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The Internet called. It wants another Web site.
Wednesday, February 24th, 2010 | Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
The new one should launch tomorrow after tons of work. Who knew getting great performance out of a custom WordPress theme could take this much time?
Not long after this I hope to find some time to blog regularly. Soon, me Droogies.
All In One SEO Pack for WordPress is a Pig
Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010 | Tech | Permalink | 2 Comments |
I’m just about to launch a new WordPress site at work and I’m tuning everything to be as fast as possible. In trying to track down inconsistent performance I installed WP Tuner and discovered that the All In One SEO Pack plugin is sometimes driving up database loads like crazy, even with half of the options disabled.
On this page it’s adding 4.9 seconds to the page loading time. More, actually, since wp-blog-header uses less database time when AIOSP is deactivated.
On other pages AIOSP is only adding a couple of hundred milliseconds to the page loads.
When I set WP Tuner to “Show Everything” so I can see all queries, it’s obvious that AIOSP is doing SQL queries for every link on the page. Why I have no idea.
If I can’t make AIOSP behave then I’m going to figure out how to replicate the features. Adding nofollow tags to the appropriate pages is pretty easy. My theme framework can insert canonical URLs. I think I can create meta descriptions via custom fields and then code that into the templates.
P.S. When I contacted tech support at my Web host about sluggish performance one of their first questions was if I was using an SEO plugin. I had previously tried SEO Ultimate and it had the same problem.
Firefox 3.6 does it right
Monday, February 22nd, 2010 | Tech | Permalink | 4 Comments |
I mentioned one time that there was one thing Internet Explorer did better than Firefox.
When you right-click and select Open Link in New Tab Internet Explorer opens the link in a tab immediately to the right of the current tab. Firefox opens the new tab all the way at the right end of the tabs list. I often keep a lot of tabs open, so sometimes I had to lace up my hiking boots to trek to the new tab.
Firefox on my home PC updated to 3.6 this weekend. The first thing I noticed is that it now opens links in new tabs the same way as IE. Good on the Firefox team for adopting good ideas wherever they find them.
Anyone else playing FarmVille?
Wednesday, February 17th, 2010 | Home Life, Tech | Permalink | 2 Comments |
I put a message on Facebook a while back that it wasn’t me playing FarmVille, FishVille, and PetVille. It was my five year old daughter, who used my account to send gifts to her account.
Then a funny thing happened. Melissa showed me how to plant crops in FarmVille. How to invite neighbors. How to send gifts.
I’m hooked. I’m making plans for getting earning enough FarmVille coins to buy a house, and mapping out how I’m going to rearrange my farm.
If you play and we’re not already neighbors, friend me and send me a neighbor invitation. And if you’ve got nails and boards I could use some.
P.S. This morning I found a page that’s supposed to help you get materials for your horse stable.
AutoPager plug-in for Firefox
Monday, February 15th, 2010 | Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
I saw AutoPager on someone’s list of best Firefox plug-ins. After using it for a few weeks I’m hooked.
AutoPager detects all of those links to “Previous Entries,” “Older Posts,” and parts 2 through 20 and pre-loads the next page . As you continue reading and scrolling the page it loads the next page after that, and then the next. You never have to click a link to continue reading and you never have to wait for the next page to load. Sweet!
P.S. It works with Google search results, too.
Google switches Gmail to https by default
Saturday, February 13th, 2010 | Middle East, Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
Information Week - Google: We’re Encrypting Everyone’s Gmail Automatically:
Whether or not the timing of this announcement has anything to do with Google’s recent actions in the Chinese market is unknown. The company today said that it is switching Gmail access to https for all users by default.
The company wrote in a blog post, “Using https helps protect data from being snooped by third parties, such as in public wifi hotspots. We initially left the choice of using it up to you because there’s a downside: https can make your mail slower since encrypted data doesn’t travel across the web as quickly as unencrypted data. Over the last few months, we’ve been researching the security/latency tradeoff and decided that turning https on for everyone was the right thing to do.”
In related news, Iran’s government has banned Gmail:
As the Iranian authorities attempt to stifle tomorrow’s protests surrounding the anniversary of the Iranian revolution, they are going one step further: Iran is permanently suspending access to Google’s Gmail. Earlier this week, we wrote about failing Internet connections in Iran.
The timing of these problems has been met with suspicion: February 11 (tomorrow) marks the anniversary of the Iranian revolution and gatherings are already being planned to protest against June’s alleged election fraud.
My day yesterday
Thursday, February 11th, 2010 | Tech | Permalink | 5 Comments |
One reason I’m not blogging much is that I’m bleary-eyed from getting an all-new corporate Web site off the ground. Here’s the fun I’ve been having.
I spent yesterday beating on Web servers with load-testing software. I’ve got a couple of servers set up as candidates for our new corporate Web site.
Things were going great until I got to the second server. It produced tons of 404 errors. I found the problem and fixed it, but the errors never went away. A link checker confirmed everything was working, and I can navigate the site just fine in a browser.
After spending hours chasing the problem I decided the software must be pulling files from a cache. I turned off every cache I know about, but there could be a PHP cache out there I’m not aware of. I’m hoping the cache expired overnight. If not I’ll be chasing that down. So that’s what I’m doing this morning. In the afternoon I’m attending a training Webinar for the load-testing software.
Google Docs
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010 | Tech | Permalink | 3 Comments |
Wedding planning tool of the century: Google Docs. I just realized you can email a form to your guests and have them put in their addresses, which go straight into a spreadsheet. This was too valuable not to share with anyone who may be trying to get 100 of their nearest and dearest into a big room.
Whoa. I didn’t realize you could do that with Google Docs. That gives me an idea for automating a process at work that collects data from partners all over the country every day.
Follow-up with pics: converting raw speaker wires to banana plugs
Monday, February 8th, 2010 | A&E, Dear Lazyweb, Tech | Permalink | 1 Comment |
Last Christmas we upgrade our home entertainment system and moved everything to new furniture. During the move I had trouble with two of the speakers. Re-cutting the speaker wire fixed one speaker, but not the center.
During that trouble I decided I was tired of trying to jam lampcord into screwposts, so I ordered these Monoprice banana plugs and followed their instructions.
Before: Naked Wires Screwed into Caps
After: Wires Formed into Gold-plated Banana Plugs
Much neater, and no more dangling strands of copper that I couldn’t force into the post. The other ends of the speaker wires going into the speakers got the same plugs.
And that problem I had with my center channel not working after the move? This didn’t fix it. I dug around some more and found the problem. During the move the Dolby setting on the receiver had somehow gotten changed from Standard to Music, which doesn’t use the center channel. A click of a button fixed that.
The banana plus are a neater wiring solution that’s easier to disassemble and reassemble. It probably even sounds a hair better than the old setup. For the small price tag and minimal work I’m happy with the upgrade.
Previously - School Me on Speaker Wire and Banana Connectors, Please
Apple insanely great device is an overpriced iPod Touch
Wednesday, January 27th, 2010 | Tech | Permalink | 5 Comments |
Gizmodo - 8 Things That Suck About the iPad:
No Flash
No Flash is annoying but not a dealbreaker on the iPhone and iPod Touch. On something that’s supposed to be closer to a netbook or laptop? It will leave huge, gaping holes in websites. I hope you don’t care about streaming video! God knows not many casual internet users do. Oh wait, nevermind, they all do.No Multitasking
This is a backbreaker. If this is supposed to be a replacement for netbooks, how can it possibly not have multitasking? Are you saying I can’t listen to Pandora while writing a document? I can’t have my Twitter app open at the same time as my browser? I can’t have AIM open at the same time as my email? Are you kidding me? This alone guarantees that I will not buy this product.A Closed App Ecosystem
The iPad only runs apps from the App Store. The same App Store that is notorious for banning apps for no real reason, such as Google Voice. Sure, netbooks might not have touchscreens, but you can install whatever software you’d like on them. Want to run a different browser on your iPad? Too bad!
If it’s too big to fit in a pocket you might as well buy a small notebook for the same price and have the freedom to run whatever apps you want.
Steve Jobs did some cool stuff but it became obvious a long time ago that he was a massive control freak. If Steve Jobs is OCD boi with 5.1% of the market imagine what an insufferable Nazi he’d be with 51% of the market.
Hint: we’d all be living in a world of overpriced SCSI drives instead of cheap IDE drives, under-performing Motorola processors, no internal expansion slots, and single-button mice instead of mice with five buttons and scroll wheels.
Google Reader can follow pages without RSS
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010 | Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
Google - Follow changes to any Web site:
Feeds make it easy to follow updates to all kinds of webpages, from blogs to news sites to Craigslist queries, but unfortunately not all pages on the web have feeds. Today we’re rolling out a change in Google Reader that lets you create a custom feed to track changes on pages that don’t have their own feed.
These custom feeds are most useful if you want to be alerted whenever a specific page has been updated. For example, if you wanted to follow Google.org’s latest products, just type “http://www.google.org/products.html” into Reader’s “Add a subscription” field. Click “create a feed”, and Reader will periodically visit the page and publish any significant changes it finds as items in a custom feed created just for that page.
Hat tip to Adrian.
6 Foot HDMI Cable for $2.95
Friday, December 25th, 2009 | A&E, Tech | Permalink | 6 Comments |
Rated 4.5 stars on Amazon after 2,400 reviews. For that price it’s worth a shot. I added it to my shopping cart so I can give it a try.
I paid about $25 at BestBuy for an 8 foot HDMI cable. That wasn’t their cheapest and it wasn’t their most expensive. The Monster Cable brand HDMI cables are insane - they have three or four classes of HDMI cables, some of them selling for over a hundred bucks. For wires. With giant USB connectors on the ends.
The cables at Monoprice.com have a good rep vs. Monster.
For the grisly details of HDMI versions (freakin’ cables have versions now?) see Wikipedia or the chart below, which I legal-stoled from Wikipedia. All HDMI cable versions since 1.0 support Blu-Ray audio and video, which I’m guessing is the only thing most of us care about in 2009.
| HDMI version | 1.0 | 1.1 | 1.2 1.2a |
1.3 | 1.3a 1.3b 1.3b1 1.3c |
1.4[50] |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| sRGB | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| YCbCr | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| 8 channel LPCM, 192 kHz, 24 bit audio capability | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Blu-ray Disc video and audio at full resolution[F] | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Consumer Electronic Control (CEC)[G] | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| DVD Audio support | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Super Audio CD (DSD) support[H] | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Deep Color | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| xvYCC | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Auto lip-sync | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Dolby TrueHD bitstream capable | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| DTS-HD Master Audio bitstream capable | No | No | No | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Updated list of CEC commands[I] | No | No | No | No | Yes | Yes |
| Ethernet Channel | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| Audio Return Channel | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| 3D Over HDMI | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
| 4k × 2k Resolution Support | No | No | No | No | No | Yes |
Then there’s version 1.1, which supports the DVD Audio no one bought. Then there’s version 1.2, which supports the Super Audio CD no one bought.
If you want to splurge version 1.3 supports Deep Color, xvXCC, Auto lip-sync, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD Master Audio. Like you, I’ve never heard of any of those things.
School Me on Speaker Wire and Banana Connectors, Please
Wednesday, December 23rd, 2009 | A&E, Dear Lazyweb, Tech | Permalink | 4 Comments |
Dear Lazyweb,
Let’s talk about speakers and speaker wire.
Ten years ago I bought a set of Paradigm speakers (which I still lurv), a Pioneer receiver (which is OK if not great) and lamp cord to connect everything. And for ten years everything was copacetic and there was peace in the kingdom.
Recently we upgraded our TV and TiVo and replaced the DVD with Blu-Ray. During the upgrading, furniture changing and component rearranging two of the speakers stopped playing audio. I got one to work again by re-cutting the ends of the lampcord at the receiver. I did the same with the center channel, but it’s still not working and I haven’t had time to fool with it.
I realized something while recutting those speaker wires: I hates me some bare ends on speaker wires. The ends get frayed and the lamp cord wire is so crazy thick I can barely cram it into the connectors on the back of the receiver (which I think is part of the problem I’m having now).
I want to convert to banana plugs. The receiver and speakers have the right connectors. I mic’ed them and they both use 4mm connectors, which seem to be the audio standard. Looking at Monoprice.com I see these banana connectors and these instructions for using them. The price is right, the reviews are great, and it looks easy-squeezey, but I gots questions.
- Is it OK to not solder solder-type banana plugs as those instructions say?
- Should I use something other than lampcord?
- Anything else I need or need to know?
You’re doomed, thumbtypers
Monday, December 21st, 2009 | Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
Reuters - Texting driver 6 times more likely to crash: study
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Text-messaging drivers are six times more likely to get into an accident than drivers who do not text, researchers said in a study released on Monday.
The researchers say the study, using simulator vehicles and identical traffic scenarios, also found the risk of texting behind the wheel appeared to be significantly higher than talking on a cell phone while driving, another dangerous distraction.
My TV, she’s on the Internet
Thursday, December 10th, 2009 | Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
This week we bought a new HD TiVo. One of the add-ons is a WiFi Internet adaptor. TiVo uses it to download movies on demand from Netflix. I always thought my refrigerator would be the first appliance to go online.
Word of the Day: Sparklines
Tuesday, December 1st, 2009 | Tech, Word of the Day | Permalink | 1 Comment |
Via Wikipedia:
A Sparkline is a type of information graphic characterized by its small size and data density. Sparklines present trends and variations associated with some measurement, such as average temperature or stock market activity, in a simple and condensed way. Several sparklines are often used together as elements of a small multiple.
The term ‘Sparkline’ was proposed by Edward Tufte for “small, high resolution graphics embedded in a context of words, numbers, images.” Tufte describes sparklines as “data-intense, design-simple, word-sized graphics”.[1] Whereas the typical chart is designed to show as much data as possible, and is set off from the flow of text, sparklines are intended to be succinct, memorable, and located where they are discussed.
On November 12, 2009, a patent application was published [2] which had been filed May 7, 2008 by Microsoft employees, claiming various aspects of Sparklines’ implementation in Excel 2010, prompting Edward Tufte, the acknowledged inventor[3] of the graphic, to express concern.[4]
Google Docs has sparkline support. There’s a free, third-party plug-in for adding sparklines to Excel 2003 and 2007. Microsoft has announced that sparklines will be a standard feature of Excel 2010.
Hat tip to Phil Greenspun.
Artificial unintelligence
Friday, October 16th, 2009 | Tech | Permalink | 1 Comment |
From Bruce Schneier: “During a daring bank robbery in Sweden that involved a helicopter, the criminals disabled a police helicopter by placing a package with the word “bomb” near the helicopter hangar, thus engaging the full caution/evacuation procedure while they escaped.”
Court rules no expectation of privacy using company email system
Monday, October 12th, 2009 | Tech | Permalink | 3 Comments |
Electronic Discovery Law - No Reasonable Expectation of Privacy for Emails Transmitted through Employer’s Server and thus, No Privilege:
In this case, the court overruled the determination of the special master and held that defendant had no reasonable expectation of privacy as to emails transmitted through plaintiff’s server and thus, no attorney-client privilege as to those communications.
Not good. I’m hoping this case doesn’t stand on appeal. Between attorney-client confidentiality and the ownership rights of the employer I’m hoping attorney-client privilege wins. Meanwhile, get thee to Gmail and set thy preferences to https secure email.
Via Bill Dean.
Mozy finished backing up 63.1 GB
Saturday, October 10th, 2009 | Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
Elapsed time since signup - eight days. Not bad.
Previously
I signed up for Mozy’s online backup service
Saturday, October 3rd, 2009 | Tech | Permalink | 2 Comments |
I had considered Mozy before and Adrian spoke highly of it yesterday, so I’m in.
I’ve got local backups with the Western Digital Media Center. I’ve got offsite backups with a USB enclosure hard drive and DVD backups of iTunes and Picasa. Thing is, my offsite backup discipline is pretty lackadaisical. I don’t think I’ve updated my offsite backups in six months. Mozy works automatically so I don’t have to think about it.
If your hard drive goes down you call Mozy or go to their Web site and order backups mailed to your house on DVD. You can download your backups, too. For individual files that’s handy. For a total hard drive backup that could take weeks, so the DVD option is good to have. Cost is $5/month for unlimited backup space for one computer. All of the data is encrypted with your choice of their key or theirs.
Previously
Be safe out there on that Internet
Sunday, September 27th, 2009 | Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
I was surfing this morning and got the Trojan warning above. AVast is free anti-malware. Why not download it?
High school yearbook for major Web sites
Friday, September 4th, 2009 | Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
How 20 popular websites looked when they launched.
I think they must have have made a mistake on the Drudge Report, though. That screenshot looks pretty much the way Drudge looks now.
Use a caps lock key, go to jail
Monday, August 31st, 2009 | Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
Sushi Mayhem for iPhone
Wednesday, August 26th, 2009 | A&E, Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
From a U.S. Internet bud:
My latest game, Sushi Mayhem, just went live in the iTunes App Store. As I’m sure a lot of you have heard me nag before that the first day of sales are the most important and give you the best chance of hitting the top 100. Because of the (flawed) way the app store works if an app gets in the top 100 it will usually stay there for a while and be self sustaining… so PLEASE go pick it up asap. I’m looking at you Arlene/Joe Sera/Scott! I don’t want to have to find a real job. It costs less than a cup of coffee at Starbucks and if you hate it I’ll give you the $2 back and count it as a marketing expense 8). If you know anyone with an iPhone let them know too.
Here’s the link to the iTunes store. I’ve never done an itms:// link before, but when I click it I go to iTunes. Pretty neat.
Build your own tinyurl-style URL shortener
Tuesday, August 11th, 2009 | Tech | Permalink | No Comments |
Mashable tells you how. You can also use Google Apps.
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