Websites are a lot like cars and webmasters are a lot like gear heads. We’re always trying to make our websites look better, do more, and go faster. Once upon a time, websites mostly consisted of a bunch of static text files linked together with the relatively simple HTML markup language to format the text, insert pictures, and make links to other pages and sites. Now days, most web pages are actually dynamically generated by program code usually executing on the server side and sometimes both on the server and in your web browser, and it’s done each time, when a visitor requests the page. This can add considerably load to the web server and slow down the generation of pages. I’m sure you’ll agree, there’s nothing worse than a slow website.

One easy way to speed up a website is to implement page caching so that frequently requested pages are dynamically generated once by a caching engine and then served up many times, rather than being dynamically generated by the server each time the page is requested. This reduces server load and increases page delivery times. Some caching engines can also cache web pages as compressed files which can be delivered as-is if the visitor’s browser knows how to handle compressed files. There are other tricks to improve performance, and you can get some impressive speed improvements using these techniques. I’ve been using a rudimentary caching engine on this site for some time now but I decided to look at other options and after some research I settled on a new higher performance engine which promises noticeable speed improvement. Best of all, it’s free.

The downside to caching and the reason I’m posting about this at all is that you run the risk of delivering old content if the caching engine doesn’t pick up on the fact that a page has been changed. I don’t expect this to be a problem but wanted everyone to be aware of what’s going on here, server-side. Browsers also cache files so the problem can be compounded. Usually, hitting the reload button on your browser will result in getting the most up-to-date file. This new caching engine is pretty good about deciding when it should deliver a cached page and when it should generate a new page. This new caching engine is highly configurable: certain pages (such as our funky Webcam page) can be designated “Don’t Cache.” 

I’ve updated the 14 September 2015 post entitled: Attorneys for PPM & AQF file reply in support of their motion to amend to correct a bad link to the September 11th document filed by the lawyers for Pleasant Pond Mill LLC and Aquafortis Associates LLC.

In the future, if you encounter a bad or broken link on this site PLEASE bring it to my attention. Email me or leave comment. Thank you.

Sometime in the past few days the webcam electronics went haywire and stopped providing full color output. I’ve adjusted the camera for black and white images which will have to do because I’m not buying a new camera anytime soon. The webcam is actually a popular site feature with people who can’t just look out the window to observe what’s going on out on the lake. Eventually I’d like to setup a camera that people can login to and operate remotely, but that’s a ways off. In the meantime, enjoy Clary Lake in Black & White 🙂

With winter almost here, David Hodsdon decided to send me a winter picture of Clary Lake (thumbnail at left) which I’ve turned into a banner for the site. This one looks like a little better than 180° wide panorama. Love it. I usually rotate banners a random basis, but I’ve decided to leave this one up for a few days. Incidentally, all the banners on this site are pictures of Clary Lake (with the exception of the one taken by my friend Jason Simonds of 2 bald eagles sitting in a tree down in Damariscotta Mills).

A number of people have been viewing the Clary webcam during and since the storm, only to find the picture at left. You’d think the camera was snowed in when in fact the webcam is working fine and it’s a beautiful day on Clary Lake. The picture you’re seeing is what the world looked like at 11:30 am yesterday morning when Time Warner’s cable service went down. It is still down so new campics aren’t being uploaded to the site. This is a temporary condition, though it can’t be too temporary for my liking. I’m posting this from work.

I (finally!) upgraded to a new computer running Windows 7 only to discover that the driver for my old Logitech “eyeball” webcam will only work under Windows XP. I tried to run it in Windows XP compatibility mode, to no avail. So I guess until I get a new camera, the Clary Lake WebCam will be offline. It wasn’t the greatest setup anyways, the view of the lake out my office window is largely obscured by trees. Still, it was a pretty popular page, and it was fun to run. Here’s the last picture that was uploaded to the site before I shut down my old system this afternoon:

So for now I’ve taken down the page, and removed the link to it. What I’d like to get is a wireless outdoor camera that I can mount on the deck railing, or perhaps on a tree down by the shore. However that’s not in the budget at this time.

I’ve been doing a little spring cleaning including a back-end system upgrade and reorganizing some file archives. Everything seems to be working. That said, if anyone comes across any broken document or picture links, please let me know! Use the Comment/Contact Form at the very least. Thanks.

It has come to my attention that a few people have been unable to register for this site because they are using one browser extension or another to block tracking code, cookies, malicious javascript, etc. One such extension which I myself use on some sites is Ghostery. What is happening is the code in the page that generates the “Captcha” is blocked so the graphic it isn’t visible. Consequently, the registration attempt fails with the error message: “ERROR: Invalid reCAPTCHA challenge parameter.” With all the attention the internet privacy meme is getting, I thought I’d address this problem head on and talk about site privacy.

First I should explain that the use of Captcha mechanism is intended to prevent automated registrations by robot crawlers intent on either hacking the site for their own nefarious purposes or spamming the site to no good end. They work by challenging people registering with human-readable-only information. This effectively thwarts the robots and is standard procedure on websites that want to restrict registrations to real people. I’m sure you’ve run across them before. A typical reCaptcha graphic from our site is shown at left. The solution is simple: disable your blocking systems temporarily, long enough to get registered; then you can turn it back on if you want and continue to browse in (relative) privacy.  I’ve updated the User Policy page with information about this. Hopefully anyone having problems registering will figure it out or contact me about it. Continue reading →

[UPDATE 4] 2:30 PM 30 August: Fairpoint DNS servers are now updated. I’m glad to be able to put this migration behind me. We’re on a new “virtual machine” server with half a dozen other relatively low-volume sites with plenty of server resources to go around including gobs of disk space. Moving on…

[UPDATE 3] 7:10 AM 30 August: The Fairpoint DNS issue continues. There were some other sites involved in last night’s move and none of them are accessible to people  using Fairpoint DNS servers. In other words, Fairpoint customers more than likely can’t get to this site yet. That is outrageous. I’ll be filing a ticket with Fairpoint later. At first it looked like one Fairpoint server was working- NS2. However it has not fully updated either so I’ve set my own servers to Google’s public DNS servers 8.8.8.8 and 8.8.4.4.

[UPDATE 2] 9:55 pm 29 August: It appears the DNS problem was/is limited to Fairpoint customers as a result of two misconfigured name servers NS1.MYFAIRPOINT.NET and NS3.MYFAIRPOINT.NET which are failing to respond properly. I solved the problem on my network by manually setting the primary DNS  server to NS2.MYFAIRPOINT.NET which is responding properly. The TTL (time to live) on Fairpoint DSL name servers is set to 19 hours which is a bit outrageous. I’ll be speaking to them. If this sounds like so much gibberish and you’re reading it, don’t worry about it. If you found Clarylake.org was unavailable for a day and then suddenly started working, that’s why. Sorry for any inconvenience.

[UPDATE 1] 9:03 PM 30 August: The migration has taken place but there are some residual DNS problems resulting from poorly configured servers most notably with Fairpoint. This is making the site unavailable to some users. Most notably, this is affecting ME so I’m on a proxy now. Patience folks.

Back on the 18th of August I posted about a plan to migrate this website to a new server. I thought this would have taken place by now but it turned out to be a little more involved as there are a number of other sites that share the same virtual machine and they all needed special attention. Anyways, the transition plan has been refined and tested and we’re ready to implement it. Theoretically nobody should notice a thing as the cut-over will take place late tonight when traffic is particularly slow, and it should only involve a few minutes of downtime. There may be a short period when the domain name clarylake.org doesn’t resolve properly. If you get a “Non-existent domain” or “page not found” error you may need to clear your browser cache, close and reopen your browser, or just try again later. Long before tomorrow morning arrives we’ll be back fully operational.

I’m going to be moving the site to a new server in a few days. The picture at left is misleading, the site actually runs on a VM (virtual machine) in an IT operations center someplace on the East coast and we’ll just be moving to another VM in the same operations center. There shouldn’t be any down time to speak of but there may be 10 or 15 minutes that the site is unavailable while the DNS updates. I’ll post an update ahead of time.

A fair number of people check the Clary Lake Webcam from time to time and sadly, 90% of the time they find it isn’t running. The reason is that the software generates a fair amount of load on my desktop computer, slowing things down and making it hard for me to get work done so I tend not to run the webcam when I’m working at my computer which lately seems like all the time. Then I often forget to start it up when I leave to do something else. Anyways, I’ve made a few changes to the webcam system configuration in the hopes that it will use less resources and not slow things down quite so much, and I will try to keep it running more regularly for those people who want to have a look at what I’m looking at out my window.

Ultimately I’d like to get an outdoor waterproof wireless webcam and mount it on a tree down by the shoreline to get a better view of the lake and whatever happens to be floating or swimming by. Maybe someday..

A month ago I installed some software that replaces the built-in user management functions on the site (user log ins, registrations, and lost passwords) with similar functions with enhanced features and functionality but it turned out to be a bit buggy so I uninstalled it. Now it appears they’ve fixed the bugs (or claimed they have) so I’m giving it another try. Here’s the original post about it the features and functions.

If anyone experiences any difficulties please let me know.

Some of you may have noticed some odd behavior on the site in the past 24 hours including getting dumped into your profile page when you thought you were going to look at say, water level charts. It turns out that an upgrade of a slightly buggy piece of software turned out to be even more buggy, and what’s worse, the bugs didn’t show up till the next day. Hate when that happens. Anyways, despite the fact that it provided some nice functionality, I’ve uninstalled it. You shouldn’t notice anything different except for the look and feel of the log in, log out, and forgot your password pages.

This is a good time to remind everyone that the site will be down for scheduled maintenance tomorrow morning Thursday, May 9 at 11 AM UTC (7 AM EST). The site will be down for no more than an hour, hopefully. Try not to panic.

Panorama photograph by David Hodsdon taken on his shoreline looking north. One of 2 or 3 pictures he has taken that are now banners on the site.

David Hodsdon sent me a panorama photograph today that he took recently on his shoreline. I’ve turned it into yet another banner on the site. Unfortunately, there are 35 banners on the site and they’re displayed randomly so the chances of any one banner coming up are 1:35 or in other words, slim. I wanted to make sure everyone saw it and knew where it came from. The banner is nice but the original 1920 x 618 image (below) is stunning (there’s a link on the image for the full size version). I’ve uploaded it to User Uploads. Displaying large photographs can be a bit of a challenge on a site with rigidly structured pages.

Whitefield Town Clerk Aaron Miller sent me some photographs earlier today showing the bridge over Pleasant Pond Stream taken from a view point out in the middle of the mill pond on the west side of the road. Two are dated in the 1923, one is dated 1934, and one is dated 1958 showing the new bridge that exists today. In a couple of them you can see the hand wheel used to open and close the original weir in the dam. He got the photos off some disks that came from the Whitefield Historical Society. One thing that surprised me was a couple of the photographs refer to the bridge as “Chester Bridge” no doubt named after Chester Boynton who owned the mill around this time. Aaron by the way is in the process of setting up the new Town of Whitefield facebook page. Now I’ve seen everything. Check it out!

I decided to take this opportunity and create a new gallery Historical Photographs and have moved some old photographs to it that were spread around some other galleries- something I’d been planning on doing for a while but just hadn’t gotten around to it.

A reminder: if anyone has any photographs you think belong on the site, upload them or email them to me and I’ll post them.

I’ve implemented a new user log in/registration system in the hopes of resolving or eliminating the issues with the previous log in/registration system. I’ve tried to test “everything” and “everything” seems to be working as advertised but as you know, or may not know, software always has bugs. So don’t be surprised to encounter glitches. If you have any trouble getting onto or using the system, email me.

The obvious changes are to the look and feel of the log in, log out, register,  and profile pages. They now look like they’re part of the site. If you’re an existing user:

1. If you forget your user name, you can now log in with your email address.
2. If you forget your password, we’ll send you and email with a link so you can reset it.
3. When you login, you’ll be returned to the News page rather than being dumped into the Dashboard “admin” screen.
4. There’s now just a “Log In” or “Log Out” link on the side bar. Use the “admin” bar at the top of the page to get to the Dashboard or your profile page.
5. Stop by your Profile page and if you haven’t already, please add your name.
6. If you’re logged in but don’t have a black bar across top of the page with “Howdy <your name> on the right side and a Clary Lake Association menu on the left side, email me.

For new users registering for the first time:

1. We’ve implemented the hated “Captcha” security road block. This is to thwart the bots and automated spammers that attempt to automate the log in process. Only carbon-based life forms please.
2. There is now an email confirmation sent. You have to click on the link in that email to “activate” your account. Until you do, you won’t be able to log in. This is pretty much standard now days. I’m hoping it will discourage the people signing up with bogus email addresses. If not, there are some additional security hoops I can put up for new users to jump through.
3. You can now pick your own password rather than having a temporary one emailed to you. Make it a good one please.

Again, if anyone has any problems, email me.