I received an e-mail last night from an undergraduate student (interested in becoming a pediatrician) who is currently taking an elective on blogging. Here’s an excerpt from her e-mail: Read more  

Today was one of those “I don’t have any classes in the afternoon, so I’m going to stream lectures instead” days. The heavy downpour from the outer bands of tropical storm Hermine gave me even more of an incentive to avoid the roads and stay at home. I enjoyed finishing a six hour day (four in lecture, two in the car) within two hours. Thank you, Enounce. Read more  

From time to time, people will ask me to validate and/or optimize their web code to streamline performance. People are now getting comfortable with using CSS sprites on their sites, but unfortunately I’ve seen this very easy-to-fix problem twice, and thought I should let people know how to resolve it. Read more  

HTML5 has been on the horizon for quite some time, but the breadth of Flash-based web applications has continued to expand over the last few years. Apple dealt their first major blow to Flash by not supporting it on their flagship tablet device, the iPad. This caused media giants like Vimeo, ESPN, Time, CBS, and Flickr to offer an HTML5 compatible (and therefore, iPad compatible) format for users. Read more  

There’s a new physician blog on the corner, and this one happens to be by the pediatric surgeon who not only taught me embryology but also about maintaining a routine (and sanity) throughout medical school. Read more  

If you’ve ever watched a semi-controversial YouTube video and read through the text comments, I’m sure you’ve seen users get into pointless arguments employing their vast curse-word ridden vocabulary of four letter words. What baffles me is how these cowards actually think what they’re saying has any clout. It’s relatively easy to hide behind a computer in a shade of anonymity as they blindly criticize their fellow users for trivial matters. Read more  

I was analyzing my Woopra site statistics over the past month, and much to my satisfaction, only 30.18% of my viewers use a flavor of Internet Explorer (IE). This is music to my ears! In fact, the Worldwide Web Consortium data shows that Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera have all been picking up steam across the Internet. Thanks to all of you who have replaced IE with one of the latter options!

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I had a random flashback this morning. For those who are guilty of using “Internet slang”, i have sum news 4 u – it’s nonsense. In no way, shape, or form will using Internet slang get you anywhere in life. In fact, quite the contrary… you’ll develop bad grammar habits and ultimately end of having to remind yourself to use proper syntax in writing formal essays for school.

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12/13/10 – This post has been modified in light of the new XCache release (1.3.2). Please follow the walkthrough to upgrade your server.

I’ve been using XCache for a few weeks and have found it to be slightly faster than eAccelerator; therefore, I pieced together this walkthrough to help my fellow BlueHost users speed-up their PHP-laden websites.

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Once in a while, I’ll come across a program or utility which is simply remarkable. As far as web development on Mac OS X, I sought a program which would optimistically eliminate my simultaneous usage of the Terminal (for SSH), Dreamweaver (for… everything else), and Transmit (for FTP). Come to find out, Panic Inc. has an answer to my dilemma – they call it Coda… I call it a Mac webmaster’s dream.

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