (SELECT id
3                   FROM snippets
4                   ORDER BY random()
5                   LIMIT 1)

on the live db. Call it Snippet Russian Roulette (although it isn't really), after the brilliant Unix Russian Roulette. However we thought it would be more fun to dedicate the next two weeks to Delightfully Malicious code. I guess you can say this is the first ever, Siafoo Contest (or insert your cool sounding contest name here), so lets see how it goes. The winner will be chosen based on snippet rating and announced March 6th. Use the comments below to suggest the contest prize (unpaid Siafoo internship anyone?)

Oh and we've also played around with the ads so let us know if they are weird or annoying in some way.

Edit: Add your snippets to the Delightfully Malicious code library

Last year we decided to generalize the mechanism behind Siafoo News and allow for full featured Blogs. We felt that blogs on Siafoo would fill a gap somewhere between articles and snippets. Also since "they couldn't possibly take more than a couple of hours to implement" there was really no reason not have them. As it happens, Blogs took quite a bit more than "a couple of hours" to implement but I believe it was worth it, so next release you will be able to create personal and group based blogs.

Even cooler, this last week (or two) I implemented remote access for Siafoo Blogs using the Blogger, MetaWeblog, and MoveableType XMLRPC APIs, complete with RSD based autodiscovery. Check out this screenshot of Windows Live Writer (I could not locate an OSS blogging client that support RSD) connected to the Siafoo News "blog":

In actual "News" we just added the Creative Commons 2.5 licenses and the F# language. The purpose for adding the 2.5 license is to allow you to post items that are already under this license, for new content please use the CC 3.0 license. Note that F# is currently using the OCaml lexer but if you guys post enough snippets we will change that.

Till next week.

It has been several months since we have deployed a new release of Siafoo or posted proper news. We wanted to apologize for this seeming inactivity on our part and assure you that we are in fact working on the next release.

Originally we planned to do a release of Siafoo around once per month. However due to extensive changes to the database schema and the implementation of several new features the next release requires a lot more testing than any previous versions. Another reason for the "delay" is the fact that we got somewhat carried away in experimental branches, developing really cool new stuff. I will write more about these features and their release timeline soon.

Also in order to keep the site "looking more alive" we have decided to start posting weekly (Monday) news updates about the status of Siafoo development, usage tips, and highlights of new content. Since Monday passed the weekly update will have to wait until next week.

Dear Siafooites,

We wish you happy holidays and a successful new year!

Have fun and be safe,

Stou and David

P.S. We apologize for the short news item but we are busy implementing cool new features =)

We found out that Yahoo and Hotmail (including Live) are automatically filing mail from Siafoo as junk. Even worse the Yahoo mail server(s) was returning deferred delivery errors, causing our mail server to retry sending the message a few times and then to give up. We attempted to contact Yahoo's support about these problems but (both times) we received a pseudo-automated reply with some links to help pages related to mail delivery.

In an attempt to remedy the situation we have implemented both DomainKeys Identified Mail(DKIM) (something of a Yahoo invention) and Sender Policy Framework (SPF) (something Microsoft likes) on our mail system. The result is that the delayed delivery errors have stopped allowing Siafoo e-mail to get to your junk folder faster, no doubt an improvement.

The problem as far as you are concerned is that any Siafoo invitations (or articles/snippets) you sent to friends and colleagues (and I am sure you've sent dozens if not hundreds and if you haven't... you should) with e-mail hosted by Yahoo and Hotmail probably ended up in their junk folder. So if you sent an invite or other siafoo based communication to someone and never got a response you might want to ask them to add siafoo.net to their respective safe lists. Or simply sent them whatever you wanted through personal e-mail.

The two workarounds for the mail delivery problems are to either switch to another email provider that has working junk filters (like gmail) or add siafoo.net to your safe list.

On Monday we presented a talk about Siafoo to the Linux User Group of Davis. It went quite well, nobody fell asleep or walked out, and we received some really good feedback. The talk had two parts: What Siafoo does and How it works. Most of the information about Siafoo's purpose and features is contained within the about page but if you are interested in knowing a bit about the technologies Siafoo uses check out the PDF slides. Also if you happen to live in the Davis area we encourage you to check out LUGOD and attend some of their monthly talks. Of course if you run a User Group or club and want us to swing by and feed you some Siafoo propaganda contact us =)

On another note, the nodebox community brought to our attention that line endings for downloaded snippets were CR-LF (Windows style). The issue was caused by the fact that the internets use CR-LF as the standard line terminator. To remedy this all snippets are now stored with LF (Unix style) line endings. You should not see a difference when copy/pasting from the page but all downloaded snippets will have Unix style line endings. Let us know if this is causing a problem. Next release we will start sending the correct MIME type for most languages which should allow your browser to correctly change the line endings to your native format. For more about the history of line endings check out Wikipedia

Also Siafoo now supports COBOL, thanks to Theo

Defcon is upon us, and I am there [allegedly] to learn some things that would prevent Siafoo from getting 0wnx0red.

Anyway if you have made the trek here, be safe (make sure you turn off your windows file sharing), and enjoy.

Also because of the usual pre-Defcon paranoia we realized that the Create Account links on the site were not SSL! We remedied the problem and suggest you go change your password... just in case.

Oh and if you noticed a weird FF2 glitch today, it's now been fixed =)