Bob and Craig have been working on two different projects that have taken a lot of their time recently. I'd like to share some of the details so you understand how important your ongoing support is to JRiver.
Craig's "minor" sidetrack has been adding support for Paypal on our payment server. Wait! What? We already had Paypal support, right? Well yes, we did, but they've decided our service is end of life.
We began with Paypal in the 2000's. My memory is that we came there via a Paypal acquisition of another service we used, so our connection was legacy for Paypal. They had trouble answering questions whenever we needed to ask. Finally, their support is ending and we need to switch to a newer API.
This unwelcome work has fallen on Craig's shoulders. He's cncb on the forum, and author of his own mo4media, and many aspects of JRiver Media Center, including Spotlight.
Craig's challenge also included a minor exposure to Linux. It's not so minor now, after a few weeks of doing Paypal plumbing with Bob to help with the learning curve.
So that's one of the projects and it has taken a lot of time.
The other project has taken even more time.
For the last ten years, we've had a server room at JRiver that sounded like a jet engine. Multiple full height and half height rack mounted machines, with lots of blinking lights, consuming lots of electricity.
These
servers perform many tasks to support Media Center and the community around it.
Bob decided, rightly, that these could now be done on a couple of Intel NUC's, which would be faster, quieter, and more efficient in terms of electrical use.
It was also a necessary step in the upgrading of the OS's involved. Some software we run requires versions of Linux that were too new to run on our old equipment. Our back end is a great tangled web of hardware and software that all works together to provide seamless service to MC. Every piece is connected to some other and they all have to sing the same song in the right key. Think Mormon Tabernacle Choir in concert with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, playing for a single person.
Bob has been toiling on this project for around six weeks. The migration required lots of work on old software written by JRiver people long gone. It had to be ported to new environments with modified architecture.
At the same time, we decided to switch our Internet Service Provider to get faster service at a lower cost. This involved new IP addresses for our servers. We also retired our old phone system which we had replaced with
VOIP.ms.
This ... caused ... some ... disruptions.
Thank you for your patience.
And a big thanks to Bob and Craig!
