• Who am I?

    I am Qrystal; or at least, that's my dot-name! Har har. (My name is really Crystal, but that's not as internet-searchable; hence, switching the C for the little-used letter Q.)

    I am here because I enjoy writing. I do this mostly for myself, but I also have a passion for helping others learn things from the things I write. Now that I am done my Ph.D. in Physics, I am stepping away from academic research so that I can indulge in some creative ways to share my knowledge and inspire the appreciation of scientific thinking in others. I am also working as a tutor, which is one of the jobs I've most enjoyed doing in my life so far.


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  • Twitter is Measuring its Improvements

    Posted by Qrystal on July 8, 2008 at 18:53.
    Category: Miscellany. Tags: twitter.

    I am really pleased with the efforts of the twitter staff in providing their users with constant updates — not to mention, the improved service! Here’s an abbreviated version of a recent post on their twitterstatus tumblog, entitled “Measurable Improvements”:

    …[Twitter] page response times have significantly improved in the last week, as you can see from this chart:

    Uptime Report

    (Here’s a live version from Pingom, so you can check on us any time.)

    What’s more, sightings of the famous “Fail Whale” [link] have gone down precipitously[:] …

    [W]hile you had approximately a 1-in-29 chance of hitting a whale nine days ago [June 29th, 2008], you only had a 1-in-2000 chance yesterday [July 7th, 2008]. And this is with Twitter handling significantly more traffic and updates[!!!]

    This isn’t good enough, of course. There’s still tons to do. But we have a plan and are encouraged by this improvement. As always, we appreciate your patience as we work through these kinks in our system.

    -@ev

    Thanks, @ev, we appreciate that you and your team are working through the kinks, and (on a completely unrelated note) I personally appreciate that you let your keys have their own twitter account. That’s just too cool!

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