Humour: Quotes dealing with common problems

When one wishes to unlock a door but has only one hand free, the keys are in the opposite pocket. (Von Fumbles Law)

A door will snap shut only when you have left the keys inside. (Yale Law of Destiny)

When one's hands are covered with oil, grease, or glue, your nose will start to itch. (Law of Ichiban)

Your insurance will cover everything but what has happened. (Insurance So Sorry Law)

When things seem to be going well, you've probably forgotten to do something. (Cheney's Second Corollary)

When things seem easy to do, it's because you haven't followed all the instructions. (Destiny Awaits Law)

If you keep your cool when everyone else is losing his, it's probably because you have not realized the seriousness of the problem. (Law of Gravitas)

Most problems are not created or solved; they only change appearances. (Einstein's Law of Persistence)

You will run to answer the telephone just as the party hangs up on you. (Principle of Dingaling)

Whenever you connect with the Internet, the call you've been waiting for all day will arrive. (Principle of Bellsouth)

If there are only two programs on TV that are worth your time, they will always be at the same time. (Law of Wasteland)

The cost is always higher than one budgets for, and it is exactly 3.14 times higher, hence the importance of pi. (Law of Pi Eyed)

The probability that one will spill food on one's clothes is directly proportional to the need to be clean. (Law of Campbell Scoop)

Each and every body submerged in a bathtub will cause the phone to ring. (Law of Yes Now)

Each and every body sitting on a commode will cause the doorbell to ring. (Law of Ding Dong)

Wind velocity will increase proportionally to the cost of one's hairdo. (The Don King Principle)

After discarding something not used for years, you will need it one week later. (Law of Fatal Irreversibility)

Arriving early for an appointment will cause the receptionist to be absent, and if one arrives late, everyone else has arrived before you. (Law of Delay)

Do not take life too seriously, because in the end, you won't come out alive anyway. (Theory of Absolute Certainty)

After your hands become coated with grease your nose will begin to itch or you'll have to pee. (Law of Mechanical Repair)

Any tool, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible corner. (Law of the Workshop)

The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act. (Law of Probability)

When you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal. (Law of the Telephone)

If you tell the boss you were late for work because you had a flat tire, the very next morning you will have a flat tire. (Law of the Alibi)

If you change lanes (traffic lanes), the one you were in will start to move faster than the one you are in now (works every time). (Variation Law)

The probability of meeting someone you know increases when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with. (Law of Close Encounters)

When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, it will. (Law of the Result)

The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach. (Law of Biomechanics)

At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle arrive last. (Theatre Rule)

As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do
something which will last until the coffee is cold. (Law of Coffee)

If there are only two people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers. (Murphy's Law of Lockers)

The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor covering are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet/rug. (Law of Dirty Rugs/Carpets)

No matter where you go, there you are. (Law of Location)

Anything is possible if you don't know what you are talking about. (Law of Logical Argument)

If the shoe fits, it's really ugly. (Brown's Law)

A closed mouth gathers no feet. (Oliver's Law)

As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it. (Wilson's Law)

GIS Data Operations and Problems in GIS

GIS applications are conducted through the use of special operators such as the following :
- Interpolation : This process derives elevation data for points at which no samples have been taken. It includes computation at single points, computation for a rectangular grid or along a contour, and so forth.
- Interpretation : Digital terrain modeling involves the interpretation of operations on terrain data such as editing, smoothing, reducing details and enhancing. Additional operations involve patching or zipping the borders of the triangle and merging, which implies combining overlapping models and resolving conflicts among attribute data.
- Proximity analysis : Several classes of proximity analysis include computations of "zones of interest" around objects.
- Raster Image processing : This process can be divided into two categories (1) map algebra which is used to integrate geographic features on different map layers to produce new maps algebraically; and (2) digital image analysis, which deals with analysis of a digital image for features such as edge detection and object detection.
- Analysis of networks : Networks occur in GIS in many contexts that must be analyzed and may be subjected to segmentations, overlays, and so on.

PROBLEMS OF GIS :
GIS is an expanding application area of databases. As a result, number of problems related to GIS applications have been generated :
- New architectures : GIS applications will need a new client-server architecture that will benefit from existing advances in RDBMS and ODBMS technology.
- Versioning and object life-cycle approach : Because of constantly evolving geographical features, GIS must maintain elaborate cartographic and terrain data - a management problem that might be eased by incremental updating coupled with update authorization schemes for different levels of users.
- Data Standards : Formalization of data transfer standards is crucial for the success of GIS.
- Matching applications and data structures.
- Lack of semantics in data structures.

Optimizing your Wordpress account - 2

A few weeks back, I had written about how to take some basic steps towards optimizing your Wordpress account. Imagine what would happen if more people started promoting your Wordpress Blog, or wonders of wonders, it appears on the front page of Digg or Slashdot. In such cases, unless you have optimized your Wordpress configuration already, you can be pretty much sure that your account will get to a state where the server is not able to handle the load, and will shut down; further if your account is on a shared server, you might have some uncomfortable queries from your host.
So, here are some points on how to optimize your account:
1. Since Wordpress works on a database system, it pulls every bit of content from the server. If there are a large number of requests for your blog, your server has to make that many DB queries to fetch the content. This puts a lot of stress on your server. User a Super Cache plugin to Cache some of the load and serve static HTML files instead of querying the DB (link to plugin, and page).
2. When you serve various files such as binaries, videos, images, scripts, etc from your server, it becomes slow. Place them on other servers, so that the load on your server is reduced. For example, you can get videos from Youtube and Photos from Flickr, and also, you can even hire some hosting space on another server or on a service such as Amazon S3 for this purpose.
3. If you are more advanced, look at your server logs; it may be possible to determine multiple requests from a bot or script that is of no good, blocking these may make your server behave a bit better
4. Look to get stats on how your web page is loading. If it takes a lot of time to load your page, there may be a lot of plugins working, or scripts loading, and so on. Some tools you can use for this purpose are - LiveHTTPHeaders (link, displays the HTTP headers), Firebug (link, Look at loading times for various artifacts on a page),
5. Inside your wp-config.php file, remove some of the DB calls that are not necessary. For example, hard-code your Template Path, Stylesheet path (link to relevant site). You will get some improvements.
6. Review your themes. Some themes call a lot of graphics, and overall call a lot of files. If your CSS files are divided into multiple files, combine them. Replace graphics wherever possible with text.
7. Review the plugins your are using to see whether they are required. Plugins can make your site much slower, especially if they do a lot of DB access and inefficient. If you are advanced technically, monitor the performance of your plugins.
8. Refer to this quick cheat sheet for DB optimization (link to cheat sheet)
9. Reduce the number of posts on the front page of your blog. Typically, Wordpress gives you 10 posts on your front page, you should reduce this to 3-4.
10. Use WP's Built in Object Cache as described on this page (link). From the same site, refer to the MySQL Query Cache.
11. For some detailed technical analysis of what can be done (link)
12. Clean Options (Finds orphaned options and allows for their removal from the wp_ options table) - Get it from this page
13. The combating comment spam page on Wordpress.org (link). If you have a good blog which is getting popular, increase in spam is only to be expected. Akismet filters out most comment spam, but just getting it into the junk spam list also adds some load to your server.
14. Page with 5 tips for making your Blog Digg / Slashdot proof (link)
15. High Traffic Tips For WordPress on Wordpress.org Codex (link)

If you know more ways beyond this, please do let me know.