30nov2001
- I heard rumors that @Home Cable services might cease today. Cox
@Home is my provider. So if you don't hear from me for a while, you'll
know what happened. The site will stay up. I just won't be able to access
it. =(
Seems that Excite
is going thru bankruptcy
proceedings. Cox uses Excite as their Cable provider. Cox has provided
excellent service & support since I signed with them a few years ago.
I made a few phone calls and found that (if you have Cox) you can get
pertinent info at 1-877-832-4751. They recommend checking here.
DigitallyImported
is also following the situation. Life without broadband .. I don't even
want to think about it (shudder). The most recent news is here
and here.
I updated the FDISK
guide
today, with mostly cosmetic changes .. adding bullets, horizontals rules,
and other organizational ploys to make it look pretty & easier to
read.
Radified broke
the 8GB
barrier. This is the first month that the site has used more than 8
gigs of bandwidth. This represents ~35% growth over last
month's
bandwidth usage .. and there's still another day left.
29nov2001
- Updated the SCSI
guide.
Made mostly cosmetic improvements. Now that I know how to use things likes
bullets, ordered lists (numbers) and horizontal rules, I cleaned up the
text, making it more readable.
The SCSI guide is my biggest guide: 14 pages. It takes a while to
review, so I don't do it very often. But it needed the attention. I feel
better about it now. It looks much more presentable. Certainly more
readable.
I also updated the SCSI
PDF file
(144kb), and the SCSI
zipped PDF
(98kb). These allow readers to either print out, or download
the guide, and store it locally on their hard drive, for easy access,
which is especially nice for those with dial-up connections.
28nov2001
- Traffic to the
Intel
Northwood Pentium 4 CPU
article increased dramatically over the past few days. Seems that the search engines
have finally
found it.
It always surprises me how much of a difference it makes when a popular search
engine ranks a page prominently. [Try searching for Northwood
Pentium in either Google
or Yahoo
and you'll see what I mean.]
Whenever traffic to a guide jumps dramatically, I always feel compelled to go
back and review it for grammar, readability & organization .. which I just
finished doing.
27nov2001
- Updated the
Norton Ghost
User's Guide
today. I give the most attention to the
most popular guides.
The Ghost guide has been surprisingly popular lately. It remains the site's
single most popular feature.
I also created a new PDF
file
and a new zipped
PDF
for the Ghost guide. These PDFs allow users print out, or store
the entire guide, locally, on their hard drives, which is especially nice for
dial-up users.
I tried to improve readability by using *bullets* to organize groups of
information, and <horizontals rules> to divide large sections of text
into smaller, bite-sized pieces.
Altho the majority of changes are merely cosmetic, I did include several
content updates, which came primarily from other Ghost users, who periodically
write in to provide helpful insights.
26nov2001
- Radified broke the
7-gig mark
for bandwidth used this month. That's never happened before. The previous
record was set last month, with
6.38 gigs.
I still remember when the site broke the 1-gig-per-month barrier for
the first time, and how I thought that was a major milestone. Now, 10-gigs
per month seems inevitable.
All site
usage stats
have continued to grow. With a few more days left in the month, there's a remote chance that we might
even break 8.
24nov2001
- Saw the movie
Spy
Game
last
night, with Robert Redford & Brad Pitt. [Actually, I saw it with
Frank
& Jan,
who are visiting from LA. =) ]Wendy
took
the
kids
to see an animated movie titled Waking Life, that I wasn't interested
in seeing, playing at one of those artsy theaters.
Spy Game was good, but not great. It's still worth seeing tho, especially if you
enjoy those figure-out what's-happening action flicks. The movie consists
almost entirely of flashbacks, which lends itself to a storyline that some
people find clumsy.
Poor Brad Pitt
gets his face punched for 24-hours straight. Great make-up job. In the end,
it's really a love story. The theater was packed (downtown
Laguna, 7:30 show).
Even the upstairs balcony was full.
If you peruse some of the
Radified Guides, you'll see that I added
buttons to many of them. These buttons use simple Javascript code.
I read that some new types of search engines will
scan your bookmarks, and rank web sites based on aggregates of pages found there.
The theory is that people only bookmark pages that they feel contain valuable
information.
Buttons make bookmarking easier.
I designed a video-editing system built around the Matrox RT2500 real-time editing
card for Tony, and posted it here.
Like me, he's also most interested in system *stability*. But when he asked me to build it for
him, I
said, "Show me the money." =)
Alex van Kaam sent word that he released an updated version of his hugely
popular Motherboard
Monitor.
We've gotten to be (digital) friends, even tho I've never been to
the
Netherlands, where he
lives.
Alex says that the Netherlands is one of the world's most densely-populated
countries. I know that, here in the US, New Jersey is the nations most
densely-populated country.
I'm embarrassed to say that, only recently did I learn that the Netherlands =
Holland. They're the same country. Holland is where the wear wooden shoes. The
Netherlands sounds cooler.
17nov2001
- Installed
Avid Xpress DV
2.0
today, a
professional video-editing program. It cannot find a compatible sound card (we
have SB Live! Value). Other than that, everything appears to working. Still
need to test all the features.
Today
begins the Muslim holy month of Ramadan
(more info here).
Lennox Lewis & Hasim Rahman duke it out in in Las Vegas tonight for the
world Heavyweight championship title. See here.
Nobody seems very excited over this one.
15nov2001
- Been working on improving the site's style. I've never been
very concerned with web design (style). Therefore it's always been a site weakness. Substance and content were always more important to me
than good-looking web pages.
Personally, I'd rather have a plain-looking Mercedes, that runs like
a tank, than the flashy Ferrari that's in the shop every other week.
But some of my web-guru friends insist that presentation is everything [outward
appearances matter most].
Now that I have plenty of content (~1,000 pages worth), I've turned a critical eye
toward style. For example, today I added *bullets* to the page containing the Guide
to the Best Software Programs & Applications.
This improves the page's readability and breaks up large chunks of text.
I try to do something everyday that improves the site, even if it's only
something small. I have much work to do where style is concerned, but I'll get
there .. eventually.
Speaking of people who don't place much importance on style .. I've been
reading
a
book about the Taliban,
the Muslin extremists who rule Afghanistan. It's subtitled: Militant Islam,
Oil and Fundamentalism in Central Asia. Hard to put down. Makes my hair curl. The book begins with a public execution,
and proceeds from there.
14nov2001
- Three days ago I received an email from a reader who accused me of
supporting terrorists because I posted an
article that the Dog wrote about the Irish Republican Army .. after he spent the summer in
Ireland.
I traced
the origins of the email to Southwark, England. So it appears legit. I posted a
copy of the email here.
The Dog's article on the IRA can be found here.
I responded to the sender by telling him that I know nothing about the IRA,
and that, if he had a dissenting viewpoint, I'd be glad to publish it. I have
not yet heard back.
13nov2001
- Posted another status-update to Wendy's adventures at USC Film school, the
5th of the semester. See here.
12nov2001
-
COMDEX
opened last
night in Las Vegas. Bill Gates gave the opening address at the
MGM Grand
.. where he
admitted that PCs are a pain to use (tell me about it).
He promised to fix things over the next ten years, which he called the
digital decade. 150,000 people are expected to visit COMDEX this week.
Yahoo covers the story
here.
Wendy posted a copy of her script for a (12-minute) film that she plans to
shoot for her thesis project. It's titled Breakwater and is posted here.
She'd appreciate any constructive feedback.
11nov2001
- Today is the 2-month anniversary of
the horrifying
day
that changed the world. The World Trade Center site is *still* smoldering.
When will it stop?
Deepak made a new, updated version of his popular PowerPoint
Intro
to Linux. It's posted
here.
Radified is flying the flag today in honor of US veterans of war. (Veterans
Day here in the US).
10nov2001
- Updated the index pages for Wendy's Film school chronicles: one
Master & four sub-index pages .. one for each semester.
I tried to make them appear more 'presentable'. They were originally written for family & friends. Traffic to these pages has grown dramatically
in the past few months .. ever since they started showing up in search
engines.
If I would've known that they were going to become this popular, I would've
made them neater to begin with. The Master Index is posted here.
It contains links to the four sub-index pages .. along with several
other kewl links.
It will be at least 15 times faster than today's fastest supercomputer,
and will have more computing power than the 500 most powerful
supercomputers in the world today. Dang.
It should be finished 2004 or 2005, and will be used to "simulate
physical phenomena of national interest." Blue Gene home
page is here.
Yahoo covers the story here.
I never heard of the NNSA.
They are part of the Dept
of Energy.
Their mission is to "increase public awareness of nuclear security and
reduce the threat of global nuclear proliferation."
IBM is also building a supercomputer that will be 5 times more
powerful than Blue Gene/L. It will be called Blue Gene/C, and is
scheduled for completion ~ 18 months after /L is finished.
08nov2001
- Received follow-up comments to the page that I posted about
Rambus RAM.
It's been interesting to hear the other side of this hotly-debated topic.
This page contains a reader's response to comments that I made about Rambus RAM
in the Intel
Northwood P4 article.
The author, named John, is an engineer living in Florida.
In his latest comments, John touches upon the factors influencing Rambus' [RMBS] stock
price. Investors & speculators may find it especially interesting.
I also posted a fun page: The
Two Cows Explanation of Political Science.
I'm not the author of this either (altho I wish I were). It's one of the many fun e-mails that we
receive. You probably receive similar 'funnies'. The 'Net is full of them.
Not sure why I like this this one enough to post it .. probably cuz it's closer to the truth than we'd like to
think. Jan
sent it. [Jan is Lani's
godmother.] Not sure who the author is.
06nov2001
- Redesigned the main page slightly. Moved things around. Kind of like
rearranging
furniture, without the sore back.
My newest website fetish is using [brackets] to identify links that aren't
part of a sentence .. like the kind you find here.
I saw this somewhere & thought it looked cool.
Worked
the Intel
Northwood P4
article. After assembling the information, I try to present it as clearly
& concisely as possible, and seem to have a knack for this type of
editing. It's almost as
if someone works thru me, reworking the text, moving paragraphs around,
deleting sentences, adding clarifying words.
Tied
the site bandwidth usage record yesterday: 300MB. Couldn't quite break
it, tho. It wasn't that long ago when Radified didn't use 300MB for an entire month.
Still looking for the ASPI
guide
to break the 1000-per-day mark. It keeps getting close, but no cigar
yet.
05nov2001
- Every once in a while I stumble across a site that I really enjoy.
Here
is one such site. Lots of great photos, with excellent image quality &
composition. Don't miss the Half Dome series, especially the link
labeled The Cables. Check out the photos labeled humongous.
Makes me feel like I'm on
vacation. With options for humongous-sized images, it's best if you have a
broadband connection & large monitor.
04nov2001
- Tomorrow, on the night of November 5th, thru-out Britain, bonfires
are set alight, effigies are burned, and fireworks are set off. The people do
this to commemorate their country's most notorious traitor: Guy
Fawkes.
03nov2001
- I received a response to comments I made about Rambus RAM in the
Intel
Northwood Pentium 4 CPU article.
This reader makes compelling points, and includes a brief history
of RAM development.
Admittedly, I have not researched Rambus RAM very much. All I know
is that it provides performance comparable to that of DDR RAM, yet
costs ~4 times more per MB. I posted the response and included a link
to it in the Northwood P4 article. It can be found here -> A
reader's response to comments about Rambus RAM.
Input from those more knowledgeable than myself is one of the main reasons for
the growing popularity of Radified guides. Speaking of which .. I noticed
that, for the last few days, the ASPI
guide
has been flirting with the magical 1000-requests-per-day mark.
It hasn't reached there yet, but is getting close.
The Ghost
guide
is the only one to break 1000-per-day. The
current daily record is 1754 copies served, which averages to more than
one request every minute for all 24 hours (set on 22oct2001).
02nov2001
- I resized the 17 images contained in this
series of family photos. This is the very first series ever posted at
Radified. Back then, I was merely beginning to learn how web things work &
made many mistakes.
The photos were too big. Most exceeded 150kb (bandwidth decadence). I
sometimes forget that not everybody has a broadband connection, or runs their
desktop at 1280x1024 resolution.
This series sees a lot of traffic cuz the prominent Photo link, in the
upper right-hand corner, takes visitors there. Since trimming the fat with
Photoshop, the images are now a svelte 25-65kb .. less than half their
original size, yet maintain respectable image quality.
I also added image tags. A descriptive bit of text now pops up when your
mouse rolls over an image. I recently read an article on good
website-building practices that says *every* image should
have a descriptive tag. If that's true, much Radified work remains.
I also updated the
article on the
Intel
Northwood Pentium 4 CPU
(including images tags), and broke up the
FDISK guide
into two
pages. It's been growing slowly with continued reader input, and became unwieldy
as a single page.
01nov2001
- Goodbye October, hello November. It gets dark so early now that
daylight-saving time has arrived. I feel like going to bed at 7PM.
Nothing of note to report. Several people here have mentioned having
an intuition that something (real) bad is about to happen. Could this be the
calm before the storm? I hope not.
September 11th
began as a
beautiful day .. just like today.
Radified used
6.38 gigs
of bandwidth
last month .. a 50% increase over the previous month, and a new site
record. A list of the site's 20 most popular destinations is posted here.
30nov2001
- I heard rumors that @Home Cable services might cease today. Cox
@Home is my provider. So if you don't hear from me for a while, you'll
know what happened. The site will stay up. I just won't be able to access
it. =(
