http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/ News, updates, bugs, tired ramblings, small breakdowns and other stuff related to maintaining, adding and expanding Driver Database. Mon, 15 Sep 2008 7:07:24 -0400 en http://www.driverdb.com/blog-1.xml http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/58/a-test-server/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/58/a-test-server/ Mon, 15 Sep 2008 7:07:24 -0400 I've set up a test server for Driver Database now. It's my old computer which had a dying Windows XP install on it that got formatted and installed with Linux. It was about ten years ago I last used Linux so it did take me a while to get Apache, PHP, MySQL and FTP set up properly and importing the database. One or two curse words were used during the process. The new test server will be run when I develop new stuff for the site and it means I can do changes a bit more easily as I don't have to edit the "live" site while developing. I'm trying to find a good place to keep the server now. It sounds like a small airplane during takeoff so the best way would be to hide it behind closed doo... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/55/dtc-at-sturup-raceway/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/55/dtc-at-sturup-raceway/ Wed, 10 Sep 2008 17:17:15 -0400 This weekend I attended the first, and probably only, race of the year. Living far from the nearest track (about a six hour drive) surely does suck. The plan was to go to the Anderstorp WTCC event again this year, but that round was dropped in favour of Imola unfortunately. Next in plans were some WTCC event, but their summer break managed to be at the same time I had some free time. Fortunately the Danish Touring Car championship has one of their rounds (the Copenhagen Grand Prix) at the Swedish track Sturup Raceway. I'd never seen DTC before and never visited Sturup so it sounded like a good plan. It was a bit weird with a miniature Denmark right in the middle of Swedish territory... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/50/a-small-change-to-the-driver-galleries/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/50/a-small-change-to-the-driver-galleries/ Wed, 03 Sep 2008 4:04:30 -0400 I just made a small change to the driver galleries on the driver profiles. It now shows how many photos there are in the gallery. If there are no photos the "Gallery" link is disabled and very much unclickable (well, you can still click on it if you really want to, but it won't take you anywhere). A small two minute change that I've been delaying "until tomorrow" for a couple of months.... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/48/new-urls-to-the-blog-feeds/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/48/new-urls-to-the-blog-feeds/ Tue, 02 Sep 2008 10:10:14 -0400 I've changed the URL's to the Driver Blogs. Instead of just pointing to the feed directly these do now go through Feedburner (http://www.feedburner.com). This makes the handling of the feeds and its subscribers a bit easier and new blog content should be spread a bit better around the next thanks to the Ping services provided. The new URLs for the Driver Blogs are as follows (and if you're not already subscribing - go on, DO IT!): http://feeds.feedburner.com/Rodrigo-Marban http://feeds.feedburner.com/Charlotte-Haegermark http://feeds.feedburner.com/Mark-Megens http://feeds.feedburner.com/Cassey-Watson http://feeds.feedburner.com/Jono-Lester http://feeds.feedburner.com/Kieran-Verno... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/38/categories-are-important/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/38/categories-are-important/ Thu, 14 Aug 2008 7:07:02 -0400 It is very important when you submit new data to the database that you are as detailed as possible both with the name of the championship and with class or category. I have too many submissions in the queue for me to waste hours trying to find the real name of the championship and in which class a person raced in. So, instead of this example: Exampleville Karting You write: Exampleville Karting Championship - Junior Clubman class Submissions with too little information will now simply be deleted as there aren't enough hours in a day. ;)... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/34/the-current-waiting-list/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/34/the-current-waiting-list/ Wed, 06 Aug 2008 6:06:50 -0400 I'm getting more and more submissions to the database, which I think it's great. Keep it up! It does mean that the waiting list before I get everything added to the database is growing. If you have submitted information that isn't yet included there is no need to re-submit it. It will get added as soon as possible (if the submitted information was correct that is). Here is the status of the current waiting list: [b]New drivers[/b]: 0 There's no queue here! :) [b]Profile changes to driver[/b]: 5 [b]Career edits[/b]: 100 [b]New career information[/b]: 419 This is the part that take the longest for me to approve new additions as it does often require a bit of research to get... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/29/on-vacation/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/29/on-vacation/ Sat, 26 Jul 2008 3:03:31 -0400 As you may have noticed things have been updating rather slowly on Driver Database the last couple of weeks. The reason is that I'm on vacation and the time I can spend on the site is obviously rather limited. Yesterday I managed to get the press releases back up to date, but we're still a bit behind when it comes to race results. The British GT championship, UK Formula Ford and Australian F3 are some of the series which are missing the latest results. If you've submitted new info or changes to the database in the last few weeks you may have noticed that they have probably not appeared yet. We are now close to 500 contributers on the site and this together with a vacation from my part ... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/21/keeping-the-duplicates-at-a-minimum/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/21/keeping-the-duplicates-at-a-minimum/ Mon, 07 Jul 2008 6:06:50 -0400 In order to keep the number of dublicates in the database at an absolute minimum I would appreciate it if you do a proper search before suggesting a new driver to the database. It seems like one in five or so of the suggested "new" drivers are actually already included, and their profile page is just a quick Driver search (in the left column, just below the blue menu) away. :)... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/20/submit-only-once/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/20/submit-only-once/ Fri, 04 Jul 2008 9:09:43 -0400 Please note that there is currently a queue for several hundred submissions to the database. All your submissions are saved so there is no need to re-submit anything, it only adds to the queue and adds to my confusion. I'm trying to get everything up as fast as I can. :) ... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/19/a-dying-computer/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/19/a-dying-computer/ Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:19:22 -0400 My main desktop computer has decided to die a slow and painful death recently. At first it was still usable, then I lost the ability to use my printers and now finally it refuses to load Windows properly. A new one was ordered last week, but there is still no sign of it. It's no big deal really as the hard disk is ok and it still is accessible through my network so everything important is still very much available. It has left me a bit crippled though as I haven't been able to print out all the stuff I need the last week. This has meant that some race results have yet to be updated. But don't fear, they will all be updated as soon as possible.... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/16/better-member-tools/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/16/better-member-tools/ Wed, 25 Jun 2008 6:06:32 -0400 As the database has grown in record pace the last couple of months the member tool "Add a driver to this championship" has become more or less unusable as it had to load every driver into a very long drop-down list. As the database now includes 22,922 drivers it could take a lifetime to load the list. Therefor I decided to make some changes to get it usable again. When you now use these tools you are first prompted to enter the first couple of letters of the driver you wish to add. It will then display a list of just the drivers that start with these letters. So if you for example are going to add Rubens Barrichello to a championship you type "barr" in the text field and press submit. The... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/15/275-contributers-equals-a-queue/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/15/275-contributers-equals-a-queue/ Thu, 12 Jun 2008 11:11:18 -0400 Since we added member accounts to the site we now have 275 contributing members. This number means that it may take a while before your edits and newly submitted info becomes approved and updated on the site as there now is a rather long list of changes I need to go through. I'm trying to work as fast as I can but it's not just a matter of pressing a button as I really need to double check a whole lot of the entries so that errors aren't approved in the database. This is also the reason why photographs may be approved quicker than new career information. Speaking of photographs. You will really need to be 100% sure that you have the photographers approval or have the rights to the photo b... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/14/timewarp/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/14/timewarp/ Fri, 23 May 2008 8:08:15 -0400 For some minutes today Driver Database went back to 2002. Why it happended is unkown at this point but for some reason the server's clock showed 2002. This meant that we had "Top 2002 Race Winners" in the right column and that every driver suddenly became younger on their profile pages. The system clock went back to the present time again though shortly, and only caused minor headaches.... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/13/whats-not-included-in-the-driver-database/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/13/whats-not-included-in-the-driver-database/ Wed, 21 May 2008 5:05:36 -0400 I'm getting more and more data sent to me and I have to draw the line somewhere or else this turns into a 24/7 project. Results for the following sports will not be added to the database: - Rallying - Motorcycle racing - Rallycross - Autocross - Hillclimbing - Dirtracing - Crosskart - Auto slalom - Ice racing... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/12/introducing-bugs-and-putting-out-the-fires/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/12/introducing-bugs-and-putting-out-the-fires/ Tue, 13 May 2008 6:06:43 -0400 Weird things have been going on lately. A couple of days ago Driver Database started going extremely slow. It could take up to 15 seconds to load certain pages, and that's at least 13 seconds too long. Being on a rather tight server budget I started freaking out a bit that the server was taking more load than it could handle. The first thing, before panicing on how to afford a faster server, was to try and figure out where in the code things were going slowly. I soon figured it out and managed to make a work-around a certain area of the code and managed to cut 10 seconds right off. I then managed to optimize some SQL queries to the database and found a couple of more seconds. It's now back t... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/11/advertise-and-decide-the-price-yourself/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/11/advertise-and-decide-the-price-yourself/ Wed, 07 May 2008 8:08:41 -0400 I decided to launch a little advertisement auction yesterday. There are five 468x60 banner spots available and I've now decided to auction out three months of advertising to the five highest bidders. This mean you will be able to advertise for three months on all pages of Driver Database (there will be a total of six banners in rotation, so your ad will be displayed every sixth time a page is loaded) and only pay what you think is a good price for it. The bidding started yesterday and will be open until the 20th of May. The next day the five highest bidders will have their banners displayed on Driver Database for the price they chose until the 21st of July. Click the following link ... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/10/some-minor-fixes/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/10/some-minor-fixes/ Tue, 06 May 2008 6:06:11 -0400 Mondays at Driver Database are more or less only related to getting all the press releases published that's been arriving in my mailbox during the weekend. There's really not that much time left for other stuff when the news mail queue has been taken care of. With all the news published, it was time to take care of some small issues I discovered yesterday. For some reason the press releases was always said to be published on today's date. So if you looked at a press release from 2006 it said it was published today! A small sloppy error from my part was found in the code, where I had unknowingly re-used the variable name for the published date with today's date used elsewhere in the code. ... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/9/a-tough-weekend/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/9/a-tough-weekend/ Sat, 03 May 2008 19:19:22 -0400 There's racing going on all over the world this weekend, and that means that tons of results needs to be added to the database. World Series by Renault, BTCC, STCC, DTC, Spanish F3, NASCAR, DTM etc. And then all the support series... it's a tough job, but somebody's got to do it. And that somebody has only himself to blame. Due to me lacking any proper TV channels that think racing is anything to broadcast I'll only get to watch the Swedish Touring Car Championship this weekend. It does however mean I have to cut a birthday celebration a bit short, but I think there will be enough time for cake before it's time to head for home. Just found out today that there will be no WTCC race at A... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/8/changed-birthdate-format/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/8/changed-birthdate-format/ Fri, 02 May 2008 10:10:08 -0400 The old birthdate format used on driver's profile pages were that from the standard DATE field of the MySQL database: year-month-date. Large parts of the world switches the month and date fields though so this can be a bit confusing. Now it's displayed in English instead of just numbers on the profile page. Hopefully less confusing. :) 1978-03-02 is now: March 2, 1978... http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/6/the-action-is-go/ http://www.driverdb.com/blog/Andreas/6/the-action-is-go/ Fri, 02 May 2008 9:09:30 -0400 I think the blog feature is pretty much ready now. The comments work as well. It's still really not that pretty but hopefully I'll get around to tweak it a bit further along the road. I guess I'll start mailing the drivers who are lined up for blogging and tell them the good news....