Steam4me access ????

[rufuskins]

I have been unable to connect to the Steam4me website bothe yesterday and today. Has anyone else had this problem?

Ruf

[jbilton]

Hi Ruff
Yes it seems to be down ATM.

Cheers
Jon

[glasgowworks]

Thanks for warning me, apparently!

Went to Google and typed "steam4me", and below that link, it reads: "Many of you will have noted the temporary absence of the steam4me site for a few days covering last weekend. The magic men at Interactive Omnimedia and ..." Looks like something seroius has happened. I'm sure steam4me will return soon.

[gswindale]

I got the other day, clicking the link brought the site up though, but it does appear to be down at present.

[rufuskins]

Right at least I don't need to blame the laptop; but annoying because I wanted the alpha channel tutorial - i.e. creating one, etc.

Patience will be necessary!

Ruf

[jbilton]

Right at least I don't need to blame the laptop; but annoying because I wanted the alpha channel tutorial - i.e. creating one, etc.

Patience will be necessary!

Ruf

Hi Ruf
Alphas are quite easy.
Once you have the texture open in TGA tools.... click the generate alpha channel button.
Then send it to the editor.
The long bit is painting all the grey bits white.
Cheers
Jon

[rufuskins]

Hi Ruf
Alphas are quite easy.
Once you have the texture open in TGA tools.... click the generate alpha channel button.
Then send it to the editor.
The long bit is painting all the grey bits white.
Cheers
Jon

Thanks Jon, but I thought that was what I had done but it didn't seem to show transparency when I used shape viewer.

I shall try again, Ruf

[jbilton]

Hi Ruf
Alphas are quite easy.
Once you have the texture open in TGA tools.... click the generate alpha channel button.
Then send it to the editor.
The long bit is painting all the grey bits white.
Cheers
Jon

Thanks Jon, but I thought that was what I had done but it didn't seem to show transparency when I used shape viewer.

I shall try again, Ruf

Hi Ruf
Did you get the PM I sent you.
You may have to alter the shape file as described.
Cheers
Jon

[BrianB]

Hi Ruff
Yes it seems to be down ATM.

Cheers
Jon

Unfortunately, it can be a frequent occurence - I've been a Steam4Me member for quite some years now, and also Railpage Australia, as well as Coals to Newcastle.

I don't think that Yuri can do much about it - over the years, I have noticed that when Railpage 'goes down' it takes S4M with it, as they seem to be on the same server - and it used to take CTN out with it as well, although I believe that is now on a different server.

The other thing (but I can't verify it) is I think the Railpage/S4M/CTN servers must be located in a 'business' office somewhere that is not attended over the weekend - over the past X years, I've noticed that these sites could go down at various times after 'close of business' on a Friday, and they stay down until sometime mid-morning on the following Monday - I've had this situation occur at least a dozen times over the last two years or so. The fact that they go down sometime over the weekend, and are not re-booted until Monday morning seems pretty clear to me they are in a locked office somewhere that is totally unattended over the weekend. I know they operate on a limited budget, but if I was the administrator, I'd be pretty unhappy to stop whatever I was doing, drive for who knows how long, unlock an office, just to re-boot a server, lock up again, then drive back home again - I'd take the attitude, it's a free service, let them wait until I'm back in the office on Monday !!! If it was a fully paid service where every subscriber was a financial contributor, you would then expect that a higher level of redundancy would be available, but when it is free, you take whatever service the operator is willing to give you.

[jbilton]

Hi
Agreed Brian ....generally its an excellent MSTS website.
I'm always referring users to the tutorials.

Cheers
Jon

[Easilyconfused]

Brian's observations are interesting.

After the problems UKTS had with the previous hosting Matt spent some time researching to find our current hosts. So far they seem good - from one of his posts recently we had a disk go bad and they sorted it without any of the admins or moderator team being aware until afterwards. Such service does come at a price though which is factored into the operating costs of the site.

[BrianB]

Brian's observations are interesting.

............from one of his posts recently we had a disk go bad and they sorted it without any of the admins or moderator team being aware until afterwards. .............

Glasgowworks above says, he went to Google and searched Steam4me - it came up with a message ".................it reads: "Many of you will have noted the temporary absence of the steam4me site for a few days covering last weekend. The magic men at Interactive Omnimedia and ............"

Yes, there was a maintenance shutdown (planned or otherwise, I don't know!!!) of Steam4me a weekend or so ago, but the site was back up and running quite OK all this week until this weekend - I suspect that it will 'come alive' again sometime tomorrow Monday morning (Eastern Australian Standard time). I'm tipping that 'Interactive Omnimedia' (who is probably the site of the hosting servers ???) is a Monday to Friday business only, and any weekend maintenance attended by staff is only by prior agreement.

[glasgowworks]

Brian's observations are interesting.

............from one of his posts recently we had a disk go bad and they sorted it without any of the admins or moderator team being aware until afterwards. .............

Glasgowworks above says, he went to Google and searched Steam4me - it came up with a message ".................it reads: "Many of you will have noted the temporary absence of the steam4me site for a few days covering last weekend. The magic men at Interactive Omnimedia and ............"

Yes, there was a maintenance shutdown (planned or otherwise, I don't know!!!) of Steam4me a weekend or so ago, but the site was back up and running quite OK all this week until this weekend - I suspect that it will 'come alive' again sometime tomorrow Monday morning (Eastern Australian Standard time). I'm tipping that 'Interactive Omnimedia' (who is probably the site of the hosting servers ???) is a Monday to Friday business only, and any weekend maintenance attended by staff is only by prior agreement.

Well, we all have to wait until Monday, won't we, if this is a Monday to Friday business only.

[mikesimpson]

Site is still down here now (Monday morning in OZ), however as Tuesday is a public holiday and a lot of people are taking the Monday off as well, I would not hold your breath waiting for the site to re-appear. The site has had long outages in the past.

Mike

[BrianB]

It's now more than one hour after normal opening of business on Monday morning, and the sites are still down - tomorrow is a public holiday, so I guess we won't see the sites back up again until sometime Wednesday morning.