Watch me on TikTok!
Well, I've finally done it: I created a TikTok account! If you can't beat 'em, join 'em. Stay tuned as well for new long-form videos, and quite possibly other new and exciting content, merch, and God knows what else... All that and more, coming soon!!!...
Fixing the Rails 3 Fragment Cache Path
Let's say you were using Rails 2.3.x, and you made the (wise) decision to implement heavy fragment caching. Then let's say that you updated to Rails 3.x. At that point, you probably noticed that Rails 3 does something seriously annoying with the paths where it caches...
Goodbye Google Translate, Hello Bing Translate!
Until recently, I got a lot of use out of Google Translate. It worked great, it was fast, and its web page translations were good enough. But then, something changed. Now when I use Google Translate in Firefox to translate a certain URI, it seems to get stuck in some...
How to “Search in Message” in Thunderbird 3.1
With the advent of Thunderbird 3, searching messages became a bit more sassy in the old bird. There is one little problem: it is not readily apparent how one actually searches for text inside an open e-mail. It used to be that you could just type Ctrl-F and the little...
Severe GRUB Problem in Ubuntu 11.04 Natty Narwhal
If you're using Ubuntu Server 10.10 and you get the upgrade notice for 11.04 "Natty Narwhal", you might want to hold off a bit before taking the plunge and typing "do-release-upgrade". It seems there is a rather severe problem with GRUB 2. If you have a RAID setup -...
Why You Don’t Want a Green Hard Drive
These days, the fad is GREEN. Everything is "eco-this" or "green that". Of course, we're supposed to be terribly concerned about saving Mother Earth. Well, I've got news for you: Mother Earth is plenty capable of taking care of herself... Whether or not humankind...
How to Remove Java Console Add-ons from Firefox
Most likely, you have at least the Java runtime environment installed on your puter. And, if you're using Firefox, you may have some strange add-ons installed that just won't go away. With every Java update you install, yet another "Java Console" add-on may be...
Why You Need Sprites on Your Web Site
In the olden days, video games relied heavily upon sprites given the rather severe limitations of computing hardware at the time. You can use this "old" technique to reduce the bandwidth load on your server. Most major web sites use them, but you may never have even...
Linux Tips and Tricks, Part 2
More linux tricks to help you become a better command line commando!
Ghost in the Machine: Solar Flares, the Electrical Grid, and What It All Means to You
On August 3, 2010, a C3-class solar flare caused a coronal mass ejection that headed towards the Earth. The impact of the flare resulted in a G2-class geomagnetic storm that lasted almost 12 hours. The official story is that the storm caused beautiful northern lights to appear from Europe to North America. Well, that doesn’t seem so bad, does it?
Fix Slow Windows Networking Problems When VirtualBox is Installed
VirtualBox is a simple, cross-platform virtualization solution that lets you set aside a chunk of hard disk space, give it a name, and then you just tell it, “I want to install linux here”, pop in your install disc (or whatever), and VirtualBox takes care of the rest. It’s really handy! Only one problem: Sometimes when VirtualBox is installed (but not even running), your Windows networking gets REEEEALLY slow. Fortunately, there is a very quick and easy way to fix it!
How to Make Your Rails 2.3 App Work with Ruby 1.9
If you’re like me, you’ve got a Rails 2.3.x application running on Ruby 1.8.x – or perhaps Ruby Enterprise Edition. Well, that’s all fine and dandy, but Ruby 1.9.2 is about twice as fast as even REE 1.8.7. So, you’ll probably want to upgrade to the new version of Ruby. Problem is, you upgrade Ruby and then your Rails 2.3 app starts whining about character encoding problems and possibly other stuff. Nobody seems to have written a one-stop guide to upgrading your Rails app to Ruby 1.9… Until now!
Move Your Docs, Music, Pics, & Vids to a Different Drive or Folder in Windows 7
Let’s say you’ve got Windows 7, and you install a second hard drive. Perhaps you have an SSD as your primary drive, and you want to store your GB’s of MP3s, videos, and documents on your second data drive. Well, you could just copy the data into a new folder the old fashioned way. But there is a better way to move your My Documents, My Music, My Videos, My Pictures, and even your Downloads folder automagically – and Windows will still keep track of everything for you!
Scottie’s SuperDuper CSS Drop Shadow
Okay, I know this one has been done like 8 bazillion times, but this method of creating a drop shadow on elements in a web page via CSS and a 1 pixel by 1 pixel transparent PNG file actually DOES work. You see, I tried all kinds of different methods of creating drop shadows in CSS, both with and without an image file, and there was always a problem. It would render properly in certain browsers. It would render properly, but it only worked for fixed-width elements on the page. Or, maybe it would only render properly for variable width page elements. Or, the darn thing just didn’t work at all. Well, I got tired of all of that, so I decided to make my own version of the CSS drop shadow. It may not be the prettiest, but it works.
How to fix “Windows cannot connect to printer” Errors in Windows 7
Let’s say you’re running Windows 7 on a computer connected to a local network. There is a shared printer running on a different machine on the network. The drivers for the printer are installed on the remote machine, and the printer is shared. You think that you’ll just sit down at your puter, use the Add Printer feature, connect to the remote printer, the driver will be copied over to your machine automagically, and you’ll be off and running. But then you see this: Windows cannot connect to the printer. Operation could not be completed (error 0x0000007e). The solution to your problem is very simple, and is even available as a Hotfix from Microsoft that will be incorporated into Windows 7 SP1.
Hits, Unique Vists, and Page Views: Which is best?
When it comes to web sites and the amount of traffic they claim to have, what is the difference between unique visits, page views, and hits per day? Which measure is the most honest?