Autarchy of the Private Cave

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    Archive for December, 2006

    What kind of English I speak

    26th December 2006

    Generally I try to speak British English, West London dialect. Well, I tried at school – now much more Americanisms can be spotted in my speech.

    I came across the test which tries to find out what kind of American English you speak. Here are my results:

    45% General American English
    30% Yankee
    10% Dixie
    10% Upper Midwestern
    0% Midwestern

    Looks like my British English is quite a mix of American English dialects :)

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    Posted in Personal | No Comments »

    Marry Christmas and a happy New Year!

    25th December 2006

    I wish all of you, that the next year be better than the previous.

    Let it be the year of peace, development and prosperity!

    Let humanity think ahead, not cure the symptoms or fix consequences.

    Here’s some snow for you, if you lack it.

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    Posted in Society | No Comments »

    Should wives entertain husbands?

    12th December 2006

    Recently (November, 30) I posted a poll in the left sidebar, asking “Should wives entertain husbands?”.
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    Posted in Society | No Comments »

    ClustrMaps: geo-tracking visitors

    9th December 2006

    I decided to try the ClustrMaps service – they offer a mini-map of geographical locations of your site visitors (you can see a sample at the bottom of the right sidebar and of this post… currently no ‘dots’ there, as it is freshly installed). Registration is simple. If you have Sidebar Widgets plugin, you will only need to add ‘Text’ block somewhere, and paste in the code provided at ClustrMaps admin page.

    Locations of visitors to this page

    Somewhat useless, especially when you already have Google Analytics running for your site (it has a very similar to ClustrMaps’ geo display… as if it might be different :) ). The good thing is that this geo-statistic is public.

    Note, that free ClustrMaps is limited to 2500 visitors a day, and you are obliged to make the thumbnail map visible (no hidden counters). Of course, there are also paid versions – ClustrMaps+ and ClustrMaps Pro. Find more details yourself at ClustrMaps.

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    Posted in Web | 1 Comment »

    HTTP caching: universal approach and sample code

    9th December 2006

    As described in my previous post, there are some rather simple mechanisms to enable visitor’s browser to cache content, and avoid unnecessary load on your servers. In this post I’ll take a look at some parts of the practical implementation of the caching mechanism on the server, using PHP.
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    Posted in PHP, Programming, Web | 1 Comment »

    LG Express LM70-32HR Notebook: Impressions

    1st December 2006

    This is not a review, but usage impressions. If you’re looking for LM70 reviews, try this one. It has good overall description, and is generally helpful. For general notebook considerations, see also my post.

    Disclaimer: I am in no way associated with LG, and I have no personal benefits from this post. Text is provided AS IS, and no liabilities are assumed based on it. Use it at your own risk – though all efforts were put into making this text accurate and non-biased.

    Before going to vacations this summer (you may want to see the photos), I wanted to by a notebook, in order to be able to work a bit on my important projects while I’m away. Frankly speaking, I used my new and shiny notebook more for gaming, and not for work.

    I was short of time, and had to make a fast decision on what notebook I wanted. My requirements were: lightweight (NOT 3 kg), WiFi, 15-inch display with resolution not lower than 1280×800, long battery life, discrete graphics solution, DVD-RW super-multi drive, and Centrino platform. I wanted all of this to be somewhere around 1000$.
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    Posted in Hardware | 1 Comment »