AI models continue to improve. The latest models will try multiple options to find the best one. This ability has enhanced this site. I believe there are no measurable performance optimizations left here. It is time to add features. Today I added Air Quality graphs to the Weather page. Less than 2 hours from concept to production…
I do not consider AI to be Artificial Intelligence. It is a very clever algorithm, one that calculates advanced pattern matching results on massive data sets without much prompting. At quick glance, it feels like it is thinking. It is not, it is a Large Language Model (LLM). This does not mean it is not useful…
Dark mode support has been added. It follows your browser's setting. The support has been added across the site. With the implementation, more of the site aligns with a consistent theme. Most of the changes are in Links on mobile and the menus and buttons for the Forum and Gallery…
In my quest for performance... These are the top enhancements I've made recently:…
The News System had a significant rewrite on the backend. It looks identical. The technical change was a shift from using PHP to craft an individualized page to having it send a news dump. By reducing the complexity of the PHP code, the page is created faster. Javascript replaces the PHP for drawing the News section. The weather section starts loading sooner. Total page load is about 0.2 seconds faster. May not seem like much: it's 30% faster…
Redis is an in-memory data structure store, used as a distributed, in-memory key–value database, cache and message broker, with optional durability. What does it mean? By using Redis to hold dynamic values in memory that are typically held in a database or file, the website can access those values faster. Faster access means faster web page delivery…
News settings were not sticking very long. Cookies set by JavaScript only stay for a week on Safari. The news feed query is done server side and embedded into the home page. These settings need to be cookies…
The News system has been updated. Faster and more consistent display…
The weather code was expanded to include current conditions, alerts, hourly definition in daily graphs, real feel, precipitation, wind, snow, clouds, humidity, visibility, pressure, and solar graphs. Changed the icons to a weather icon font. Added loading indicator when changing locations. Added buttons to jump through the forecast one day at a time. Significant performance enhancements: Graph loading time was reduced by over 10 times. Graphing library was customized to include only necessary functions (85% reduction)…
The site is using a custom build of Nginx which enables TLS 1.3. We're more secure and (yet again) faster. TLS 1.2 support remains for legacy browsers…
