Sunday, December 30, 2007

Ways To Speed Up Your WebSite!

clipped from www.drunkadmin.com
Optimize Links
For example if link is
www.domain.com/blog
make sure you write it as
www.domain.com/blog/
to prevent one extra request which would be made to the server if the former link is used.
clipped from www.drunkadmin.com
most people overlook one of the largest problems with website performance
DNS
If you don’t have it set up properly, all the optimizations listed above will only help a little.
1 - make sure all your DNS servers listed in your whois records actually work.
2 - Make sure all your DNS servers respond in a timely manner.
3 - Make sure your whois records have at least 2 DNS servers
and that they are are in completely different subnets.
clipped from www.drunkadmin.com
1) Set the http headers to set the expiration timeframe
5) Add your css to the top of your head tag, and your javascripts to the bottom of your body tag.

12) Instead of XML consider JSON if its posible

15) Cache your sql results

clipped from www.drunkadmin.com
Caching!
wp-cache
combine images, like icons and othersuch small files (under 1-2k) into a single file
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Year 2007's top 10 science and tech stories

clipped from www.slate.com
Illustration by Robert Neubecker. Click image to expand.
1. Cellular rejuvenation.
two research teams announced that they had turned regular body cells into the equivalent of embryonic stem cells just by injecting four genes.
2. Artificial life.
They claim to have built an artificial chromosome, and are on schedule to grow "the first living cells with fully artificial genomes"
3. Regeneration.
An amputee may one day be able to feel with an artificial limb as although it was his own
4. Humanized animals.
human embryos with animal DNA.
5. Cyborgs.
researchers put computer chips into moths, allowing them to be remotely controlled
6. Vegetative consciousness.
scans found near-normal brain activity in a woman who had been diagnosed as vegetative because she didn't respond visibly to stimuli
7. Parthenogenesis.
shark foetus developed in a tank with no apparent father
8. Physical hyperlinks.
put a high-density bar code on any object to encode information about it
9. Nonlethal beam weapons.
10. Embryo manufacture.
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Five Shocking Stats About Men and Sex

The trouble is that most of the actual surveys of penis size are unscientific and unreliable. The Kinsey survey relied on men to report their own numbers honestly and accurately—never a good idea. (Curiously, that survey found that gay men reported having longer penises than straight men—a finding never since replicated.)

* go to the site for the rest!
Sex on the Brain

The idea that men think about sex every seven seconds, like the claim that we only use 10% of our brains, is often repeated but rarely sourced

Not Tonight, Honey

The stereotype about the sex-starved man and the disinterested woman may be more than just a cliché. As it turns out, the instant a woman enters a secure relationship, her sex drive begins to plummet. Four years in, a German study found, fewer than half of women wanted regular sex. And after 20 years, only 20 percent did

Measuring Up

For as long as there's been such thing as a ruler, men have been putting wood to, um, wood and wondering how they measure up. "There's nothing wrong with you. You look at yourself from above and you look foreshortened," Hemingway reassured a panicking F. Scott Fizgerald. "It is basically not a question of the size in repose. It is the size that it becomes. It is also a question of angle."

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Philosophy Pages

Some light reading for a cold winter evening.
Enjoy.

Philosophy Pages

. . . from Garth Kemerling

This site offers helpful information for students of the Western philosophical tradition.
The elements you will find on this site include:

The Dictionary of Philosophical Terms and Names.
A survey of the History of Western Philosophy.
A Timeline for the intellectual figures discussed here.
Detailed discussion of several major Philosophers
Summary treatment of the elementary principles of Logic
Links to other philosophy Sites on the Internet.
An opportunity to download the entire site for personal use.
Visitors are welcome to browse and to make fair use of the copyrighted text found on these pages.
When in doubt about the appropriateness of a contemplated use, please apply the principles stated in Peter Suber's excellent comments on copyright.
If you quote anything directly in another setting, please include a complete citation in an appropriate form, and remember to check out the academic credentials of the author.
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Open Source Living - Web's best Open Source software

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European Governments Embracing Open Source

The Norwegian government also recently declared that they will only use open standards for government information, with the Open Document Format identified as the main alternative.
In September the Dutch Secretary of State of Economic Affairs, Frank Heemskerk, and the Dutch Secretary of State of Internal Affairs, Ank Bijleveld-Schouten, published the Action Plan Open Standards and Open Source Software.
German Foreign Ministry recently came out in strong support of the Open Document Format.
Clearly European governments are engaging more and more in open standards and open source software (perhaps inspired by European Commission research showing that these steps will stimulate the European economy). This trend is picking up momentum at a crucial time, as the European Commission conducts the midterm review of their i2010 programme for ICT policy in the European Union. Here's hoping that openness is front and center in their policy going forward.
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Google Reader Tips

While this post at Lifehacker is almost a year old, it still answers questions many may have on how better to use Google Reader. Read away...
clipped from lifehacker.com


Hack Attack: Getting good with Google Reader

Lifehacker%20google%20reader%20header.png

Google Reader is one helluva feed reader, but unless you've spent a little time digging into the documentation, you probably aren't taking full advantage of what it has to offer.

Today, I'm going to show you the ins and outs of Google's powerful newsreader, with an emphasis on Reader's powerful and time-saving keyboard shortcuts. To round things off, I'll finish up with some of my favorite Google Reader-related tweaks and downloads to get you up to speed with the best newsreader on the planet.

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Have Sex While You Sleep

clipped from www.livescience.com


If you think it’s impossible to have sex while you sleep, think again, according to a new study.


There are at least 11 different sex-related sleep disorders, collectively referred to as “sexsomnia” or “sleepsex,” that affect people who are otherwise psychologically healthy—causing them to unknowingly engage in various sexual activities during the night.


Among other things, they found that people—mostly men—sometimes masturbate, initiate sex with a partner and reach orgasm during sleep. They usually have no memory of these activities when they wake up, learning about them only if a partner or roommate tells them.
“Sexsomnia doesn’t come out of nowhere,” he said. But “for whatever reason, sexual behaviors become part of the repertoire.”

While people might feel ashamed to learn from their partners that they are exhibiting these behaviors while they sleep, these disorders are not indicative of psychological problems
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More Google Reader Tips

Steve Rubel covers many areas of how better to use Google Reader for Knowledge Management. Read on...

Become a Knowledge Management Ninja with Google Reader

In this era of data smog, the knowledge worker who can act like an agile ninja by consuming vast quantities of information, synthesizing it and getting it in the hands of the right people at the right time is invaluable. For knowledge worker ninjas, RSS is your shuriken.

I have been using various RSS readers for nearly five years now - I've tried them all. However, none matches the power of Google Reader. I have found that if you tap into all of its features, it's the Holy Grail of Personal Knowledge Management.

So as 2007 winds down and thoughts turn to productivity and prosperity in the new year, I offer these tips to help. Share your own thoughts in the comments. (Some of these may work with RSS readers from Newsgator, Bloglines and others but they are written with Google in mind.)

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Saturday, December 29, 2007

Cool StumbleUpon Trick

clipped from patrickdevivo.com
Cool StumbleUpon Trick

Date December 29, 2007

This is a nifty trick that I figured out that you can use to impress your StumbleUpon addicted friends. You can create an error page on StumbleUpon.com that displays a personal error, all from your web browser. Let me show you:

The url to StumbleUpon’s error page is this: http://www.stumbleupon.com/error.php

If you follow the link above, it will take you to a page which says “unkown error”, this is because StumbleUpon doesn’t know what the error is. You can insert an error message by using the following url format:

http://www.stumbleupon.com/error.php?error=YOUR%20MESSAGE%20HERE

(%20 is used to show that there is a space there. Insert it between the letters otherwise your browser won’t load the page.)

You can then make something like this to send to your friends:

StumbleUpon Error Page

error.png

AddThis Social Bookmarking Widget
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Streaming BBC iPlayer for all platforms

Good news for UK Linux and Mac users who can at least access the content as Flash video.Improvements to other aspects for XP and Vista users too - the Beeb has been true to its word here. Not perfect but the right direction.
clipped from www.bbc.co.uk
From today we are pleased to announce that streaming is now available on BBC iPlayer. This means that Windows, Mac and Linux users can stream programmes on iPlayer as long as their computer has the latest version of Flash. Another change is that you do not have to register or sign in any more to download programmes, and Windows XP and Vista users will have an improved version of Download Manager (formerly the Library) available to them.
Thanks to everyone for their feedback over the past months on this messageboard, it has helped us to come up with the new designs and software. This forum will remain open for discussion of the new BBC iPlayer for feedback and suggestions on changes you’d like to see in the future, as we have further plans for next year, including integration of the BBC Radio Player into this site.
The help pages have been updated to reflect these improvements and we hope that more people than ever can enjoy BBC iPlayer.
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Thursday, December 27, 2007

Power of Facebook affects law

clipped from news.bbc.co.uk
Since January, Facebook has added 250,000 new users each day with nearly 60 million people worldwide now using the site.
Facebook has also acquired considerable attention regarding its user privacy policies, online marketing strategies and the short-sighted decision of some companies and governments to block employee access to the site.
the lasting lesson of Facebook may come from a series of events that unfolded over the past two weeks in Canada.
They demonstrate that Facebook is far more than just a cool way to catch up with old friends; rather, it is an incredibly effective and efficient tool that can be used to educate and galvanise grassroots advocacy, placing unprecedented power into the hands of individuals.
politicians, companies, and other organizations can ill-afford to ignore a medium that is capable of mobilizing tens of thousands within a matter of days. Those caught flatfooted may ultimately find themselves struggling to save face.
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Wednesday, December 26, 2007

firefox popup window resize

not sure if anyone else has had this problem.....but if so, here goes!

Firefox Popup Window Resize

For some reason, some popups in Firefox have been opening with the wrong size for the content displayed and the resize feature was disabled for the windows.

After some research, I found that in Firefox you can override this behavior by changing one of the many user preferences.

To do this

  1. Type about:config in the location bar and press enter

  2. Search for the "dom.disable_window_open_feature.resizable" entry

  3. Change the boolean value from false to true

Setting this to true will prevent a window from disabling the resize feature.


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Tuesday, December 25, 2007

Fun Stuff On the Web -- Things To Do This Weekend

Here are some of my favorite sites on the web.

100 of the Best Legal Free Full Version Games You Can Download Online -- If you love games, this site is for you.(from an ex-game addict junkie)

TV Mafia -- this site has over 300 TV series with complete episodes of favorite shows.

Some of my favorite movie download sites:
- Fresh HDL
- High Definition Share -- High Def. Movies

Movie Ost's -- A site dedicated to movie soundtracks.

If you want to read a book, there is:
- Bookyards The Library
- Bookyards list of free online libraries -- separated by category
- The 100 Most Influential Books Ever Written

Here are some pirate library sites for more up to date books:
- Burgomeister
- Bookworm
- Greylib
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