Karmona Pragmatic Blog

I have just upgraded to WordPress 2.9 – Carmen (named in honor of the jazz vocalist Carmen McRae) in less than 3 minutes…

WordPress 2.9 Highlights

* Global undo/”trash” feature
* Built-in image editor
* Batch plugin update and compatibility checking
* Easier video embeds
* Over 500 tickets, bugs and enhancements

I have just upgraded to WordPress 2.8 in less than 3 minutes…

WordPress 2.8 Highlights

* Speed!!!
* Theme Browser and Installer
* Ability to add Custom Headers
* New drag-and-drop widgets admin interface and new Widgets API
* New ways to customize dashboard widgets
* Syntax highlighting and function lookup built into plugin and theme editors
* Configurable Views on Management Pages
* Faster Loading Admin Pages

The Dunning-Kruger effect is a cognitive bias in which people who are worst at a task show the most illusory superiority, rating their own ability as above average (e.g. “shut up I hack you“ :)

Justin Kruger & David Dunning have tested and verified the following predictions:

• Incompetent individuals tend to overestimate their own ability and performance 
• Incompetent individuals fail to recognize genuine skill in others (it takes one to know one ;)
• Incompetent individuals fail to recognize the extremity of their inadequacy (“One puzzling aspect of our results is how the incompetent fail, through life experience, to learn that they are unskilled”)
• If they can be trained to substantially improve their own skill level, these individuals can recognize and acknowledge their own previous lack of skill (There is still some hope)

Do you have the confidence that this post isn’t about you? 

Think again… (!!!) - “ignorance more frequently begets confidence than does knowledge” (Charles Darwin)

Do you think this post is about you?

Might be considered vain but interesting enough, the same research have shown that the top performers tended to underestimate their own performance compared to their peers (see chart below). 

So… if you find this post boring, obscure, stupid, annoying, poorly written or inappropriate than please keep in mind it isn’t something I have committed knowingly.

Last weekend I was wasting time on my Blog performance and all I got is 10 sec. and this lousy post.

Quick profiling with FireBug and YSlow FireFox extensions have done great wonders with my amazingly slow, not-really-that-interesting, hosted (webhost4life) WordPress blog.

Main action items:

• I have removed the sitemeter performance penalty widget
• I have installed the WordPress Super Cache Plug-in which wasn’t that simple with my webhost4life hosting limitations.
• I have removed couple of images and reduce the blog top image size from 80k to 5k (!!!)

Results:

• Main blog page returns after ~1 sec.
• I am still getting a lousy grade with the YSlow tests (62) but it seems like the YSlow blog post announcement have failed too… (57 :)
• Post pages are still slow (~2-4 sec.) but I know what I have to do the next time more than 1 million readers will complain…

Have fun!

I am very “proud” to introduce the ultimate geek widget: Base 64 Encode / Decode Online Widget

Q. Where can I see this dark magic?

A. Here… :)

Q. How can I add this cool Base64 widget to my blog?

A. Simply copy-paste this little script:
___________________________________________

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://blog.karmona.com/base64widget.js” ></script>

___________________________________________

Q. Does this blog widget support ALL blog platforms?

A. Sure… (including dasBlog :)

Please contact me if you have any issues / questions / suggestions,

Have fun!

Technorati have finally started to release the “state of the blogosphere” report.

I must admit I was really waiting for this shitty report and I hate the fact that I need to see this reports in shards (will be released in five consecutive daily segments) but it was worth waiting until now.

2008 Blogosphere statistics includes:

• 133 million blogs (indexed by Technorati since 2002) was 70 million last year… (The State of the Live Web, April 2007)
• 7.4 million blogs posted in the last 120 days
• 1.5 million blogs posted in the last 7 days (did you? ;-)
• 900,000 Blog posts in 24 hours = ~10 Blog posts per sec. (!!!) – Technorati claims that spam filtering have reduced the numbers they published last year (1.4 million blog posts per day)
• 66% of bloggers are male…
• 63% are ages 25 to 44
• 79% personal blogs
• 59% have been blogging for more than two years.
• 44% are parents
• … and with the mean annual revenue of $6K blogs are also claimed to be profitable (a.k.a. not mine)

WOW (!!!)

Nuapurista kuulu se polokan tahti
jalakani pohjii kutkutti.
Ievan äiti se tyttöösä vahti
vaan kyllähän Ieva sen jutkutti,
sillä ei meitä silloin kiellot haittaa
kun myö tanssimme laiasta laitaan.
Salivili hipput tupput täppyt
äppyt tipput hilijalleen.

Ievan suu oli vehnäsellä
ko immeiset onnee toevotti.
Peä oli märkänä jokaisella
ja viulu se vinku ja voevotti.
Ei tätä poikoo märkyys haittaa
sillon ko laskoo laiasta laitaan.
Salivili hipput.

Ievan äiti se kammarissa
virsiä veisata huijjuutti,
kun tämä poika naapurissa
ämmän tyttöä nuijjuutti.
Eikä tätä poikoo ämmät haittaa
sillon ko laskoo laiasta laitaan.
Salivili.

Siellä oli lystiä soiton jäläkeen
sain minä kerran sytkyyttee.
Kottiin ko mäntii ni ämmä se riitelj
ja Ieva jo alako nyyhkyytteek.
Minä sanon Ievalle mitäpä se haittaa
laskemma vielähi laiasta laitaa.
Salivili.

Muorille sanon jotta tukkee suusi
en ruppee sun terveyttäs takkoomaa.
Terveenä peäset ku korjoot luusi
ja määt siitä murjuus makkoomaa.
Ei tätä poikoo hellyys haittaa
ko akkoja huhkii laiasta laitaan.
Salivili.

Sen minä sanon jotta purra pittää
ei mua niin voan nielasta.
Suat männä ite vaikka lännestä ittään
vaan minä en luovu Ievasta,
sillä ei tätä poikoo kainous haittaa
sillon ko tanssii laiasta laitaan.
Salivili.

I have nothing to add…

News Flash from the Karmona`s Oligarchy

25/11/2007 – I have officially joined the domain madness* with yobsi.com

28/11/2007 – The backlink left-pane widgets** bordel and the right-pane google adsense hoax were removed (a.k.a. Back to sanity…)

1/12/2007 – I was added as oligarch in Wikipedia*** and got a really cool oligarch watch as FaceBook gift

~~~

* I heard a rumor that Pasha really hit-the-jackpot with outrages 1 digit (~3 cents) adsense-revenue and the site was up only for one week!!!

** blogarama, spotplex, blogcave, blogskinny, blogflux, blogcatalog, feeds4all, Bloghub, zimbio, mybloglog, icerocket, bloggerschoiceawards, technorati, bumpzee, amazingcounters etc.

*** If the Wikipedia bots will not like it (or better yet, since I have already made the necessary cleaning), you will only be able to see it in this rare snapshot

Almost a month ago, I have moved to my own hosted blog due to google blogger outage.

Last week (September 3rd ~00:00), I was visiting BlogCatalog and I got the Internet Service Outage-Lie-of-the-Day: “Database Error – We’re sorry, but our database servers are currently overloaded. Please enjoy a cup of coffee and then try refreshing this page – Blog Catalog” [BlogCatalog Outage September 3rd - 2007] … so I followed the site recommendation and I have enjoyed a great cup of Italian coffee but I was very sorry to see that it didn’t helped the BlogCatalog database to recover…

These days, we are working intensively on the last sprint goals; One of the goals was to finish the architectural design of our unique internet service.

So… Yesterday we where guesstimating (until the very late hours of the night) on the scale needed for this service and started mapping the IT topology, Database implementation and software back-end options that are viable to support it.

I have a lot to say on the process, technology challenges and options for my future posts and I can sum it up now saying: We all hope that by taking the right decisions when reaching a critical-architectural-junction these days, we will be able to enjoy a good cup of Italian coffee while our databases are down for maintenance… but we also know that simple risk management on our guesstimates is also to be prepared for rainy days with a good enough Internet Service Outage-Lie-of-the-Day ;-)

Google recent outage brought me to this new karmona.com hosted home – powered by WordPress.