Who says cats can’t protect us from wildlife attacks? In this video, a house cat chases away a hungry bear from a woman’s porch. That is one brave cat!
[via Holger on FB]
Want to have a look at Apple’s new tablet?
If you want to get a good idea of the capabilities and looks of Apple’s new tablet, then have a look at this post, which I wrote last year, in September. At that time, I was thinking about a nice, large iPod — which is basically what the iTablet will be — in addition to much more, of course. But the core idea is the same. It bridges the gap between the desktop or laptop and the iPod. It’s a larger device on which we can consume media (news, photos, videos, music, etc.). And I bet it’ll come with some awesome speakers, just like the MacBook Pro laptops, and it will likely also stream music through AirTunes.
Speculation aside, I can’t wait to see the real thing later this week.
American airport hysteria
I love this article from Patrick Smith at Salon.com. It’s on the subject of American hysteria when it comes to airport security, and it references all of the overblown and recent responses of the TSA and other individuals charged with security at American airports. Since when have we become such a nation of frightened ninnies?
“This country needs to get a grip. We need a slap in the face, a splash of cold water.”
“What caused the delays and what hassled so many travelers was not the defendant’s actions, but our mindless and hysterical response to them.”
“Here in this proclaimed new “age of terrorism,” we act as if the clock began ticking on Sept. 11, 2001. In truth we’ve been dealing with this stuff for decades. Not only in the 1980s, but throughout the ’60s and ’70s as well. Acts of piracy and sabotage are far fewer today.”
“Imagine the Karachi attack happening tomorrow. Imagine TWA 847 happening tomorrow. Imagine six successful terror attacks against commercial aviation in a five-year span. The airline industry would be paralyzed, the populace frozen in abject fear. It would be a catastrophe of epic proportion — of wall-to-wall coverage and, dare I suggest, the summary surrender of important civil liberties.”
“What is it about us, as a nation, that has made us so unable to remember, and unable to cope?”
Patrick isn’t the only one upset about this. I wrote about our overblown airport security rules in the past — see this article, and this one, and this as well.
All I can say is that hope can be glimpsed across the pond, in Europe. Having flown through multiple European airports this past year, I can tell you things appear more rational there. Even when there are extra security checks, the tone is calm, the demeanor is calm, and you’re not eyed with suspicious eyes, like you are here in the US, where everything is seen as a threat.
Are you really backing up your WP blog?
When those of us with self-hosted WordPress blogs back up our content using the built-in WXR functionality, do we ever check the downloaded XML file? Until recently, I didn’t worry about it. I’d click on the Export button, copy the WXR file to a backup folder and think my blog was safe, but I was wrong.
You see, what may be happening is the creation of the WXR file on the server side may be terminated before all the content gets written to it, and we’ll end up with a partial backup of our blogs. This is no fault of the WordPress platform, but will happen when the server settings don’t allow enough resources to the PHP script which writes out the XML file. When that’s the case, this is what the end of the WXR XML file looks like.
In the screenshot you see above, the script ran out of memory (I’d set PHP’s memory_limit at 64 MB, which was too little for my needs), but it can also run out of time, if PHP’s max_execution_time is set too low.
Depending on your scenario, you may or may not have access to the original php.ini file on your web server. If not, check with your host, you may be able to create a php.ini at the root of your hosting account to adjust these parameters (within limits). The thing to do is set the memory_limit and the max_execution_time high enough to allow PHP enough resources to generate the full WXR file. I can’t prescribe any specific limits here, because the amount of memory and time the script needs depends on how big your blog is. All I can suggest is that you experiment with the settings until they’re high enough for the WXR file to generate fully. You don’t want to set them too high, because your server will run out of memory, and that’s not fun either. This is what my setup looks like.
What happens if you use a cheap web host is that you’ll get crammed along with hundreds of other sites on a single virtual server where all the settings are tightly reined in, to make sure no one’s hogging any resources. Chances are that as your blog grows, your WXR file will get too big and will need more resources than are available to write itself, which means you’ll start getting truncated backup files. If you never check them by opening up the XML and scrolling to the end to rule out any error messages, you’re not really backing up your blog.
Keep this in mind if you want to play it safe. Always check the WXR file. A good backup should close all the tags at the end, particularly the tag, like this screenshot shows.
1978 ad for Hagoromo Foods, spoofing Star Wars
1978 ad for Hagoromo Foods, spoofing Star Wars. Goofy, silly, weird and fun. Looks to be an ad for what they call “sea chicken“, which I’m guessing is tuna.
Raoul Pop 