There are not much of an update today. Life had been a bit topsy-turvy with so many things going on at the same time. So I had allowed a few balls to drop. I’ll pick them up later but first things first — there are things that require fixing.
Load Times on chowtimes.com
Chowtimes.com load times had been sporadic. You all know about it. We received a couple of emails last week complaining about this. And then our hosting company shot us another email about overloading and stuff. Sigh … there is no end.
So the past few days, I had taken over Nanzaro’s PC and wiped out the entire PC. He was not a happy camper but with 4 computers at home, he just gotta use one of the others.
I am going to do test installs and migrations of chowtimes to a new server. Oh … this is gonna be huge learning curve for me because I wanted to do it on the cheap.
So I am thinking of doing this:
- Use Centos as the Linux server
- Use VirtualBox for virtualization
- Use WordPress Appliance from Turnkey Linux to setup the blog environment
I am going to create this as a sandbox environment to test migration of chowtimes and also primarily to see if there are going to be a big difference in performance.
If this works, I am going to attempt to migrate chowtimes.com from shared hosting to a virtual dedicated server using the same Centos, VirtualBox and WordPress Appliance combination.
Tech Geeks out there, what do you think? Any comments and guidance appreciated!
The Next 8GTCC Event
We have decided on the cuisine for the next 8GTCC event. It will be CANTONESE!
The 8GTCC Cantonese event is being co-planned by Joe and LotusRapper. Well, we thought the Cantonese cuisine would be easy but as we got down to it, it has its own challenges.
Among the eight cuisines, Cantonese is the most familiar to everyone. That IS the main problem. Cantonese cuisine means a lot of things too. Just giving some examples … the following are distinctively Cantonese:
- Hongkong Style Cafe
- Dim Sum
- 10-course banquets
- Homestyle Cantonese cooking
- Noodles and Congee houses
- Siu Mei (Barbeque), Lo Mei (organs) and Siu Lap
See? We have so many options available but each of them are so familiar to everyone. Everyone could go and have these sort of food on their own … at anytime in any of the hundreds of Cantonese restaurants in Vancouver.
We are still cracking our brains. We wanted to do something different, something extraordinary … something that will awe all of you.
Right now, we are gravitating towards doing sometime like an ultra-extravagant dinner. It is going to be more than the cost of the 8GTCC Hunan ($20) and 8GTCC Jiangsu ($40) dinners. We are thinking of moving to a bit pricier multi-course lavish dinner with a price range of ($70) but affordability is something we are not sure how much is an issue here. What do you think? Can you help us by responding to the poll below?
//
If you have ANY comments or suggestions, just send me an email (ben@chowtimes.com) or better still, put in your comments here so that we can have an exchange of ideas.
Extreme Dim Sum Event
We hit a snag on the planning.
Things did not … turn out the way we expected. We wanted the XDS event to be perfect and that everyone goes away raving about the extreme dim sum. We just realized (among other things) that “extreme” means a lot of things. Rather than pushing ahead and end up being a less than perfect event, we thought we should not rush this.
So the event for June 26th is being put off until we get the chance to rethink how we are going to improve on this.
The restaurant had been really supportive for this event for which we are thankful to help us explore our options.
That is it for this week … eat well.
I think the most important thing about the dinner is the dishes itself. Once we know what we will be eating, we can vote for the dishes?
Hi Doug,
You’re right.
The first step is deciding which variance of Cantonese cuisine (as Ben articulated) we’re going to go with in the first place, LOL.
Or we could do a “Cantonese Cuisine Crawl” ……… the C3 !
I’m ok with paying a bit more money for an excellent dinner. One thing I would suggest though is to not go overboard with the number of dishes. We can only eat so much food and if there are so many dishes to eat then the eating experience becomes a chore. I’m sure you had lots of left overs in your last dinner. Just have fewer dishes but with quality ingredients. Dishes that you wouldn’t normally order when you eat on your own because they are expensive. If I may also suggest leaving out sharkfin soup due to ethical reasons.
I can’t say that I’m not disappointed by the delayed XDS, but I understand that you want it to be perfect because everyone is expecting such. I hope XDS happens very soon! Thank you!
Hi Ben – how does one view the poll results as they are now ? I think in my browser the poll results window may be cut off at the bottom (?). This is what I see:
10-course – $50 32% (18)
Lavish multi-course – $70 23% (13)
Homestyle Cooking – $30 18% (10)
HK Style Cafe – $20 12% (7)
Dim Sum – $15 11% (6)
Hi LotusRapper:
You may use this link to see the latest results of the poll:
http://www.polljunkie.com/9KiAo7/View7945.aspx
Am going to fix increase the height of the poll widget in a few minutes. Let me know if it is still truncated.
Ben
Thanks Ben 🙂
Which hosting company are you currently using? Will you be staying with them if you move to a VPS?
We are currently being hosted by GoDaddy. I don’t care if we move to another hosting company as long as it makes it easier for us without charging us an arm and a leg. 🙂
Hm wrote a reply but don’t see it here.
A VPS would cost quite a bit more than shared hosting, but not as much as dedicated hosting. I would check http://www.webhostingtalk.com/ to find a hosting company that fits your needs.
I’m not sure what you have in mind with your home hosted server though, since it’ll be limited by your internet connection which isn’t enough bandwidth to accurately simulate traffic for Chowtimes.