Passing Over

.

+ And when your children say to you, “What do you mean by this service?” you shall say, “It is the sacrifice of the Lord’s Passover, for he passed over the houses of the people of Israel in Egypt, when he struck the Egyptians but spared our houses.”

+ And as they were eating, he took bread, and after blessing it broke it and gave it to them, and said, “Take; this is my body.” And he took a cup, and when he had given thanks he gave it to them, and they all drank of it. And he said to them, “This is my blood of the covenant, which is poured out for many…”

+ But when Christ appeared as a high priest of the good things that have come, then through the greater and more perfect tent (not made with hands, that is, not of this creation) he entered once for all into the holy places, not by means of the blood of goats and calves but by means of his own blood, thus securing an eternal redemption.

+ “And when I see the blood, I will pass over you.”

“Bilbo Baggins deleted himself.”

.

Middle Earth as MMPORG. From past playings of Avatar MUD and Legend of the Red Dragon, I can attest to the need for Level 1 Newbies to go out into the forest and kill rats and squirrels in droves for a few days before they can get to the major league. That’s to get you acquainted with the delicious flavor of ennui-inducing repetition of which most MMPORGs are composed. Perhaps it’s to keep fanfic-writing players from capitalizing on their adventures to write bestselling fiction.

Link found via Ipse Dixit who in turn found it via Ami- Amygdalg- Amygdalaf- Gary. More discussion in this MeFi thread.

Live Long and Paper

.

Rock Paper Scissors Spock Lizard. I’m puzzled enough already as to how Paper could possibly beat Rock in the regular game, now you have to wonder why a Lizard would eat Paper, or why Spock would vaporize a rock. I can probably understand Lizard poisoning Spock, though, since Vulcans are vegetarian. But didn’t ancient Vulcans eat lizard? And if Vulcans are vegetarian to avoid illogical killing, why won’t they eat replicated meat?

Update: And I wonder if Evil Mirror Universe Spock eats meat? To see how you would look in the Evil Mirror Universe, get a goatee.

As Gently as a Tree Falls

.

Sixty years after Antoine de Saint Exupéry, author of The Little Prince, disappeared while conducting aerial surveillance photography for the Allies during World War II, parts of his plane have been found where it presumably crashed into the sea.

If you haven’t yet read The Little Prince, or have not read it recently, by all means do so. I first read it as a child, having discovered an old, 1943-edition paperback among the dusty books in the cabinet under the family altar. Since then I’ve read it at least three times more, and have come away from the reading with something new each time.

Pilots, astronomers, boa constrictors, and readers everywhere lift a toast to you, Monsieur Antoine, as you now fly among the stars.

Designing for Traffic

.

Bandwidth usage graphSo last week was an interesting one, memetically: a link from Instapundit to the Kerry Daisy, and an April Fools’ barrage of links to the March for Web Standards, spawned from A Whole Lotta Nothing, Boingboing, StopDesign, and WaSP — all this within a span of two days. Traffic jumped from an average of about 200 visits per day to almost 2000 visits on 3/31, to over 3000 on 4/01.

It pays to be ready for traffic spikes and sudden popularity. Though the bandwidth issue may be dead to some, not all of us are hosted on paid or owned servers, or perhaps we simply wish to stick with what’s cheap, and are willing to accept bandwidth limitations for affordability. But that is no reason your web presence should go down in error screens with the first MeFi or Slashdot FPP. Here are a few tips to keep you afloat through the bandwidth crests:

  • Streamline that code. Maybe it’s turning into a cliché, but web standards work. Trim out the nested tables, unnecessary or redundant <div> class attributes, spacer GIFs (argh), and frames, and you can cut your page size — and loading time — to a fraction of what it was. There’s something to be said for minimalism.
  • Have a smaller — or no — sidebar on deep pages. Inside pages probably don’t need your entire linkroll, sideblog, archive listing, WinAmp playlist, and whatever other sidebar paraphernalia you use on your front page. Fix up your templates so that a more basic sidebar (or no sidebar at all) is shown. Main navigation, breadcrumbs, and search form may be all you need while indoors.
  • If you run a weblog, use individual archives. Single entry pages really help permalinking, and you don’t get hundreds of people loading up a whole month or week of entries just to get to that one anchored post. Of course, many of you still use services without individual entry archiving, in which case you should probably try and get the smallest increments you can. (Blogger goes down to Daily, I believe.)
  • Compress your graphics. One reason M4WeSt used that single-tone B/W image was that the GIF compresses nicely, having only two colors to deal with: #000000 and #FFFFFF. It’s a good idea to use clean line art or solid expanses of clear, non-dithered, non-gradiated color. The former will compress well in GIF or PNG, the latter will work for JPGs as well.

Another cliché to remember: every byte counts. Here’s hoping your website stays up through those fifteen minutes of fame. Comments are open to any useful additional input.

Blossoms and Tourists

.

(I extended this entry a bit, and moved its timestamp back a few hours so that I could say: today is 04-04-04!)

The cherry blossoms were at their peak yeasterday, so Amy and I spent the day strolling around the Tidal Basin in a clockwise direction, enduring cold winds and heavy tourist traffic to admire the trees in full bloom. We started at the Smithsonian Metro, walked west along Independence Ave, and swung left on 14th St SW. As it “turns” out, we had turned a block too soon, and had to deal with a walk through a tunnel and a couple of extra pedestrian crosswalks before rejoining the crowd of sightseers. (Note to self: turn left at 15th St SW next time.)

Walking the 3 km circumference of the Tidal Basin took about three hours, with a pause at the Jefferson Memorial to read the writing on the wall, and numerous camera stops at any moment that the sun deigned to peek out from behind the swift-moving clouds. The whole place was a mob. Thousands of people choked the walkways and bridges around the Tidal Basin, sometimes overflowing off the sidewalks onto the street, slowing passing vehicle traffic. The situation was worsened by recent rains, with dirty puddles blocking walkways and paths, forcing sightseers to walk in slow single file or to squelch through muddy grass. The Jefferson Memorial was packed as well, tourists milling about the open spaces, sitting on the marble steps, snapping away gleefully at each other and at the view. It was both fun and annoying at the same time.

We skipped the FDR Memorial in favor of a faster walk around the Basin, and reached a somewhat looser point in the crowd towards West Potomac Park. No places to sit under the blossoms, however, as the ground remained mostly damp and muddy.

It was sad to see the wall around the Washington Monument, still blocking access to the Monument grounds and further aggravating the tourist traffic. Amy and I squeezed through the worst of the crunch and headed for the Mall to stroll toward the National Gallery, just to say hello to the Girl in the Red Hat.

Despite the crowds, it was an excellent day. Photos here.

April Fools 2004 Roundup

.

March for Web Standards has moved. Please adjust your links accordingly.

Update, 10am 2 Apr 2004: What? It’s Friday? I thought it was Saturday. <grumble> #

Update, 1am 2 Apr 2004: Well, that was fun. Hits from Boingboing, Mathowie, WaSP, and a bunch of other places, with my bandwidth intact. Anyway, I’m stuck in Baltimore right now, having missed the last train back to DC, and starting tomorrow I’m going to enjoy a nice, long, relaxing weekend with Amy at the Cherry Blossom Festival. More words soon on standards, markup, color palettes, image compression, and designing for traffic. Have a good Palm Sunday weekend and remember to set your clocks ahead. #

Happy April 1st. In addition to M4WeSt, there’s more craziness going on elsewhere on the web:

M4WeSt

.

Introducing the First Annual March for Web Standards, Washington, DC. We’re taking the fight for clean, structural, standards-compliant markup straight to the seat of power. Down with <font> tags! Down with spacer GIFs! Down with table-based layouts! Web Standards forever! Long live stylesheets!

(By the way, the toaster offer is serious, but only for metro-accessible DC residents.)

Update: High-profile inbound links to the March for Web Standards April Fools’ gag: Mathowie, WaSP, BoingBoing, Waxy, and more (blogdex track).