MetaMixed

Update: Okay, well, that donate button just does not want to work. As Kate asked below, there is an email address you can send money to (jmhodges+mixed over at Gmail) and I also put up a working donation button (Donate to Mixed). Thanks, folks.

Remember those really great parties you went to a while ago? Remember that guy who everyone really, really liked but when he started drinking it seemed like he just couldn’t figure out how to stop? Oh, you could slow him down, even put a pause on it for an hour or so, but by the end of the night he would be pissing his pants or flopping from side to side on the floor.”He’s a great guy”, everyone would say, “We just don’t get why he gets like this. I mean, did you see what he did to Laura’s bag?”

You’ve been there. I’ve been there. And now, I’ve gotten to see a program I wrote behaving exactly like that guy.

You see, the software behind these wonderful aggregates (Mixed States, Recombinants and the less cleverly named Upper Bounds), was doing stupid things, like not caching feeds, not spreading out the downloading and processing of said feeds, not caching what would be displayed after processing all the feeds, and so on. I’ve fixed all that.

Yay me.

So, here we are again. I’ve got a whole new set of problems running in my mind, now. Like, “I really need to write a proper archive, so that Google doesn’t go through all eleven thousand eight hundred and thirty-seven posts (holy crap! that’s a lot of syllables), 125 feeds and 3 aggregates and kill my site in one fell swoop.” and “Gee willikers, I wish my host wouldn’t kill of my FeedUpdater process just because its run on longer than 15 minutes. It sleeps for 12 of those minutes!”). Also, there’s Obquo. But that’s a long way off. Oh, and grad school, but that seems even further off.

Ah, that brings me back to something I’ve been wanting to share. A little birdie told me that Mixed States is going to be mentioned in the January issue of Physics World. So, hooray to all of you bloggers on Mixed States, because you rock so hard. You guys have always provided me with hours of procrastination and a heapful of learnin’.

Yeah, learnin’. It’s 6:20 am and I woke up at 3:40 pm, 15 minutes before I went off to work. I’m a little fried and my g’s are disappearing.

I’m sure there was something else I needed to say. “Thanks to the bloggers”, the Physics World thing, missing g’s, shoot.

Oh, right, you.

You rock. You come here and read this thing and get your groove on. You might have even sent me a little note asking where the hell I’ve been. You and people like you keep this band going. You’re the reason why I’ve stayed as band manager and scraped up enough instruments, alcohol and groupies to keep it all together. I do it for the music, man

But I’m not going to make a rocking comparison between your rocking self and the rocking bloggers of Mixed States, Recombinants and Upper Bounds. There’s just too much rocking going on for my little brain to do a proper qsort. And damn the heuristics! They never mean anything, anyway!

Okay, now that I’ve buttered you up. I have a small request.

You see, I’m working for a living (every day). Unfortunately, I’m working for low pay. Also, I’m paying student loans in a soonish fashion and so on and on and on. This is good and fine and the way of things, except that I might not be able to pay for another year of web hosting and my time on this one is up on January the Ninth.

This is kind of scary. Alright, really, really scary. I don’t want to disappoint you folks again by letting the aggregates go down, but I just can’t make the money situation happen. So, I’m asking you guys for you help. Financial help.

Okay, not asking. Would begging suffice?

Perhaps groveling?

I’d like to move this whole site right on over to Planet Argon because they can give all of us a much better experience. Those guys know how to run a ship and they specialize in exactly the kind of programming stuff Mixed runs on. Their bottom level service is only $135. It’s a hell of a value and a step up from what you’re used to.

Should I get on my knees now? I’m not proud.

Okay, a little proud. I’m proud of what this site can do. I’m proud that its been posted about in Science (yes, in the mag) and I’m proud it’s going to be in Physics World.

I hope you guys can toss a few of your hard-earned dollars this way. Any amount would be great. I’d like to keep doing this. I’d like to do it more and I’m going to be scrimping and saving to do so. Hit this button, would you, and help me keep the band together?

Note: Uh, apparently, you’ll have to click through this blog post, the sanity and security checks make the above button not work in the feeds. See Donate to Mixed or just email me at jmhodges+mixed over at Gmail.