Someone’s got a sense of humor on MassWrestling :)
MassWrestling.com gets about 90k requests to its RSS feeds every month, which eats up about 3GB of bandwidth transfers and puts extra load on the web server.
I saw a tip on Coding Horror Blog that it is a great idea to rewrite your RSS feeds to be syndicated by Feedburner. Unfortunately, the example given doesn’t quite work for MassWrestling.com’s e107 feed URLs:
/cms/e107_plugins/rss_menu/rss.php?forumposts.2
So I spent some time relearning Apache’s mod_rewrite, and came up with the following lines to add to my .htaccess files:
RewriteEngine On
RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} !FeedBurner
RewriteCond %{QUERY_STRING} ^forumposts\.1$
RewriteRule ^rss\.php$ http://feeds.feedburner.com/masswrestling/posts_rss? [R=301]
This rewrite sends all requests that are not FeedBurner’s http agent to Feedburner’s copy of my feed. The problem was figuring out that the question mark after the rss.php? is actually not matchable in the RewriteRule condition. Instead, you have to match it in a RewriteCond against the %{QUERY_STRING} variable. The replacement pattern requires a question mark at the end of it to ensure that mod_rewrite does not pass on the extra paremeters to the new URL.
So now:
rss.php?forumposts.2
redirects (301, permanently moved) to:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/masswrestling/posts_rss2
Let’s hope it knocks out the extra RSS traffic I have.
I often get random emails from people regarding MassWrestling.com. Sometimes I even get emails regarding the New England Prep School Wrestling website I allow to be hosted for free on our server (NEISWA Site). I don’t have much to do with the guys who run the NEISWA pages on my server - they run their portion independently.
Anyways, here’s the strangest email I’ve ever gotten. I’ve bolded the outrageous claims. If this person is genuinely telling the truth on all accounts, then I apologize for my insensitivity. But this is just too crazy not to share.
Preface: I checked with the Prep administrators, and this person has a penchant for causing all sorts of trouble. Check this out for example. Good stuff!
=====
Wednesday, 12/6/06
Subject: hi mike; asking for a 2nd chance on NEISWA site
Mike:
Late last year, my computer link-up was blocked from the NEISWA website because of some postings by my 2 nephews. My computer ID number or computer Link (or whatever you call it) was blocked, and that’s where I’ve been: out of touch regarding my grandson’s wrestling progress and his New England wrestling friends/partners.
As my nephews’ havoc caused this rift, I’m asking for a 2nd (and final) chance to be allowed to check the NEISWA site, forums, rankings and such, because it gives me the opportunity to follow my old school (redacted) and my grandson’s current school, along with their competitors.
I’d greatly appreciate the opportunity to link up again with the NEISWA website, as this is his final year in prep school. As I have terminal cancer, I will not likely be able to see or enjoy him at the collegiate level, assuming I’m still alive in 2008. the doctor’s won’t make any promises.
You won’t have to worry about any problems from me, again. My nephews are now (thank God!) away at college, and I won’t be hosting them over Christmas break as I did last year, which is when they raised a ruckus (somehow) on your site. I assure you that you’ll NEVER HAVE A PROBLEM WITH ME ON YOUR NEISWA SITE, ever.
And if you don’t want me to post, I won’t. I just want access to follow my grandson and his team’s progress, and to support the wrestlers and your site for its coverage of the great sport of wrestling.
Please reinstate me/my computer, and lift the “block” to my ID number/or ID link, or whatever it is that cuts off my access to the NEISWA site.
Kindly respond to this email ASAP, as the season’s already started and I feel terrible about not knowing how he’s doing. Thanks for giving me a 2nd chance.
Cordially yours,
[redacted]
ps: Tomorrow’s the 65th anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. My father was one of the Navy men who survived this sneak attack that forced us into WW 2. many of his buddies/friends died that Sunday morning, died for the freedoms too many Americans take for granted.
I never take my freedoms, especially freedom of speech, for granted. If you’ll be kind enough to “lift the block” on my access to the NEISWA site for just the next four months, I can not express to you how profoundly grateful I’ll be to you, Mike Atlas. Please, from this old man to you—a young, vibrant student at Northeastern University—have a little mercy on my for the “sins” of my irrepressible (and yes, sometimes irresponsible) nephews.
Do the right thing, and let me follow the last year of my grandson’s New England prep school career on the NEISWA site. thanks again. Godspeed!
Rounded, approximate numbers
Site’s constituency (guesstimated max unique visitors interested at any given time):
19,000
Most unique visitors ever in a given month (Feb 2006):
16,500
Registered users:
3200
Users who have posted something in the forums:
1500
Total forum posts:
20,000
Users who have more than 150+ forum posts:
15
Users who have more than 100-150 forum posts:
15
Users who have more than 25-100 forum posts:
70
That means approximately 2+ % of the site’s registered users do 1/4 of all the talking on the forums.
That means approximately .1% of the site’s constituency have ever talked in the forums (even once).
And these numbers generally reflect what is now well known about socially driven websites - a tiny percentage of the users do a huge percentage of the contribution for little or no pay while the masses simply lurk and do not interact with these people doing all the talking (example: Wikipedia, where fewer than two per cent—are responsible for seventy per cent of the work).
More:
Understanding the 1% and also here.
I’ve been asked before why I’m not wrestling in college. I wrote this before I graduated high school and it’s probably good to have this in my blog despite the fact that I wrote this in April 2003.
Yeah, hm, one would think colleges would be banging on my door. But several factors make up the reasons why I didn’t wrestling in college.
1) The minimum weight class in college is 125, where the guys there are like 135-140 cutting weight to get to that weight class. I’ll never be as big as any of them. They are that big even in D3 college wrestling. I’m just not big enough (i could lift more) to wrestle 125 in college.
2) I achieved everything one can acheive as a high school wrestler. I don’t really have dreams of wrestling college. When I look back at high school, the first thing and the most important thing I will always remember is wrestling. I don’t want to do the same for college. I want to look back on college as the years where I learned how to be a successful adult in society, having fun, and studying my fucking ass off. College wrestling is a huge committment which I don’t really want to committ to. It won’t get me anywhere closer to my degree.
3) Only two of the 5 schools I applied to have wrestling teams - Rennselaer Polytech and Worcester Polytech, both division 3 programs. On the national college level, I’m actually not that good a wrestler. The competition in college is unreal, even at division 3.
4) Division 3 programs can’t (afford to) offer me scholarship money for wrestling.
5) Despite my accomplishments, division 1 and 2 wrestling programs across the country don’t generally recruit wrestlers from New England. They prefer to recruit kids from PA, IA, OH, MN, NJ, and CA, states where wrestling dominates winter sports, where the competition down there would kill any wrestler from new england. Bigger/better wrestlign programs jsut aren’t interested in me.
6) I got offered a very nice academic scholarship to Northeastern University. I have a 3.65 gpa and stuff, so I wasn’t depending on my wrestling alone to get me into/through college.
From here on out, I no longer compete, I’m a college student and a high school All-American in wrestling
Thanks for asking.
I have released a college-weight wrestling boxscore infusion for the PHP-Fusion content management system. You can see it in action at the NECCWA website, as well as a version for high school weights on the e107 content management system at MassWrestling.
The source is released under the GPL and you can find more informaton on it at my CV.
Last Monday I was officially moved to the development team within Pyxis Mobile for the remainder of my coop period. They have me doing some research and proof of concept work right now for some new products that will be available in the near future. I couldn’t be more grateful for the switch, it will be a real resume booster.
In other news, the major implementation that I handled from configuration to integration and deployment at AGF in Canada went into production with mWholesaler on May 5th, 2005. There’s plenty of press that made it out there, too. I guess the marketing department has some real good newswire feed sources, or something. Google is here to make a big record of the press release for the implementation I did the majority of the implementation and integration work on while I was on PSG. How many other 20 year olds can say they implemented a mobile CRM solution for a top Canadian financial firm?
The development team culture, while only perhaps 10-15 paces from my old desk, seems worlds apart from PSG. It’s incredible how stressful it can be to keep customers happy on the professional services group. I was doing all kinds of multitasking, calling, emailing, configuring, troubleshooting, integrating, data mapping, all at the same time, all day. I still had a blast working on that team, though, they’re all great guys, and funny too. But there are many other cool things about the company that really do reflect on my hapiness there, and also the award it just recently won, “Best Places to Work in Boston, 2005″. So anyways, the development team seems like a little bit more laid back atmosphere. But it’s probably only temporary, as we’re currently at the beginning of a new version development cycle. Some side projects and proof of concept projects seem to be the name of the game for the next week or two. It could probably be just as stressful as PSG in a month or two on the development team, in time for the next release.
They happen to like me enough that they offerred to have me work full time through the summer on the quality assurance team. I glady took up the offer, since I really didn’t look forward to working landscaping stuff again this summer. My back is slowly getting better by the day, and I don’t even need to take the large amount of ibuprofen the doctor once told me I should take daily anymore. Most days I get by with none at all, but others I wake up having slept in the wrong position, sore as hell. I’d really like to be able to practice wrestling again by next winter, or even this summer. I miss it too damn much, but the thought of reinjuring and setting back any healing it’s gone through scares me away from the mat still. In the meantime, I still have masswrestling to mess with.
I’m considering developing a piece of software to compete with The Wrestling Tourney. While it may have a solid userbase, from what I hear from some coaches is that the writer of the software isn’t very open to adding new functionality to it. I think I could develop a solid application in a pretty short amount of time, perhaps in C# using visual studio, and a mysql database as a storage piece for tournament data. It would save me quite alot of work to store tournament information in a database, and would allow for quick and easy reports to be generated that could offer some advantages over the current standard software. Problem with this is that I would not have time to support users of the software very much. I could probably charge for support, though, to make it worth my time. Red Hat and many other open source projects survive on this business model. And besides, I wouldn’t be doing it for major profits unless I had full time to work on it. Anyway, it’s a lofty idea, and I’d have to do an independent study to work on it or do it as my own coop position in order to devote any kind of serious effort into it.
It’s boring here at home.
I ended up giving my mother a half hour lecture on what a compiler is, why code has to be compiled, why Java is interpreted as bytecode and isn’t machine code, and what CVS is (no, it’s not the drugstore). I also “shined a light on Marblehead” for her on what is OSS, and why in the hell anyone would want to write something that’s open source. I used the IBM funded Eclipse project to explain it best. I think she retained perhaps 5% of my entire narrative.
In other news, some of the most devoted users of MassWrestling.com have begun to campaign for others to make a donation. I couldn’t be happier. I was planning on paying for a MassWrestling.com banner to be printed out for next season’s tournaments with some of my own money, since I donated all of last quarter’s earnings from the site to the MA USAW organization to help defray the cost of two Oklahoma State National All Americans who are coming in July to Hudson, MA for a two-day clinic. It’s really a great feeling to know that people are willing to step up and butress my efforts in providing for the site.
That also underscores the movement I’ve been leaning towards for the site itself - I’m going to found the site legally as a non-profit organization, so that donations in the future can be tax-deductable. I think this kind of thing would help attract some large donations that I could easily delegate to the community to help improve the MassWrestling.com mission statement, which is a document that I’ve been working on for awhile now and plan on having it reviewed soon.
