Latest Story

How Far From Tree Will This Orphaned Apple Fall?

May 6, 2012
By
iPad

SINCE THE PREMATURE BUT EXPECTED death of its beloved and feared CEO and technical design guru—Steven Jobs—of pancreas cancer, Apple stock has shot to its all-time high, and now since new iPad was released, that same white hot Apple stock has taken a most rude hit, falling nearly 15%. Now, the talking heads at Apple are suggesting that a smaller footprint of the iPad is in the works, but trouble with non-starters like Apple’s creative but completely legal tax schemes and the usual chicanery concerning its Asian labor force have hastened the fall. What gives? In the midst of all this bad news Apple announced a stock dividend, but we haven’t heard anything about that in a while. We now realize that as usual, the skim is being siphoned off the market for those with bold market plans, and those meek weak loyalists who were pleasantly charmed by such faux news have taken a bath in subsequent trading days, er, I mean weeks. We just hope this trend is not a repeat of fortunes...

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Ask Apache Server If You’ve Got The Nerve

April 16, 2012
By

HTACCESS FILE KNOW-HOW will do several things for you: Make your website noticeably faster. Allow you to debug your server with ease. Make your life easier and more rewarding. Allow you to work faster and more productively. What Is .htaccess? Specifically, .htaccess is the default file name of a special configuration file that provides a number of directives (commands) for controlling and configuring the Apache Web Server, and also to control and configure modules that can be built into the Apache installation, or included at run-time like mod_rewrite (for htaccess rewrite), mod_alias (for htaccess redirects), and mod_ssl (for controlling SSL connections). Htaccess allows for decentralized management of Web Server configurations which makes life very easy for web hosting companies and especially their savvy consumers. The hosting techs set up and run “server farms” where many hundreds and thousands of web hosting customers are all put on the same Apache Server. This type of hosting is called “virtual hosting” and without .htaccess files would mean that every customer must use the same exact settings as...

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Residents Reminded to Lock their Vehicles and Remove High-Dollar Items After Rash of Recent Thefts

April 5, 2012
By

Loudoun County, VA – The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office reminds residents to remove high-dollar items and garage door openers from their vehicles when left unattended. In the past several days vehicles in the Lowes Island were entered and were either rummaged through or items were taken. Most of the vehicles entered were left unlocked. The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office Crime Prevention Unit is offering residents several tips for deterring thefts from vehicles: • KEEP YOUR VEHICLE LOCKED. Most stolen items are taken from vehicles that are left unlocked. • Remove all items from your vehicle, including garage door openers, when not in use. When you cannot do this, put the items out of sight (inside a lockable glove box or trunk). If your vehicle has anintegrated garage door opener, please try to park your vehicle in the garage. • A visible GPS unit is an obvious target, but car prowlers also look for any signs that one may be inside your vehicle, such as a mount on the window or dashboard. Even the circle...

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Optimization Savvy: Is Your Website Fast Enough To Fly?

March 3, 2012
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IT’S ALWAYS BEEN IMPORTANT to make your website fast. Not only is it obvious visitors are going to prefer it but it’s now well-known that Google uses loading speed as a ranking metric. The initial page load of your website is perhaps the most important. The longer it takes to load the more visitors are going to press back and find an alternative. A slow website is something that could potentially frustrate visitors so it’s important to try and remove it from the equation. Jakob Nielsen is an authority on usability and has studied response times extensively. He notes that response times of: Up to 100 milliseconds is perceived as instantaneous response Up to 1 second will be noticed by the user but their thought flow will remain uninterrupted. Over 10 seconds is also mentioned but this shouldn’t be applicable to normal websites which is the focus of this blog. If your site takes longer than 10 seconds to load something is probably critically wrong! Read it all.

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To Link Or Not To Link, Does It Matter?

February 26, 2012
By

IT SEEMS LIKE A CURIOUS question to ask: should links be deliberately excluded from online articles, essays and blog posts? The link, after all, is the very currency of the web. But that is the question Nicholas Carr poses in an intriguing blog post. Needless to say, his post does not contain links, at least not in the main text; instead they are listed at the end, like footnotes. Why? Because, Mr Carr argues, links lead us astray: Links are wonderful conveniences, as we all know (from clicking on them compulsively day in and day out). But they’re also distractions. Sometimes, they’re big distractions – we click on a link, then another, then another, and pretty soon we’ve forgotten what we’d started out to do or to read. Other times, they’re tiny distractions, little textual gnats buzzing around your head. Even if you don’t click on a link, your eyes notice it, and your frontal cortex has to fire up a bunch of neurons to decide whether to click or not. You may not...

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Loudoun Forecast

Today Wednesday Thursday
It is forcast to be Thunderstorm at 11:00 PM EDT on May 22, 2012
Thunderstorm

82°/61°

 It is forcast to be Thunderstorm at 11:00 PM EDT on May 23, 2012
Thunderstorm

81°/64°

 It is forcast to be Chance of a Thunderstorm at 11:00 PM EDT on May 24, 2012
Chance of a Thunderstorm

82°/63°

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