You can destroy people on those Nets now and nobody’s watching
— Bill O’Reilly
I am quickly growing more and more disgusted by those supposedly on the Right that are pushing Liberal agendas on way to many issues.
via Hot Air
Wilson Miner has a great resource on A List Apart: Setting Type on the Web to a Baseline Grid.
Over the last year or so, there’s been a lot of talk about grid systems and using column grids for website layouts. Mark gave us a lesson plan, Khoi gave us a case study and Cameron gave us a toolkit. The message is clear: we have the browser support, the know-how, and the tools we need to create consistent multi-column grid layouts on the web.
We can apply the same principles of proportion and balance to the type within those columns by borrowing another technique from our print brethren: the baseline grid.
Wilson is part of the Django team. The more I read about Django and the more I see it in action, the more I am thinking about dumping WordPress and rolling my own Django-based site.
Here is a very interesting thread started today in the TextDrive Forums: Who’s Biggest Shared Hosting Resource Hog: WP or MT?
Doubtless due to having too much time on my hands, I’ve built two visually identical versions of a new blog that will be eventually hosted here. One version is in WordPress, the other is in Movable Type.
Personally, I don’t have any real preference for either WP or MT. But, I do have a bias for static pages, because I think (imagine?) that they’re delivered faster from a reader’s point of view. Subjectively speaking, static sites feel snappier to me than a lot of WP sites.
Hence, I’ve got two questions:
1) Side by side, on the same machine with the same browser, would Jill Reader really see a static page produced by MT before she’d see the identical page delivered by WP?
2) Which of the two platforms is most likely to run afoul of CPU/memory/etc. limits imposed by shared hosting? I know this really isn’t an issue for the typical blog with minimal readership, but let’s dream. Suppose a site does become popular. WP is going to be busy generating a lot of database queries. MT is going to be busy rebuilding some number of pages pages every time someone posts a comment. (MT won’t rebuild the entire site on its own.) I’m assuming the sites have identical content, the same posting rate, same comments, etc.
(There are plenty of complaints on the web from MT users who’ve run into problems obviously caused by excessive resource use on a shared host. But, if you look, there are also complaints from WP users who’ve run into problems.)
I’ve left comment spam out of the equation because I suspect both platforms are equally vulnerable. Akismet and other equivalent spam countermeasures are avaiable [sic] for both.
I’m shooting in the dark here, but I’m guessing that the key variable might be the comments. I.e., with few comments the edge might go to MT, but as comments increase, the rebuilds will suck more resources than the corresponding database activity will with WP.
Has anyone ever run some numbers on this?
I would love to see some great discussion around this. Will Jason weigh in? My gut tells me the Perl/CGI structure of Movable Type is the bigger resource drain, but I could be wrong.
Looks like I am a Superman. I ran across this today at Andy Beal’s site.
Your results: You are Superman
|
You are mild-mannered, good, strong and you love to help others.  |
Click here to take the Superhero Personality Test
Too bad I can’t be a web jedi. That’s the superhero for me! Just imagine, enforcing web standards. (Boy does thesuperheroquiz.com need some help with their code!) Applying microformats and creating new mashups seemingly at-will.
From Save the Internet Blog: AT&T Yields to Neutrality, Paves Path to Congress
In a striking victory for Internet freedom advocates, AT&T officials agreed on Thursday night to adhere to strict Network Neutrality conditions if allowed to complete their proposed $85 billion merger with BellSouth.
OK 110th Congress, Make Net Neutrality the Law in 2007. Call or write your Congressman today!
I am trying to clean up my duplicate WordPress content here at ecrosstexas.com.
Today I updated my .htacess file to redirect www.ecrosstexas.com to ecrosstexas.com as WWW is deprectiated. I have been using just ecrosstexas.com for some time now as my preferred URL. Of course, I could have used this plugin instead of hacking my .htacess file. A word of caution Cool URIs don’t change.
In order to answer this question, we must first recall the definition of WWW:
World Wide Web:
n. Abbr. WWW
1) The complete set of documents residing on all Internet servers that use the HTTP protocol, accessible to users via a simple point-and-click system.
2) n : a collection of internet sites that offer text and graphics and sound and animation resources through the hypertext transfer protocol.
Last week I updated my template’s header.php robots meta tag. Now <meta name="robots" content="index,follow" /> is only in the <head> of my main blog page, individual entries, and pages. My archives (monthly, categories, etc) all get <meta name="robots" content="noindex,follow" />. Details can be found in How to Make a WordPress Blog Duplicate Content Safe.
Google has announced their year-end zeitgeist data. Interesting data here.
Google.com - Top Searches in 2006
1. bebo
2. myspace
3. world cup
4. metacafe
5. radioblog
6. wikipedia
7. video
8. rebelde
9. mininova
10. wiki
Kind of sad looking at current events. Darfur comes in at #4 on the where is list. Only one political scandal on the scandals list (Foley).
In recent weeks there has been an explosion of interest in alternatives to gravatar for adding avatars/images to a blog:
What about OpenID and all the Web 2.0 sites (MySpace, YouTube, etc) I think the last thing we need is 5 or 6 competing and incompatible solutions. What about one service to rule them all—Buddy Cards? With a bit of coding I would think that 30 Boxes could add MyBlogLog, gravats, pavatar, and more.
I installed Buddy Cards a few weeks back and I have been very impressed with it.
Encourage 30 Boxes to jump on this today! Here is an active thread on the 30 Boxes forum.
Rats, I spoke too soon. Upon closer inspection it appears that my technorati troubles are still not solved.
Hooray! It looks like the upgrade to WordPress 2.1 and use of the static front page has solved my technorati problems.
Seeing WordPress 2.1 is nearing beta, I decided to upgrade ecrosstexas today. I figured why continue to tweak the site with an outdated version.
My favorite feature allows you to control the “front page” of your site. Glad to see this is finally baked into the core. I am using this to serve the Howdy Y’all notice at http://ecrosstexas.com and the texas blog at http://ecrosstexas.com/blog.
I wonder if this will help at all with my technorati issue?
Heather Champ posted some big Flickr news today.
Way to go Flickr! The service just keeps getting better. Be sure to check out my photos on Flickr.
Are you sharing photos on Flickr? Why not start today?
[Update: Thomas Hawk points out remaining issues. Paul Stamatiou provides a great list of Flickr gift ideas. ]
It appears that my choice to display my most recent entry from “the texas blog” is causing massive problems. Technorati seems to think that my home page (compared to this the texas blog) is its own blog and now most searches in technorati reference the wrong site!
Is there any way to correct this data in Technorati? Any advice?
[Update 1:45pm, still wrong after home page change]
To clarify,
my home page is at http://ecrosstexas.com and
my blog the texas blog resides at http://ecrosstexas.com/blog.
I just don’t understand.
Brandon Wood recently wrote Cell phones, bloggers pushing increased accountability.
In it he notes:
the Internet has repeatedly shined the light on people and events that would have rather gone unnoticed. From Michael Richards’ racial tirade at an LA comedy club, to the video of a student getting stunned by campus cops, the Internet is increasingly becoming a venue to showcase people’s misdeeds and hold them accountable for their actions.
I am always on the lookout for news making events. A couple of months back I saw a motorcycle chase end in a violent crash on US 75 in Plano. I was able to snap a few pictures from the scene including this one
I am trying to win an iPod from Malarkey.
Transcending CSS
Yes, it is on my wishlist. Hint, hint!
So expect to see this in my footer from the next month!