David Xia

Category Archives: Technology

How the Internet’s Domain Name System Works

2012-02-12T22:45:24+00:00 | By

So what exactly happens when you type “davidxia.com” into your browser’s address field and hit “Enter”?

A website is simply a collection of online content ranging from text documents to images to video. All this content lives in physical machines called servers. Servers listen for incoming calls or requests from web browsers or applications and respond with the appropriate content.

Think of the Internet as having a giant Yellowpages phone book

So how does this content get from a machine that could be halfway around the world to your computer? Every machine that’s connected to the Internet… more

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Why an Aesthetically-pleasing Internet is Important

2012-01-04T16:34:28+00:00 | By

I prefer to write code for backend. The plumbing, infrastructure, functionality of a product. Backend developers want the computer to spit out all the relevant data for a page as fast as possible. Their primary concern isn’t how it looks, just that it gets there efficiently.

But I’ve learned that functionality is necessary but not sufficient. Form that only fits function fails to attract users. A well-crafted web app must also have good design. This is why UX and UI are increasingly more important. In the early days of the Internet when only hardcore hackers and geeks were online… more

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How to Work Happily with Developers

2012-02-12T22:45:52+00:00 | By

Since I didn’t know how to program last year, it’s better to write my thoughts down now before I become a tech elitist who can’t relate to people who don’t know and don’t care about the difference between interpreted and compiled languages.

1. Don’t treat developers as commodities.
Why would you treat anybody in your organization as commodities? If your team hired the right people, you should value each of them.

2. Simple things can often be complex (and complex things can be simple).
So don’t expect seemingly small changes to be done in the blink of an… more

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Why You Should Read Steve Jobs’ Biography

2012-01-07T19:09:01+00:00 | By

I’ve got 140 pages left to go in Steve Jobs’ biography, and I’ve laughed, shuddered, but most of all, felt inspired by all the pages so far. I can’t believe I didn’t know more about Jobs’ personal background; the creation, near death, and triumphant rise of Apple; or the myriad other people in the tech world that were related to Jobs’ life.

Isaacson writes with clarity and detail. The anecdotes are numerous and often funny. The portrait Isaacson paints of Jobs has inspired, scared, and taught me a lot. I… more

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What I Learned From Chris Dixon’s Skillshare Class

2012-02-09T16:48:18+00:00 | By

I attended Chris Dixon’s Skillshare class “How to Raise Your First Round” earlier this week. It was my first time meeting the entrepreneur and investor. I learned a lot from his class. Here’s a summary.

Whether to Raise Money

Avoid taking money if you can. Some businesses are not suitable for VC funding. This includes mom and pop stores and companies that can’t scale up to have revenue in at least the hundreds of millions.

I asked whether our current culture of celebrating fundraising as a mark of success is a recent… more

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How to Install Ubuntu 11.10 on Macbook Air 4,2

2011-10-27T10:12:30+00:00 | By

I told my friends I wanted to run Ubuntu, a flavor of the Linux operating system, on my Macbook Air. But I was hesitant. When they asked why, I said I was worried about hardware-software compatibility and, on a more philosophical level, Steve Job’s death was too recent for me to tinker with a product he made to be a cohesive unit.

My friends dismissed my latter concern and said the installation should be a cakewalk.

They are wrong. Installing Ubuntu 11.10 on a 13″ Macbook Air 4,2 is tedious and confusing. I had… more

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Ignore Spam Email From John of Ygnetworkltd

2012-02-09T15:24:08+00:00 | By

I received a strange email a few days ago from a man named John. He told me

Dear Manager,

(If you are not the person who is in charge of this, please forward this to your CEO,Thanks)

This email is from China domain name registration center, which mainly deal with the domain name registration and dispute internationally in China and Asia.

On September 19th 2011, We received Tianhua Ltd’s application that they are registering the name ” davidxia ” as their Internet Keyword and ” davidxia .cn “、” davidxia .com.cn ” 、” davidxia .asia “domain names… more

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How I Learned to Program

2012-02-09T18:34:27+00:00 | By

I’ve always liked to write and decided a good way to share my writing was on a personal blog. Three years ago I registered a free Wordpress blog with the url “davidxia.worpdress.com.” I decided the “wordpress” in my URL was lame so I Googled how to buy a domain name. I registered “davidxia.com” through GoDaddy and rented some hosting space. (Unfortunately I rented hosting space with GoDaddy because I didn’t know any better. I’ve since switched to Linode.)

I didn’t like my Wordpress blog’s default theme so I browsed other ones. I didn’t like any that I… more

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Robert Zubrin’s “The Significance of the Martian Frontier”

2011-09-12T00:07:30+00:00 | By

Robert Zubrin, an American aerospace engineer and author, wrote the essay The Significance of the Martian Frontier. He argues that the technological and cultural advancements of “Western humanist civilization” were the result of a frontier – a wild and unknown territory of vast resources. The Greeks had the Mediterranean. The United States had the American West (never mind that the Native Americans were here long before).

Zubrin argues for the need of a new frontier, namely Mars. He cites Frederick Jackson Turner‘s essay “The Significance of the Frontier in American History“… more

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WordPress Logged-in Cookie Problem and Solution

2012-02-09T14:46:48+00:00 | By

My Wordpress blog is installed in a subdirectory in my document root. This keeps the document root tidier. The problem is that the cookie titled “wordpress_logged_in_somerandomhash” that tells Wordpress you’re logged has its path set to http://www.yoursite.com/subdirectory. You can still log into the admin console. But when you visit your blog at http://www.yoursite.com, Wordpress doesn’t think you’re logged in because your browser doesn’t send the wordpress_logged_in_somerandomhash cookie.

This is not a huge problem, but I wanted that nice banner on the top that allows me to have admin functions. I also wanted each post to have an “edit” link… more

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