Quite possibly.

In part one of taking a first look at what I see every day, this is what I found and these are the conversations (with myself) I had.

• Champagne Corks for Door Knobs
• Champagne Corks for Wall “Hooks” (I see a trend…)
• Door Knobs for Curtain Ties
• Empty Picture Frames for Fancy Walls

(Update: I did this post from my phone, so the layout is experimental … my explanations as the maker of the way things are are alongside the photos. My observations and questions as the visitor are below.)

• Cool cabinet knobs. Do these work? Did you drink all the champagne to have the knobs or did you make knobs because you’d already drank the champagne?
• There’s no pictures in the frames, yet I like the wall. Mentally, I fill in the frames with a variety of photos starting with puffy paint sweaters and 80’s backdrops reminiscent of high school mug shots and family portraits. I wonder if you meant to leave it this way or have a hard time finishing projects?
• Did you do these before the kitchen or after? How much load can these handle? I think I’d like to try these for jewelry or curtain ties.
• Absolutely love the look of this! Where on earth did you find the old knobs?

Extra: Today is Day 5 of my 30 day blog challenge. Click ‘Follow’ at the bottom of the page to receive weekly updates in your inbox or follow me on Tumblr if that’s your scene.

The post I Spy: a fresh look around a space that i see every day appeared first on Jewels.

So I set out to optimize my site for speed and decided to share that as today’s #30dc post.

First, a bit about my environment:

• Basic GS hosting account on MediaTemple.
• A free Cloud Flare account that I really know very little about. I clicked through a promotion one time a long time ago when I was in my Media Temple control panel.
• WordPress 3.5.2 with wp-cache plugin active.

To start with the problem of performance on the admin side, I read somewhere that the primary culprits for slowness are plugins and themes. So I went to Plugins > Active Plugins to see the full list of plugins active. I then de-activated all of my plugins via the database. In a new browser window, I loaded my admin and browsed a bit. The interactions felt faster, though not quite as zippy as I would have liked. I then went to Plugins in this new window and went through activating each of my previously active plugins taking the time to browse a bit in-between to gauge whether or not I felt that plugin was the cause of tardiness.

NOTE: I wouldn’t typically do this in production for any client site, nor would I recommend it. However, I wasn’t worried about the random, midnight visitor seeing something ‘funky’ so proceeded to test as if I were on a development or staging or otherwise private version of the site.

While this was highly unscientific, I decided not to re-active a few plugins including Feed Statistics. This was the first one that brought my admin to a crawl when it was activated. Since I wasn’t using it anyway, I recorded the few stats I had and killed it. In addition to the perceived performance gain on the admin side, I knew that my feed URLs were my most frequented URLs so I figured this could reduce the load on my server in general. From there I chose not to reactivate plugins I knew I was no longer using anyway.

Since the public portion of the site can be accessed without a login, I proceeded to benchmark my site’s current performance at Pingdom.

• Performance Grade: 87/100
  • Leverage Browser Caching – 15/100
  • Remove query strings from static resources – 90/100
  • Specify a Vary: Accept-Encoding header – 96/100
  • Specify a cache validator – 93/100
• Requests: 64
• Load Time: 4.79s (from the Netherlands)
• Page Size: 2.8mb

Yikes. It was as bad as I thought thought, even with wp-cache enabled and running. This got me on the hunt for a better cache plugin where I then landed on W3 Total Cache. I remembered this from my time at Substance, so considered it safe to begin playing with immediately.

Knowing that it can take some trial and error to get the settings right in that they both boost performance and don’t break the site, I proceeded to test each general option out individually. For tonight, I’ve settled on the following:

• Page – enabled (Disk:Enhanced)
• Minify – disabled (when it was enabled, my theme could no longer dish up thumbnails and I wasn’t about to dive into troubleshooting that at this hour)
• Database – disabled
• Object – enabled (Disk)
• Browser – enabled
  • All options except “w3 cache header” and “disable cookies for static files” are checked
• CDN – disabled
• Reverse Proxy – disabled
• CloudFlare – enabled
• Monitoring – disabled (while I’ve heard that NewRelic may now run on MT, I didn’t have the time to go through trying to get this setup again)
• Miscellaneous – Enabled Google Page Speed dashboard & “verify rewrite rules”
• Debug – Off

As I poked around to make sure stuff worked, I also ran my site through Pingdom again and again. When I first activated W3 Total Cache – before I had any settings enabled – the performance plummeted. So that showed me that wp-cache was doing some good.

After getting all of these options set, I was still only getting a Performance Grade of 88 and load time > 2s. Pingdom was still recommending that I “Leverage Browser Caching” so I went into my Performance > Browser Cache settings and checked all the boxes I could. When I ran the Pingdom tests this time, I got a B+ if I use my old high school’s grading scale. And while I ‘d like to edge that up even higher over time, I decided tonight wasn’t that time. Sleep is far too exciting!

So for now, I’ve settled on the following report:

• Performance Grade: 93/100
  • Leverage Browser Caching – 90/100
  • Remove query strings from static resources – 61/100 (down from 90)
  • Specify a cache validator – 95/100
  • Specify a Vary: Accept-Encoding header – 100/100
• Requests: 61 (down from 64)
• Load Time: 1.22s from the Netherlands, 1.11s from Dallas
• Page Size: 2.6mb  (down from 2.8mb)

As for what’s next, I’d like to look into better optimizing my images and consolidating some of the asset requests. (That doesn’t include the rest of the interface and IA changes in the hopper.) I’d love to see it come in under 2mb and load in < 1s. I have a feeling I’ll be racing something in my dreams tonight.

Extra: Today is Day 3 of my 30 day blog challenge. Click ‘Follow’ at the bottom of the page to receive weekly updates in your inbox or follow me on Tumblr if that’s your scene.

The post A Need for Speed: How I sped up my WordPress Admin and WordPress (.org) Blog appeared first on Jewels.

UPDATE: in a recent GTD post, David Allen recommends cleaning out your old junk to make way for getting things done in the New Year. I can say with confidence this works. So glad to be ahead of something this time. “Out of clutter, find simplicity. From discord, find harmony. In the middle of difficulty, lies opportunity.” – Albert Einstein

The post Cleaning out the Closets appeared first on Jewels.

It’s been a long month recovering from a corrupt hard drive and many lessons have been learned. Since my track record is 1 computer corruption/data-loss/water-spill/theft per year, I’ve decided to document so next time I’m only out a few hours.

(1) INSTALL PHP & MySQL: Followed the incredibly easy steps at http://maestric.com/doc/mac/apache_php_mysql_snow_leopard

(SNAG) Ran into a snag with MySQL, as I kept getting an error when trying to start it. It wouldn’t start in the preference pane, nor at the command line.

(SOLUTION) Download the correct version for my Airbook. Intel Macs (AirBook, PowerBook, etc.) are x86

(2) Fix php.ini: I still had to fix the socket locations as defined in php.ini – but that was easy, thanks to maestric (see link above)

(3) Install MacPorts: Followed the instructions @ http://www.macports.org/install.php

(4) Install McCrypt: Pretty sure I skipped this the second time around. If I have to do another one of these fresh installs again, I’ll try better to update this list.

(5) Apache Mod_Rewrite: Lastly, I’m still struggling with getting Apache’s mod_rewrite to work correctly. That is, even though I have it installed and activated, my local WordPress sites don’t work unless I turn the permalinks off. Which is a bit of  a pain since I then have to remember to update those settings when I upload to the server.

(6) Database Backups: Unfortunately, I found out that my TimeMachine backups had already deleted the last full backup of my machine pre-wipe out by the time I realized that I’d forgotten to load in all my old databases. This meant that I lost all of the work that I’d only done locally and hadn’t yet uploaded to any dev/stage/production server. So note for the future: treat your local machine like a server and do mysqldumps that you can be easily backed up via your current backup routine and then easily loaded when needed.

Happy Instals.

The post Installing PHP, MySQL and MacPorts on Snow Leopard appeared first on Jewels.

After several weeks of no working printer, I finally sucked it up and decided it was time to fix it. The error message “Ink System Failure” had me thinking that I’d installed a faulty ink cartridge. (I have them refilled at the awesome Inkwell Xpress in downtown NE Portland, where Good Dog Bad Dog used to live.)

I went out and bought brand new ink cartridges, to rule out the ink-replacements as a problem. And still, no matter what I did, I kept getting the nasty Error: 0xc18a0001. HP’s support site instructed me to remove all the cartridges, turn off the printer and unplug it for 2 minutes. Then plug it in, power it up and voila! it would magically work. Only it didn’t. Then it instructed me to take it in for servicing.

Servicing? Apparently what they meant to say was “scour the web for tips from other people who have suffered from the same problem. We know about the issue and how to fix but we don’t have to care about you.”

The biggest obstacle was wading through the heaps and heaps of irrelevant posts, sketchy solutions and various rants and raves. But an hour or so later, I found it. The solution that worked. Sweet Jesus!

ANSWER (to most of life’s questions): hard reset

HP C5180 All-In-One Printer HARD RESET:

1. Hold down HELP + OK button and unplug printer (could experiment with regular power-off, but I opted for brute force)
2. Hold down HELP + OK button again as you plug the printer back in. Then power it on, if it doesn’t power on automatically. Be Safe: keep holding the buttons until the printer turns itself off. (It took mine less than a minute.)
3. Now you can release the buttons and simply power it back on. (I held my breath, but that’s not required.)
   • I got an error message about “improper shut down” since I unplugged it w/out powering down. After I clicked “OK” the printer was just fine and didn’t mind anymore. And now I can print.

The post How I Fixed my HP C5180 Printer appeared first on Jewels.

I wrangled the Ausie’s into signing up for a team and w00t, can Cricket players hit a ball! We all caught on quickly to win 2 games and advance to the championship game. It was looking meek when we were down 0-9 at the bottom of the first inning, but in what was hailed as the comeback of the century, we rallied to win at the bottom of the 7th and final inning 17-16. Nothing bonds people like winning together.

At the start, I wasn’t sure we were going to figure out how to function as a team. We were disorganized and at a slight disadvantage with a quarter of us unfamiliar with technicalities, like rules. I’d like to think that my chatty instigations and cheer leading helped pull us together … at least everyone knew my name. And by the final game, even though I sat out after the first inning with a smashed toe, everyone knew everyone and cheered everyone on. (Note to self for future games: catch the ball first, then tag the runner to avoid a stomping at home plate.)

I could go on about how much it rocked to play, and especially to win, but I’ve got a championship dinner at the Salt Lick to attend. Larry the Lawyer says it’s the best Texan BBQ in town.

The post On Being a Champion appeared first on Jewels.

If only New Orleans wasn’t such an awesome city, filled with fun and friendly people, delicious food and an abundance of liquor and festivals I wouldn’t be in this predicament. Yes, another sign that life on the road can be challenging.

Let me go back to the beginning. As a highway ferry transports me across the Mississippi, I transfer my love of Mississippi into Louisiana. Spanish moss hangs from statuesque oaks, black cats roll on the ground, baiting me to pet them, at the #1 haunted mansion in the world and Jaik’s mom welcomes me with the finest home cooked dinner I’ll have all trip. (I need to take better notes since I’m not quick with French, but the dinner included lots of crawfish in both etouffee and pizza and a French cake with 7 layers of pudding diving a rich, white cake.)

I spend Saturday learning all things Cajun and some of the Creole, before heading to the Atchafalaya basin, towards New Orleans. In Breaux Bridge, locals point me to a meat market for some famous Boudin (pronounced BOO-dan). Though the owner doesn’t want his picture taken, he packs a beer from his personal stash in the back, along with the purchased sausage and stuffed mushrooms in my cooler. And it continues to get better.

Once in NO, I manage to get the last dorm bed at the India House, the best hostel in the city and meet up with two fellow travelers I met back in Flagstaff. As we head for the French Quarter to check out the Friday night life, I text Hannah from Tucson. (She’s a friend of a friend I just met and absolutely adore.) A few excited messages later and we’re sitting in the bar Hannah used to work at, doing some shots with her best friend (in her honor of course) and making a positive first impression of the city.

The next day we set out for plantations and will have taken 10,000+ steps by the time we retire at 6am, including the time change. We all stay in the French Quarter and make a trip down Bourbon avenue: drunk people overflowing in the streets, each with beads, beers and fancy daiquiri to-go cups. We try the Texan sized mixed drinks and stand awestruck as a karaoke dj/performer dances MC Hammer style, complete with a standing flip. As we wind up our morning at the hotel, I learn Dutch while teaching Go Fish. Yep, I can really travel the world now with “give me”, “do you have”, numbers and face card names, “go fish” (my favorite!) and a swear word I cannot repeat.

Despite having to check out of our hotel only four hours after falling asleep, we find energy in Cafe du Monde’s coffee and beignets. And I can’t leave out the impressive troupe performing acrobatics and break dancing. Unfortunately, a lavish military performance for Extreme Home Makover across the street in front of the cathedral, forces a frustrated man with a megaphone to shut down the troupe. Apparently they can’t hear their TV show host above the music and fanfare from our crowd. (I’ll post a video, as the guys are phenomenal and I want Joe to learn these tricks. They walk up stairs on their hands, slide across the ground on their heads, break dance and make the grumpiest laugh.)

Lousiana is hard to leave. I want more days to tour the swamps, to walk the antique malls, eat Cajun and learn French. If I don’t get this ticket I may just have to go back.

The post Lovin and Leaving Louisiana appeared first on Jewels.