While this is an aspect of a style guide (for the structure of the metadata itself), this is very much a devops document, for use and manipulation of metadata in publishing. The basic point is that certain kinds of information about an image file is most conveniently kept inside the file itself, accessed and manipulated ... Read more
It seems that there are some simple things that are not managed well on the security front, specifically the lack of encryption of the data stored in the database. While backups can be encrypted (by most backup tools) the data itself is not encrypted in the database. The main counter to that is if the ... Read more
This Document Part of a Complete Set of Style Guides Purpose of an Image Style Guide This Image Style Guide is for all visual communication including photographs, drawings and the like on websites, social media, static images in video, as well as all printed material. Here are some guidelines that should help photographers and photo ... Read more
I've spent time recently in Google Adwords and things are as or more complex than ever. I'd say more. Here are a few issues that confront the Adwords User: - Ad display - Ad extensions - Keyword match types - Ad group to keywords to ads configuration - Dynamic ads - Tracking templates - Landing ... Read more
This Document Part of a Complete Set of Style Guides NOTE: figure out how to merge / reference this with markdown Purpose of Text Style Guide This Text Style Guide is for all textual communication including email, website, social media, brochures, ebooks, etc. as well as all printed material. This guide includes markup style and ... Read more
This Document Part of a Complete Set of Style Guides Purpose of Brand Style Guide This Brand Style Guide is for all brand communication including in email, website and social media as well as all printed material. This document is the source of typography, color palette, logo and other brand elements. This is the definitive ... Read more
This Document Part of a Complete Set of Style Guides Nothing here yet... This Document Part of a Complete Set of Style Guides
This Document Part of a Complete Set of Style Guides This document provides guidance on the creation and management of video for social media, as well as advertising on video platforms. In particular, video needs to be optimized for SEO purposes and for particular platforms. Just as written content and image content needs to be ... Read more
This Document Part of a Complete Set of Style Guides Purpose of Contact Information Document This Contact Information Document is for all textual communication including email, website and social media as well as all printed material. It is the single source for all communication internally and externally. All changes to the organizational contact information should ... Read more
It cost me 3,300 THB for a new battery array for my 5 year old MacBook Air (2011). Bought new, the system is not often used on battery, but almost daily as my primary computer. > Why replace a battery in a five year old computer? Just buy new. Sure, it only has 4gb of ... Read more
WordPress is rolling out a Native Font Stack which is meant to stop loading of external fonts (namely from Google). A very worthy endeavor. I've got this stack now running on jeffmcneill.com toward the same end. I'm fine with the typography, and basically it has simply been a drop-in replacement for the previous stack. > ... Read more
> 05-Nov-2016 - Note: I've reached the conclusion that I will entertain no more underpowered devices as they are ultimately so limited their return on investment vastly underperforms overpowered devices. This means Intel Compute Sticks are no longer acceptabe acceptable. The Intel NUC is now what I consider to be the future of the desktop. ... Read more
The best part of video is how convenient it has become. However, it is still a lot of work. The tools I like to use also need to be fast... and free. This is an important aspect of liberty. Even for short videos there is usually a combination of images, video clips and audio that ... Read more
A social media style guide is only necessary in a narrow technical sense, as much of what the other style guides include applies to external / public communication, of which social media is a mere element. However, it is always useful to have particular protocols and concrete guidelines so there is no confusion. Social Media ... Read more
Style guides are just that, guides or guidelines to maintain a particular style of presentation. Guides instruct on correct usage. They are essential for maintaining consistency of an organizations and brands presentation across various media. Because of a proliferation of media, as well as media-specific goals on the Internet (aka search and social discovery), style ... Read more
Mary Meeker - Internet Trends - 2016 Takeaways - Macro and Micro It was great to get some macroeconomic trends in this year's report, so we can see not only inside the industry but externally. And folks, it does not look good for many. - 3bn global internet users, growth flat at 9%, decelerating if ... Read more
> This is a set of notes and remarks rather than anything comprehensive or systematic. The main point is learning from the fact that there is a development lifecycle in terms of consuming software products, and make better adoption decisions through a set of heuristics. By development, we need of course to expand this to ... Read more
I've moved my workflow, task, and idea lists to Trello. This is a good tool and I see others use it effectively for project and task management. Also, it is a fast web app and they have mobile apps, all free. Project and Idea Management with Trello Use of Trello is meant to improve my ... Read more
Wow, what a strange week. People normally don't or don't have to change their email clients and calendar apps very often, but of course we can blame this one (at least part of it) on Microsoft. With the retirement of the greatest Calendar app ever (for mobile and desktop), Sunrise is... well... heading off into ... Read more
With apologies to Friedrich Nietzsche.1 The title of one of Nietsche's early essays is On the use and abuse of history for life As an occasional developer, generally just scripting, hacks, and sysadmin stuff, and of course troubleshooting WordPress js/css/php, Node has entered my daily life in the form of the Atom editor, and now ... Read more
Release Cycles and Lifecycles of software (and hardware) are interesting. How these releases are structured, who does them, and the planning and development process is fascinating from a rollout-of-features perspective. Development release cycles can also be applied to services. Operating System Release Cycles Of course we know how Microsoft is getting into trouble with their ... Read more
This page is for ongoing issues and awesomeness that is ImageMagick As of early May 2016, there is a big exploit out there called ImageTragick, but a recent patched version should help. The main fix is to edit the /etc/ImageMagick/policy.xml to include: ## Installing ImageMagick on CentOS sudo yum install -y gcc php-devel php-pear sudo ... Read more
Movement from a democracy to an autocracy seeks legitimacy in legal and democratic terms. Because the transition is from democracy, there is either implicit or explicit democratic action that is taken to limit or essentially destroy democratic power. This is seen throughout history. Why an autocracy needs such legitimation is mostly an issue of propaganda, ... Read more
Looking at recent data, what I see is the death of Firefox and Internet Explorer. Too bad for the former (you had your chance), and expected for the latter (and no, Edge isn't showing any real adoption rate). One surprise is how Safari is showing uptake on the Mac platform. I find this browser basically ... Read more
My air conditioner died a few days ago and while it is a bit uncomfortable (I’m in Thailand and it is the hot season, so it gets up to around 34c in the office), it is insufferable to work when a 90 thread kernel process has 90% of the processor. It is really hard to ... Read more
For when your wifi breaks down and all you have is an ethernet port on your DSL, and a Mac Mini. Not so bad, but it does keep the fan running and eat up the processor. Good for short term (ship out the broken wifi router, get replacement). Limitations of Internet Sharing on OSX Only ... Read more
See also discussion of WebP Note I no longer use OSX but instead Debian 9 Linux, and therefore have switched to the Trimage image compressor GUI which works well much of the time. When it doesn't I resort to ImageMagick. A recent post from one of my favorite blogs, the Tips-and-Tricks-HQ people spurred this response. ... Read more
Audiobooks are generally a neglected/emerging area in much of the world. If one is in the US, of course it is less of a problem, but even Apple has a half-assed approach currently. Apple / iOS / OSX While it appears Apple is trying to get its act together, it is a far distance from ... Read more
A smart home has a certain promise to it, that is, an intellect, a brain. But before we apply that metaphor we need to understand the basic elements of a home (and only after that, what would make it smart). But even the idea of a home is already too constraining and not accurate in ... Read more
Email signatures are those bits of text below the closing of a message and the name of the sender. They can be pretty crazy, or non-existent (which is worse). I've seen misspellings and other indicators of ineptitude. One of the worst types of infractions is when lawyers are involved, and legal disclaimers are appended to ... Read more
I read a provocative article on Micro Course Content which was linked from an article on the (potential) rise of mobile learning. Note the word potential as we only really see smartphone adoption rate information, not actually micro course content adoption or success rates. > Side note: unclear why a learning company couldn't use the ... Read more
Water, not so good Turns out that water is not good for very young babies. The main problem seems to be that urination also removes not only water but sodium and other essential minerals from the body, and the baby may not be getting these replenished at the same speed (since the their only source ... Read more
There is quite a bit of functionality that a bot can provide these days, as a first class account on various communication tools. It is time to seriously consider the value that a bot can provide for learning and tutoring. In particular, while things like Ok Google, Hey Siri and Microsoft's Hey Cortana. These are ... Read more
The great work of so many organizations are directing consumers and devops to weave crypto through everything: every communication, transaction, and interaction in the digital, as well as offline world. Why? Well because there are no functional legal rights currently present in all countries regarding the search and seizure of devices and the hacking and ... Read more
Facebook, Google Adwords/Analytics, and Bing all have moved their tagging for conversations and tracking page views and other activity, over to their respective Tag Managers. - For Google this is called the Google Tag Manager - - For Bing this is called UET Tags and Conversion Goals (UET stands for Universal Event Tracking) - (link ... Read more
The two kinds of email: marketing and transactional, and the need to manage this has resulted in a proliferation of solutions from various providers. Marketing email consists of messages to the customer from the organization; transactional are messages to the customer by the computer system (e.g., invoices, receipts, email list confirmations, contact form submission confirmations, ... Read more
The force-feeding I am talking about is the force-feeding of babies, not adults. This is actually quite an alarming action taken on the part of moms who are mistaken about their role in feeding babies. There are actually quite a few things that can help a baby feed if they start to get fussy and ... Read more
Not baby back ribs, but the ribs on human babies. Yes, turns out they can be a bit funny (non-symmetrical) and stick out on one side and not the other. Of course nearly everything one notices about the baby causes some concern, but this one was allayed by the many other cases found on the ... Read more
Pacifiers are Artificial Nipples says the Dr. Sears site. His site is one I take with a grain or two of salt, but it is definitely a good second-ranked site for me. First rank are actual medical organizations in the US, UK and UN, as well as actual healthcare research (though of course one must ... Read more
The issue of various Englishes is one that can help increase customers when targeting different native English speakers from different countries. English as we know is not monolithic, but most sites have a single site per language. The complication there is of course flags are used, so either a British or American or some composite ... Read more
Turns out that teething can start as early as 3 months. This was news to our doctor (which is quite sad). The state of health care with children is unfortunately the same as that as with adults, which is even more inadequate for several reasons: - Adults can tell you symptoms and the like - ... Read more
There is a runaway train of add-on fees, mandatory subscription fees, and per-site costs for reasonably functional Ecommerce on WordPress. Why is that? We are not referring to fully hosted solutions, or custom development. But merely WordPress Plugins that work reasonably well, are reasonably stable, and are updated reasonably often. WooCommerce - The Good and ... Read more
The point of this is to free the cloud, though we won't have full rights for a while (total freedom), still quite a bit can be done within the cloud. First, Drop Dropbox The first step is unintuitive. Drop Dropbox. Yes, that's right. Dropbox is a cul-de-sac in the evolution of the Internet. It isn't ... Read more
The first month is a killer. Death of your sleep, your schedule, your uninterrupted time. To stop it from being the death of your marriage and your family, by all means take a month off from work. Sure you can put in the odd few hours per day, but in general, expectations should be a ... Read more
The big issues for prenatal (besides choice of the mother) included (but are not limited to): Place of birth Country of birth Hospital/home or birthing center Country of Birth Note for country of birth, the idea is to get dual or triple citizenship. This is possible if one or both parents are from a country ... Read more
With a significant number of people in Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar without electricity (as well as a number in Thailand and Vietnam who are not accounted for in the official numbers on electricity access), power generation is of strong interest. Instead of expensive, larger scale projects (which are of course also important) something like *Gravity-Powered ... Read more
My son was born on 28 October, and the first week has been exciting, eventful, as well as tiring. A few points for others: Emotion In a newborn, emotion is quite simple. It begins and ends in the guts. To be hungry is to be upset, and to use the only faculty at its command, ... Read more
Colic affects between 10% and 30% of babies at some point. It is defined as excessive crying, > 3 hours/day, 3 days/week, for at least three weeks. However, apparently the causes of colic are unknown. The normal span of such colicky behavior is between 2 weeks to 6 months of age. However, some last longer, ... Read more
Note: See also Cloth Diaper Laundry Detergents and Cleaners It seems that the more we learn about how much of the human world is manufactured, and the more we realize how unnecessary, wasteful, and destructive it is, the more self-sufficiency and self-reliance becomes a demand on my soul. By self and by soul we do ... Read more
Cecil from The Straight Dope has an article from 2005: Does Microwaving Kill Nutrients in Food and is Microwaving Safe. The result of the article is actually that we don't really know for sure but research is being done. With that in mind, we proceed. What is a Safe Microwave Oven? Safety is a tricky ... Read more