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How Far From Tree Will This Orphaned Apple Fall?

Gabriel Thy — Sun, 06 May 2012 18:15:26 +0000

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.

Notions of Apple's Vulnerability Stated As Self-Correction

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 that belayed the company last time Jobs was ousted from his perch at Apple, this time by mere men, back in 1985 by the Board of Directors led by John Sculley, but we are afraid that without the unfathomable push of Steve Jobs, Apple will soon enough turn to sauce.

Ask Apache Server If You’ve Got The Nerve

Gabriel Thy — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 02:30:37 +0000

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 everyone else on their segment. So that is why any half-decent web host allows/enables (DreamHost, Powweb, MediaTemple, GoDaddy) .htaccess files, though few people are aware of it. Let’s just say that if I was a customer on your server-farm, and .htaccess files were enabled, my websites would be a LOT faster than yours, as these configuration files allow you to fully take advantage of and utilize the resources allotted to you by your host. If even 1/10 of the sites on a server-farm took advantage of what they are paying for, the providers would go out of business.

Then there are web hosting companies that do not allow its customers an .htaccess file. Yahoo engineers claim that this policy is a security measure. But many CMS endusers are quick to pont out that this is just not true, and recommend that users flee Yahoo™ for a more friendly hosting company, but I find that solution a bit harsh, time-consuming, and dangerous for someone with seven active blogs. Harsh, because I like Yahoo’s stability and while I have often found their help assistance rather spotty, at least it’s a warm body I’m talking to when I seriously believe and need them even though many times I figure out the solution to my problem. Just having somebody else to help trim the sail is good enough to move past an information barrier. Time-consuming, because this many blogs that need to be stroked gently for the transfer takes more time than a trip to the bathroom, a refill of my big assed iced tea glass, and a long stare into the fridge of desolation would take. And dangerous, oh yes, very dangerous. A misplaced file, a corrupted database. Oh, hell no!

So Yahhoo it is for me, at least for another year. Yet I have found many occasions to use the MOD_REWRITE PHP command to modify the “.htaccess file” so that many of Web 2.0 CMS engines play well with all the other files that offer a clean and fast functionality we have come to expect out of our content management systems.

It’s no secret I love WordPress. A semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability, WordPress been an open source industry standard for several years now. Version 3 has introduced plenty of muscle…

But the promise of several choices of SEO-pleasing permalinks has presented something of a problem that is said to be easily fixed with a MOD_REWRITE of the .htaccess file. But Yahoo’s not playing that game. I sweated tooth and now for several months, settling for the default setting which one SEO plug-in flashes red with cautionary warning that this method of URL display is definitely not recommended. But it was the ONLY method for this sucker, glued to old school Yahoo.com for my hosting needs.

Yes. It had taken Yahoo six months to offer the newest upgrades for MySQL and PHP and the upgrade to WP 3.3 that everybody was now running. I finally forgave them for that. But here I was again, spending hours after hours searching down alternatives on Google™, finding first one trouble ticket here, another one there, all sporting the same permalink problem, and all finding a solution, except me, still stuck at Yahoo. Others were on Yahoo, but never posted a response to the board if indeed they ever found a solution, moved to another server, or had just given up. I had done an AskApache test, and sure enough, it was clear that while most Apache servers offered a quick MOD-REWRITE fix for this permalinks issue, my particular Apache server did not, so I gave up, placing call to Yahoo on telephone phone.

The fellow who answered my call was an American lad named Christian. He and I swapped anecdotes for at least forty-five minutes, not about a permalink fix because that was solved early in the conversation with the expected “security” response, validated by his engineers he said told him they often get that request, but sorry, no can do, no .htaccess file for Yahoo users, but we chatted on about other computer and industry affairs like crusty historians. I thanked him, and went back to sifting through Google returns as I typed in new and awkward strings trying to find an answer to my dilemma. I just could not believe that as large as the Yahoo database of web clients must be, and their access to WordPress, that every other Yahoo/WordPress user out there were suffering along without a fix just like me.

A week later I had my fix. I couldn’t find it online with any ease. I couldn’t find it at WordPress.org with search after search. But now I had found my fix. Just as logic would dictate, Yahoo has provided a simple, painless, and light workaround plug-in for this version of WordPress, thus “allowing” for pretty permalinks. Hallelujah! Actually WordPress “allows” for it, but just needs a modified .htaccess file to finish the job.

I’m happy now. I’ve got my pretty permalinks. Now why didn’t Yahoo engineers know about this plug-in?

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

Gabriel Thy — Thu, 05 Apr 2012 15:37:22 +0000

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 impression left on the windshield from the suction cup mount is enough for thieves to break-in. They assume a GPS is hidden somewhere inside. Please try to rid your unattended vehicle of all tell-tale signs.

• Park inside your garage, if available, and keep the garage locked. Or, try to park your vehicle near or under an illuminated area.

Residents are also encouraged to register high-dollar items such as GPS units, tablets, laptops and MP3 players with the manufacturer and have the serial number available for the responding deputy if a theft occurs. This may assist with recovering the item in the event of a larceny.

Anyone with information about the perpetrators of these crimes is asked to contact the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office Criminal Investigations Division at 703-777-0475. If the caller wishes to remain anonymous they should call Loudoun Crime Solvers at 703-777-1919. If the information provided leads to an arrest and indictment, the caller could be eligible for a cash reward of up to $1000.

Optimization Savvy: Is Your Website Fast Enough To Fly?

Gabriel Thy — Sat, 03 Mar 2012 15:53:33 +0000

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.

To Link Or Not To Link, Does It Matter?

Gabriel Thy — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 19:18:00 +0000

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 notice the little extra cognitive load placed on your brain, but it’s there and it matters. People who read hypertext comprehend and learn less, studies show, than those who read the same material in printed form. The more links in a piece of writing, the bigger the hit on comprehension.

This is part of Mr Carr’s broader argument, detailed in his new book “The Shallows”, about how the internet is changing the way people think. The hyperlink, he says, is “just one element among many—including multimedia, interruptions, multitasking, jerky eye movements, divided attention, extraneous decision making, even social anxiety—that tend to promote hurried, distracted, and superficial thinking online.” Laura Miller, who reviewed the book at Salon, took Mr Carr’s words to heart and put hyperlinks at the bottom, inspiring Mr Carr to do the same. And in a similar vein, he notes, a blog published by the National Core for Neuroethics at the University of British Columbia is carrying out an experiment in which hyperlinks will be excluded from the text blog posts, and listed at the end instead. The bloggers in question have for their part been inspired by the writing of Olivia Judson, formerly of this parish, at the New York Times; she also lists her hyperlinks at the end, rather like the references in a scientific paper.

Read it all.

Open Burning Restrictions in Effect in Loudoun February 15 – April 30

Gabriel Thy — Thu, 23 Feb 2012 14:32:13 +0000

THE LOUDOUN COUNTY FIRE MARSHAL’S Office is reminding everyone that open burning is restricted in Loudoun County between February 15 and April 30. The regulations, which prohibit open air fires between the hours of midnight and 4:00 p.m., are enforced by the Virginia Department of Forestry and the Loudoun County Fire Marshal. Known as the “4:00 p.m. law,” these restrictions are in place due to the potential for rapid fire spread across woodland and grassland areas that is the result of dry outdoor fuels, high winds and temperature increases that are normally present in the late winter and early spring season.

During this period, residents may conduct open burning between the hours of 4 p.m. and midnight, subject to other restrictions. Open burning is prohibited at all times in the Towns of Round Hill, Purcellville, Middleburg, Lovettsville and Leesburg and in areas of Loudoun County that are part of suburban development. The burning of construction materials is prohibited at all times within any area of Loudoun County.

Where open burning is allowed, it is limited to leaves and other yard trimmings if curbside trash pick up is not available for this purpose and must not be done any closer than fifty feet from any structure.

Persons conducting open burning must contact the Loudoun County Emergency Communications Center at 703-777-0637 prior to igniting a fire and at the end of the burning. Fires may not be added to or stirred after midnight. Persons are responsible, at all times, to ensure the fire is maintained under control and that it is attended, with provisions immediately available to extinguish the fire if necessary.

Any person who violates this law could be convicted of a Class 1 misdemeanor, which carries a penalty of a fine up to $2,500.00 and up to a year in jail. Further, if convicted, a person may be required to compensate the locality for the full costs of fighting a fire.

More information about the 4:00 p.m. law is available on the Loudoun County Fire Marshal’s Office webpage or by calling 703-737-8600.

Contact: Mary L. Maguire, Public Affairs Officer, or Firefighter Laura Rinehart, Public Information Officer, 703-777-0333.

Open Burning Ban Effective In Loudoun

Gabriel Thy — Wed, 31 Aug 2011 16:16:00 +0000

NEW OPEN BURNING REGULATIONS will take effect in Loudoun County May 1, 2011. All open burning will be prohibited within all areas of Loudoun County between May 1, 2011, and September 30, 2011.

The regulation on open burning is based upon air quality standards developed by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) and is enforced locally by the Loudoun County Fire Marshal’s Office. The DEQ recently changed regulations which apply to several Virginia regions, including Northern Virginia, extending the open burning ban through May and September. These changes were adopted by the Board of Supervisors in February 2011.

Apple’s Stock Sputters After 10% Falloff

Gabriel Thy — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:38:37 +0000

STILL ONE OF THE STRONGEST PERFORMING stocks on the market, Apple (AAPL) has sputtered up and down and around the $358 mark for a week or so now. After soaring over the $400 mark just before the exchanges around the world began tumbling on the news of Europe’s banking crisis, Apple has been trapped in that investor’s uncertainty box once again. What is ironic, but then what is more ironic than the stock market, Apple’s stock had just been projected to reach $540 on the strength of its continued success with the iPad. That and more than $86 BILLION sitting on the sidelines, Apple is positioned to continue its revival quest to gain marketshare that it somehow could not capture with its long line of personal computers. Payback is hell, laddies.

Today, unlike a dozen or so previous opening bells here in the United States where the overseas markets almost always crumbled over night, Wall Street opened up with a substantial gain. Unfortunately the line has been slipping all morning.

As usual, it’s the big money players taking whacks at the market, and we just have to sit back and take what they deliver.

Apple’s Competition Stiffens, Others Die Off

Gabriel Thy — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:22:01 +0000

NEWS FROM THE PAD SECTOR. Hewlett-Packard has taken a dump. After a mere seven weeks on retail shelves, HP has thrown in the towel, pulling its WebOS TouchPad off the shelves in a brutal corporate defeat. Apple just has too much juice oozing from its iPad to suffer wannabes lightly.

Heres’ the latest line. Apple’s iOS tablet software accounted for 61.3 percent of the tablet market in the second quarter, more than double the 30.1 percent share held by Google’s Android, its nearest competitor. Microsoft held a paltry 4.6 percent share and RIM 3.3 percent, according to Strategy Analytics.

But the landscape could soon change. Google’s move this week to buy Motorola Mobility, a hardware manufacturer, has also potentially raised the stakes against Apple as it will give the Internet leader slick, new devices to showcase its undergirding software—matching the Apple model.

Lovettsville Town Limits

Gabriel Thy — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 15:10:05 +0000

ACCORDING TO WIKIPEDIA, Lovettsville is a town in Loudoun County, Virginia, United States. The population was 853 at the 2000 census. The 2005-2009 American Community Survey (ACS) estimated the population at 1187. I can verify the first two sentences in this paragraph. And the town does indeed appear to be growing. After all, I moved here, but just outside the town limits, so I posted this map as an easy reference when the topic of its boundaries may require a quick if somewhat unspectacular response.