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Hey, I'm Putzy!

Putzy

By Putzy,
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Posted

Hey all. So... it's about time I did one of these! I'm not going to promise to keep it short - every time I do that I end up writing hundreds of lines... This is almost certainly going to end the same way.

I'm Lewis, more commonly known by my nickname of Putzy, and I'm 23 from London. I graduated two years ago with a Computer Science degree, which has led me to my day job of work as a Software Engineer - currently for a company providing recruitment marketing tools to a number of agencies and companies around the world that I'm sure a few of you would've had/will have the pleasure of experiencing at some point! ;) 

I've been in the Football Manager community one way or another for around 13-14 years from when I first played Championship Manager 03/04 and wanted some logos, and I've stuck around since, no matter how much some people have tried to keep me away! I think I first played FM Handheld in 2013, which I think was the first version on Android? No doubt someone here will be able to correct me on that one!

In 2007, I started doing web development as a hobby in my spare time, and I eventually connected two of my favourite things together. I starting working with members of the wider community on too many websites to count, building my skills up from just changing the HTML and CSS, fiddling with the JS and PHP code for small changes, to writing my own fully-blown applications and forum software. Most recently I've started doing server management and administration, so I can now handle everything myself. Sometimes that's a blessing, othertimes it makes things very difficult. But hey, it's a constantly changing world, and I'll never know everything (thanks to Google for filling in those gaping holes for me!).

I can't even begin to remember all the sites I've worked on, but I have fond memories of my learnings on sites like FM Heaven, FM Graphics, FM Player, The Gaffer, Los Wonderkids, FM Fanboys (all gone now...), FM View, and of course Vibe. If it wasn't for the massive amount of hours I've spent on these sites over the years, I almost certainly wouldn't be in the job I'm in at all. Who knows what I'd be doing?! I'm not much good at anything else!

I'm honestly not really sure what brought me to Vibe in the first place though (I know it was back when it was FMH Vibe) - I guess I must have been being nice to @Dec and helped him out on something! Things just spun out of control like they usually do when in my hands, and since then, I've very much been in the background, but in charge of everything technical such as the server and code, making sure the site stays up on release days, and overseeing all the other things that go into the site to make sure things look good.

Outside of my job (and my unofficial second job here!) I'm generally a bit of a techy - I build computers, and I break computers; I take phones apart and put them back together again; and I spend way too much money I don't have on things I don't need! I enjoy gaming in the spare time I do have though, mainly on the PC, but also on the Xbox and more recently the Switch - but I'm not massively into online playing... that needs to change soon. 

I'm also a massive fan of Formula 1, and won't miss a single session on TV for anything. Truth be told, I'm not a huge fan of football anymore... If it wasn't for Vibe and the FM community at large, I certainly wouldn't be playing the games anymore! There is your slightly shocking fact about me.

Oh, and I often get questions about why I have an Angry Bird as my avatar. Well, I once got told that I act like the red one, so I set my avatar as a joke one day, and just never changed it back, and I've since taken him everywhere with me. So, that's a bit of a strange one with no interesting backstory unfortunately... I'll change it soon when I find something a bit more me to put on there.

But yeah... that's me. Not nearly as long as it could have been! :P 

As for us here at Vibe, with @Stam and the rest of the new team at the helm, let's hope we can take this place to the next level. It's certainly something we won't be able to do without the fantastic core community that is here (I'm not going to name names - you know who you are) and who so welcoming to newbies joining the fray! It's thanks to you that the site is still going after all these years, and as I said above, without this site and all the others that came before it, I wouldn't be where I am today. :) 

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Posted

Great to know more about the man behind the angry bird.

You do a great job here and probably do far more than any of us realise you do. 

One question why the nickname Putzy?

Oh and Hamilton fan or not?

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Posted

Great stuff mate! I'd heard a rumour that the Angry Bird won't last much longer so good to see that confirmed :O

Most of what vibe has become has been down to you so there's a lot for us to be thankful for.

Thoughts on this F1 season? And would you be able to pull off the sunglasses at night like Kimi did in Singapore?

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Posted

Really interesting read, it's inspiring to see that hobbies like sites like this can take you places. In many ways it's great to see you posting more as if you weren't all your efforts would go under appreciated, it's always good to have a face to link to the work if that makes sense. 

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Posted

It's like meeting the Wizard of Vibe (your new nickname from now on)

As the others have said you deserve a huge thanks for all the unseen things you do here and the fact that you continue to do so is a huge thing for the guys like me who enjoy coming here so much

Long live Putzy the Wizard of Vibe

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Posted

Thanks all. :)

 

9 hours ago, FuddledFox said:

One question why the nickname Putzy?

Oh and Hamilton fan or not?

Haha, just my surname with a y on it! I can't remember when that was first used, but I think I must have been at school.

Not a Hamilton fan at all if I'm honest. Something about his attitude..... can't fault his driving though - definitely one of/the best of this generation. 

9 hours ago, samhardy said:

Thoughts on this F1 season? And would you be able to pull off the sunglasses at night like Kimi did in Singapore?

Good season overall, possibly the best since 2012 for competition at least. I would have preferred an even less dominant Mercedes to have spiced things up more, and maybe if Red Bull had started the season well, then we'd definitely be talking one of the best seasons I'd have watched.

8 hours ago, Ashez said:

Really interesting read, it's inspiring to see that hobbies like sites like this can take you places. 

Definitely! If nothing else, the "real world" loves things like this as previous experience as it shows problem solving, management and all kinds of skills. I'd recommend it to anyone who has an interest in the techy side of things!

 

1 hour ago, Taff said:

It's like meeting the Wizard of Vibe (your new nickname from now on)

Haha I could get used to that...... :P

giphy.gif

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Posted

First time I got to talk to Putzy was a few weeks before this past summer. Somehow we always seem to be on the same wave length and working together is a breeze. It's not often I find people of this quality.

Albus "Angry" Dumbledore :laugh:
You could use that for your new avatar.

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Posted

Nice to meet you @Putzy,

Very interesting back story. Half tempted to go nerd and ask you web dev questions, but I'll resist that!

Love that you're into F1, so am I, but tragedy this year: here in Australia the free to air channel showing F1 sold it's rights to Fox halfway through the season, so we went from every second race live to ... none... ? So I just read and listen to podcasts about it now. Wish F1 had an equivalent to FMM...

Anyway, thanks for keeping Vibe running, much appreciated! 

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23 minutes ago, scratch99 said:

Love that you're into F1, so am I, but tragedy this year: here in Australia the free to air channel showing F1 sold it's rights to Fox halfway through the season, so we went from every second race live to ... none... ? So I just read and listen to podcasts about it now. Wish F1 had an equivalent to FMM...

Oh no. :( "Luckily", I've got Sky Sports and have had for years, so I'm covered at the expense of my pocket being a little lighter.... 

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3 minutes ago, Putzy said:

Oh no. :( "Luckily", I've got Sky Sports and have had for years, so I'm covered at the expense of my pocket being a little lighter.... 

Thought about it, but it's AUD$60 per month, adds up a bit. Maybe next year! ?

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Posted

Putzy been working behind the scenes on this sight for a very long time.

Honestly he deserves a lot more credit than he gets. He keeps this site we all love up and functioning.

Great write up mate. Good to know you a little better.

 

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9 minutes ago, FuddledFox said:

Look up Motorsports Manager. I hear good things and SI are involved with it as well.

Yeah, I had the first one, didn't get the new one yet, too busy with FMM! :laugh:

But even though I loved the first one, it wasn't licensed. I want a real fully license F1 management game. Still will try MM2 sometime soon - I do know I'll love it.

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Posted

Wow you're not just a mytical creature but a live techy :) great to read abit about you mate! Thanks for all your work!

so.. thoughts on Max verstappen? And... is vibe in the cloud or running onold fashioned hardware?

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22 minutes ago, PriZe said:

so.. thoughts on Max verstappen? And... is vibe in the cloud or running onold fashioned hardware?

Verstappen is just what F1 needed - he's definitely keeping things fresh, and more than a match for the top tier. It's a shame Alone so isn't at the head of the grid, as I think their wheel to wheel action would be fantastic. I think Verstappen, Ocon and Leclerc will all be world champions in the future providing they have the right seat at the right time.

 

Vibe is running on a cloud server, but I'm currently operating that server as if it were a classic "bare metal" server. I've got the best of both worlds this with stability, but also with the super quick option of scaling up if we need to without much hassle.

Right now, our biggest issue with this setup is our database, which isn't running any replicas - it means if I need to change the server specs for any reason, we have to go down for a few minutes whilst the server updates, rather than it being seamless to all of you.

That's probably the next big challenge for me and our infrastructure. Right now we use "vertical scaling", which makes one server more powerful and more expensive as needed. The target is to have a "horizontal scaling" system which means more smaller servers to handle the load as needed. 

 

See, I told you I can ramble on forever..... :D

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7 hours ago, FuddledFox said:

Related image

I’ll second that I understood the word Server, and this from a guy who did 3 years of IT (Information Technology not Intensive Training) at College, and still just about knows how to operate a computer ?

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Posted
10 hours ago, samhardy said:

Verstappen is a fucking idiot :P

Oh go away you grumpy muppet!

@Putzy totally agree! I hope Alonso will get a better car next year, enjoyed his actions this weekend when he and Vettle were fighting. 

Is Vibe in one of the big clouds or a local provider? At work we use a lot of AWS and Azure. Vertical scaling is costly but somehow the database is always an issue that causes that:laugh:  Time for infrastructure as code and zero down time deployments :) 

@FuddledFox what? You don't know your API's from your Microservices and docker containers? :P

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25 minutes ago, PriZe said:

Is Vibe in one of the big clouds or a local provider? At work we use a lot of AWS and Azure. Vertical scaling is costly but somehow the database is always an issue that causes that:laugh:  Time for infrastructure as code and zero down time deployments :) 

We've previously used AWS S3 for storage, but found it to be a bit excessive for our needs here, especially on the cost side - as such, I've never used their server offerings for Vibe. We've also used DigitalOcean which is a fantastic offering, but had a few disk space constraints that we couldn't overcome.

We're now using 3 different "local"-ish providers for our different servers - our main web server, our files server, and our torrent server - and I can't honestly remember who they are, apart from one is in Germany. No real reason for this, except we're trying to gauge where the best price to performance ratio is - it's also worth not keeping all our eggs in one basket. ;)

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Woah bro you started managing at the age of 10?! That's insane! Great to know more about you and your computer stuff. Read some of those comments about providers and servers and blah blah blah and yeah you completely lost me HAHAHA computer stuff just has no fate with me. Anyway, thanks for your silent contribution thus far to the site! Really appreciate it!

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37 minutes ago, FuddledFox said:

No it's all  Dutch to me mate! Not much call for any of that in the garden.

Mate, time to innovate! A best of breed, api loosly coupled garden is what you need nowaday with a headless CMS to power your garden ;)

added 0 minutes later
29 minutes ago, Putzy said:

We've previously used AWS S3 for storage, but found it to be a bit excessive for our needs here, especially on the cost side - as such, I've never used their server offerings for Vibe. We've also used DigitalOcean which is a fantastic offering, but had a few disk space constraints that we couldn't overcome.

We're now using 3 different "local"-ish providers for our different servers - our main web server, our files server, and our torrent server - and I can't honestly remember who they are, apart from one is in Germany. No real reason for this, except we're trying to gauge where the best price to performance ratio is - it's also worth not keeping all our eggs in one basket. ;)

Haha yeah i can imagine its a bit OTT for Vibe :)  good luck with all future tech endeavours 

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33 minutes ago, PriZe said:

Mate, time to innovate! A best of breed, api loosly coupled garden is what you need nowaday with a headless CMS to power your garden

?yeah...um...that sounds awesome.

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