Level 1 Attempt
Well, I had planned on attempting my Tripoli Level 1 Certification (that’s High Power Rocketry lingo for H and I motors for you non-rocket types) at the Midwest Regional Fun Fly. MRFF is usually put on as a joint effort between NIRA (Northern Illinois Rocketry Association) and WOOSH (Wisconsin Organization Of Spacemodeling Hobbyists). However, this year it looked like only NIRA would be there as they were the only one’s with it on the calendar. As such, I scrubbed my plans to make a L1 attempt. NIRA dropped their Tripoli association (I believe), and I prefer to certify with Tripoli since most of the HPR (High Power Rocketry) launches I attend are Tripoli. WOOSH is a Tripoli group, but it looked like they wouldn’t be there.
Now I see that they have it on their calendar. They also have this nifty little handout. So it looks like my attempt may be back on.
The problem is, I slowed way down on construction of my L1 project since I didn’t expect to be launching it this weekend. Granted, there isn’t that much left to do, just finish the paint and install motor retention. But with limited time between now and Saturday, that may be a bit of a scramble to complete. So I will scramble and get it flight ready by Saturday morning.
If there is time, I will post pictures and details of the project from start to finish.
Further Optimization of the W3C Validation Images
So call me picky, but I went ahead and tried to further optimize the process for using the W3C validation buttons. I know that seems like trying to eek out another 10 horsepower from a 400 horsepower sports car, but it really bothers me to reduce efficiency for something so useless (which brings up the point, “Why use them at all?” but that’s another story).
I felt that I could probably create some efficiencies by combining the images and using an imagemap for the links instead of using two separate images. There are basically three potential areas then for optimization:
- size of the html on the page
- size of the single image vs. two seperate
- reducing the images requested from 2 to 1
Note that this whole process is only an option if you actually have both valid XHTML and CSS. If either of these don’t validate, you need to just use the one image for the one that does validate.
Ok, so here is what I did:
I started by combining the two images into one single image:
This allowed a reduction in server requests from 2 to 1. Instead of asking the server for and image, then another, the browser only has to ask for a single image here. Also the total size of the single image is 1287 bytes. Compare this to 1441 bytes for the combined images. (Note that I am using 16 color gifs for both of these, as opposed to the 128 color originals. See my post on this.)
The second part of this process was to change the html to call the single image, use an image map to separate the links, and make sure it was valid XHTML, then measure the results in bytes.
342 bytes the old way:
alt="Valid XHTML 1.0!" height="31" width="88"
class="graphic"
align="middle" />
src="/images/w3c/w3c_css_16c.gif"
alt="Valid CSS!"align="middle" />
396 bytes the new way:
So, the html for the new way is actually a little bigger. But that is ok because our total weight of the images combined with the html is actually less. 1783 bytes the old way, 1683 bytes the new way – we save a total of 100 bytes. Doesn’t sound like much, does it? So I guess we will justify the whole process by saying that we’ve reduced the hits to the server in this process from 2 images to only 1.
Like I said, it’s like eeking out an extra 10 horsepower from a 400 horsepower engine. OK, maybe more like an extra 5, but it was fun, wasn’t it?
Optimizing W3C Validation Buttons
I was recently working on one of my sites and had added the W3C buttons for valid XHTML and CSS (which actually validate, by the way). I regularly run speed reports on my sites as well and when I added these two buttons, I was not pleased with the result. Call me picky, but the extra image weight wasn’t necessary for what these buttons are. Since they are more for show and don’t really serve purpose for the user, why add the weight?
So I took the buttons and reduced the number of colors in the gif to see what we could do without losing too much in the way of image quality. The originals were 128 colors. I found the least I could reduce it to and without losing too much quality was 16 colors. The results were pretty good, I think. The XHTML button was reduced in size from 1.68k to 805 bytes. The CSS was even better going from 1.23k to 656 bytes. Now I can load both buttons for less than the cost of the original XHTML button.
Here are the results. Feel free to use them in place of the originals (if your pages do in fact validate).
| Original (128 colors) | Optimized (16 colors) |
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Sage: a feed reader for Firefox
Back in my (not so long ago) IE days, I was using Pluck as an RSS reader. I liked it, it was handy. Now that I switched to Firefox, I had to find something for RSS. Nice thing about Firefox, there are a lot of plugins available.
Sage seems to fit the bill. It has a sidebar for the feeds like Pluck did in IE. So far, so good. If you use Firefox (you do use Firefox, don’t you?), Sage would be a nice plugin to add. If you know of a better RSS reader for Firefox, let me know.
Sage: a feed reader for Firefox
Sometimes Ironic
I was about to post yesterday about BrowseHappy. I had been meaning to for sometime, then yesterday I had the urge to post about it. Then, for whatever reason, I didn’t. So what about that is ironic?
It seems that yesterday, an announcement was made by the Web Standards Project (another fabulous site, by the way) with the headline
Appearently, WaSP felt that BrowseHappy compromised its position by infering a lack of neutrality toward various browsers. That makes sense to me, since BrowseHappy really promotes Mozilla browsers (and specifically, IMO, Firefox). So…
to make a long story short WordPress.org will be taking Browse Happy under its wing by continuing hosting the site and keeping it current with the latest trends and information.
![[Valid RSS]](/wp-images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
