First of all, I'd like to thank everyone who so quickly reported problems with the English to Latin section of the website. It's great to know that this tool is important and being utilized.
Second, it should only be down for a short time. It will be back up and running soon.
Thanks for using the site!
Wednesday, December 9, 2015
Wednesday, September 16, 2015
Small Server Glitch Stopped Numen for Morning
So there was a small glitch on the server this morning. It was super easy to fix but I didn't have a chance to fix it for a few hours. It should be good now!
Friday, May 22, 2015
Upgraded Server and Site Statistics
This is a post for the technical minded people in the audience.
This site is actually hosted on a cloud service called Amazon EC2. EC2 changes now and again. As they buy new and faster hardware (computers) they tend to decommission the older ones and makes the top tier the new middle tier, and in effect marking down the prices. In addition to this regular upgrade cycle, competitors like Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure lower prices to stay competitive and EC2 has to follow suit.
It's because of these upgrade and competition cycles that prices and server specs tend to fluctuate. Since this site has been using the same configuration for about a year now, I decided to check if there's newer, faster, cheaper hardware.
It turns out there is. I was basically able to double the power of the site's hardware. EC2 is great because all it takes is 3 clicks to make the change. The site was down for about 2 minutes all together. So if you noticed an outage, that's probably why.
The upshot of this upgrade is that the site should run noticeably faster and handle noticeably more users. As a matter of fact, usage tends to increase about 30% percent year-over-year. In fact, this has been a great year because the gain has been 34% overall. Check out the image below.
Notice the blip on May 13th and 14th. That's when I accidentally bombed the server. Ooops. Despite that, there was still a 34% gain in usage.
This site is actually hosted on a cloud service called Amazon EC2. EC2 changes now and again. As they buy new and faster hardware (computers) they tend to decommission the older ones and makes the top tier the new middle tier, and in effect marking down the prices. In addition to this regular upgrade cycle, competitors like Google Compute Engine and Microsoft Azure lower prices to stay competitive and EC2 has to follow suit.
It's because of these upgrade and competition cycles that prices and server specs tend to fluctuate. Since this site has been using the same configuration for about a year now, I decided to check if there's newer, faster, cheaper hardware.
It turns out there is. I was basically able to double the power of the site's hardware. EC2 is great because all it takes is 3 clicks to make the change. The site was down for about 2 minutes all together. So if you noticed an outage, that's probably why.
The upshot of this upgrade is that the site should run noticeably faster and handle noticeably more users. As a matter of fact, usage tends to increase about 30% percent year-over-year. In fact, this has been a great year because the gain has been 34% overall. Check out the image below.
 |
| 34% year-over-year usage increase |
Overall, this is good news. The site is getting more and more popular and hopefully more and more useful. Also, it's getting faster. Thanks for reading and using it. If you have friends who are taking Latin or are interested in Latin, make sure to tell them about Numen.
Thursday, May 14, 2015
Server Outage
Sorry about the server outage. It was a technical mistake on my part -- don't worry, Numen isn't going way. Thanks for all the compliments -- the number of people emailing me really did let me know that Numen is a useful and necessary tool. Please continue to report problems! It really helps me out!
Thursday, January 22, 2015
X-Rays Open Secrets Of Ancient Scrolls
NPR has a piece on new techniques for looking into scrolls that were charred and turned into (essentially) lignite in Pompeii during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 C.E.
X-Rays Open Secrets of Ancient Scrolls
I remember when I was in graduate school, we were all very hopeful that someday such technology would exist and be viable. New original texts of Ancient Latin and Greek would be amazing.
One of the most amazing things about this technology is that the texts would indeed be untouched by the hands of monks and scribes during the middle ages. Why does that matter? The Latin and Greek texts we have today are copies of copies of copies. And like all copies, errors have been introduced. In addition to errors, semi-literate monks may have made corrections that were based on incorrect assumptions about Latin in the centuries prior to their births.
Why not simply unroll the scrolls? Because they are essentially ash. Since the discovery of the scrolls in Pompeii, experts have ruined countless scrolls trying to unroll them. At some point, they were essentially locked in a vault in the hopes that someday technology would advance. It would appear that such a day has nearly arrived.
X-Rays Open Secrets of Ancient Scrolls
I remember when I was in graduate school, we were all very hopeful that someday such technology would exist and be viable. New original texts of Ancient Latin and Greek would be amazing.
One of the most amazing things about this technology is that the texts would indeed be untouched by the hands of monks and scribes during the middle ages. Why does that matter? The Latin and Greek texts we have today are copies of copies of copies. And like all copies, errors have been introduced. In addition to errors, semi-literate monks may have made corrections that were based on incorrect assumptions about Latin in the centuries prior to their births.
Why not simply unroll the scrolls? Because they are essentially ash. Since the discovery of the scrolls in Pompeii, experts have ruined countless scrolls trying to unroll them. At some point, they were essentially locked in a vault in the hopes that someday technology would advance. It would appear that such a day has nearly arrived.
Monday, January 19, 2015
māccer - A tool for macronizing Latin text
Felipe Vogel, a graduate student at the University of Kentucky, recently shared his "macronizer" with me. One of our joint efforts will be to improve the results of his tool with a fully declined/conjugated word list from Numen.
Check it out here: Māccer - A Tool for Macronizing Latin Text.
Check it out here: Māccer - A Tool for Macronizing Latin Text.
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