Category Archives: Technical

Nofollow hurts bloggers more than spammers

Nofollow really took off in the blogging community as a means to stop comment spammers and I think at this point it’s safe to say that it’s had absolutely no effect on that front. What’s worse is that it’s the … Continue reading

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web | 9 Comments

Load balancing across MySQL servers using JDBC

In our production environment at GreatSchools we have 3 production MySQL database servers: 1 read-write master and 2 read-only slaves. In moving our site from Perl to Java we need to load balance read-only connections across the read-only slave servers … Continue reading

Posted in Database, Java | 9 Comments

Podcast interviews tell a bigger story than most blogs

I just received my first iPod from Amazon the other day and have been playing with it a little here and there. Having music to go is great but I’m really enjoying listening to podcasts! Just as blogs have become … Continue reading

Posted in Software Engineering, Web | 6 Comments

Well formed validation of XHTML pages

Validating XHTML pages is an interesting subject because no high traffic site I’ve ever tried it on actually successfully validates XHTML against a W3C validator. Most folks I know take it for granted that it’s unrealistic to write large sites … Continue reading

Posted in Java, Software Engineering, Web | 1 Comment

More powerful database constraints with regular expressions

Is it just me or do you agree that we should be able to easily apply regular expression constraints to a column in a table without writing a stored procedure? For example if I want to guarantee that a varchar … Continue reading

Posted in Database, Software Engineering, Systems Administration | Comments Off on More powerful database constraints with regular expressions

Behind Closed Doors

A great book I read recently from the Pragmatic Programmers is Behind Closed Doors: Secrets of Great Management. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is either a manager or executive or aspiring to some form of a team … Continue reading

Posted in Agile Development, Management | Comments Off on Behind Closed Doors

Apple’s PR genius

I don’t know what kind of koolaid Apple puts in their PR but it’s working on me! When they announced the Intel MacBook Pro it took all my will power not to drop 3 G’s on a pre-order the minute … Continue reading

Posted in Desktop | Comments Off on Apple’s PR genius

The time has come to upgrade to MySQL 5

We’ve finally hit the point at work where we’re ready to upgrade from MySQL 4.0 to 5. Data integrity has been a problem since I started at this job. Part of the reason is that MySQL 4.0 has an odd … Continue reading

Posted in Database, Software Engineering, Systems Administration | Comments Off on The time has come to upgrade to MySQL 5

SMART objectives in moderation please

As a technology manager a big part of what I do is trying to help people do their jobs well. That includes removing obstacles, being an advocate when there is a problem, making sure the team is operating efficiently, ensuring … Continue reading

Posted in Agile Development, Management, Software Engineering | Comments Off on SMART objectives in moderation please

SEO Toolbox

At work when we design a new page that we hope to drive people to via search engines we often consult with our search engine consultant to ensure we’ve thought through the page design and that the HTML is up … Continue reading

Posted in Search Engine Optimization, Web | Comments Off on SEO Toolbox