Blog Archives
Focus
For over 6 years, the title of this site was – “Fraction of the Blogosphere”. It was fitting when I first created it and for years that followed..
One thought I had is to transform this site to accommodate my latest hobby – a sci-fi novel. This is kind of a distraction though and less than an hour per week.. So we’ll see..
If I do make any changes, I will keep all of the old posts, purely for nostalgia at this point and attempt to maintain the existing embedded word press deep links so as not to offend my fellow wordpress neighbors. I might use a revamp as an opportunity to practice ReactJS and some rapid prototyping techniques.
When I first started this site, it was a great way for me to document different coding “gotchas!”, and for awhile it felt like my own little personal “stackoverflow”. I simply stopped investing time in publishing these snippets because the code I worked on became too proprietary, and “stackoverflow” and “leetcode” type of sites outpaced what I could generically write. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Every now and then, If I want I could still go on a tangent and decide to learn something new and write about it, but I have chosen to invest a different way..
If you are a new visitor to this site, or an old subscriber getting this ping after a long silence, this post is not necessarily a final close, but an acknowledgement of an extended absence..
During the time when I contributed most of my articles, peaking in 2013, my unique visitor count was over 10k and climbing. Money was never the goal, so Ads are always minimal. I simply found time to write when I could, and subscribers climbed. Fast forward to 2019 and I definitely will not be investing the same time as I once did. It is now time to focus, and since this site is so strongly linked to my email address, it is only fitting if the latest contributions to the site at least reflect more of who I am now.
My old tagline under the previous title was – “World full of automation demands a new breed of worker”. Now I see things a bit differently. The world is always on a trend of automation since the first civilizations and newly skilled labor usually follows suit. It is a recurring cycle and the new generation “worker” in this context is simply the latest specializations in the workforce.
Whether it’s writing a blog, social media, etc or anything else that may be taking your time, sometimes we simply have to realize that some habits are either no longer necessary, or simply not generally reciprocating in a truly beneficial way.
So what next? It’s time to set some new goals and achieve them.
MIT Professor Develops NSA-like Email Data Visualization Software
See for yourself:
https://immersion.media.mit.edu/
Race at the Pump – Electric vs Gas
Watch this quick video showcasing Tesla’s new tech that could give the gas giants a run for their money:
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2420802,00.asp
Grant production tax credits to advanced biofuels such as algae fuel and their research as an alternative to crude.
Signing the petition only takes a second, White House makes it very fast and easy. Once you sign my petition there are many of other petitions out there you might find interesting, such as petitioning for Texas to separate etc.
Hopefully these types of social media projects may eventually garner some real attention.
JQuery Grid Themes
Useful links to JQuery grids utilizing (mostly) standard UI themes and/or very little code.
Google!
http://jquery-ui.googlecode.com/svn/branches/labs/grid/tests/static/grid/default.html
Datatables.Net:
http://www.datatables.net/styling/themes/smoothness
Ke-Cai:
http://www.ke-cai.net/2010/01/theme-your-table-with-jquery-ui.html
Trirand:
http://www.trirand.com/blog/jqgrid/jqgrid.html
Stackoverflow:
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2613632/jquery-ui-themes-and-html-tables
JQuery and Partial Postbacks
I recently came across an issue where JQuery bindings no longer functioned after a partial postback and stumbled upon some code that was helpful in most cases.
Javascript (JQuery):
Sys.Application.add_load(startJQuery);
startJQuery() {
//do JQ here
}
And alternatively..
Sys.WebForms.PageRequestManager.getInstance().add_endRequest(function(){});
This code will not always work however, as was the case in my particular scenario, so I resolved using an alternate method.
RegisterStartupScript is great functionality, and can be useful for loading javascript dynamically on an as-needed basis.
The example below, based on prior code selects the correct JS file to use, then loads it using the registerstartupscript function. This is all within a code block which calls an update panel
C#:
int scriptnumber = 1;
string FilePath = String.Format("~/Scripts/Script_{0}.js",scriptnumber.ToString());
System.IO.StreamReader sr = new System.IO.StreamReader(HttpContext.Current.Server.MapPath(FilePath));
jqueryfileoutput = sr.ReadToEnd();
upnlBodyContent.Update();
ScriptManager.RegisterStartupScript(this, this.GetType(), "scriptname",
"<script type=\"text/javascript\">" + jqueryfileoutput.ToString().Trim() + "</script>", false);
IIS Application Pool
A great many documents, blogs and references exist on IIS which cover it comprehensively. This article simply serves to discuss one aspect – the application pool.
When configuring IIS in an environment that will contain many websites, there are a few important considerations:
– Will each site potentially run different versions of .NET? Sites with different frameworks should not share the same app pool. This will cause a conflict and they will not be functional.
– Is it a large web application that requires many resources? If yes, you may also want to consider creating it’s own app pool, which allows you to manage detailed information regarding how the server prioritizes the site.
Recycling
The first tab for the app pool properties displays information regarding memory resource usage. If you have multiple sites on a server which are hit very often and would like to force the amount of memory each one uses, you can create an app pool for each and manage it here.
Or if it will be split evenly among various sites, you can create “groups” of app pools with assigned memory and IIS will allocate among children accordingly.
You can also force the worker process to automatically free up memory after specified interval and/or at different times of the day.
Recycling
Performance
The performance tab allows for CPU resource management. Certain sites may have functions that, left unchecked or still under development, can cause excessive CPU load and affect other processes running on the same server.
Max CPU usage can be assigned here setup in conjunction with events to trigger when these scenarios occur.
A remote exploit or overflow attempt of your server can also be secured here by limiting the maximum number of kernel requests.
Idle timeout can help free up CPU for a site that is not very active. Legacy sites or informational areas which are rarely visited are still using a fraction of the CPU usage, and setting an idle timeout can help release some of those resources.
Performance
Health
The health tab can help you diagnose potential issues with your site or application. By forcing certain restrictions such as maximum failures and/or maximum failures within a specific time period, as well as enabling pinging, you can check for periods of down time or help identify timeout issues a specific web service may be experiencing.
This tab works well in conjunction with third party testing tools used to benchmark and stress test your site, application or service.
Health
Identity
Depending on the size and nature of your infrastructure, you may want to configure certain application pools to run under different credentials. For highly security conscious people this can theoretically reduce the likelihood of certain privilege escalation techniques that may be executed in the event of a remote application pool exploit.
Identity
Hope the above information was helpful. This was a condensed version based on a similar article I read on Windows Networking. See reference below for full article.
References
WindowsNetworking, http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Working-Application-Pools-Internet-Information-Server.html
2010 in review
The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:
The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Minty-Fresh™.
Crunchy numbers
A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 1,300 times in 2010. That’s about 3 full 747s.
In 2010, there were 24 new posts, not bad for the first year! There were 25 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 6mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.
The busiest day of the year was December 1st with 27 views. The most popular post that day was The “Iron man interface”.
Where did they come from?
The top referring sites in 2010 were digg.com, slashingtongue.com, WordPress Dashboard, facebook.com, and legal5ounds.com.
Some visitors came searching, mostly for iron man interface, ironman interface, iron man ui, hackers movie, and star trek ui.
Attractions in 2010
These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.
The “Iron man interface” June 2010
Programmatically fire an event handler in ASP .NET July 2010
The Truth About Microsoft June 2010
Aldi Stores Credit Card Fraud October 2010
About September 2008
Out of Office Reply 