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Updated 03-Aug-2025 Baidu has decent webmaster tools. There only comes a problem if one does not read or write Chinese. However, Google Translate can do a decent job. Also, it is possible to create a Baidu account using a non-Chinese phone number for verification. Why Register a (non-Chinese) website with Baidu While it is the ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 My wife, anxious because our baby is sick, was convinced she needed to go to the doctor on the third day of his cold. Note that I had a cold earlier, and his symptoms are the same. A bad cough with lots of phlem. Certainly it is disturbing to see the baby suffer, ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 This page will be updated at ongoing, irregular intervals. Transportation on the Water One of the more interesting personal water craft is the Mokai powered kayak. Painless Mokai aftermarket products to improve the kayak This would be better as an electric watercraft. Not only would it be silent, but likely the maintenance costs ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 See also discussion of Image Optimization for the Web Note this is a brief note, as WebP is less interesting than originally thought. Yes, this format is out there, and yes, it can in many cases reduce the size of images by a certain amount. However, browser support is not complete (therefore you ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 > 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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%, ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 > 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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, ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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 ... Read more

Updated 03-Aug-2025 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 ... Read more