PhotoDude.com

Over three years ago, I wrote a little open letter to Yahoo, “Lost In The Yahoo Desert”:

I know I don’t visit you very much. Not like some others. But you have this one page I like to visit, the “Most Viewed” News page. No, I’m not going to link it. Because it is virtually guaranteed that you’ll just change the link.

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This is a remixing of a template set, Web Writer, that began quite some time ago. In September of 2004, there were very few templates available for Textpattern, which was on Release Candidate 1 back then. I made a few available, including Web Writer v1 and Web Writer v2. Later Alexandra used it as the basis for an updated Textpattern 4.0.x template named Coffee Bar [demo].

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Dear Yahoo,

I know I don’t visit you very much. Not like some others. But you have this one page I like to visit, the “Most Viewed” News page. No, I’m not going to link it. Because it is virtually guaranteed that you’ll just change the link.

You see, today is the third time I’ve woken up to do a little morning news surfing and found that page gone. Poof. No redirect or forward to the page’s new location. No 404. Just an ugly dead end, redirected to a broken page.

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When an application you have installed on your server asks to be pointed to a “temporary” directory, [1] if there’s a default already filled in, one that’s been working for 21 months, leave it the %$#@! alone, and [2] if you foolishly decided to point it to a directory of your own choosing, make sure that directory is not also used by other applications, because one may try to run the other’s temporary files, creating a code poison that will make your site keel over like a drunken monkey.

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In case you haven’t heard, “Adobe Systems Incorporated has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Macromedia in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $3.4 billion.” I titled this “Adobemedia,” because it sure won’t be “Macro-dobe.” In fact, it will likely just stay Adobe.

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I used to like Microsoft’s Outlook. I especially liked having one “page” that would show me my task list, my calendar, the amount of e-mail I had waiting, and a link to my contact list. It made me imagine I was efficient. And you have to imagine it before it can become real.

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Inspired in part by the article at A List Apart on Smarter Image Hotlinking Prevention, I decided to try and resolve a problem I had when using this technique in the past.

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Below I’ve collected the Textpattern resources I’ve come across in the past three months, and I’ll try to keep it updated as new ones appear. So, go “Deanload Textpattern,� and then dive in to these links…

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Web Pimpin’ – Much of my time lately has been spent working on a redesign of a client’s site, and now it’s live: Garcia Studio.

I mention it here for a couple of reasons. One, Google loves me (...this I know, for their index tells me so, lots of links to them belong, we are weak but they are strong…), and therefore, loves the things I link (or, at least, indexes them quickly). So, if you need still life or advertising photography or food photography in the Atlanta, Georgia area, Carlos Garcia can help you out.

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Making Ugly For Right – Several years ago, I placed a page on the web about bandwidth thievery: ”There are some evil souls out there who will steal your copyrighted JPEG or GIF, and to add insult to injury, often they will code their page so the graphic is drawn off your server space. In addition to the aggravation, it can cost you money, and in the worst cases, even get your site shut down.”

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Compressing the Compressed – Suppose your workplace had a very space-conscious parking deck that frowned on cars above a certain size. To accommodate this you select a subcompact car, carefully measured with that parking space in mind. You’ve put some time and effort into solving the space problem, and solved it to your satisfaction.

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MT-MySQL 2, PhotoDude 0 – That doesn’t begin to tell the score. It was a shutout, with the opponents able to score at will, resulting in a 7th inning “mercy call” to end the game.

Movable Type and MySQL have combined to thoroughly mop up the new web server with my tattered remains. I am humbled before mere text documents, though some of them be large and ornery.

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Hire on Talent Content, Not Container Age – Adrian Holovaty is a very bright person, from whom I’ve learned quite a bit via his web site. Therefore, it’s possible an imposter wrote this, because it seems so off base to me.

“One point I wish you’d mentioned is the importance for news Internet operations to hire young people. Speaking from experience, I’d argue that people of my generation are almost always more computer-savvy, more accepting of new ideas, more capable of learning new technologies quickly, more innovative/creative and just flat-out more likely to ‘get it.’ ”

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Browser War: Winners and Loser – The nearly 7 year old Battle Royale of the browsers, Internet Explorer versus Netscape, has apparently come to a legal end: “Microsoft will pay $750 million to AOL Time Warner to settle an antitrust lawsuit filed by AOL on behalf of its subsidiary Netscape last year, the companies said Thursday.”

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Hosting Tip – When you’re shopping around for a new web host (using the latest version of Mozilla), this is probably not a good sign.

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Developer’s Toolbar – Al at Fulton Chain Design left a comment the other day, pointing me to the PNH Developer’s Toolbar (currently v0.5). Al had noticed in a screenshot that I use a lot of the designer oriented bookmarklets and favelets in my version of Mozilla, and suggested this toolbar might eliminate the need for them.

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Angry Web Authors – “I bought into every argument the W3C made that keeping up with standards, validating, and using semantic markup now would somehow ’future-proof’ my site and provide some mystical ’forward compatibility’ [...] Standards are bullshit. XHTML is a crock. The W3C is irrelevant.”

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Things Reid Doesn’t Understand About RSS – Some relate to the concepts of RSS, and some relate to reading the feeds of others. Most are probably the result of a lack of knowledge, and/or the time to gather it.

First, what I think I do understand about what RSS “is”: it’s another exemplification of the benefit of separating content from presentation. It allows someone to sample the 150 KB full presentation you see on my home page in a 17 KB text-only summary (which looks like this in AmphetaDesk), providing a substantial benefit of bandwidth. It also provides a time benefit (at least it does for me), allowing me to sample over fifty sites from one web page. It is another layer of the concept of ”weblog as web filter”; I trust certain people/sites to point me to interesting links, filtering subjects and sites I don’t have time to visit. Using RSS syndication and a feed reader, I can further filter/summarize 50 or more of those sites onto one page.

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Meta Keywords Tag, 1996-2002 – “After Infoseek (Go.com) closed in 2000, the meta keywords tag was left with only two major supporters: AltaVista and Inktomi. Inktomi remains the sole survivor, with AltaVista having dropped its support in July, the company says.” A memorial service will be held next week, after which all ’s will be cleared.

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