I’d like to introduce the improved Events page! Now you can just go to our all purpose Events Page and see what’s coming up! It’s a little barebones now, but eventually it will have the week’s events listed. You can also see the three upcoming events in the sidebar. (Sorry about that dingbat — still trying to fix it.) As very observant readers may have noticed, I’ve been struggling with events for a while — they were way too NYC-centric to be really useful, but this way events can be quickly added and a database maintained. I’ll still be doing some spotlight posts, as well, but this is, hopefully, a useful resource. So keep those events coming!

I also added a tip jar way down at the bottom of the page. I agonized over this for a while, but it is sort of blog tradition at this point and hopefully isn’t too greedy or pathetic. Part of the reason is an ongoing series of unforeseen web hosting charges. BEGIN TECHIE WEB HOST DISCUSSION.

The Beat is hosted on Media Temple, which all of our web admin friends endorsed and which has proven to be very stable, fast and adaptable. On that basis alone I would endorse it. However, as may people have found out, MT has a way of adding extra charges for mysterious “GPU” overages. If you google “Media Temple” and “GPU overages” you’ll find lots of sob stories, including one poor guy who had $1000 of extra charges in one month for some 404s. You could buy your own frigging RAID array for that kind of money. My own charges have been several hundred dollars a month — nothing bankrupting, but a charge that was Not In The Budget. I’ve been working with my tech team to reduce my GPU overages, and am currently considering some different “web hosting solutions” as they put it. END TECHIE WEB HOST DISCUSSION.

Part of the “Problem” is that The Beat’s traffic is going up, and should continue on the same trajectory. Call it the old “growing pains.” Or just call it a pain. I run the Beat 90 percent by myself, with the volunteer help of a few people like Steve Stahl who cleans up some of my grammar, and my wonderful contributors, and it has made money from day 1, thanks to my awesome advertisers and sponsors. These GPU charges are, however, a bit of a setback until I can put some other improvements into place.

Anyway, if you like to tip websites, you can now tip the Beat! And if you don’t, just keep reading. I’m very lucky to have such a loyal audience, and it is very much appreciated.





As a special premium, here are the three most popular images ever on The Beat! These three (and hundreds of others) were improperly moved over from the old site and generated a lot of 404s which overtaxed those GPUs — whatever they are. But the band is back in town.


Hayden Panettiere!

Jessica Biel!

And of course, dear, dear Gerard Butler.

BONUS!

Salma Hayek!

SUPER EXTRA SURPRISE BONUS!

Dr. Lucien Sanchez (Matt Berry) from GARTH MARENGHI’S DARK PLACE. I have no idea why this picture is so popular on Google but hopefully it is because there are a lot more Garth Marenghi fans than is generally supposed.

I’m sorry all these pictures are Not Comics, but people like looking for Jessica Biel in a bikini more than Devil Dinosaur. People are funny.

Okay boring web discussion over. Back to the fray.

1 COMMENT

  1. So… if we donate a certain amount, will you post more cheese/beef cake photos? Or Devil Dinosaur frolicking in Loch Ness?

    (And while I am not one to complain, that Salma Hayak photo looks like her head was stuck on another body.)

  2. A brief technical suggestion: to cut down on the 404-related GPU charges, I’d recommend the “Exclude File Type Requests” plugin for WordPress. It’s very simple: you give it a list of file types like jpg, png, gif, etc, and it makes sure that if one of those files is missing, WordPress doesn’t spend time trying to process it as if it were a page.

    (More generally, I’d suggest looking into some sort of caching plugin as well — I’ve had good experiences with WP Super Cache, for instance — but I’m sure your tech team has already considered that.)

  4. When I saw the heading ‘Things to Do’ and that pic of Salma Hyek, I assumed someone was simply building a list.

    More Devil Dinosaur!!