Math on the Web

Updated 03-Aug-2025 Below are bulletted list items. Later this will turn into better copy. Summary: Use Texvc when necessary, and KaTeX when possible. Math in Chrome SVG is the preferred method for Math on Chrome, though accessibility is still an issue Basically, for Chrome, the options are: ship small images at a great expense in ... Read more

MediaWiki vs. WordPress

Updated 03-Aug-2025 There of course is no MediaWiki vs. WordPress in the sense of a battle. As Wiki and Blog platforms go, each is the winner in their category in terms of raw number of users/pageviews. That said, there are definitely (different) concerns with each platform, architecturally as well as accidentally. And therefore, we dreg ... Read more

Elixir and Phoenix

Updated 03-Aug-2025 Late to the party as always, as this has been going on for a few years, but hey. In any case, this is about Elixir and Phoenix: - Elixir is a 5 year old functional programming language, that runs on the - Erlang BEAM VM (which is very mature, fast, and reliable), and ... Read more

Thoughts on Amazon Echo Show

Updated 03-Aug-2025 The new Amazon Echo Show looks great. Watching the video, it is striking that the interface appears so clean. This is obvious when using voice, since buttons don't really count. Also, the fact that this is not just a piece of hardware and natural language interface, these are applications being shown. In terms ... Read more

Install, Configure, Maintain Postfix

Updated 03-Aug-2025 Postfix Mail Transport Agent (MTA) Postfix is a Mail Transport Agent (MTA). It is not a complete mail system, but focuses on the MTA component, and does not include a Mail Delivery Agent (MDA), such as IMAP support, nor does it include a Mail User Agent (MUA), such as a web mail client. ... Read more

Google Apps Free vs. G Suite

Updated 03-Aug-2025 For those of us early adopters who managed to snag a 50 user (or 10 user) free google apps accounts, things are sweet. New users have to cough up $ 5 USD/mailbox/month (or $ 4.19 USD/mailbox/month provided yearly billing). What Google really wants is the $ 10 USD/month or $25 USD/month enhanced cloud ... Read more

Submit URLs to Bing, Google, Yandex

Updated 03-Aug-2025 If an important page is added or updated with important changes, then it behooves one to submit that URL to the various search engines, especially Bing, Google, and Yandex. Strangely enough, this is not as straightforward a task as one might think. First of course, one needs to be registered with the various ... Read more

Referer, Referral, Analytics Spam

Updated 03-Aug-2025 Spam, spam, spam, spam, spam, eggs, and spam. You get spam with your analytics. These are not real visitors, just spam in the logs. Here is how to de-spam your analytics. Google Analytics Spam Filters Admin > Account > Filters Add custom filter, exclude by hostname Filter Pattern .*(hostname\.tld|hostname\.tld).* Note that a filter ... Read more

Sclerotic Teens – WP & MW

Updated 03-Aug-2025 Two very popular content management systems are in their teenage years now: WordPress will be 14 this year, and MediaWiki will be 15. Those are a lot of years on the web. As teenagers, these two successful and interesting projects try and act like the adults they want to be. Unfortunately, this can ... Read more

Shell Commands and Utilities

Updated 03-Aug-2025 This is a terse collection of commands and utilities I find useful for shells. There is little distinction between programs and commands as commands are programs (and are installed or come pre-installed) and programs have commands. Also included is a shell (Fish Shell) and some other shell applications/utilities (Mosh, Nano). bc - basic ... Read more

Nano Command Line Text Editor

Updated 03-Aug-2025 Nano is pretty awesome, fully open source, and has mnemonics for most commands. Note that I use Fish Shell on OSX, CentOS and Ubuntu. Various benefits accrue, when scripting and also autocomplete and such. Various Commands and Such Set Nano as default editor of git in OSX Search and Replace Apparently this is ... Read more

WordPress Plugins Redesign 2017

Updated 03-Aug-2025 If a phrase could sum up what we've seen so far in WordPress in 2017 it would be something like: > Bureaucratic nonsense, shitty design, tone deaf development. The Core crew and their work on Plugins has recently turned from tragedy to farce. While these hardworking plebes have put in the hours, their ... Read more

GeoIP on WordPress and in General

Updated 03-Aug-2025 Detecting a visitor's location can provide a semi-customized experience that can work out well. However, it can also lock visitors into an assumption that is incorrect, and that may create a worse experience. For example, changing default languages based on location is not a good idea (it is better to use cookies and ... Read more

ntpd, ntpdate, chrony on CentOS

Updated 03-Aug-2025 Recently, I'm on a server that chrony just barfs on, so my preferred time mechanism doesn't work. Indeed, ntpdate doesn't work as well. Turns out that ntpdate is obsolete (or being obsoleted). After a lot of nonsense, it turns out that running ntpd from the commandline is possible, as long as it is ... Read more

Piwik vs. Google Analytics

Updated 03-Aug-2025 > Note: as of june 2018 I've discontinued use of Piwik. While it is reasonably good as a solution, the MySQL component requires too many resources, and frankly what it does better than Google Analytics in terms of actual data doesn't provide much value in my current use cases. Piwik is an open ... Read more

Link Disavow Tool Bing Google Yandex

Updated 03-Aug-2025 Link disavowel is desired someone (a competitor, or simply a derranged troll) has created low-quality links to your site. In some cases, in competitive, global markets, this may actually be the result of perhaps hundreds of domains created for the purpose of wrecking large numbers of competitors by providing Google with evidence of ... Read more

WordPress Form and Comment Spam

Updated 03-Aug-2025 As with security in general, escaping the scourge of WordPress form and content spam requires a layered approach. Here is what works. Databases and Behavioral Anti-Spam The first step is the one that nowadays works the least well. In the beginning we had Akismet, and things got better, but this is an arms ... Read more

EU-Vietnam Free Trade Area (EVFTA)

Updated 03-Aug-2025 The EU-Vietnam Trade Treaty is still under discussion regarding the implementation details as of early 2017, due to the complexity and the level of reform needed to implement it on the Vietnamese side. Negotiation concluded on 02 December 2016, and the treaty will take force in 2018. The EVFTA is just one of ... Read more

Bing Google Yandex Webmaster Tools

Updated 03-Aug-2025 While there are Webmaster Tools for Naver and Webmaster Tools for Baidu, both of those do not have an English interface. While it is possible to muddle through, it would only be worthwhile if targeting the Chinese market (in China) or the Korean market (in Korea). Bing Webmaster Tools, Google Webmaster Tools, and ... Read more

GSuite DNS Records

Updated 03-Aug-2025 GSuite is the latest term Google is using for what used to be called Google Apps for Domains. Google Cloud is now a provider of GSuite (along with many other services). GSuite is akin to similar offerings by Microsoft, Yandex, and more anemically, Amazon Workmail/Workdocs, and Apple. CNAME Records calendar = ghs.google.com. drive ... Read more

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