Archive for 2005-05

Food.

1. Jim ‘N Nicks BBQ. With no doubt in my mind, Jim ‘N Nicks is the greatest restaurant in the world. More than just barbecue, Jim N’ Nicks combines many different food favorites and is consistently wonderful. Missy and I enjoyed their fare opening night (5/24) here in Montgomery.

2. Chick-fil-a. Okay. So you weren’t expecting a fast food restaurant in this list. Well, Chick-fil-a isn’t your typical fast food restaurant. Killer service and a great menu make this THE choice for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

3. Carrabbas. Because I’m nuts about Italian food and Carrabbas is the best at it.

Pricier Fares:
1. Highlands Bar and Grill. The single greatest experience with food I have ever had in my life was at Highlands in Five Points South. Expect to pay $60-100 for two. Well worth every dime for a special occasion.

2. PF Changs. More moderately priced than Highlands, Changs is the greatest Chinese food in the world. Even better than the original. (Disclaimer: Okay, so I am a westerner and have tastes akin to such…)

3. Ruth’s Chris. When you’re ready to do Outback one (or ten) better, go to Ruth’s. Be ready to spend. ($60-100 for two.)

Source rc3.org:

1. Enter about:config in the Firefox address bar to edit your browser configuration.
2. Set network.http.pipelining to true. (You can toggle it by double clicking on it.)
3. Set network.http.proxy.pipelining to true.
4. Set network.http.pipelining.maxrequests to something bigger than 4. I set it to 10.
5. Create a new setting called nglayout.initialpaint.delay and set it to 0. To create a new setting, right click on the page, select New and then select Integer (since this setting is a number).

IP Konfig Site Step-by-Step.

In this series I’ll develop some short lists of the "best of." Drawing from many different areas of life, I’ll probably exhaust all of the topics on the blog and may resort to creating new icons and topics for the obscure drabble I dive into.

First up, Guitars. Specifically acoustic guitars:
1. Collings (http://www.collingsguitars.com)
2. Breedlove (http://www.breedloveguitars.com/)
3. Goodall (http://www.goodallguitars.com/)

The best in the world at their craft.

I’ve been toying with setting up PHP/MySQL sites for some time now. It’s become quite a hobby actually.

PHP is an open-source (meaning it’s authored, developed and tweaked by one person or many and is generally free of charge to use, develop, and tweak) scripting language for the web. (Like HTML as a language, but "tagged" differently.)

MySQL is merely an open-source database that allows scripts to enter, retrieve and modify "tables" of data (text and more) via the web.

The beauty comes in when folks develop entire sites based on PHP and MySQL and release them for (free) download and use. These sites can be categorized by their functions. Here are a few to spur your appetite:

Portal
A portal is generally an all incompassing web application (even "engine") that allows many types of content to be shared on any given space. You might find project management, calendaring, contacts, journals, IM, forums, listservs, intranet and extranet and many other tools that are typically geared toward "enterprise" applications (corporate intranets for example.) Portals are often referred to as Content Management Systems (CMS.)

Forum
A forum is a central message system used for mild corporate and collaborative communication and project management. You are on one right now.

Blog
Or weblog, is an online database-driven journal that typically allows public (or private) linear communication surrounding topical discussions usually authored by one or select few individuals.

e-commerce
E-commerce is also addressed in the open-source community and houses the functionality for online product marketing and sales.

Wiki
A wiki is a simplified content management system allowing single or multiple (collaborative) users to edit the content of a website with little or no knowledge of HTML or other web languages relying on the database to store and retrieve page content. (Enabling database technology is the basis of managing content via a wiki.)

Groupware
A portal designed for collaborative work amongst project members. Essentially, a database-driven project management facility.

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Ok. So why the fuss about all this? Well, if you’re clueless at HTML, if you couldn’t care less about trying to engineer graphics that people actually like, or if you simply don’t have enough time in the day to hand code a website and just need to disseminate information as quickly as possible, then a solution using PHP and My SQL might be just for you.

A new take on the atomic clock measures time more precisely using the elements Ytterbium and Strontium. Man, I knew those would come in handy some day.

http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7397

Missy and I are buying a house this month. As long as the inspector doesn’t tell us there’s a sinkhole underneath the thing, we’ll move in at the end of the month. We’re both very excited about our first home and look forward to the conveniences of home ownership.

You’ll notice a new addition to davidblog.com, a forum. If you’re registered on the site already, you may post to your heart’s content. If not, register to discuss all things: Tech. Design. Music. Life.

Baby Beyonce

The browser war is on. Get Firefox.