CDN up for HD and American Gladiators

Today we finally resolved that as long as the pages are being cached at our CDN, then we don't have to rewrite every img src and link to point to the absolute url. That was such a giant relief!!

After finding out this wonderful news, I went back to the HD site, which I'd already changed most of the links, and switched them all back. At least I was smart enough to start with the smallest site.. imagine if I'd chosen to do Stargate first! *groan* The best part of this whole CDN business is that the sites should be faster, especially for people outside the USA (since our servers are based in Ohio).

Aside the the CDN run around, we should be going live with a new contest on Monday (for the movie Wedding Daze) and I've just about finished writing that. Thank goodness I spent such a lot of time setting up a "contest" interface outside of Stargate last year.. made this one much faster to create.

American Gladiators site is live now, but better than that! It's actually behind the CDN. I wanted to switch stargate today, but there was a snafu in the cname update request through our host. They thought when I said "setup the cname on stargate.mgm.com" that I really meant.. "setup the cname on www.stargate.mgm.com". *sigh*

Our content manager today asked me to write her a new form for the administration site. Apparently she has SO many images to upload.. she gets tired of doing them all on one page. I'll write her a page where she can do 5 or 10 at a time, make it quicker.. that's what I'm here for! On a sadder note.. sounds like some of the Ark of Truth images will be coming off the site. Most of the ones she will take off haven't actually gone up yet (I wrote a nifty start and end date into the admin site so she can do things in advance).



Thanks for all the wonderful comments and recommendations for fanfic! In answer to some of the questions, I like it all (gen, het, slash, ship, au, etc). I have a fondness for SGA DH & JF, but definitely like SG1 as well.

I didn't quite get done reading "White Walls" this morning, but in my lunch break I read "Between the Lines" by Sholio, a.k.a. friendshipper. I will definitely check out more from her, and all of the other links and authors suggested!
I remember the first story I read, was by liketheriver called "Velocity Asymptotic". That got me hooked! I've read so many now that sometimes I honestly can't remember if some instances are an episode, or a story I read that was so vivid that I can "see" the images from it!

Mostly I copy the text into a text editor, then spell check. My only "peeve" with some fic is that not all typos get found or fixed. It can really distract me from the story.

Looking forward to reading more of it of course!

BFN

Stargate fan fic

It must be hard to concentrate with a camera so close to your face!


I know SGA fans don't have a fondness for this ship.. but I sort of love their non-shipness even more!

I need to take a break from working on something entirely too frustrating.. so what better to talk about than one of my favorite things! I am not sure if I'd mentioned previously, but I am a HUGE fan of Stargate fanfic. I read as much of it as I can get my hands on (which luckily is a lot). Some of it I don't like that much, some of it is brilliant, either way I love it all.
Every morning I run (well jog/stumble) and recently I've been using the treadmill in my apartment building as it's dark outside that early. Since it's mind numbingly boring in there, and all I have to stare at is myself (wall of mirror = evil) I have taught myself to run and read at the same time. I print out the story I find, punch holes in the margin, and put it in a large binder which happens to fit perfectly on the display of the treadmill. You'd be amazed at how FAST 2 miles goes by when you're busy reading! I usually set the treadmill to cross country or some such program, so that it varies the incline and speed for me.

This morning I almost finished reading one of the best I've read lately, called "White Walls" by Eildon Rhymer. Got some nice whole team whump, plus major character growth for all of the team.

Any suggestions for good fan fic will be greatly appreciated! Apparently we're not supposed to accept "scripts" but heck.. I'm a programmer (in no way a writer or related to production), and these are such wonderful stories.

Thanks for all your kind words about Steger. A few of us went to visit him last night, and take him presents (teen girl magazines.. although he wasn't as enthusiastic about them as we expected!) and plant life. He's doing much better, although it seems the worst part of his whole ordeal was the Angiogram, sounds quite unpleasant.

BFN

Quick sad post

A member of our web team had a minor heart attack last night, but he's OK now, obviously in hospital and we're taking a trek out there this afternoon to see him.

He's our Front end developer, and the one I work most closely with (besides my boss). He's only 25...

BFN

CDN link irritation and more bts

After finally getting the time to read the documentation for setting up the sites with the new CDN.. we discovered a rather large issue. We have to change all the src and links to everything on all the sites. Doesn't sound so bad? We have literally thousands of pages, and ten times more images. Luckily at least a chunk of Stargate and MGM.com are actually content managed pages, so that won't so too much of a drama.. but there are tons of micro sites (sites specific to each movie) that will have to get changed once they are written.

The solution I came up for inserting the correct absolute URL and still have development and staging work is pretty simple. Just get this: $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] and assign them to a var, and stick them in front of every url. Ick.. anyhow.. I guess we'll do high traffic stuff first, and work our way through the rest later.
I had quite a panic on Friday night. I was watching SGA with the BF, and I saw our ad come up (Unlock the Gate Sweepstakes) and went WHOOPS! I didn't test to make sure I'd set it to turn on, and check that the word was right! I dashed over to my computer, and attempted to browse to stargate.mgm.com only to have it.. fail?! I go to google.com, jeninason.com yep.. they work fine.. only stargate.. I find my phone, frantically dial my boss, leave him a message. What to do! I reloaded a few times.. and _finally_ after at least 5 minutes of trying I got the page to load. Yikes.. that must have been some crazy traffic spike. I guess it's safe to say we'll be putting contest and sweeps pages behind the CDN. Slowly my breathing returned to normal, and I had to rewind part of what I'd missed on Harmony.

I know some people think the painting was mean for Shep.. and I agree to an extent.. but it was SO funny.. I can't help but love it! I spent a while this morning after I got to work trying to find out if we had any decent hires images of that painting to no avail! Oh well.. I put up some other random pics for today!

In response to a couple comments specifically:
Achimedes on the Hollywood Ashes; Looks like that's what our ex-cricket captains are up to! I was terribly sad that there weren't more people there, but I guess Americans for the most part just simply don't understand cricket. That's just not cricket I say!

Crownglass39; I too would love that picture on a t-shirt.. if only I could get a really great image of it! Thanks for the "bad day" comment too.. as I said.. it can be hard not to take things personally but now I think it's quite funny.

Kristen; Sadly I don't directly get any content. I wrote the pages that display the content, and an administration system so the content people can upload things and turn them on without anything coming near me. I do _sort of_ get a say in content, but usually only if my opinion is asked (being the resident SG fangirl) and each Monday the content person asks me what I want this week's poll to be, then she rewords it so it fits and sounds much cooler. Funnily enough PHP is my main language right now, but I started out in Perl, then some ASP, Java, C etc. Most of our sites are PHP with either Oracle or MySQL as our databases.

Morjana; Yep.. me too.. I save the eps on my DVR, and watch them all weekend, sometimes I just play them over and over as I'm doing housework. My workmates hate that I can sometimes recite the script verbatim.. addicted I tell you!

Rose; I honestly was sure I wasn't going to like Harmony. What a pleasant surprise! Plus I just love the McKay/Sheppard thing too.

Achimedes (again ;)) ; That's such a great description, Bing Crosby-Bob Hope.. definitely!

Ruffles; I agree with the poor John, he worked so hard and got the snub. Still.. was funny :)

A-Pilgrim-soul; Thanks for your kind words! I'll try and keep the pics coming.

Finally results of last week's poll. Wasn't very popular.. could have been both the topic, and the fact that it was without the submit button.. scared people off?
Do you think McKay will propose to Katie Brown?
Don't hold your breath. - 43% - 2166
Maybe yes. Maybe no. - 27% - 1393
Yes. They're MFEO. - 30% - 1537
Total: 5096

BFN!

Quick SGA eps thought

Didn't you just LOVE the last scene.. my bf and I were rolling all over the floor at that last scene.. precious! I wish I had a screencap of that.. just brilliant!

BFN!

Busy day with DNS/faux sites for Natpe

Next week americangladiators.com goes live with a new site, so we've been scrambling to setup the CDN to sit in front of it (for all that crazy traffic!) and work out where it's to be hosted.. where the DNS should go. I think it's much more complicated than it needs to be.. but that's pretty common!

Morning started with both our designer and front end developer's calling off sick. Seems something is going around the office, and I sure don't want it! Sadly that meant that I spent a large amount of my day putting my fingers in the dike. Edited a page that will be a "faux site" called KMGM, for NATPE, that will showcase upcoming syndication stuff like Reno911 and Chappelle's show. Fun stuff.. great videos good for a laugh!

I'm looking forward to watching Harmony tonight, hopefully I won't have so many DVR problems like last week!

Thanks to crownglass39, morjana (who is always the best!), kristen, rose and omglawdork for your kind words. Sorry I went a bit ape yesterday.. I guess I take things Stargate related a little too personally! I just love the show tons, and get tired of "fanatics" always dogging things we do, and calling us all sorts of nice things (yes I lurk on Gateworld!). We are human, we make mistakes, it's not because we don't love the show that these things happen.

I love it when you guys leave me hints as to what's broken (morjana has helped me tons of times!) sometimes we're in a rush, and don't check things properly.

Specially in response to kristen, I'm not actually the "web master" per se, just the web programmer. I started at MGM about a year and a half ago, and we didn't even work on the Stargate site until April last year. I had seen the show, and I am a sworn sci-fi fan (movies, tv shows, books you name it!) and I have all the toys and posters in my cube to prove it. I became a dedicated fan when we took over the site and watched all the episodes of SG1 and Atlantis back to back over a few weeks, here at lunch, then after work (turned my BF into a fan in the process).

I love the reactions of the fans to most of the polls, and how people get quite adamant about who should win! I report on their progress to our team, who all find the results interesting as well.

Anyhow.. it's late Friday night, time for me to go home! Everyone have a great weekend! Tomorrow is Australia Day (26th Jan) so everyone have a beer for me (or raise their glass!)

BFN

Limited space creates miscommunication

Apologies in advance for this rant:

The one thing that we have problems with when creating new poll questions is space. We only have a small amount of space to work with, without the layout on the page getting screwy. Another problem is that many fans are so into finding things we do wrong, that they misunderstand the question.

My original question : Do you think McKay will propose to Katie Brown in the future. Sadly this didn't fit, so it was shortened to the current question: Do you think McKay will propose to Katie Brown?.

This has prompted fans to "correct" my error. Pointing out that the proposal was in Quarantine last week. To which I'd like to respond that in fact.. it didn't happen at all. McKay never asked Katie.. she just found the ring, and he told her what he was planning to do. Then at the end, he said he wasn't ready. From this I thought it would be neat to ask if you think it would happen at all.

TPTB here don't give a crap about the poll. They almost never even see it, ask about it, or in any way comment about it. If it weren't for me insisting that we keep it, it would have replaced by the hideous ad that appears below it months ago (I don't like the ads on the site either, but that's for another rant).

Anyhow, sending emails correcting the poll is only going to achieve one thing.. the removal of it.

For those that do understand my cryptic haiku like questions.. here are some more results from past polls:

Favorite Atlantis Slash Pairings
Sheppard/McKay 67% 12703 Votes
Teyla/Weir 13% 2529 Votes
Ronon/McKay 20% 3784 Votes
19016 Votes

BFN

DB Design finally final.. ish?

I think we finally worked out what everything on my database design was meant to do. That might sounds strange, but I created it last summer, so our memory was rather foggy as to what everything on it was for. We spent lunchtime brainstorming why we did each table, and I think we've finally cracked it. Matt and I were rather impressed that we'd thought of just about everything!

For the Stargate poll that I posted the results for yesterday.. honestly I think that's the highest number of votes we've ever had in that amount of time! Current poll doesn't have quite as big a count, but also is much harder to script against.. being that it uses javascript & ajax. Well that's my theory ;)

I have made a folder with some choice images to post, but I'm fast running out! I only have images from production episode 1-4 (not air order), and we return the discs after we take the ones which are approved to go on the site. Bummer.. but I did however get my hands on some Ark of Truth pics. I don't want to post any until the movie is released.. to spoilerie of you know what I mean!

I like Joe's smile in today's pic.. although DH looks pained.. bad scene?

A previous poll's results (since they still haven't given me a place to post previous results on the official site):
Who would win in an intergalactic street brawl?
Ronon Dex 50% 7161 Votes
Teal'c 50% 7130 Votes
14291 Votes

Back to DB Redesign

Pretty quiet day, went live with the new Stargate Poll.. although it looks almost the same (minus a submit button ;))

After working on the system to pulling the downloads from the contests, I went back to the Transfer Tool. Yikes.. Found a couple cracks in the database design I made with my boss many months ago. Looks like tomorrow will be reviewing that, as things have gone quiet again on Stargate, and MGM HD is also not too noisy. American Gladiators stuff is going well as well, but more on that.. another day?

I love cheeky "candid" pics like today's.

Edit----------->

Results of the last stargate site poll for crownglass39!

Sheppard/McKay 49% 29389 Votes
Ronon Dex/Teyla Emmagan 40% 24002 Votes
Keller/Carter 11% 6881 Votes
60272 Votes in total.

Hollywood Ashes today!

The batsman is Steve Waugh!


Meat Pie and Cricket.. nuff said.

Rugby Jersey.. but the right colors!

This post is completely off topic, but today I'm going to the inaugural Hollywood Ashes Twenty20 cricket match. For the Aussie team it appears Steve Waugh and Mike Whitney will be there! Excitement.. also meat pies, which is actually the number one reason to go IMO. Pics are taken from lots of angles, with my lil point and shoot digital cam.. so not great, but pretty!

http://www.hollywoodashes.com/

Woot! Cricket in LA.. strange!

BFN

Half day today!

Thankfully today is a half day, so we're just tying up some small things before the long weekend, sadly even though my new ajax'd poll is ready to go, we never go live with any major code changes on Friday's (unless something is busted), so it won't go up until Tuesday.
I noticed someone had been messing with the last poll that was up. Honestly I'm shocked it took someone that long to work out how poorly it was coded, and take advantage of that to skew results.

A couple posts ago I mentioned Team Stargate and the results, and chevron7 asked me the following:
Why is Team Stargate only open to residents of the US and Canada?

While I don't know a "for sure" answer to this, and I've never directly asked anyone in legal, I think it's a combination of cost and law.
We have to abide very strictly to certain rules when running sweepstakes and contests. Team Stargate is considered a contest, as prizes are awarded, and every country (and sometimes state) has different laws governing these things. The marketing people who created Team Stargate have limited budgets (smaller than I'd imagined actually) and can't spend the extra money to have the contest available to other countries.

I've worked with some other large companies in the past, and they had the same challenges with running contest and sweepstakes online. Nestle only ran contests for US residents (not even Canada) and Toyota was the same. These companies have the advantage of having offices worldwide, and those parts of the companies in other countries can run local contests.

That was a much longer answer than I intended, but I wish we could do more for other countries, being that I'm not from here, and ran into the same difficulties.

I know some out there spend a lot of time finding stuff we do wrong on the site (like naming files that aren't supposed to be live a little too obviously) I ask you to please remember there's are only 4 of us.. and we can only spend a small amount of time on the Stargate site. Compassion please!

BFN!

Ajax poll and an image

As no one has specifically asked for any pics, I'm just going to randomly pick some that I like. If you'd like them emailed in the largest size I have (from gmail) you can email me at jeniimages@gmail.com.
I like this pic, the cheeky grin of a man willing to show his belly on TV!

Ark of Truth photo's went up today, just a small sampling, and I think more each week until the DVD is released. Team Stargate announced their rankings and winners, and so they are now live as well.

Writing the Ajax poll has been much simpler than I had anticipated. I think I've been avoiding doing Ajax for so long as I loathe Javascript. That's why I worked hard to become that hardcore backend programmer! No more Javascript and browser shenanigans. Until Ajax. *sigh*
Essentially all it does it capture the contents of the form, and send them via query string to a php page, which updates the DB, and shows the results. I thought it was going to be much more difficult..

BFN

Stargate site changes galore

Tons of work on Stargate site this week.. sadly to the detriment of the other sites.

I work hard to separate my love for the show, from my extreme displeasure at the marketing choices made by TPTB over what we can put on the site, what we are promoting, and the content they give us.

So pages are ready to go up (once legal approved) for Rankings and Winners of Team Stargate. This has been a major argument point over the last few days, but I won't go into it. The pages themselves are super simple, I wrote them to be database driven from the administration site, so our content person can update them as they get the ranks/winners. Along with this we have received all of the new images for Ark of Truth! Sadly I have to rewrite the stills page to accommodate these, nothing dramatic, but going to be partially hard-coded for each movie, since there will be no more SG1 seasons.

Between all these new pages, I've been rewriting the home page poll. It's just not been working the way we'd hoped. When we first wrote this site about a year ago, it was in a huge hurry (we had a month and a half!) so I cut corners where possible, and the poll was on a corner. Basically it's someone else's code, shoehorned into our administration site, and front end. It breaks when you put single apostrophes in the fields. I know.. simple to fix.. except who loves wading through someone else's code? not me! So I'm just rewriting it. Much simpler and easier for the content people to use.

That's about half of the updates just for this week. Sounds quick and easy.. but no such luck of course!

Going to a pre-screening of Cloverfield tonight.. WOOT!

BFN

Missed the fun.. nerdy cube though!

So I actually missed the fun that happened when the pics were taken. I was only at the breakfast that was had before the filming of the speech. As a result, I have no idea what they were laughing at! I will endeavor to find out though. In addition I can't get any larger images from said event.

If only I had more pics to post! Sadly no.. so you're treated to the wonderful view from my cube.



BFN

Another day, another pic? :)

Thanks everyone for your comments! I am trying to track down a couple extra pics to post today.

Unfortunately I don't have any rights, copyright or other of these pics, as I didn't take them (only the ones with me in it are actually mine).

These ones I also can't get any bigger sizes unfortunately (well perhaps the one that's on the news item at stargate.mgm.com).

I'll ask my boss today about posting higher res pics on the site, I think the only reason we don't do it now, is because it doesn't fit in the current layout. I know the originals that we're given (well.. I think someone in marketing retouches them first) are massive, and I can try and get specific ones, just let me know which particular ones.

Thanks again for everyone's lovely comments! As I mentioned in my last post.. I only wish I could be so interesting all the time!

More of SGA People's Choice piccies

Yes.. More pics! I keep coming across them, so must share!













BFN!

ps. Thanks for everyone's comments! If only I could be this interesting all the time.

We are people people..

Well not me.. Stargate Atlantis!

Here are some pics I couldn't post until today ;) (and I don't have rights to them.. so er.. well.. you know).




BFN

Stargate Atlantis WON!

It's wonderful that they won the People's Choice Award for favorite SciFi show!

I was sad at how SHORT that clip on the show was.. seriously.. was that even 2 seconds?

*sad* I'll rewatch tomorrow.. but I don't think I FF'd through anything longer.

YAY!

Couple more pics from breakfast on Friday

These weren't taken by me, but I managed to get my hands on them! More to follow:






We're all excited to hear tonight who wins at the People's Choice Awards. Everyone cross fingers for Stargate Atlantis!!

BFN

People's Choice?

I found out we'll know on the 9th who won in the People's Choice Awards. I've still got my fingers crossed for Stargate Atlantis, but they were up against Battlestar Gallactica.. so.. well anyhow.

Did anyone see that x-files article in Wired this month? Very funny stuff. Let me see if I can find it online (maybe only in the print version?).
Found the link:
http://www.wired.com/entertainment/hollywood/magazine/16-01/pl_screen

Here is the interesting part:

Mitch Pileggi X-Files ID Mulder and Scully's tough-guy boss, Walter Skinner. Current Cover Where hasn't this guy turned up? He was on the ill-fated Day Break and played a commander on Stargate: Atlantis. The Truth Everyone on TV eventually goes through the Stargate. It's a rule.

New contest coming up for the Stargate site, actually that's what I'm working on today. Of course it's another "custom" page.. can't they just settle on a type of contest/sweepstakes and stick to it!! No that would make my job too easy! I wish I could win this contest.. I like the prize.

Trying to work out a way I can find myself in Vancouver in March.. hehe.. see if I can get myself an invite to Bridge Studios!

BFN

Breakfast in heaven

I just got back from an hour and a half breakfast with some of the Stargate cast!

Yes.. Srsly.. Once I get home I'll download the picture I took with David Hewlett.

I was lucky enough to meet Sebastian (Jane and David's son), and also Caden (Rachel and Loyd's son). They are very close in age, but Baz is much much bigger than Caden!
Both are extremely adorable of course, and you can tell their parents think the world of them!
Joe Flanigan was also there, but I didn't get to chat with him much, but I did get to have quite a chat with Jewel. Jewel is even more lovely in person! Most everyone else there were suits from MGM (some I think are my bosses bosses bosses!)

Many thanks to Adam Lewis who was kind enough to think of me again (he took me backstage at Comic-con to meet them as well) and call me up last night to let me know they'd be here, if I'd like to go up.

Gosh.. am so excited/happy to have had such a wonderful morning!!

OK.. James downloaded the picture for me:



Oh.. and here is the pic where I chopped myself off.. David thought it was very funny I wasn't able to aim the camera ;)


BFN!