After some tweaking of site permalink and URL settings, posting sitemaps to Google, and other such SEO tinkerings, I have managed to get my posts into Google’s search engine. Before, I had no luck finding my posts, no matter how specific I made the search terms.

Strangely (or maybe not), my stats plugin reported almost simultaneously a dramatic drop in daily unique hits, from the 180s to 2. Pretty depressing, until I realized those multiple hits were probably from the googlebot trying to index the site, failing, then trying again. [UPDATE (82/06): The stats plugin was not compatible with the upgraded version of WordPress. I caught on when I saw it had clocked absolutely zero hits right after one of my posts appeared in the latest Tangled Bank. My other site counters registered dozens of visits, so I realized the WP upgrade must have broken the stats plugin. There was an update available, so the plugin (ShortStat) works now.]

So, here is what I have learned. Plain text permalinks are best. Trailing slashes on site URLs are important, at least to the w3.org validator service computers. Getting a sitemap with those permalinks into Google’s hands is a good thing. Tweaking your .htaccess file to allow bots to index your site is necessary, especially if your site dwells in a subdirectory, as mine does, of a different domain. (www.wheatdogg.com is forwarded to the “real” location.) Clearing up your .htaccess file also seems to help people find the site, especially if it’s tucked in an obscure corner of your main domain. Adding tags helps you get onto Technorati’s radar screens, and thus Google’s. Putting Google Analytics code on your site helps give you a real sense of your traffic, and maybe it convinces Google’s computers to pay attention to you.

July 31st, 2006 | Tags: Technology | Category: General stuff | Leave a comment

I’ve been spending the last couple of days maintaining and developing websites, both family- and work-related, which led to me to come to two not-so-original revelations.

1. How marvelous is it that any person with the necessary minimal skills can download free software and create a website in just a few hours? Even more amazing is that a person can have that website hosted for free, or at least darn cheap. I’m paying just $7.95 a month for this one and my computer-related site, for example.

2. Like any endeavor, developing and maintaining websites is an at times frustrating, but ultimately rewarding job. Open-source software makes step 1 possible for minimal cost, but at the expense of ease-of-use. WordPress may be an exception, but its content-management  cousins, php-nuke and Joomla can drive a person nuts.

So while I tear my remaining hair out, consider with me the amazing power that open-source software and low-cost webhosting offer the average Joe or Jo.

July 18th, 2006 | Tags: Technology | Category: Commentary | Comments (2)

The gullibility of the scientifically challenged media and buying public never ceases to amaze. Spurred perhaps by sharply higher gasoline prices, backyard inventors and shady promoters are pushing the latest wonder technology, “HHO gas,” otherwise known as water gas, Brown’s gas or Klein’s gas.

For a tidy investment of a few hundred dollars, one can adapt a car to run on HHO, or for a few thousand, one can buy a device to produce HHO at home for transportation or for welding. Cars apparently can run for miles on mere puffs of HHO, and torches can burn holes in seconds through most metals.

I would encourage anyone buying such devices to first watch videos of the Graf Hindenburg accident in 1937 or the Shuttle Challenger accident in 1986, to get an idea of the Promethean power of HHO gas.

Wait, 1937? Isn’t HHO supposed to be a new technology? you ask. Nope. In fact, the principles behind the production of HHO have been known and used for close to 200 years. If you were lucky, you might have even made some in middle school science class.

If you run electric current through water, you break water down into its constituent parts, hydrogen and oxygen, both gases at standard temperature (20 C) and pressure (1 atmosphere). Very little current is required; a 6-volt lantern battery does the trick nicely, although quite slowly.

July 14th, 2006 | Tags: Professional skeptic, Science, Technology, The media | Category: Uncategorized | Comments (28)

Two members of the Space Shuttle Discovery crew spent nearly seven hours repairing the International Space Station, accompanying their hard work with some goodnatured repartee.

Like the helpful service station attendants of yore, British astronaut Piers Sellers and US astronaut Michael Fossum joked, while they fixed a cable reel necessary for the operation of a railcar attached to the ISS. The railcar enables expansion of the ISS.

They swapped a defective reel with a new one brought aboard the shuttle; each one weighs 330 pounds on Earth. In orbit, they still have substantial mass and inertia, so there were a few tense moments while Sellers, like an orbital “weight lifter,” held one in each hand.

The two also learned that for space mechanics, elbow grease still works just as well as for earthbound ones. To get the reels swapped, they had to twist harder with a wrench to loosen stubborn bolts.

CNN has an account of the repairs and spacewalk.

Discovery is scheduled to return to Earth on the 17th.

Riding Rockets : The Outrageous Tales of a Space Shuttle Astronaut

Space Shuttle: The First 20 Years — The Astronauts\’ Experiences in Their Own Words

July 10th, 2006 | Tags: Science, Technology | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Mark Nickolas, whose site BluegrassReports.org state administrators have blocked from state-owned computers, filed a suit today in US District Court, contending that Kentucky Gov. Ernie Fletcher has violated Constitutional guarantees of equal protection and free expression.

State web blocking software allowed state employees access to mainstream news sites and many conservative blogs, but prevented employees from accessing Nickolas’ site and other less conservative blogs.

BluegrassReports.org has been sharply critical of the beleaguered Fletcher, whose administration has been sullied by accusations of preferential and discriminatory hiring practices. State GOP leaders have recently distanced themselves from Fletcher, who intends to run for re-election next year.
Details about the lawsuit and the events leading up to it are here.

July 10th, 2006 | Tags: Technology, The media | Category: Uncategorized | Leave a comment

Despite all the media frenzy about the risks to the crew, Discovery successfully made orbit Tuesday and docked with the International Space Station this morning. So far the mission of STS-121 is so routine as to be boring. And that’s good.

The big issue in media reports centered around the foam insulation surrounding the external fuel tank - the rusty-red cylinder carrying the liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen “fuel” for the shuttle’s main engines. The insulation is necessary to keep the liquified gases cold.

It also has a tendency to fall off during launch. A large chunk of insulation hit the Shuttle Columbia on takeoff, damaging its protective, heat resistant tiles. The Columbia disintegrated on re-entry on Feb. 1,  2003, as a result of the damage. Atmospheric friction burned holes through the metal skin of the spaceplane, killing all on board.

NASA officials, not known for their eloquence, reported that inspection of Discovery’s external fuel tank had revealed some fracturing or loosening of the foam insulation, but that the faults would not endanger the mission.

They said nothing about endangering the crew, although it is probably what they meant. The media nearly went ape-shit, claiming NASA officials were more worried about making a return to space after a three-year hiatus than about ensuring the lives of the seven-person crew.

July 6th, 2006 | Tags: Science, Technology, The media | Category: Commentary | Comments (2)

After threatening weather scrubbed Discovery’s July 1 takeoff, NASA postponed the first shuttle launch in months until (perhaps symbolically) July 4.

I’m planning a more detailed post once the shuttle (shown here on the launch pad) is actually safely in orbit.

July 3rd, 2006 | Tags: Technology | Category: Physics | Leave a comment

That’s what I tell my students each year: matter is mostly empty space. The concept is hard to accept, especially if you have ever hit your head on something, but nonetheless true.

As an analogy, I have used a scale model for the hydrogen atom I picked up from somewhere now forgotten. Place an ant on the 50-yard line in a football stadium. The atom represents the proton. The electron is just outside the stadium, in the parking lot. In between electron and proton is space.

Now I have a new scale model to use. It’s online, to appeal to the digital generation. The creator has represented the electron as a one-pixel speck on the webpage, and far, far away the proton as a much larger ball.  The distance and sizes of the particles are on the same scale.

The model, of course, is not to be taken literally. Atoms are not really miniature versions of solar systems. Electrons are strictly speaking  not little specks traveling in neat little orbits around a spherical proton (or nucleus) that looks like Neptune. That conception (minus the Neptune part) dates back almost 100 years.

Time was, scientists did conceive of the atom as a solid ball. That picture changed in 1897, when J. J. Thomson identified the electon and proposed that it was part of the atom, rather than separate from it. He proposed a “plum pudding” model, in which the negatively charged electrons were embedded in a positively charged matrix.
In 1911, Ernest Rutherford tested this model with his famous gold foil experiment. Briefly, Rutherford bombarded an extremely thin sheet of gold foil with positively charged alpha particles, expecting that most would just pass through the “squishy” pudding.

June 23rd, 2006 | Tags: Technology | Category: Physics | Leave a comment

The Bluegrass Report, one of the best sources for progressive political news in our fair Commonwealth, is apparently not welcome on the state-owned computers in Frankfort. Nor apparently are other liberal sites, according to The Daily Kos.

State employees apparently lose their First Amendment rights once they enter their office doors. Shameful, but not all that surprising, considering who’s in office.

June 21st, 2006 | Tags: Technology, The media | Category: Random rants | Leave a comment