WordPress Speed Tips
I am alway looking for ways to get the most out of WordPress. I found this article very useful.
I would also recommend the article to newbie programmers who are looking for ways to squeeze some speed out of a web application. The techniques apply to almost any PHP application – but, they apply in a general way to any application.
Using the MySQL Query Cache is especially beneficial on a busy site – especially if your hosting service limits the number of queries the database can service in an hour.
I Will Never Graduate
As a young person, I was told to study hard, and I would do well. I can also remember that I believed that as I learned, I would become more competent, more able. Learning was supposed to be cumulative – it was supposed to built on itself. My friends graduated from university and went on to careers and stable jobs, or so they expected. The longer they continued in their careers, the more competent and knowledgeable they would become.
This has not been my experience in the field of software. I have grown in personal ways, but a kid coming out of school is learning Ruby On Rails just as I am. Not only am I in a cycle of constant learning, but I am often reading about things just to stay current. Often, I never use or apply these things. Many young people are better than I am in many areas because they acquired their skills in these areas at the same time I did.
There is even a expectation that on older person like me will know less. Most certainly, I am expected to think in stiff and antiquated ways. This puts pressure on me to keep learning to keep working. The pace of learning has never stopped or slowed down for me. It is the same.
This is the one difference between me and some of the younger people I run across. They embrace novelty, and that is their strength. In time, they will have to embrace or cope with change. That will be a different experience for them. Fewer people like rapid and constant change. People cling to their hard won competence and knowledge even as the rest of the world is telling them that it is becoming less relevant. They cling to their status. The pride of the young in their new found skill will be their downfall in these changing times.
I, for one, realize that I will never graduate. I will never arrive. Any status I gain based on expertise will be diminished as soon as the next big thing comes along. As a programmer, unless I create the next superduper programming language, I will never have laurels to rest on. (By the way, Java was the next superdupper programming language. Young people are excited about other languages now.)
On the one hand, this makes life exciting. I take pleasure in the change and the learning. I embrace the enthusiasm of the young. I also take secret pleasure in watching a young whippersnapper turn into a clued-out fuddy duddy, especially if the young whippersnapper has become arrogant. The confidence of youth quickly transforms itself into paternalism and condescension.
I was going to close here, but as soon as I used the word “paternalism” I wanted to find a more gender neutral word. I realized that the word “maternal” has a more positive connotation. Perhaps that is the attitude we need to foster: a maternalism, a nurturing of the young. It is important for older people to pass on what they know about coping with change just as they pass on technical skills. It is important for young people to get over the idea of arriving, or of graduating. The learning may never end. Nor should it.
I Am Trapped Inside A Computer
I have become trapped inside my computer. It’s true – it is less a metaphor than you might think. A long time ago, in a galaxy far away, in a land before there was a computer on every desktop, I had a typewriter. I loved my typewriter. It was work to type – and retype – my poems, short stories and articles, but I loved it.
The computer presented a way to make it easier for me to edit and manage my text. And, there was something magical about being able to store my writing on disks. I would bring my disks to a service bureau, and I would print my material. Then, I would use a light-table to create literary magazines and chapbooks. I was in heaven. I loved to write.
Somewhere along the way, I have become seduced by the technology. I became a developer, not a writer, and I began to read computer books on my vacations instead of the literature I used to read. Occasionally, I would get excited about the democratization of knowledge and culture, but the truth is that I abandoned my calling.
In a sense, I have become more interested in the printing press than I am in the written word. There was a time when, if I wanted to read Plato’s Republic, I had to go to the library, or to the bookstore. Today, The Republic is available online from a number of sources. Still, I have not read it in years, and I no longer know people who have read it.
My experience is not that the computer has created a network of scholars and artists. Perhaps it has, but I have long since become seduced by the means of sharing and managing knowledge rather than knowledge and culture itself. In Walden, Thoreau once wrote, “Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, an end which it was already but too easy to arrive at.”
That is my fear sometimes: I have been distracted. It took heart disease to get me to expose myself to Robinson Caruso. I listened to it on my MP3 player while walking to regain my strength and health. What struck me was that society made Robinson Caruso long to be free and wild, but being deserted in the wild had a civilizing effect on him. Even as I love technology, and code, I miss my former interests.
Let me out! (I am sure I will feel differently tomorrow.)
Civilization is a limitless multiplication
of unnecessary necessaries.
Mark Twain