First slow web site of 2013 spotted…

At 09:30 on 1st January, as the country stumbled, bleary-eyed into 2013, people’s thoughts naturally turned to New Year’s resolutions. At the top of the list were the usual decisions to eat or drink less. Cancer Research UK has capitalised on this by launching their “dryathlon”.

Would be “dryathletes” are encouraged to sign up and pledge to abstain from drinking alcohol for January. As well as raising awareness of alcohol-related illnesses, the objective is to encourage people to donate their “beer money” to charity.

When, I tried to sign up for this it was obvious that I wasn’t alone. The site seemed slow compared to other websites at that time and part way through the registration procedure I saw this error message.Gateway timeout

I persevered and after a few “page refreshes”, I was able to register. Then I encountered problems with the page that populated the related page on Justgiving.com .

HTTP 500 error

Despite this, I’m pleased to say that my registration was successful. I only hope that this example of poor web performance didn’t dissuade too many people from joining this worthwhile cause.

If you’re feeling inspired to donate, please visit my JustGiving page here.
http://www.justgiving.com/dryathlete-richard-bishop

Quadcopter timelapse

My brother-in-law took this set of photographs from a remote controlled quadcopter when he visited our house at Christmas. The quadcopter ascended to 150 feet or so over the fields near Market Street and took a set of still images which I spliced together to produce a “timelapse” effect.

As the quadcopter takes off the camera is facing West towards Lumb Wood on Holcombe Hill. The copter then rotates  to the left until it is facing East, at this point many of the houses on Market Street and Heycrofts View become visible. After this the camera is pointed towards Edenfield Recreation Ground, “the rec”. The copter rotates again after this and shows a view towards Scout Moor. After this the copter returns to its take off point in the garden.
This still image shows a view of Market Street and Heycrofts View.
DCIM100GOPRO