Recently in General Nerdery Category

If after upgrading to Wordpress 2.3 you're getting database errors similar to SELECT cat_ID AS ID, MAX(post_modified) AS last_mod FROM `posts` p LEFT JOIN `post2cat` pc ON..., it might be because you're using the Google Sitemaps Plugin. (That link wasn't the exact problem I was having, but I recognized the SQL statements as being similar.) Easy fix - just download the new version (zip file).

I was reading the latest issue of "Public CIO" (being that I work for the government) and ran across these fascinating statistics on New York City's "311" service. New Yorkers can dial 311 to access any number of government services. It's basically a central hotline for connecting with your government. Cool. 2004 Calls: 10.4 Million 2005 Calls: 14 Million Total Number of Calls: 50 Million Average Daily Calls: 40,000 Languages Available: 170 That's incredible. In any of 170 languages, over 40,000 calls a day are answered regarding government services. And from what I've seen, the praise is near universal.

I had no idea this existed. There's a machine that changes the lane configuration of the Roosevelt Bridge based on the time of day and traffic flow. It literally moves the concrete barriers an entire lane width. Cool! Washington Post's Answer Man has a video of this behemoth at work. (via Carl) (Oddly, the "Share" button is disabled, so I can't snag the code to put the video here. What's up with that Post?)

Amid the requisite Web 2.0 backslapping, there are rumblings around the internets that folks are pissed about Google acquiring Feedburner. Well, not so much pissed at the acquisition as at the prospect of Google owning yet around piece of the puzzle. For some of my sites, Google handles the ads, the statistics, and now the RSS feeds; that *is* a lot of the puzzle. The folks at AU Interactive say, quite simply, that you should "own as much as you can of what belongs to you." They're right. What's needed here is Feedburner-like software for webservers, much like OpenAds. Weird comparison you might say, but hear me out. OpenAds does a nice job of taking data from disparate sources and bringing it together to give site owners an additional layer of control. It works nicely with ad networks like Adsense and other big ad publishers, but gives site owners local ad serving and data on ad/network performance. This is exactly the sort of software that's needed for RSS feeds. It would install on webservers as easily as Wordpress and operate in a subdirectory or subdomain of a website. The site owner could feed it RSS URLs from the site's content management software in whatever native format that software wanted. The "open-source Feedburner" would untangle those formats and serve up a feed at a custom-generated URL. By directing users to that URL, the site owner would give the software the data it needed to generate statistics, serve ads, and perform the other more complex tasks that formerly attracted them to Feedburner. This certainly isn't the direction the web is going when it comes to serving small-to-midsize websites; most companies are, like Feedburner, choosing to offer "services" rather than products. But this would be a big step forward for site owners to take back their data from The Google.

I'm a huge fan of Verizon DSL - this is the fifth home/apartment I've had it in. During the last move, I was lured in by Comcast,s "Triple Play" deal, but that only lasted three months as Comcast slows to a crawl during peak hours and is totally unreliable. When I moved back to Verizon, I used some old equipment I had from prior Verizon installations, rather than make them send me new (unnecessary) equipment. So for a while I've had two nagging goals related to my home network and the transition back to Verizon (which happened last December...ahem) 1) Stop using Verizon's Westell Versalink 328W as my wireless router. Go ahead and laugh - I know it's silly to have been using it for so long, and I've had a nice Linksys router lying dormant for 6 months. 2) Gain some security, stability, and speed. This is obviously related to goal number one, because generally I don't start projects unless I see a clear need. If the Versalink was doing a nice job I'd have no complaints. But as my network gets more robust, I find that the Versalink can't handle the throughput required to run a reliable local network. So, I followed these directions to turn the Versalink into a bridge/modem and use the Linksys to perform all other tasks - firewall, authentication, and LAN. I used option 2 and it worked without a hitch; the directions are fairly straightforward but a bit confusing at a few points. As always, trial and error is my friend. Things are noticeably faster at this point, making my Saturday evening nerd hour well worth the time.

A friend describing the web industry: "i feel like its a bunch of people wearing t shirts and blazers with thin glasses and tight jeans and coverse sneakers. trying to be ironic." me: "and I'm standing in the corner in nantucket reds and a polo - collar up, obvi."

Two short items. First, I attended TechCocktail DC last Thursday, the first event from the same folks who bring you TechCocktail in Chicago. I met some cool folks and learned a bunch about the tech scene here in DC, which is more robust than you might imagine. I'm looking forward to more of these and hope it was enough of a success that they hold them fairly frequently. Second, it's well worth promoting that Ross has a new venture out there. DC Tech Events aggregates the variety of events in DC each week that technology professionals would be interested in. He updates it each Monday - it's got an RSS feed, of course, for your convenience.

Does anyone else have huge memory issues with Firefox? I know my Macbook is a bit light on RAM (1GB), but Firefox is ridiculously sloppy with its memory usage. Things were running a bit sluggish earlier - Firefox was eating 450MB of real memory and 2.7GB of virtual. I realize I'm a bit of a power user and open a bunch of tabs at once, but I do try to keep it under 25 or so, and I close them as soon as I'm finished. It really shouldn't be quite so bad. I did a bit of digging and implemented these tips to try to reduce usage. Any other tips I should know about?

A bit over a month ago, I challenged myself to abandon Mail.app and switch to Gmail for at least a month. Ross did this years ago, so I'm a bit behind the curve, but in any case I'm happy to report that the experiment was a great success. I haven't missed Mail.app once during the past month and a half. Gmail with Notifier is as efficient as having a local client. Of course, what was missing was a simple solution for making data available offline. And then Google came out with Desktop for Mac, which has the ability to index your Gmail account alongside your desktop results. I know there's some debate as to whether that's even necessary in our increasingly connected world, but I think for the next few years local caching will continue to be a requirement for base applications like e-mail.

Last night I attempted an upgrade that should have waited until the weekend. Things went bad and my site was down for 24 hours or so. Sorry about that. I have so much to post now but it will have to wait until the weekend. I promise I'll make it up to you.