Learning how to code is like learning anything else – You have to do it. The hardest part is figuring out where to begin, and then you need some mechanism to show you that you’re making progress. The latter is important because it motivates you to keep going. First, have a goal. I initially wanted to [...]
Thursday, November 26, 2009
(draft) I’ve been using Firefox since the first public beta, and the one thing always on my wish list was fixing the sluggishness and unbelievable memory consumption (2 GB of RAM?) that results from keeping Firefox open for too long. This is still on my wish list today (almost 2010), and I know it’s unlikely to [...]
Wednesday, September 30, 2009
The short tags in PHP have been deprecated as of 5.3.0. Short tags provided a shorter alternative to the annoying-to-type <?php and <?php echo. Instead, you could use <? and <?= respectively. This was great but it caused problems when working with XML files, and the short_tags option was disabled in the PHP config by [...]
Wednesday, June 10, 2009
Every Geek site needs an obligatory Bash Tips post Copy Files Securely Between Two Machines I used to always forget the syntax for this, until I realized that the syntax is exactly like the standard cp command. In fact, you can copy files like you normally would using scp, on your local machine. The following are equivalent: $ [...]
Friday, May 1, 2009
The following plugin for Pidgin will block the incredibly annoying and useless notifications from AOLSystemMsg on AIM. “AOL System Msg: Your screen name (mrEman) is now signed into AOL(R) Instant Messenger (TM) in 2 locations. Click here for more information.” To use, paste code in file, save file as blockaolsystemmsg.pl in ~/.purple/plugins/ and then open (or re-open) [...]
Monday, April 13, 2009
Whiteboards are as useful as they are overpriced. I built one using tileboard (the thing they use in bathrooms), and I highly recommend making/buying one. It took me awhile to find tileboard in my area. In case anyone has the same problem, here are 4 alternatives I considered: They are not in any specific order. Glass [...]
Saturday, April 11, 2009
I have updated the vim page with my vimrc/gvimrc configs. Instead of repeating myself, I will quote some parts of the page .. More details and the vim config itself here I recommend turning backups on if you have them off. I personally hate having the ~ files all over my OS, so I keep them along [...]
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Static sites in this context just means non-database driven sites. Your static site can be an elaborate PHP script or just a few markup and image files. For this I am using Jekyll – A neat Ruby gem that makes your static sites dynamic. It lets you create layouts and embed custom variables in your [...]
Monday, February 16, 2009
Most people I know who’ve never used dual screen ask me why I don’t invest in one big monitor instead. There’s a big difference between having multiple monitors and having just one, no matter the size. Though which is better really depends on what you’re using the computer for, what OS/window manager you’re using, and [...]
Saturday, November 15, 2008
One reason many people don’t contribute to open source apps is because they find it daunting to look through somebody else’s code. Some might even think that it’s just simpler to write something from scratch than to study someone’s work. This isn’t true, and reading foreign code is something get used to and excel at [...]
Tuesday, December 15, 2009
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