Your WiFi is spying on you – and it’s about to get worse
A company in Taiwan recently presented a developing WiFi tech that can be used to monitor your location, heart rate, breathing patterns, sleep cycles, and much more. The company's techie bossman, Doctor Tzi-cker Chiueh, claimed that, "Channel state in modern Wi-Fi is...
jQuery AJAX Form Submit for Dummies
So you’ve decided to be supercool and use jQuery. That was a wise decision you made, because jQuery totally rocks. Especially in Rails apps, jQuery makes life a LOT simpler. Yes, you have to learn some JavaScript and some quasi-new syntax, but it’s still seriously powerful and convenient. There’s only one problem: if you’re like me (i.e. JavaScript-impaired), you just couldn’t get your forms to submit via an AJAX call. And so, without further ado, I present to you jQuery Form Submission for Dummies!
Increase the Performance of Fragment Caching in Rails
If you use Rails on a high-traffic site, you know that as your number of users increases, you have three main options:
1. Add servers to handle the load
2. Optimize your queries
3. Improve your caching scheme
You may be surprised to know that most people go for Door #1. It’s a lot easier. You don’t have to really do tons of work to rewrite your code and actually make it efficient. You don’t have to ditch “the Rails Way” and start actually thinking about what the database layer is doing to slow your site down to a crawl. And you don’t have to think about how Rails’ cache expiry functions actually work. Finally – and best of all – you can just pass the costs on to your customer, right??
Of course, to achieve good performance, you can use things like Phusion Passenger. But that alone ain’t gonna cut it. You also have to optimize your queries, stop doing things The Rails Way and start thinking for yourself, and of course optimize your caching scheme.
In this episode, I’m going to tell you one very cool way to turbocharge your caching setup!
Adding JavaScript to WordPress Posts Without a Plugin
If you have installed your own WordPress blog on your server, you may want to include some JavaScript goodness from time to time. The bad news is that WordPress likes to screw around with tags when using the WYSIWYG post editor. That makes it kind of hard to, say, embed a video in one of your posts. The good news is that there is a very easy way to embed any kind of JavaScript in your posts without the need to install any plugins, or change any configuration settings. And it works beautifully with the WYSIWYG editor…
Add Your Own Program to the Windows Explorer Right Click Context Menu
One of the most handy features in Windows is the ability to right-click on a file, and select an option to edit that file in a particular program. The big problem is that sometimes, your favorite program doesn’t come with a right-click context menu option. Or, maybe it does come with such an option, but it doesn’t work for some reason. Whatever the case, you can very quickly and easily add whatever program you want to the right-click menu in about 30 seconds.
Autorun Fun: Customize or Repair Autoplay for an External Drive
Let’s say your external harddrive or USB stick no longer triggers the AutoPlay feature in Windows. In fact, it may not even automatically show up in Explorer at all when you plug in it!
What to do?
It’s surprisingly easy to fix such problems by creating a new autorun.inf file on the external storage device.
The Easy Way to Copy a MySQL Database
If you have a web site of any kind, you probably have dealt with MySQL databases. Sometimes, you need to move your database, whether it’s to another server or back onto your existing server after performing an OS upgrade. Lucky for you, there’s a very, very easy way to copy your DB over with a few copy commands…
The Truth About the Performance and Capabilities of Intel’s GMA 500
Alrighty, I just can’t stay quiet about this one. I’ve had enough. I’m talking about Intel’s GMA 500 graphics chip. You know, the one that’s in all those Z-series (and soon Pine Trail-based) netbooks, the one that gets all the bad reviews, and the one that is generally regarded as less capable than even that ancient, stinking heap of a graphics core, the GMA 950. Well folks, think again. In fact, the GMA 500 is capable of simultaneous decoding of two (yes, two) 1080p streams, 3D graphics, and DirectX 10.1 – and all that in a 2.3W power envelope (at least in the US15W “Poulsbo” chipset).
Windows 7 File Sharing: Fixing the “Entire User Directory Shared” Problem
One of the most common problems in Windows 7, as I recently discovered, is that you tell Win 7 to share only your Public directories, but it doesn’t quite listen. Due to some apparent bug that is at least present in the Release Candidate build of Win 7, sometimes the OS will share your entire Users directory – including the Public files/folders. That means ALL your files are shown to the whole world on your LAN. Question is: How to fix it?
Save Time and Preserve Your Sanity with Windows Easy Transfer
If you’re like me, when it comes time to upgrade Windows or the hardware inside a computer, you do things the old fashioned way: you manually copy all the user’s desktop, settings, and data onto a backup drive, and then restore it all after the upgrade. Recently I have discovered a much, much easier and faster way to do the same thing. It’s called Windows Easy Transfer, and it’s present in Vista, Windows 7, and you can even install it on an old XP box.
How to Increase the 10 Connection Limit on a Windows LAN
Let’s say you have a network of more than ten Windows computers connected in a local workgroup without a domain controller. One of the computers has a printer connected to it, and more than ten machines in the workgroup need to print at the same time. The good news: It’s actually really easy to increase the limit and get everybody printing/sharing files in a very short time!
How to Fix a DVD Burner that Won’t Read/Write Certain Discs
Every computer these days comes with a DVD/CD burner. They are seriously useful devices, especially since blank DVD media is now dirt cheap. When your burner was new, it probably worked like a charm. As time went by and you tried different brands or types of media, you may have discovered that your drive didn’t burn as well any more. Many people just assume that their drive is bad, and they buy a new one. But there is another even cheaper option that many folks simply don’t know about: you can usually upgrade your drive’s firmware for free!
How to Easily Print a Large Image to Multiple Pages in Windows
Let’s say you’ve got a ginormous image that you’d like to print. Maybe it’s a picture of a map, and the resolution of the image is something like 2000 by 2200 pixels. Obviously, you could just print the image to a single sheet of A4/Letter paper, but you’d lose a lot of detail. The good news is that Windows XP, Vista, and Windows 7 all give you a wonderful (AHEM!) application that does exactly what you need…
Splitting Atoms: Choosing the Best Atom-Based Netbook
These days, netbooks are the “in” thing. You’ve no doubt seen them around – they’re like little teeny-tiny laptops. Generally speaking, they are slower than a regular laptop, but are smaller and have longer battery lives. If you are following the latest netbook craze, you will no doubt be aware that the new Pine Trail platform will be out probably early in 2010. I’ve been packing my brain full of all kinds of specs and reviews and datasheets and whatnot, and I’m here to tell you that you can get tomorrow’s netbook platform today – if you know what to look for.
What to Do When Your Manual WordPress Update Dumps You Back to the Installation Page
Everyone loves WordPress – especially when it comes time to upgrade to the latest version of a plugin or of WordPress itself. You just click a button, and it does all the work. Sometimes, you can’t automatically update WordPress itself. In such cases, you need to manually install the newer version. If after a manual install you are dumped back to the initial WordPress setup screen, it will seem like you have just destroyed your entire old WordPress site. Fortunately, you haven’t destroyed anything! Here’s how to get your site back in just 3 steps…
Notebooks, Netbooks, and Hot Air: Laptops Demystified
Back in the day, it was easy to select a portable computer. There was only one size: big suitcase. At that time, Apple’s portable computer was called the Macintosh Boulder, and it only weighed 1,264 ounces. Running through the airport with one of these “portable” devices was a lot of fun. Yes, life was good. Fast forward a few decades, and laptops were just lower-powered portable computers. Then, a few years ago, something odd happened: everyone started demanding “desktop replacement laptops”. In short, everyone wanted a laptop that could do everything their desktop machine could do. And today? Well, we have netbooks. And we are on the verge of seeing a whole slew of new laptops with CULV processors. They’re going to be thin and light and have “long” battery lives… or so we’re told. So, what the heck are you supposed to buy? Well, that depends on what you need and want. But hopefully, it will all be a bit more clear in a few minutes…