October 2005 Archives
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October 30, 2005
Slowing Performance of Movable Type
I was noticing today that saving a blog entry had started to get really slow. So, I did the natural thing. I googled about for others with similar issues. Minutes later, I found the following two sites: underscorebleach.net and Don't Back Down.
As it turns out, the problem is with the default category archive templates. They put every single post in a category in its entirety on a single page. Any time any post changes (comments, trackbacks, content, etc.) in the category the entire page needs to be rebuilt. This is not a big deal with categories that have 10 items in them. For ones with hundreds, this becomes a huge problem. (My own gadgets category has over 150 posts in it.)
So, the first solution is to make that page smaller and simpler. Examples of this are given at the first link above. This is also the method I have implemented now. Basically, instead of full text to all posts in a category I have the full text to the first 10 posts and an index of all posts in a category. (Note that monthly archives only have this problem on very active blogs. Posting 3-4 times a day would cause slow downs towards the end of the month.)
The second solution is to use smarty in conjunction with dynamic templates to create a fully paginated category archive. The second link above gives code details on how to do this. That site also seems to have implemented this on comments, which can also cause issues.
Another partial solution is to just switch the category archives to dynamic. This would speed up publishing, but may slow down the loads on the category archives. These archive pages are often near the top of my load list. Naturally, that's because they contain the full text to everything I've posted. So the first solution should actually direct people to the actual posts rather than an index with all of the posts.
In any case, hopefully posting comments and articles into the gadgets category will be faster now. ;)
Phone Review: Samsung SCH-a950
Allright, here I am doing a review again. actually, I drafted this review over two weeks ago. When I went to put it up, I realized I didn't have enough storage on my web host for it. However, now that I'm on a new host I should be good to go to be able to put up the pictures and video that need to be part of this review.
This review is of the Samsung SCH-a950. Although it has been out a while at this point, I still thought I throw my personal comments up. Unlike other phones I've reviewed recently, I don't own this one. I got to use it for about a week or so and thought I could compare it to the Samsung SCH-a970 without much issue. If you haven't read that review, you may benefit from looking at it when I make a comparison.
(And once again, as usual, the videos and pictures will lage the main post by a little bit.)
October 24, 2005
Interesting Van; Jeep Trails
This forum post has a bunch of interesting pictures of various trails out in Moab. It's of a 4x4 van that has gone out and done all of this.
Some of the descriptions of the trails are actually a bit scary. We haven't actually done much off-roading with our Jeep. One of these days we'll get out and do more. We have a place near us that has trail ratings and stuff that is a nice place to practice before going off to the random roads in Death Valley like we have in the past.
Alaska 4x4 Network - How do I get the red off or The van goes to Moab.
October 23, 2005
Server Move
If you're seeing this, you're seeing it on the new server. The move is going a bit slowly as various pieces are migrated once after another. The biggest issue have been some permission changes and some .htaccess behavior that has been different.
The dynamic templates weren't behaving the same. The templates_c directory had to be given slightly different permissions. I did a .htaccess subdomain of "blog.kf6nvr.net" and it's no longer working which is breaking some links and image sources.
October 20, 2005
Google Ad Nonsense
Ok. I really like Google as a company. I think that, in general, they make some really good products and they have capitalized on an entirely new kind of market.
When I first decided I wanted to make a blog, I thought maybe I could cover the hosting fees using Google AdSense. It was pretty non-invasive, offered relevant links for my readers, and I could (somewhat) control the look and feel of the content.
However, there are some things about AdSense that really don't work. Like the fact that you cannot explicitly block a certain kind of ad from showing on your website. Say, for example, something you find incredibly offensive.
The first time this happened, I had written an article about photographing your pet rabbit. When I went back and looked one day, I noticed that the ads were promoting the sale of rabbit's feet and fur. I found this really annoying, so I emailed Google. They told me they could do nothing, so I removed ads from that page.
Now I run a blog that primarily talks about nature and endangered species and such on perlgurl.org. I recently went to look at some of my articles on the endangered grizzly bear and guess what, it's bloody happening again and now I'm really quite pissed off. Guaranteed bear hunting, Grizzly Bear Skins, Grizzly Bear Rugs.
I'm going to have to turn Google AdSense off on my site. I don't trust it anymore not to push products that are completely inappropriate. I love the fact that it runs public service announcements like Red Cross but I cannot handle the fact that it's trying to sell endangered species skins as rugs. I don't care that it's legal with some species because they're really walking a fine line - you can sell a grizzly bear skin, but you can't kill one in the lower 48 unless it's a problem animal.
So I'll just have to pay for my own hosting, I suppose. It's a shame such a great idea falls just short of being usable, some simple categories of allowable ads would likely fix this kind of problem I have to wonder if people just don't read the ads that end up on their sites or if they just ignore them or not care. Well, I care. So there it is.
October 16, 2005
Weekend Outside of Yosemite
We left my work place at about 415p. (Hey, just over 8.5 hours of work isn't too bad, is it?) We prepared a CD full of podcasts to listen to over the weekend. By about 9pm, we were enjoying listening to them and talking about the subject matter.
We got fairly low on gas, or so I thought. By the time we hit the gas station at the turn-off towards Toulumne we had to fill up. Luckily, it was a 24 hour station because the others on the way up had been closed.
By about 11pm we arrived at our campsite on the other side of Yosemite. We set up and crashed. Not long after the wind started. Well, that's an understatement. Howling gusts came down the mountains and slammed into our tent. This kept up throughout the night, preventing us from getting much needed sleep. On the bright side, the temperature wasn't too bad.
October 12, 2005
Yay! iTunes 6.0 Left My Podcasts Alone!
Unlike updated to iTunes 5.0, the updated to 6.0 was very smooth. It looks virtually identical to 5.0, too.
In fact, most places still refer to items in the list as songs or albums. I do notice that the bottom count of stuff says items now, rather than songs. But when you share stuff, it's still music. Actually, I don't even know if video sharing will work.
It's also still the Music Store, even though music is only a small part of what you can buy. You can also buy audiobooks, video, and podcasts (well, download them -- same basic thing).
It's really too bad they're charging for TV episodes. At 2 bucks a pop for an average of 24 episodes you'll end up paying 48 bucks for an entire season. Compare that to, well, free if you have Netflix, Broadcast TV (w/Tivo, of course), or other DVD rental or used sales you'll get it quite a bit cheaper. Sure, the DVD rental will delay the whole season until a few months after it airs, but at least you can watch them all together. ;)
The TV Shows link doesn't yet work. I'm sure that will be fixed soon.
Two bucks for the music videos is a good price. On V Cast, from Verizon, music videos are 4 bucks.
Maybe they'll do a free video Thursday or something now. ;) It would be nice if they could sign up someone other than Disney, too.
Besides a few iTunes store changes, the changes to iTunes seem fairly minimal. It seems more like an iTunes 5.1 or something. I mean, they got all the way to iTunes 4.9 then they did 5.0, 5.0.1, and now 6.0? Wow.
More info here at Apple's site, of course..
Los Angeles Loses Power For Unknown Reason
I thought it odd that we have lost power in Santa Cruz four times in the last week. But apparently Los Angeles has also lost power three times in the last two weeks. The strange part? The power company doesn't know why power has been lost in either area!
Seriously, that's all a bit odd to me. Now don't get me wrong. I'm not talking odd as in some crazy conspiracy theory or terrorist acts or something. I'm talking odd as in shouldn't the power company know why they lost power? After all, they had to go fix something to get it turned back on, no? More likely, there has just been some hardware failure and they don't know why it's failing but they do know what has failed. (e.g. A blown transformer but they don't know why it blew.) It's odd because the weather has also been very nice and stable here
Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing: Santa Cruz: East Side Loses Power 4th Time This Week!
October 11, 2005
Santa Cruz: East Side Loses Power 4th Time This Week!
For the fourth time in less than a week we lost power in Santa Cruz in the Live Oak area. This happened last night from 7:30pm to about 12:45am. This was the longest outtage in the series.
Over the weekend we lost power in the evening for about 40 minutes and before that it happened in the middle of the day for about 15 minutes a time, with less than half an hour between the outtages.
What could possibly be going on? The weather hasn't been bad at all. In fact, it's been pretty nice. Rumor has it one of the outtages was from a blown transformer. That's great and all. But it's been four outtages!
Well, on the plus side, it has gotten us to get all of our batteries charged up again. ;)
October 9, 2005
Windows XP Kicks Ass!
Alright, so that's a bit strong. But this is a tale of something that happened to work really well. It uses what is probably little known feature of Windows. IMO, it's all of the little known features that make Windows good -- or at least equivalent to any other OS. I'll probably get flamed for this sort of statement, but I don't care. I have to use Windows, as many people do, so when things work right because I either know something others don't or others aren't using the OS right, it makes me happy.
October 8, 2005
Full Review: Samsung SCH-a970
Once again, I'm going to attempt to bring a detailed and thorough review of a phone. This time, it's the Samsung SCH-a970 which is known for it's 2.0 MP camera with a 2x optical zoom and auto-focus. As far as I know, that's a first on Verizon Wireless if not a first in the US. Why, then, was it kept so quiet when it launched in Best Buy?
Anyway, as usual the pictures and video will most likely come after the text. I have actually dedicated some time to this, though, so hopefully the delay won't be as big as on my VX9800. I have to say, though, that I like the VX9800 better but the 970 (as I'll call it) does have some very nice features. As with all of my reviews, though, they are not intended to be completely unbiased. I do try to give facts, but if there is a feature that isn't that useful to me I may not even review it (unless asked to).
Once again, let me know if this rambling is useful.
(Updated Oct. 11 8a PST)
Read the rest of "Full Review: Samsung SCH-a970"October 7, 2005
Don't Watch This Movie Before You...
Have you ever watched a movie and then, the next day, found yourself in similar circumstances? Often the "movie version" was rather dramatic, leading to stress you wouldn't have had to deal with if you had just watched the news instead! We're here to make sure this doesn't happen to you with some simple guidelines...
DON'T WATCH THIS MOVIE JUST BEFORE YOU...
GO DIVING: Open Water
LEAVE A LOVED ONE FOR A SHORT BUSINESS TRIP: The Bridges of Madison County
EAT FAST FOOD: Super Size Me
SEND YOUR KID TO KINDERGARTEN: The Sweet Hereafter
SEND YOUR KID TO HIGH SCHOOL: Kids
VISIT OB-GYN APPOINTMENT: Dead Ringers
GO INTO LABOR: Rosemary's Baby
GO FOR SURGERY: The Doctor
GO BABYSITTING: Scream
GO CAMPING: The Blair Witch Project
GO TO THE DENTIST: Marathon Man
GO SWIMMING: Jaws
GO FLYING: Lost
RENT OUT YOUR APARTMENT: Pacific Heights
GO TO PROM: Carrie
Python (Sorta) Eats Gator
If that were the end of the story, it wouldn't be all that exciting. But it's not.
It took me a little while to figure out what I was looking at in this picture. Apparently, said python couldn't actually keep said gator in its body. And so the gator burst out -- with both animals being dead.
Read more here found via PERLGURL.ORG: Laurie Darcey's Blog: Gator Gluttony: A Python's Fatal Mistake
October 6, 2005
Now in Hand: Samsung SCH-A970
So, I guess Best Buy has had this phone for a while. Well, I now own one. Heh. ;)
My initial impressions are mixed. The camera seems nice. The screens are nearly impossible to read outside. With buttons everywhere, they tend to get pressed accidentally. The music playback and buttons on the outside are great. The performace is a bit slow. It has an "Intenna" (as they call it) which is nice, but the sticker is a bit silly: "For best performance, Do NOT touch this area when using your phone." That's great and all but it's completely impractical to not touch that area without cover up the microphone, getting finger prints on the lens, or any number of other things.
I'll be posting more later when I have a chance to play with it some more.
October 3, 2005
MegaSound VRCD300-USB Follow-Up: Front Auxiliary Input
So, I finally got a good chance to use the front input of the VRCD300-USB. I used a custom cable to pipe sound from my VX9800 into it. I had the volume up all the way on the phone and I had to turn the unit up to about 25-30 to hear it well. Volume was a bit quieter than from other sources.
However, that probably means they are attenuating the input, which is good since some devices can probably drive a fair amount of power out of the headphone jacks. This also means it probably wouldn't work very well with a line-level output.
The sound quality was fine. It seems a bit "muddier" than playing the same stuff from MP3 off of a CD and a bit muddier than listening to the audio through the 9800 with headphones. It might be that I need to turn the handset's volume down the the headunit's volume up. However, it was perfectly acceptable, too. What, with all the road noise and such, you can hardly tell, really.
Shane Conder's Whateveritis of Nothing: More MegaSound VRCD300-USB Data: Radio Performance
October 2, 2005
LG VX9800 Plays Video From Archive.org Unmodified!
I was just trying out video formats on my new VX9800 (I'm obssessed, really.). I found something that I think might be interesting to more than just me.
Archive.org provides videos (among many other things). One of the formats they provide these videos in is MPEG-4 with a .mp4 extension.
Well, the 256kb MPEG4 videos are at 320x240 and they play perfectly, without any conversion, on the VX9800! Just download, stick them on the card in the my_flix directly, stick the card in and play!
These are all legal and free downloads. And they play full screen!
Hey, you can even get some Superman 'toons.:
This is absolutely wonderful for content. There is a lot of old content as well as public content and user submitted content.
October 1, 2005
What's with Big Company CEOs these days?
The quote came after an MIT presentation where Zander, get this, showed off a prototype device that can “receive and play music videos.”
Alright, what? This is news how? See, here's the thing: Back in March Verizon launched their VCast service. Guess what? It has videos on demand. And you know what else? They can provide videos for free (news clips or whatnot) or charge for them (things like Simple Life).
And you know what else you have been able to download for the last 9 months? Yeah, you got it. Music videos. Big whoop. One of the first things I did with my VX9800 is try to figure out if the VCast app was in faster (it is) so I was browsing all of the categories. I ran across a free Shakira video -- and downloaded it in less than a minute. It's about 4.5 minutes long and just over 4 megs. Things download fast on VCast (it requires you to have an EVDO signal).
So why is it a big deal that a protoype phone can do this when shipping phones have been able to do it on an American carrier for half a year? (Which phones? LG VX8000, LG VX8100, Audiovox CDM-8940, Motorola E815, Samsung A890, and most recently the LG VX9800 and I'm sure lots more to come this holiday season.)
So wait a minute. Apple's CEO Steve Jobs thinks people won't download full music files. However, people have been downloading full music videos for half a year. (I missed that one before, too.) And even paying $4 a pop for them -- this is the first time I've seen a free one. And Motorola's CEO Ed Zander thinks it's cool that a prototype phone can download music videos -- yet one of their own phones (the E815) has been doing that for how long again? Right. And then we have Engadget speculating that he may have been commenting about the Apple iPhone he alluded to? Yet Apple's CEO doesn't like mobile video -- or mobile music downloads.
Well, whatever. I've got my phone that can download video -- and music video. And it can play MP3s. So why can't it download MP3s? Well, maybe it can... maybe it can. Hell, it can probably stream them just fine if it wanted to.
Good grief...
Did Zander just confirm the Apple iPhone? - Engadget - www.engadget.com
$100 Kids Laptop Runs on Human Power
They say it doesn't take electricity. What they mean is you don't need to plug it in because you can literally "wind it up." This is a very cool concept. 
I can find on the web that it runs Linux. I can't seem to find out anything else about it, though. I have to wonder if it isn't more of a large PDA. Think of something like the latest Zaurus with it's 4GB hard disk. It doesn't use much electricity at all because it's an all-mobile device. If this was basically that, but with a much larger crank-able power supply, it could be very viable.
The $100 price point, on the other hand, will be the big challenge, IMO. Hopefully this will happen. It's actually too bad it seems to be only targetted at poorer countries and kids and such. Something like this, for $99 bucks in a Toys'R'Us would really give the VTech kids "laptops" a run for their money.
Computer expert Professor Negroponte came up with the idea after visiting a Cambodian village where school children used donated notebook PCs.It's hoped poor countries will be able to afford to buy lots of the computers.
Well, since the poor countries get a lot of money and other stuff from the US and Europe, why not just get those countries together and give them out with some food?
"Would you like a laptop with that?"
CBBC Newsround | Sci/Tech | Cheap laptop is created for kids
