Dead Letter Art Website Update
A new Dead Letter Art website is in the works and coming soon. The new site enhances previous content with dynamic features and improved organization. The new site has also been updated to include more archived content, including ancient issues and special projects. Additionally, some keen Ajax functionality kicks the “fun” up a notch. Anticipated release date: September 1, 2006. Check out the old, sickly green website here. Continue reading »
WordPress Plugin: Disable Lazy Load
WordPress 5.5 brings some cool new features, including built-in support for lazy-loading images. So whether you want it or not, WordPress will add a new “loading” attribute to all of your images. That way supportive browsers will be able to load your images as the user scrolls the page, instead of trying to load everything at once. It’s a popular front-end technique that may help to boost performance a little bit. Like anything else, there are pros and cons to […] Continue reading »
4 Ways to Make a WordPress Site Private Access Only
Have you ever wanted to make a WordPress site private? So that only specific users are allowed access? For example, for my found-images site eChunks.com, I decided to require user login in order to access any content. So now for that site, public access is not allowed, and any posts, images, and all other content is available only to logged-in users. This tutorial explains four ways to make a WordPress site private or members only, so that only authenticated/trusted users […] Continue reading »
Digital Units
Digital units and their relative capacities1: Byte: (100 bytes) A single digital character. Kilobyte: (103 bytes) A small page of digital text. Megabyte: (106 bytes) A small novel, or a screen-resolution digital image. Gigabyte: (109 bytes) A symphony in hi-fi sound, or a pickup truck filled with paper. Terabyte: (1012 bytes) One-tenth of the printed collection of the Library of Congress. Petabyte: (1015 bytes) All of the email produced in the world in one day, or about a half-million hours […] Continue reading »
How to Modify HTTP Headers in the WordPress Admin Area
WordPress provides the wp_headers filter hook and send_headers action hook to add and modify HTTP requests. For front-end pages, these are ideal hooks that should be used whenever possible. Unfortunately however neither hook works on all pages in the WordPress Admin Area. After some experimentation, I found an easy solution to modify HTTP headers on any/all pages in the Admin Area. Continue reading »
7G Firewall for Nginx
After several months of development, the official Nginx version of the 7G Firewall is out of beta and ready for public use. If you are not familiar with 7G Firewall, check out the documentation for the Apache/.htaccess version. The Nginx version of the 7G Firewall works the exact same way, so I won’t bother repeating everything here. The only difference is the implementation, how to set it up on an Nginx server, which is explained in this post. Continue reading »
Nine Feet
I’m a moral in a secret box, An earthworm, chewing through a sour meal, A home, still within the daisy farm. Oh, black ants, parasites, nematodes. This trunk’s cold with its precious relics. Jackpot’s dying for foxy diggers. I’m an end, a joke, a passing fad. I’ve left my mark to make a payment, Jumped in the lake with my mom and dad. Continue reading »
Coda 2 Lessons Learned
I recently switched over to Panic’s Coda 2 for code editing and SFTP functionality. After using my previous editor/FTP software for over 10 years, I was surprised that learning Coda 2 happened so easily. It literally took me like two days of using it before I was back up to full development speed. In the process of learning, I discovered numerous questions and concerns that weren’t covered in the Coda 2 documentation or anywhere online. This post rounds up these […] Continue reading »
Meditation on the Details
You want people to visit your site. Even better, you want people to stay awhile and enjoy your content. The more time visitors spend at your site, the more likely it becomes that they will notice the little things that make your site unique. As your guests scan your pages, you want to reassure them that you have accounted for everything. When I notice that a blogger has addressed the subtle nuances associated with running a site, I feel more […] Continue reading »
Take Your Arguments to the Next Level
Everybody loves to argue. Unfortunately, not everyone understands their own absence of understanding. As you listen to people argue, it always sounds as if everyone knows everything about the topic at hand. This behavior seems to come standard with humans, however, what kills me is how people never desire nor seem willing to take their argumentative skills to the next level. In fact, many people I listen to don’t even realize that “higher,” more sophisticated levels of argumentation exist, let […] Continue reading »
Critical Thinking Excercise, Part One: Just Do It
An excellent way to exercise your critical thinking skills involves critically analyzing corporate slogans. Company slogans such as Nike’s “Just do it,” Budweiser’s “King of beer” and Fruit Loop’s “Follow your nose!” are ubiquitous in contemporary capitalistic culture. So, as you journey through your day, keep your eyes and ears open to the various business taglines that you will inevitably hear, and pick your favorite for further analysis. Continue reading »
Osseus Website Update
Osseus Website Multimedia artist extraordinaire, Kenneth Paul Schrag — better known as Osseus to his fellow DLa comrades — is currently in the process of updating his personal design portfolio website (Flash required). Ken’s work is diverse, with online samples covering both graphic design and illustration. We finally met up with Ken and Yasuko several months ago before their Japanese trip. We shared coffee in the Desert Oasis and shared recent experiences and creative happenings. Ken and Yasuko have been […] Continue reading »
Creative Writing Exercise, Part 1
A Hemingway scene1 written in the style of Borges: I noticed the labyrinth of trees on my left, it appeared as a mysterious maze. I watched as the infinite trees erased the endless fields, and marveled at the ancient, unearthed bonsai tree. I imagined the raging storm that had ripped it from the ground, forcing it back into the bamboo grove. I thought about how its roots were now swirling with dirt, each tiny rock a microcosm of solar systems, […] Continue reading »
Migrating All Book Accounts to Perishable Press Books
Just a heads up! I’m in the process of migrating all book accounts to the new bookstore at Perishable Press Books. The goal is to streamline everything — all books and user accounts — under the new books domain. This will make everything much simpler for everyone. Eventually, the other book sites will be taken offline, after everything is migrated to the new bookstore here at Perishable Press. Continue reading »
Automatic Language Translation Methods
As you may have noticed, Perishable Press recently added automatic language translation to each of our articles. The free, automatic translations are available as a series of image links (via corresponding country flag icons) next to each article’s individual post view. We have found that providing this free service is important as many of our visitors come from countries other than the United States, and therefore may be unable to read our articles as presented in the English language. Continue reading »
Lynda.com Course: Developing Secure WordPress Sites
After months of preparation and production, my new video course on developing secure WordPress sites is now available at Lynda.com. This is my second video course on securing WordPress; the first one was originally launched in 2011 and remained in Lynda’s library for over five years. I received a lot of great feedback on the course, and so I jumped on the opportunity to do another one. If there is one thing that I enjoy doing, it’s helping people with […] Continue reading »
