Uncategorized

sixthseal.com costs RM 38 per gigabyte to run

My hosting plan allows 5 GB of data transfer per month and I need to
pay RM 38 (A$ 15) for each gigabyte after that. I surpassed the 5 gig
limit last month and I’ve also already gone past 5 GB of transfer a
couple of days ago for this month. I appreciate every single one of you
who drops by (even the trolls ;)) but unfortunately, I cannot afford to
pay the excess bandwidth fees. Well, as you know, I’ve just received my
results a couple of days ago to find out I’ve graduated, so I’m waiting
for my official transcript to be mailed to my Malaysian home address
before applying for post graduate studies and a part time job.

This site has grown quite a bit since the beginning and I’ve always
tried to include at least one photo in each post, since I carry my
(currently broken) digicam everywhere. 🙂 This means that the front
page does take up quite a bit of bandwidth each time you visit. I tried
to reduce the main page’s size to display 7 days back instead of the
previous 14 days to accommodate the increase in visitors.
Theoretically, that should cut my bandwidth usage to half, but that
still wasn’t enough to keep sixthseal.com within the 5 GB per month
bandwidth allocation.

sixthseal.com costs A$ 15 per gigabyte to run

I currently receive an average of 630 visitors a day, which comes to
18,927 hits daily and that uses up 261,659 kilobytes (slightly more
than 1/4 of a gigabyte). July’s (the statistics up to today) daily
maximum is 918 visitors a day, which resulted in 27,771 hits and
395,306 kilobytes (!) of used bandwidth. Today is the 20th of July, so
there’s 6 more days till the end of the month. Using the average daily
bandwidth consumption figures, that comes to 1/4 of a gigabyte daily,
which might result in a bandwidth bill of RM 114 or A$ 46.30 (3 gigs
over) when the current surpassed bandwidth is added in.

Unless I transfer the money from my drug dealing in Melbourne (in my
secret bank account in Australia) to Malaysia, I can’t afford to pay
that much per month. Heh. I’m kidding of course. The bank account is in
Switzerland, not Melbourne. 😉

On a serious note, I do not run any banner advertisements or any
other forms of revenue generating features, since I do not like banner
ads or those darned Gator pop-ups. I’m not interested in doing that,
since this is after all a personal blog for everyone to read. I
appreciate every person that surfs over, and the regular visitors are
always welcome. =D However, I do need to make some changes in order to
reduce the bandwidth consumption rate.

1. The main page will now only show 3 days back instead of 7 days.
2. The Picture of the Day would not be clickable to display a larger photo.
3. The currently bloated CSS would be optimized to reduce the file size.
4. The banner would be replaced with a lower quality version to minimize the bandwidth impact of each visit.
5. The photos/scans of the next few days would be hosted at my SNG Unix
account at Monash University, Australia instead. Heh! I’m surprised
they haven’t deleted my user account yet.

Those measures are temporary and they will only be in effect
till the end of this month (31st July). Please don’t get me wrong, all
of you are more than welcome here! 🙂

Just take it easy with the F5 key. 😉

Thanks everyone!

Update: Oh, I wasn’t asking for donations or anything, I just
noticed from the stats that the F5 key was used a bit too
enthusiastically by some IP addresses. However, I could not mind if
anyone wants to send me a fansign. 😉

I finally got a copy of Windows XP Pro w/ integrated Service Pack 1
today. RM 7 = A$3.50, usually things go for RM 5 though. Needless to
say, this is not a licensed copy. There seems to be a big crackdown on
“pirated” (unlicensed) VCDs, DVDs and CD-ROMs in Malaysia now, Sibu had
several raids yesterday but yeah, the shops all closed down before the
enforcement teams came. Happens all the time – information leakage. 😉
It was business as usual today, so I grabbed a copy coz it seems that
Windows Me can’t detect NTFS formatted drives when it’s running on
FAT32 so I had to install Windows XP. The serials doesn’t work with
Windows Update too (only the Service Pack checks though), so I bought a
copy with an integrated SP1. The CD has a lot of er…”value added”
features as well, as is usual with these CDs, so this saved me a lot of
downloading with my slow dial-up connection. 🙂

Anyway, long story short, I could access my hard disk again and all the photos in there, so I posted the Tribeadelic Winter Party post and photos
[sixthseal.com]. Now, there’s just one last long-due post (flight home)
I have in the backburner. I’ll write that tomorrow, I have to sleep
soon, it’s a Saturday night, but I’m having a very chilled out one
today. I have to wake up early tomorrow for this photo competition at
the Rejang Esplanade, it’s a photo shoot of the candidates of a local
beauty contest. I don’t think that’s the preferred term nowadays, but I
can’t think of an alternate name. Anyway, it’s 13 girls, bring your
camera, arrive before 8 am to register, come if you’re interested. I
don’t know the contest details, coz I’m just going to take photos to
post here anyway. Check back tomorrow if you’re interested in the
aesthetic offerings of Sibu, Sarawak, Malaysia. 😉

P/S – I will reply the mails and comments tomorrow. I’m terribly
sorry about the delay, I’m tooooo sleepy right now (remind me to post
the recipe to the Nice and Relaxing Mug of Hot, Steaming Milo Sleep
Potion) and my 80 gig hard disk (containing ALL my photos) just made
this horrible clanging sound and I immediately shut down the PC and
took that hard disk out. I pray it’s not a head crash or something like
that, I don’t dare to plug it back in right now, it sounded really
terrible just now. I will put on my largest set of balls and plug it
back in tomorrow and if all goes well, I’ll transfer the photos to two
other hard disk (for contingency) and back them up to CDs ASAP. Curse
me and my tardy backup practices. Again, apologies for the lack of
feedback, your comments and mails are appreciated, I’ll get to them
tomorrow. 🙂