My technical meanderings and other nonsense. Published since 2002. No, really. I'm *that* internet-old. I remember the days of This is becoming “old news” in the web community, but I wanted to talk about it anyway, since I own a MacBook. For those who haven’t yet heard, there seems to be an issue (one of many issues) with Apple’s MacBook laptop – a computer that’s relatively new to the market. It seems they mysteriously [...]
Monthly Archives: October 2006
Google Video Player: Do I need this?
Google Video Player lets you download and watch videos in full high-resolution quality instead of the low quality streamed video available at video.google.com. Videos that contain detailed visual information (like application demos or code samples) must be viewed in their native resolution to discern fine details. This player combined with downloaded video solves the problem [...]
Daring Fireball membership denied in Google Reader, Bloglines
Last week, John Gruber opened up his members-only RSS feeds to the public, for one full week, with the intention of inticing more readers into paying for a full year membership to Daring Fireball. I have to admit, I enjoyed my “feed reading” a little bit more, this past week. The included links, “Jackass of [...]
Dreamhost file snapshots
Yesterday I came across an unfortunate problem where I lost some text on a web page. The original text was in Greek, and for some reason, when I viewed that HTML page in a text editor, the Greek converted itself to something unreadable. Without realizing it, I had re-saved over the current version, with the [...]
MySQL changing column types
Often in your database development work, you’ll come across a situation where a particular column type no longer “fits” the type of data that needs to be stored in it. For example, let’s say you’re storing dollar amounts in an integer field, which can’t hold decimal values. Later on, someone decides they need to store [...]
Search only Amazon Prime items
iSearchBetter is another site that searches only for Amazon Prime eligible items. The other one I know of is bigscreenprices.com, which was mentioned here once before. iSearchBetter seems like a much better interface than bigscreenprices.com, which needlessly uses AJAX to request the search results, with no indication that anything is happening. iSearchBetter is more organized, [...]
6 Windows XP annoyances fixed
After a fresh installation of Windows XP there are a number of tasks I complete to customize my installation, improve performance, and reduce system resource utilization. The quick tips below show you how to remove balloon notifications and Windows XP Genuine Advantage warnings, fill functionality gaps with Windows PowerToys, and prevent certain actions from happening [...]
Web pages or webpages? Which is it?
As I (glumly) launched Internet Explorer 7 for the first time, I noticed Microsoft still thinks web pages are webpages: It’s two words – not one. Same goes for web sites. I thought this was cleared up in 1999. Oh wait – that’s right. Microsoft is still stuck in 99, so that makes sense. Worse [...]
Five senses plus sleep equals six
Throw one at me if you want, hash head. I’ve got all five senses and I slept last night, that puts me six up on the lot of you. Brendan Frye (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) in the movie Brick (2005) I like this quote too much to ignore it’s presence. It was perfectly placed, too, in the [...]
Some basic programming tips
Before any coding begins, it’s important to step back and view the larger picture. Ask yourself: “Do we really need to add this feature? Is there something that already exists that can complete the same task, resulting in less man-hours?” As a developer, I am always hesitant when adding anything. I hate adding things. Therefore, [...]