Author Archives: Todd Huss

Moving to 64 bit Ubuntu

Posted on November 14, 2008 by Todd Huss

After 3 Ubuntu upgrades on my primary workhorse (a Lenovo Thinkpad z61t) I decided it was time for a fresh install to remove all the cruft. In the past I’ve always used 32 bit Ubuntu (even though my laptop is … Continue reading →

Posted in Desktop, Java, Linux | 1 Comment

8 months off to Mexico and back

Posted on June 8, 2008 by Todd Huss

From 20080511AguaV… October 4th, 2007 was my last day as the VP of Technology at GreatSchools when I handed the reigns over to Chris Pickslay so that Susan, Sequoia, and I could take off on our sailboat to Mexico for … Continue reading →

Posted in Sailing, Travel | Comments Off

Transcending CSS

Posted on August 15, 2007 by Todd Huss

Working at GreatSchools we do a lot of CSS work and we have a number of CSS books on our library shelf. However, last month we picked up a copy of Transcending CSS and it’s far and away the most … Continue reading →

Posted in Design, Web | 1 Comment

Simple CMS using Google Spreadsheet API

Posted on June 12, 2007 by Todd Huss

Update 6/14/2007: Dion Almaer has published a nice Javascript helper which makes working with spreadsheets much nicer, I’ve moved my stuff to it and it’s a big improvement over using the Google JSON api directly. Publishing dynamic content on your … Continue reading →

Posted in AJAX, Javascript, Software Engineering | 12 Comments

Open source caching proxy servers

Posted on May 22, 2007 by Todd Huss

Hello lazy web, I’m looking for some advice on caching proxy servers and thought you might have some good pointers! We currently front our site with 3 caching proxy servers to offload static content from the web servers and we … Continue reading →

Posted in Systems Administration, Web | 7 Comments

GreatSchools wins Webby People’s Voice Award

Posted on May 1, 2007 by Todd Huss

I’m thrilled that GreatSchools has won the Webby People’s Voice Award for best Family/Parenting site. We’ve been in the nominations before but I think continued growth and brand awareness through a largely redesigned site helped push us over the top … Continue reading →

Posted in Design, Web | Comments Off

Search engine cloaking, it’s the intent that matters

Posted on April 16, 2007 by Todd Huss

Back at the end of 2005 I wrote a short post titled Cloaking, no need to be ashamed and now in 2007 even more big sites are practicing some form of search engine crawler targeted cloaking. Yet still most SEO’s … Continue reading →

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web | Comments Off

Bay Area Indie Rock Bandega Style

Posted on March 13, 2007 by Todd Huss

My good friends in the east bay have just debuted their new Ruby on Rails based site Bandega :: never miss a show again! If you’re a San Francisco Bay Area resident that loves indie rock and wants to keep … Continue reading →

Posted in Ruby on Rails, Web | Comments Off

Search Engine Friendly URLs with Ruby on Rails

Posted on February 4, 2007 by Todd Huss

Update 2/5/07: I’ve since discovered five plugins that address this very problem with slightly different approaches (the latter two store a permalink in the table, good for mutable titles): acts_as_sluggable acts_as_urlnameable acts_as_slugable acts_as_friendly_param permalink_fu Obie’s recent post on search engine … Continue reading →

Posted in Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Search Engine Optimization, Software Engineering | 3 Comments

Ruby on Rails Dreamhost plugin

Posted on February 2, 2007 by Todd Huss

Update 2/11/07: Just to clarify, this plugin won’t keep your Rails site running on Dreamhost if the sum of all your running processes exceeds 200MB (which is when their process monitor kills your processes). Run ps aux and sum the … Continue reading →

Posted in Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Systems Administration | 15 Comments