Thoughts, opinions and fascinating discoveries by Elliot, a student at USC
My mom wrote a series of posts called the 30 Days to Better Parenting Challenge. For organizational purposes, she put all the posts into one of WordPress’s Categories. But since there’s one post for each day, there are 30 posts. By default, WordPress shows only 10 posts per page, and we didn’t want that because it would be hard to see all of the Parenting challenges from one page.
Continue reading ‘WordPress: Show More Posts on Archive Pages’
Just wanted to point out a new post on my Technology blog, in case it might help someone:
“I think there are very few people who have the capacity to see the future. So it can be difficult when you are talking about something where nothing about it exists yet.” James Currier, Founder, Tickle.
Yesterday, I was working on a website and had two versions of the same file. When I was ready to put the new version up for testing, I deleted the old one and put in the new one. I refreshed my browser window. No change! I pressed Ctrl+F5. I was still seeing the old version! I replaced the old file again, making sure to overwrite the old copy. I refreshed a few times and used Ctrl+F5 a few times to “force refresh.” No go. For about 5 minutes I was totally confounded. Why was the old version of my file still showing up, no matter how much I tried to refresh?! As a last resort, I went to Tools -> Clear Private Data in Firefox, and cleared my cache. One last refresh, and– BAM! The beautiful new version finally appeared. Another example from today after the fold…
Here’s a summary of how I landed an internship with Google. I feel compelled to write this out for the first time because the vibe I got at Google is that people are really friendly, really honest, and one heck of a lot smarter than me. So the least I could do is be honest.
I didn’t actually get one of these Noogler hats, but they do consider us Nooglers around here. I saw a few of the hats around, although they weren’t generally being worn by anybody. It sounds like if they had TGIF this Friday and I went, I would get one. But unfortunately this Friday’s TGIF is cancelled due to Monday’s holiday. Maybe I’ll ask someone if I can still get the hat; they’re so cool. Although we did get a Google visor already, this Noogler hat has a propeller on top (which you can’t see in the photo), so it stands out.
Image by “Moblog” (source)
As I’m writing this down, I’m quickly finding that the connections are quite a bit more twisted than I thought! It’s really interesting to look for my old emails and reconstruct in my memory just what happened. I believe it started with submitting my resume on Google’s website for a summer internship. At the time, I was a freshman at USC. I received a reply from Heelie, who told me that no, the internship program requires at least two years of college. That’s fine, so I inquired about the Google Pizza Program which I discovered online somehow and read about on Google’s website. Continue reading ‘First Day at Google’
I’ve lately been thinking a lot about how to get more people blogging. I’m really convinced about the benefits [gunthers.org] of blogging, as I’ve said before. But how do you get started, especially with no technical background? There are two great choices for people who don’t want to have to deal with hosting their own blog: WordPress and Blogger.
This came to mind today because I realized just how much Blogger’s templating and hosting system has improved. Previously, you could have your blog hosted by them on BlogSpot, or host it yourself on your own server. Hosting it on your own server meant that their server has to use FTP to upload the static files. This means constant rebuilding and republishing, and it’s really slow and annoying.
But now they have new options, and they’re all totally free. (This is unlike WordPress.com, which charges some fee for domain hosting.) And I think only Google can truly afford this long-term, because they run the advertising network (AdSense) and they take a cut of everyone’s AdSense earnings to keep the company– including Blogger– running. The new option for hosting which totally changes everything is custom domain hosting. The really great part is that this works with any hosting service you’re using. It works with an unlimited number of blogs, and Google takes care of everything. Just add a CNAME record to your DNS settings (DreamHost supports this perfectly).
It’s a really tough choice. Each has pros and cons, so I’ll list a few here so you can make the right decision for yourself. Continue reading ‘Blogger or WordPress? I now recommend Blogger’
At the end of every semester, the University of Southern California has students complete course evaluations. These include reviews of our professors and teaching assistants (TAs). Typically, professors don’t take these seriously at all. They’re passed out in the middle of one of the lectures towards the end of the semester, and then the professor leaves for 15 minutes while we complete them. One student is designated to complete them and turn them in to the department. In other words, we don’t get much time to complete them, and students who don’t come to class don’t get to do them at all. Sometimes classes have fewer than 50% evaluate the professor and course.
I learned from Professor Zuckerman (Core 101) that they actually take course evaluations very seriously. According to him, every single one of them is read… and the scores have a direct effect on salary and promotions. This is a very good thing because students definitely have a better idea than anyone else of what the class is actually like. He advocates taking your course evalations home and turning them in later… this is something a vast majority of students aren’t aware they can do. In fact, Zuckerman requires it: he takes our evaluations upon submission of our final exam– and the evaluation is mandatory, good or bad. It’s anonymous and not grade-impacting, so it’s important for us to really tell the professors and the school what we think.
Everyone should have a blog. The Blog is the New Resume. If you want to get your blog started, contact me. My guide to starting your own blog. I measure a year in 429 blog posts.
WordPress.com added a new feature last November which shows the number of hits to each post over time in a nice bar graph. I really want this for my own blog, but I couldn’t find a plugin for it. If you know of one, let me know! If it doesn’t exist, create it, and I’ll definitely use it!
How to Install Bad Behavior on WordPress
I’m still getting spam comments and trackbacks on this blog, despite using both Akismet and Spam Karma 2. So today I installed Bad Behavior. It’s a standard WordPress plugin, and should work automatically. Simply upload the Bad-Behavior directory (with the bad-behavior folder inside), activate it on the Plugins page, and you’re good to go. These are the best kinds of plugins.
Continue reading ‘How to Install Bad Behavior on WordPress’