Starship Asterisk*

I don't use APOD software, but this morning I wasn't able to access APOD with my browser. After the usual connect-and-loading time Netscape told me "Document Done", but there was only a blank rectangle on my screen. Whatever the problem is, it is probably not caused by the software.

There was some sort of software glitch at NASA. APOD is now back up. We apologize for the inconvenience.
- RJN

APOD is a wonderful website and I appreciate the effort in putting together such an enormous and awe inspiring collection of Astronomical images.

Recently I have noticed a measurable slow down when loading the APOD Archive page.
Previously I could open the Archives page and access any listing with immediate results.

Now when I access the Archives page, I am forced to wait up to 2 minutes before I am allowed to access a listing. I have checked my CPU utlization and during the loading time period and 100% of available CPU time is being consumed by Internet Explorer.

I have only experienced this problem on the APOD Archives page.

Has anyone else experienced this problem.

The thing is, perhaps, that archives page is quite large itself for it contains all of past apod entries links. I checked today it was 301390 bytes. It loads in about 10..20 seconds here.

It might even be internet traffic.

"Ananlogy"

Even a Lamborghini Diablo can only move down the LA freeway system at 10 mph during rush hour traffic.

Unless you get to ride the "T1" diamond lane.

I have tried at several times during the day and run into the same performance issue.

Since these are essentially links, it might help if the links were established in folders by Year. As MakC found, the page only contains
0.28743MB of data but it seems as if there is latency between the load the data request and the amount of time ther server takes to deliver the data.

I have seen this with systems with very large databases and the best way to handle it is to create folders for large chunks large chunks of data specific to a time period as in this case. When a User system makes a call on the database contained within the Year folder, the system won't get hung up trying to resolve each link over a period of 12 years.

Other suggestions or speculations would be welcome.

I was getting a 'cannot find the server' message sunday and monday.

I was hoping they were re-writing the software to exclude the porno and gambling link posters. No such luck.

In fact they didn't even clean all that shit off the web site.

Come on guys, do we want that trash here?

Are you short for volunteers to clean and delete posts and topics?

I doubt if you will delegate that responsibility to someone you don't know, but for the record I will help police this web site by deleting posts, posters and topics.

Kovil

kovil, 2 things:

1 they don't read here

2 we were talking about APOD not APOD forum

Well, it' my turn to not have read accurately. I read it as the discuss button. When I clicked Discuss I got the error message of 'cannot find the server' sunday and monday. I wasn't trying to access the archives.

There sure are lots of porn and gambling links on the Asterisk Cafe site.

Perhaps if one deletes them the posters get pissed and post more, so ignoreing them makes them go away sooner. I just object to the blight, but then I am not the Minister of Good Taste !

Makc, sometimes it sounds like your words are running thru a translator.
<1 they don't read here >
I still can't figure out what you really mean.

kovil wrote:Makc, sometimes it sounds like your words are running thru a translator.
<1 they don't read here >
I still can't figure out what you really mean.

I mean, there are good chances admins never read your post, here.

Makc,

What is the political climate within the APOD upper management regarding the cleaning off of the trash/spam postings on the APOD board site?

have no idea, really.

personally I think they moved to other places (maybe mailling lists or something) and simply don't care.

I have been accessing APOD from my office and home computers for the past 18 months.

During the last two weeks, I have noticed that when I leave and return to the http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/archivepix.html web page on my office computer their will be a pause of ~20 - 25 seconds with ~60% cpu usage. This is the only web page for which this pause occurs. I have not been able to identify the reason. I would appreciate any suggestions as to the cause.

The pause has not occurred on my home computer.

it is currently ~300KB. this page is about 10 KB. go figure it out.

Sounds like another ideopathic version of the Curse of Bill.

Most people who followed Bill's advice and got all their sofware from a single vendor, i.e., Windows, Internet Explorer, Outlook, and Office, get used to regular inexplicable behavior from their computers, plus weekly security patches (not sure what they all do, but my computer seems to get gradually slower over time), and attacks by every sort of malware imaginable.

Good luck finding an explanation or solution.

That page has a lot of links and each one must be looked up in the cache to determine which color to display them in.

Check your IE Internet Options/Internet files/General/Settings
How much disk space are you using for the cache. The default on my laptop was 640MB.

I use Firefox and its default is 51MB and aboutcache showed 35MB was in use.

I use IE6.0 at home and at work. The "Amount of disk space to use" is set to 350 MB on the home computer and 400 MB on the office computer. On the office computer, I experimented with settings of 500 MB, 600 MB, 700 MB and 800 MB. For each setting, the problem continues to occur on the office computer.

Hello All

Sometimes the post link hangs and sometimes it posts the same message.

Must be my mistake.

Maybe double click.

Oh well!

Asterisk is still the best.

fvanland, try going the direction I suggested: 50MB or smaller.

You'll also wait for the cache to empty down to the new size (weeks) or force a purge.

I suggest you switch to firefox.

William Roeder wrote:switch to firefox.

Yeah, that's right. Using other browser (and especially IE), watch it carefully. Keep your eyes open wide. Whenever you will notice even slightest glitch or inconvenience, whenever it does something that you think it should have not, or even if you simply do not like its icon - you know what to do. Get damn firefox. It is right what you were dreaming about since you even haven't been born yet, trust me. According to recent survey, up to 80% of newborn babies prefer firefox to other browsers. Another research has shown strong benefits of long-term use of firefox for health care; it improves cholesterol level and lowers breast cancer risk. Finally, crime rates are known to be lower among firefox users. There is no problem firefox can't solve. It's the #1 software ever made.

Whoa, I didn't know about most of those benefits! Except crime rate being lower among Firefox users: some IE users deal with the stress of infections and crashes by going on murderous rampages.

Joking aside, I'd also recommend switching away from IE if possible.

In IE, I tried setting the "Disk space to use to" 50 MB, 100 MB, 150 MB with the same results.

I then experimented with Firefox and Netscape. The problem did not occur with either of these.

I don't know. I have my IE loading that page very, very fast, and I have CD-sized 600+ MB cache. On the other hand, I have fast connection.

As for firefox, what pissed me off completely about it - if you don't count this importunate evangelism all over the net - is its speed. I used to have full-blown mozilla and then firefox installed, and you know they were slowest browser monsters ever, though they constantly claim the opposite.

Try going to Tools->Internet Options->General and delete all temporary files (there you should find a button fot it), then restart IE. If that doesn't help, then your problem is not with cache.