[Quote] 8 Flags FCU Dear Don, We just wanted to let you know that we truly appreciate you helping us out of our dire need for computer expertice. Again we thank you for all you did to get us up and running. [/Quote]

www.debian-administration.org/articles/412
Posted by Steve on Thu 6 Jul 2006 at 22:03

One of the most common Apache2 questions I've seen on Debian mailing lists is from users who wonder how to host multiple websites with a single server. This is very straightforward, especially with the additional tools the Debian package provides.

We've previously discussed some of the tools which are included in the Apache2 package, but what we didn't do was show they're used from start to finish.

There are many different ways you can configure Apache to host multiple sites, ranging from the simple to the complex. Here we're only going to cover the basics with the use of the NameVirtualHost directive. The advantage of this approach is that you don't need to hard-wire any IP addresses, and it will just work^tm. The only thing you need is for your domain names to resolve to the IP address of your webserver.

For example if you have an Apache server running upon the IP address 192.168.1.1 and you wish to host the three sites example.com, example.net, and example.org you'll need to make sure that these names resolve to the IP address of your server.

(This might mean that you need example.com and www.example.com to resolve to the same address. However that is a choice you'll need to make for yourself).

Since we'll be hosting multiple websites on the same host it makes a lot of sense to be very clear on the location of each sites files upon the filesystem. The way I suggest you manage this is to create a completely seperate document root, cgi-bin directory, and logfile directory for each host. You can place these beneath the standard Debian prefix of /var/www or you may use a completely different root - I use /home/www.

If you've not already done create the directories to contain your content, etc, as follows:

root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www

root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.com
root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.com/htdocs
root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.com/cgi-bin
root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.com/logs

root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.net 
root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.net/htdocs
root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.net/logs
root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.net/cgi-bin

root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.org 
root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.org/htdocs
root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.org/logs
root@irony:~# mkdir /home/www/www.example.org/cgi-bin

Here we've setup three different directory trees, one for each site. If you wanted to have identical content it might make sense to only create one, and then use symbolic links instead.

The next thing to do is to enable virtual hosts in your Apache configuration. The simplest way to do this is to create a file called /etc/apache2/conf.d/virtual.conf and include the following content in it:

#
#  We're running multiple virtual hosts.
#
NameVirtualHost *

(When Apache starts up it reads the contents of all files included in /etc/apache2/conf.d, and files you create here won't get trashed on package upgrades.)

Once we've done this we can create the individual host configuration files. The Apache2 setup you'll find on Debian GNU/Linux includes two directories for locating your site configuration files:

/etc/apache2/sites-available

This contains configuration files for sites which are available but not necessarily enabled.

/etc/apache2/sites-enabled

This directory contains site files which are enabled.

As with the conf.d directory each configuration file in the sites-enabled directory is loaded when the server starts - whilst the files in sites-available are completely ignored.

You are expected to create your host configuration files in /etc/apache2/sites-available, then create a symbolic link to those files in the sites-enabled directory - this will cause them to be actually loaded/read.

Rather than actually messing around with symbolic links the Debian package includes two utility commands a2ensite and a2dissite which will do the necessary work for you as we will demonstrate shortly.

Lets start with a real example. Create /etc/apache2/sites-available/www.example.com with the following contents:

#
#  Example.com (/etc/apache2/sites-available/www.example.com)
#
<VirtualHost *>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@example.com
        ServerName  www.example.com
        ServerAlias example.com

        # Indexes + Directory Root.
        DirectoryIndex index.html
        DocumentRoot /home/www/www.example.com/htdocs/

        # CGI Directory
        ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/www/www.example.com/cgi-bin/
        <Location /cgi-bin>
                Options +ExecCGI
        </Location>


        # Logfiles
        ErrorLog  /home/www/www.example.com/logs/error.log
        CustomLog /home/www/www.example.com/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Next create the file www.example.net:

#
#  Example.net (/etc/apache2/sites-available/www.example.net)
#
<VirtualHost *>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@example.net
        ServerName  www.example.net
        ServerAlias example.net

        # Indexes + Directory Root.
        DirectoryIndex index.html
        DocumentRoot /home/www/www.example.net/htdocs/

        # CGI Directory
        ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/www/www.example.net/cgi-bin/
        <Location /cgi-bin>
                Options +ExecCGI
        </Location>

        # Logfiles
        ErrorLog  /home/www/www.example.net/logs/error.log
        CustomLog /home/www/www.example.net/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Finally create the file www.example.org:

#
#  Example.org (/etc/apache2/sites-available/www.example.org)
#
<VirtualHost *>
        ServerAdmin webmaster@example.org
        ServerName  www.example.org
        ServerAlias example.org

        # Indexes + Directory Root.
        DirectoryIndex index.html
        DocumentRoot /home/www/www.example.org/htdocs/

        # CGI Directory
        ScriptAlias /cgi-bin/ /home/www/www.example.org/cgi-bin/
        <Location /cgi-bin>

                Options +ExecCGI
        </Location>


        # Logfiles
        ErrorLog  /home/www/www.example.org/logs/error.log
        CustomLog /home/www/www.example.org/logs/access.log combined
</VirtualHost>

Now we've got:

• Three directories which can be used to contain our content.
• Three directories which can be used to contain our logfiles.
• Three directories which can be used to contain our dynamic CGI scripts.
• Three configuration files which are being ignored by Apache.

To enable the sites simply run:

root@irony:~# a2ensite www.example.com
Site www.example.com installed; run /etc/init.d/apache2 reload to enable.

root@irony:~# a2ensite www.example.net
Site www.example.net installed; run /etc/init.d/apache2 reload to enable.

root@irony:~# a2ensite www.example.org
Site www.example.org installed; run /etc/init.d/apache2 reload to enable.

This will now create the symbolic links so that /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/www.example.org, etc, now exist and will be read.

Once we've finished our setup we can restart, or reload, the webserver as the output above instructed us to do with:

root@irony:~# /etc/init.d/apache2 reload
Reloading web server config...done.
root@irony:~# 

posted 18th May 2004

• Text for the screen is sized with CSS in terms of pixels, ems or keywords. As most of us know, sizing with pixels is easy: get your selector and give it a font-size – no more thought required. Sizing with keywords is more complicated and requires a few workarounds, but you’re in luck as the techniques are well documented. That leaves ems. At this point people often leg it. ‘Ems are too inconsistent,’ they say, ‘they’re too hard; they never work.’ Well that may be the received wisdom, but if ever the was a case of FUD then this is it. I will now attempt to show you how ems can be as quick and easy to use as pixels.

  Why ems?

  If the world were an ideal place, we’d all use pixels. But it’s not, we have the broken browser to contend with. IE/Win will not allow readers to resize text that has been sized in pixels. Like it or not, your readers will want to resize text at some point. Perhaps they are short-sighted, doing a presentation, using a ridiculously high resolution laptop or simply have tired eyes. So unless you know (not think) your audience won’t be using IE/Win or will never wish to resize their text then pixels are not yet a viable solution.

  Keyword-based text sizing will allow all browsers to resize text so this is a possibility, but I don’t find it gives me the precision that pixels would give me. Using ems however, allows all browsers to resize text and also provides pixel-level precision and so they tend to be my unit of choice.

  Get on with it

  OK let’s dive into ems. I’ll show you, from scratch, how to size text in a document using ems. I’ll assume throughout that we are dealing with a browser set to ‘medium’ text. The default size for ‘medium’ text in all modern browsers is 16px. Our first step is to reduce this size for the entire document by setting body size to 62.5%:

  BODY {font-size:62.5%}

  This takes 16px down to 10px which I’m using purely because it’s a nice round number for example purposes – 10px text is too small for the real world. From now on it’s easy to think in pixels but still set sizes in terms of ems: 1em is 10px, 0.8em is 8px, 1.6em is 16px, etc. If you are laying out your document using CSS (which you are, right?) then you have probably used a few divs to group together elements. Apply text-size to these divs and your job is almost done. Consider a two column layout with header and footer:

  <body>
  <div id="navigation"> ... </div>
  <div id="main_content"> ... </div>
  <div id="side_bar"> ... </div>
  
  <div id="footer"> ... </div>
  </body>
  
  #navigation {font-size:1em}
  #main_content {font-size:1.2em}
  #side_bar {font-size:1em}
  #footer {font-size:0.9em}

  So this would give us a document where text in the navigation and side bar is displayed at 10px, the main content is 12px and the footer is 9px. There now remains a few anomalies to sort out (you’d have to do this even if you were sizing in pixels). In Mozilla-based browsers, all heading elements in our aforementioned #main_content div will be displayed at 12px whether they are an H1 or an H6, whereas other browsers show the headings at different sizes as expected. Applying text-sizes to all headings will give consistency across browsers, for example:

  H1 {font-size:2em}  /* displayed at 24px */
  H2 {font-size:1.5em}  /* displayed at 18px */
  H3 {font-size:1.25em}  /* displayed at 15px */
  H4 {font-size:1em}  /* displayed at 12px */

  A similar job needs to be done on forms and tables to force form controls and table cells to inherit the correct size (mainly to cater for IE/Win):

  INPUT, SELECT, TH, TD {font-size:1em}

  And so to the final tweak and the bit folks seem to find most tricky: dealing with nested elements. We’ve already touched upon it with our headers, but for now let’s look more closely at what’s going on. First of all we changed our body text to 10px; 62.5% of its default size:

  16 x 0.625 = 10

  Then we said our main content should be displayed at 12px. If we did nothing, the #main_content div would be displayed at 10px because it would inherit its size from the body element – its parent. This implies that we always size text relative to the parent element when using ems:

  child pixels / parent pixels = child ems
  12 / 10 = 1.2

  Next we wanted our h1 heading to be 24px. The parent to our h1 is the main_content div which we know to be 12px in size. To get our headings to be 24px we need to double that so our ems are:

  24 / 12 = 2

  And so it goes on. Tricky stuff occurs where rules like this are applied:

  #main_content LI {font-size:0.8333em}

  This rule implies that all main content list items should be displayed at 10px. We use the same straight forward maths to achieve this:

  10 / 12 = 0.8333

  But what happens when one list contains another? It gets smaller. Why? Because our rule actually says that any list item in the #main_content div should 0.8333 times the size of its parent. So we need another rule to prevent this ‘inherited shrinkage’:

  LI LI {font-size:1em}

  This says that any list item inside another list item should be the same size as its parent (the other list item). I normally use a whole set of child selectors to prevent confusion during development:

  LI LI, LI P, TD P, BLOCKQUOTE P {font-size:1em}

  And that’s it. When sizing text in ems there’s really one rule to remember: size text relative to its parent and use this simple calculation to do so:

  child pixels / parent pixels = child ems

  Some helpful tools

  Pixy’s list computed styles is fabulous bookmarklet which shows the cascade of calculated font sizes (or any other CSS property). Mozilla’s DOM Inspector is even more powerful as it allows you to see which CSS rules are affecting any given element in order of cascade priority so you can see why your text is or isn’t changing size when you expected it to.

  If you’re finding the maths all a bit complex, try using Riddle’s handy em calculator.

  And finally… what is an em?

  Classically, an em (pronounced emm) is a typographer’s unit of horizontal spacing and is a sliding (relative) measure. One em is a distance equal to the text size. In 10 pixel type, an em is 10 pixels; in 18 pixel type it is 18 pixels. Thus 1em of padding is proportionately the same in any text size.

  Update:

  Make sure you read Patrick H Lauke’s comment on perfecting this method for IE5/Win.

Typography · CSS techniques

• Pete F. wrote:

  

  I like to start the page with a default font size definition in points, then use “em’s” of that point size for specific items. Works well across all browsers, including IE/Win, IE/Mac, Firefox, Opera and Safari.

  18 May 2004, 14:12 GMT

• Marko Samastur wrote:

  

  Just a small comment from a math nut. 75% of 16 is 12, not 10.

  So, if you want to go from 16px to 10px, you need to set font-size to 62.5% (unless browsers have their own math and 75% actually works).

  18 May 2004, 14:40 GMT

• Rich wrote:

  

  Marko – thanks for that. Schoolboy error duly corrected.

  18 May 2004, 15:00 GMT

• James Craig wrote:

  

  Fantastic article, and a perfect description of how to use ems. I disagree with one small part of the method though: the arbitrary body size. I’d recommend leaving the body size at 100% and scaling the rest down in ems accordingly. Of course, the downside is that the default is no longer the easily-divided 10 pixels. The upside is that it works well with user style sheets.

  Imagine I was a more-technical-than-average user (more people will figure out user CSS eventually) that had a preference for larger fonts. Perhaps I had vision impairment, perhaps I had some standard hyperopia gaining with age, or perhaps I just liked reading large text better. Not too large, mind you. Just about 120% of normal. Seems easy enough in my user CSS, right?

  body {font-size:120% !important;}

  That is, as long as everyone uses the standard default size for the body element. Trying this one your example yields massive text. I’ve also seen other arbitrary examples like 76 percent or 80-something percent. The more variations there are, the worse it becomes.

  So that’s my two cents. Do you agree? Again, lovely article… (We just differ on one small detail.)

  18 May 2004, 15:54 GMT

• Gordon wrote:

  

  Wonderful article, and you are right FUD was stopping. No more!

  Thanks for taking the time to capture this info, it’s people like you that help people like me look good (well.. better at least..)

  18 May 2004, 18:30 GMT

• Mike P. wrote:

  James, I believe that 76% came from Owen Briggs work:
  http://www.thenoodleincident.com/tutorials/box_lesson/font/

  18 May 2004, 20:12 GMT

• Shawn Medero wrote:

  

  My own testing tells me 76% is as small as you can go before things text becomes unreadable in some browsers.

  18 May 2004, 21:05 GMT

• ie wrote:

  An excellent article. I think I finally understand how to make ems work.

  Nonetheless, the em approach seems to me to be fairly unwieldy. I differ with you that “sizing with keywords is more complicated.” The ALA article you’re alluding to was the first of its kind. Things have moved on since.

  The technique has stood me in good stead many a time.

  body, div, table, h1, ... h6 {

  font-size: x-small; fo
  t-size: small; /* ALA uses Celik’s hack, I prefer Tan’s hack */
  }

  This gives you a “base” font size 13px in all major browsers if and when set to “medium” text size. Now you can alter text size using either ems or percentages without a usual ripple effect or tedious calculations.

  When you size text, let’s say, from smallest to largest in IE, it’s always legible. See www.stopdesign.com

  With ems you may get horrific text size. See www.micr.cz

  18 May 2004, 22:17 GMT

• patrick h. lauke wrote:

  

  two issues that are worth mentioning as well:

  – IE gets its text resizing horribly wrong when just using ems. if your text size is set to normal, it’s fine, and ems relate directly to what the equivalent percentage would be…so having 0.75em on the body would have the same effect as 75%. now, bump the text size up or down, and you’ll notice that IE scales ems far more drastically than percentages, resulting in too big / too small text. the deceptively simple solution: in addition to having something like

  body { font-size: 0.75em; }

  you need to add an extra rule (i usually do it on the html) in percentages, which helps IE get its bearing back in terms of resizing…so

  html { font-size: 100%; /* IE hack */ }
  body { font-size: 0.75em; }

  now resizing works consistently.

  – although, as per the cascade, setting the font-size on the body should really influence all text sizing in the document, IE seems to ignore it when it encounters a table. the naive approach would be to set the font size for both body and tables like so

  body, table { font-size: 0.75em; }

  this works in IE, but any other same browser will honour the cascade, resulting in table text actually being sized to 0.75 of 0.75 = 0.5625em. the solution, similar to the previous one, is to add a percentage size to the table

  body { font-size: 0.75em; }
  table { font-size: 100%; /* IE hack */ }

  i seem to remember that this same issue happens with selects and inputs as well, and can be solved in exactly the same way, by adding a 100% sizing to them in the CSS.

  i like to call these the “be patronisingly over-specific, so IE knows what you mean” rules…and the beauty is that these don’t break in other browsers, and – apart from being “obvious” – don’t really fall under the category of hacks per se, as they don’t rely on bugs in any browser’s css parsing like, say, the box model hack does…

From: http://www.bigbaer.com/css_tutorials/css_font_size.htm

There are two types of length units: relative and absolute. Relative length units specify a length relative to another length property. Style sheets that use relative units will more easily scale from one medium to another (e.g., from a computer display to a laser printer). - W3C Relative units are:

• em: the 'font-size' of the relevant font
• ex: the 'x-height' of the relevant font
• px: pixels, relative to the viewing device

The .em unit can be troublesome, though theoretically it is ideal. Read the following from the W3C specs and note the potential pitfalls: The 'em' unit is equal to the computed value of the 'font-size' property of the element on which it is used. The exception is when 'em' occurs in the value of the 'font-size' property itself, in which case it refers to the font size of the parent element. It may be used for vertical or horizontal measurement. (This unit is also sometimes called the quad-width in typographic texts.)

BAD JOKE ALERT! What did one .em say to the other .em? Who's your Daddy? Wince all you like now, but hold it to heart when you venture into the realm of .em's! Most of the confusion and difficulties when first using "em" results when the declared "font-size" of the parent element is overlooked. Used correctly, the .em is an ideal font-size unit of measure. Pixel units are relative to the resolution of the viewing device, i.e., most often a computer display. If the pixel density of the output device is very different from that of a typical computer display, the user agent should rescale pixel values. It is recommended that the reference pixel be the visual angle of one pixel on a device with a pixel density of 96dpi and a distance from the reader of an arm's length. For a nominal arm's length of 28 inches, the visual angle is therefore about 0.0213 degrees. A single pixel viewed in that reference frame would approximate 0.26mm in length. Pixel units are relative to the resolution of the viewing device... With this in mind, .px may be the most portable unit of measure across devices. Absolute length units are only useful when the physical properties of the output medium are known. The absolute units are:

• in: inches -- 1 inch is equal to 2.54 centimeters.
• cm: centimeters
• mm: millimeters
• pt: points -- the points used by CSS2 are equal to 1/72th of an inch.
• pc: picas -- 1 pica is equal to 12 points.

In cases where the specified length cannot be supported, user agents must approximate it in the actual value.

→ be VERY afraid! Ideally? The very best unit of measure is NONE AT ALL! Let the user-agent determine the display according to the user's preference - BUT! We also know that with most designs, this is not a very practical approach. Personally? I prefer the "mix 'n match" flexiblilty of .em and .px - As user-agents become more "user-friendly" designer sizing will NOT be as potentially problematic OR controversial as it stands now. ;) - papabaer <font> Bad! CSS Good!♠

Example of em font size scaling in relation to the font size of the parent element

So what exactly is an em? The em unit traces its origin to the em box as used in print typography. The actual spatial rendering of an em is dependent on the glyphs of the font used. As such there is naturally a great deal of variance. The "1 em" spatial representation of an upper case letter X of the Courier font will be decidedly different from the rendering of the same upper case letter X of the Verdana font.

Though at first thought it may seem confusing it is not. An "em" unit or "1 em" displays at the default or "base" size for a rendered font glyph as contained within an HTML element where the default display is assigned by the user agent. Generally speaking, text styled with a font-size 1 em {font-size: 1em;} will display as if no size declarations were assigned. Font-size "1 em" headers, sub-headers, paragraphs and other user-agent display controlled elements will all render at the default user-agent-determined settings.

Some designers feel the "default font-size" assigned by user-agents is too large. Declaring a smaller than "1 em" font-size for body text is a simple thing. A popular "em-size" for body text (used here!) is {font-size: 0.8em;} which generally renders as the equivalent of 11px (11 pixels).

In conclusion, pixel (.px) sized fonts offer reliable control and consistant scaling across devices. A 12px font size will always retain the same relative scale to a 16px font when displayed on the same device and active resolution. The em unit scales consistantly as well and has the added advantage of allowing the end-user to adjust the text size through settings available on a particular user agent.

Em is used almost exclusively throughout this site because of its accessbility (text-resizing) advantage. The em is easy to work with as long as you recall the punch line from the earlier bad joke. Just always remember to ask each em, "Who's your Daddy?" and you and the em will do just fine! - Jack "Papa" Baer 2002/05/17

A hacker picking apart the security model of Microsoft's brand new Windows Server 2008 has found serious design weaknesses that render some of the product's new security protections "useless." You can read his comments here: Hacker Pours Cold Water on Windows Server 2008 Security Design

Google Is a Calculator

When you can’t be troubled to reach over and pick up the handheld calculator sitting on your desk, you can use Google as a high-tech web-based calculator. All you have to do is enter your equation or formula into the standard Google search box, and then click the Google Search button. The result of the calculation is displayed on the search results page; it’s that simple.

You can use the standard algebraic operators to construct your calculations—+, -, x, and / for addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, accordingly. For example, to add 2 plus 3, enter 2 + 3 and press Enter. To divide 10 by 2, enter 10 / 2, and so on.

And Google’s calculator isn’t limited to basic addition and multiplication. It can also handle more advanced calculations, trigonometric functions, inverse trigonometric functions, hyperbolic functions, and logarithmic functions. Just enter the proper formula into the search box, and wait for Google to display the answer.

Google Knows Mathematical Constants

In addition to performing calculations, Google also knows a variety of mathematical and scientific constants, such as pi, Avogadro’s Number, and Planck’s Constant. It also knows the radius of the Earth, the mass of the sun, the speed of light, the gravitational constant, and a lot more.

For example, if you’re not sure what the value of pi is, just enter pi into the Search box and press Enter; Google returns 3.14159265, as it should. How about the speed of light? Enter speed of light, and Google returns 299,792,458 m/s. It’s amazing what Google knows.

Google Converts Units of Measure

Another surprise is that Google’s calculator also handles conversions. It knows miles and meters, furlongs and light years, seconds and fortnights, and even angstroms and Smoots—and can convert from one unit of measurement to another.

The key to using the Google calculator as a converter is to express your query using the proper syntax. In essence, you want to start with the first measure, followed by the word "in," followed by the second unit of measure. A general query looks like this: x firstunits in secondunits.

For example, to find out how many feet equal a meter, enter the query 1 meter in feet. Not sure how many teaspoons are in a cup? Enter 1 cup in teaspoons. Want to convert 100 U.S. dollars into Euros? Then enter 100 usd in euros. And so on and so forth.

Google Is a Dictionary

Want to look up the definition of a particular word, but don’t want to bother pulling out the old hardcover dictionary? Not sure of a specific spelling? Then use Google as an online dictionary to look up any word you can think of. It’s easy—and there are two ways to do it.

The first approach to looking up definitions is to use a ´All you have to do is enter the keywords what is in your query, followed by the word in question. (No question mark is necessary.) For example, to look up the definition of the word "defenestrate," enter what is defenestrate.

When you use a "what is" search, Google returns a standard search results page (typically with several useful definition links in the list), as well as a definition section at the top of the page. This section includes a short definition of the word and two useful links. The first link, disguised as the result title, is actually a link to other definitions of the word on the web. The second link, Definition in Context, displays an example of the word used in a sentence.

Google Is a Glossary

Even more definitions are available when you use the Google Glossary feature. Google Glossary is what Google calls it, anyway; really, it’s just another advanced search operator that produces some very specific results.

The operator in question is define:. Use this operator before the word you want defined, with no spaces between. So, for example, if you want to define the word "defenestrate," enter the query define:defenestrate.

When your query includes the define: operator, Google displays a special definitions page. This page includes all the definitions for the word that Google found on the web; click a link to view the full definition.

And here’s something else to know. If you want to define a phrase, use the define: operator but put the phrase in quotation marks. For example, to define the phrase "peer to peer", enter the query define:"peer to peer".

Google Lists All the Facts

When you’re looking for hard facts, Google might be able to help. Yes, Google always returns a list of sites that match your specific query, but if you phrase your query correctly—and are searching for a fact that Google has pre-identified—you can get the precise information you need at the top of the search results page.

What types of information are we talking about? Fact-based information, such as birthdates, birthplaces, population, and so on. All you have to do is enter a query that states the fact you want to know. For example:

• To find the population of San Francisco, enter population san Francisco.
• To find where Mark Twain was born, enter birthplace mark twain.
• To find when President Bill Clinton was born, enter birthday bill clinton.
• To find when Raymond Chandler died, enter die raymond chandler.
• To find who is the president of Germany, enter president germany.

The answers to these questions are displayed at the top of your search results page. You get the precise answer to your question, according to the referenced website. Click the associated link to learn more from this source.

Google Displays Weather Reports

Did you know that Google can be used to find and display current weather conditions and forecasts? It’s a pretty easy search; all you have to do is enter the keyword weather, followed by the location. You can enter the location as a city name, city plus state, or Zip code. For example, to view the weather forecast for Minneapolis, enter weather minneapolis.

Google displays current weather conditions and a four-day forecast at the top of the search results page. And, while this is a good summary report, you may want to click through to the more detailed forecasts offered in the standard search results listings below the four-day forecast.

Google Knows Current Airport Conditions

Weather information is important to travelers, as is information about flight and airport delays. Fortunately, you can use the main Google search page to search for this information, just as you did with weather forecasts.

To search for weather conditions and delays at a particular airport, all you have to do is enter the airport’s three-letter code, followed by the word airport. For example, to view conditions at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport (with the code MSP), enter msp airport. This displays a link to conditions at the chosen airport; click this link for detailed information.

Google Tracks Flight Status

Google also lets you track the status of any U.S. flight and many international flights. All you have to do is enter the flight number into the Google search box. For example, to find out the status of United Airlines flight 116, enter ua116.

Google now displays links to three sites that let you track the flight status—Travelocity, Expedia, and fboweb. Click one of these links to view real-time flight status—including maps of where the plane is in its route.

Google Tracks Packages

Airline flights aren’t the only things you can track with Google. Google also lets you track the status of package deliveries, from the U.S. Postal Service, FedEx, and UPS. All you have to do is enter the package’s tracking number into the Google search box, and Google will display a link to the service’s tracking page for that package.

Google Is a Giant Phone Directory

As part of its massive database of information, Google now includes listings for millions of U.S. households in what it calls the Google PhoneBook. You search the PhoneBook listings from the main Google search box, using specific query parameters.

All you have to do is enter some combination of the following parameters: first name (or initial), last name, city, state, or Zip code. For example, to search for John Smith in Minneapolis, enter john smith minneapolis mn. As you might suspect, the more details you provide, the more targeted your results will be.

When you enter your query using one of these methods, Google returns a search result page with a PhoneBook Results item at the top of the results list. The two or three names listed here aren’t the only matches in the Google PhoneBook, however. To see the other matching names, click the PhoneBook Results link; this displays a full page of PhoneBook listings.

And here’s something even more cool—Google lets you perform reverse phone number lookups. Just enter the full phone number, including area code, into the standard Google search box. You can enter all 10 numbers in a row, without hyphens (like this: 1234567890), or use the standard hyphenated form (like this: 123-456-7890); Google accepts either method. When you click the search button, Google displays a single matching PhoneBook result.

Google Knows Area Codes

It goes without saying that if Google knows phone numbers, it also knows area codes. If you have an area code and want to know which city it serves, just enter the area code; Google will return the city in which that area code resides.

Google Has Movie Information

Numbers aren’t the only types of information available via a Google lookup. You can also use the standard Google search box to look up movie reviews and showtimes. All you have to do is enter the word movies followed by the name of the movie. For example, to find out when Casino Royale is showing in your neighborhood, enter movies casino royale.

Google now displays a movie information section at the top of the search results page. From here you can click to view movie reviews, showtimes for a theater near you, and so on.

And if you can’t remember the name of a given movie, you can use Google to figure it out for you. Just enter the movie: operator, followed by whatever information you do know—an actor’s name, the movie’s director, a plot detail, or whatever. Google returns a list of movies that match your search criteria, along with reviews for each movie listed. Click the movie title to view more reviews for that movie.

Google Loves Music

Google not only lets you search for movie information, it also is a great search engine for music. Google knows the names of tens of thousands of popular performers; all you have to do is enter the performer’s name in the search box, and Google returns specific information about that performer.

For example, when you search for norah jones, Google displays a Norah Jones section at the top of the search results page. This section includes a brief listing of the artist’s most recent (or most well-known) albums and songs.

And there’s more. Click the performer’s name and you see a visual listing of the artist’s albums. Click any album art or title and you see a listing of album tracks, a link to album reviews, and links to download tracks from the album from a variety of online music stores. Back on the main artist page, there are also links to websites devoted to the artist, news about the artist, photos of the artist, and mentions of the artists in Google Groups discussion forums.

Google Knows the Answer to the Ultimate Question

Let’s return to Google’s calculator for one final hidden feature. As you recall, the Google calculator has been hardwired to include the answers to some fairly complex—and fairly fanciful—calculations. For a bit of fun, try entering the query what is the answer to life the universe and everything. Google’s answer should delight long-time fans of Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. (It’s "42", in case you were wondering.)

My wife found this excerpt online - it is a very touching story... From: http://www.spiritofmaat.com/archive/sep3/emotions.htm Animals also feel fear and anguish at facing death, and struggle to preserve their existence. The true story of Emily illustrates the anguish that a three-year-old Holstein cow felt when it was about to be slaughtered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Emily had seen her companions pass through a swinging door in front of her, never to return, and she was next in line to be slaughtered. She had never been in a slaughterhouse before, and there was no way out for her since a five-foot fence confined her in a small area. Emily was lucky. Just as her turn came up, the men took a lunch break. Emily seized upon the moment and took the opportunity to escape. Somehow, this 1,600-pound cow jumped over the five-foot fence. No one had ever heard of a cow doing this kind of thing before, and she soon became known throughout the rural area west of Boston, where a search party tried to find her. The slaughterhouse workmen scoured the woods and endeavored to entice her back by leaving bales of hay for her, but she would not go near the traps that they set. Many people reported seeing Emily running through the woods. Some even saw her learning to forage for food with a herd of deer. The newspaper reported updates on recent sightings of Emily, and when Meg Randa read about her, she felt determined to purchase her from the slaughterhouse so that she could live in peace on Randa's land. The Randas searched the woods and left food for Emily. But although Emily ate the grain, hay, and water that they left for her, she did not reveal herself to them. After numerous attempts, they finally found her in the woods, looking right at them. She had lost 500 pounds and needed the care of a veterinarian to recover from her 40-day ordeal. Eventually, she was taken to Randa's schoolhouse, where she is being tended by the students.

Our Beach Home in Australia

Click the photo of the house for the KUNDA Website...

[KUNDA means "Nest" in Aboriginal]

Click the photo of the beach for photos of the MANY nearby beaches...

Nearby Beaches

Click on the Thumbnail...

From: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=499240&in_page_id=1770&in_page_id=1770&expand=true I love this article - my view is that the age of the artist is irrelevant - go to the Link to see the 50+ comments - many of which are gloating about the poke in the eye for the "Art Critics" of the world...
Don
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To the untrained eye, they appear to be simple daubs that could have been created by a two year old. Which is precisely what they are.

But that didn't stop the supposed experts falling over themselves to acclaim them.

The toddler in question is Freddie Linsky, who has fooled the art world into buying and asking to exhibit his paintings.

Freddie's efforts, which include works using tomato ketchup composed while sitting on his high chair, were posted by his mother Estelle Lovatt on collector Charles Saatchi's online gallery.

She claimed her son was an art critic and and a familiar face at major exhibitions, and added ludicrously overblown captions to his offerings.

One creation of random red and green splodges called Sunrise was captioned: "A bold use of colour. Inspired by the 'plein air' habit of painting by Monet, drawing on the natural world that surrounds us all."

And his black scrawlings in a work entitled The Best Loved Elephant are captioned:

"The striking use of oriental calligraphy has the kanji-like characters stampeding from the page, showing the new ascent of the East. It is one of Linsky's most experimental works."

Freddie is said to favour the "spot and blotch" technique pioneered by the American abstract expressionism movement in the 1950s.

The young artist is said on Saatchi Online to have "dedicated his whole life to art".

His mother wrote: "Freddie W R Linsky paints over and over, making us curious to know what is going on.

"It seems that one stroke is being repeated - the same stroke or one very close to it, hence the possibility of the infinite opening up of the structure of time."

Freddie's mother, a lecturer at Hampstead School of Art and a freelance art critic, said she never dreamt anyone would be duped by her over-the-top descriptions.

But a Manchester artist and collector paid £20 for one of Freddie's works and a gallery in Berlin wanted him to showcase his talents.

She said: "Freddie has been coming with me to galleries since he was three months old. and from eight months he was dipping his fingers into paint and able to hold a brush loosely.

"He sits on his high chair with a piece of paper and gets very excited at the mess he gets to make.

He has progressed from ketchup to acrylics on paper or canvas. I wondered whether the art world would be encouraging or dismissive if I showed his work online.

"I thought people would figure it out. But a collector paid £20 for The Best Loved Elephant. He said he liked the flow and energy of the picture.

"A gallery in Berlin emailed, saying they were having an exhibition and thought Freddie's work was of a high standard and would like him to participate.

"I wrote on his behalf thanking them and asked them to let us know how their plans progress. They still don't know he's only two."

From: http://techdirt.com/articles/20080319/020719583.shtml

from the it's-that-simple dept

TechCrunch points us to a story that I had to triple-check wasn't an early April Fool's release, concerning a Canadian internet company named GeoSign that supposedly raised $160 million a year ago to fuel its Google ad arbitrage play, only to have it all collapse in a year, in part due to Google finally hitting back against arbitragers. The story is fascinating on a number of points -- from the idea of putting $160 million into what was clearly a fluke (though, it sounds like the VC probably pulled most of that money out of the company) to the fact that the company's collapse (and massive layoffs) happened just months after the $160 million was closed. However, the key point was that all of the company's revenue came from a single arbitrage play: buying Google keywords and sending people to landing pages with Yahoo ads on them. When Google pulled the plug (as it should have), the entire revenue line disappeared. While there are plenty of firms that rely solely on Google for traffic (and even sue when that traffic goes away), this should be a clear reminder to anyone: if you are totally reliant on a single company for your business to work out, you're probably in trouble. No good business is built entirely off a single supplier or revenue source.