Category Archives: How To
Developing a Website on the iPad
The iPad has a reputation as being only for media consumption. It wasn’t possible to really create with the device. Any serious computer work had to be done on your laptop or desktop. I needed to prove this wrong.
This write-up has some bias. I very much want my iPad to be a computer replacement, for battery life, size, and ease of use alone. I set out to see if I could develop and maintain a website using only the iPad.
The project chosen was Quotey.net. A WordPress based site filled with quotes, poems, and essays. To be clear this was created from scratch on the iPad. There was no previous version I was updating
New Site Design and How to Add Fonts to Your Website
I’ve been wanting to update the look of this site for quite some time. The three day Memorial Day weekend provided the perfect time.
The Home, About, and Project pages are static HTML. The Blog and Contact pages are WordPress (eventually the entire site needs to be moved to WordPress). The background for each page is a different picture I took. They load somewhat slow at the moment. I’m working on speeding that up.
I also started playing around with @font-face and the Google Font Directory. I’m using the Josefin Sans Std Light font by Santiago Orozco for all the header fonts on the site. It was surprisingly easy to set up and use. One line of code anywhere in the header about the </head>
<link href=’http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Josefin+Sans+Std+Light’ rel=’stylesheet’ type=’text/css’>
Then call the font in your CSS document:
h2 {font-family: ‘Josefin Sans Std Light’, arial, serif; font-size:2.8em; font-weight:700;}
The future of text on the web will be interesting as a result.
The hardest part of the site redesign was the about page. Learned first hand how hard it is to write/design an about page. The one up there now won’t be the final design, but I didn’t want that one page to stop me from updating the entire site.
Facebook Allowed To Use Your Photos For Advertising
Originally posted on the Technology Should be Simple blog on May 22, 2008. Updated the screenshots and instructions for the new privacy menus of Facebook.
If you’re on Facebook, you have seen the advertisements that have begun to show up. The most obvious, appears on the sidebar whenever you are logged in. The advertisements are comprised of a title, a picture, and some descriptive text. But where do the pictures come from? You’ll be surprised.
Advertising on social networks has become common place, and most people don’t take much notice to them. The way they work is the website gains information about each individual and displays a corresponding advertisement that the user is most likley to click on. That’s a quick summary of target marketing online advertising, but Facebook goes a bit further. The pictures used in the advertisements are ones that users post on their profile. When you sign up for Facebook you agree for them to use the content in your profile for advertising purposes. Basically, Facebook can take a photo that you uploaded and use it in an advertisement on the site. They are also allowed to add your name to advertisements you have acted on, so you’re friends can see what you have done. Seems to make advertising a bit to personal to me. So now that you know what is going on, how can you fix it?
In the privacy settings of Facebook you are allowed to opt out of allowing your pictures to be used in social advertising. In the Social Ads section of the Privacy settings, you must select “no one” to turn off the use of your pictures in social advertisements. You can also select ‘no one’ at the bottom of the page to have your actions on advertisements not broadcast to your friend. I have turned off both on my personal profile.
What Other Sites Know About Your Facebook Profile
Recently Facebook held a developers conference, and revealed a lot of new features of the popular social network. Facebook is looking to become your central online profile that will link out to other websites. In theory this is pretty good idea, and Facebook has the size and ability to make it a reality. They are already integrated with many websites and expect thousands more in the next weeks. But what does this mean for the users of Facebook, more specifically all the private data you have in your profile.
By default, all Facebook users are opted into the “Social Integration” program that gives your profile information to websites that you visit. I like the idea of having one central profile, not having to create a new profile for every website I join, but I need to control the data that is given out by Facebook. Much of the data is of no concern to other web services, and really only provides them with more ways to advertise towards me. There is a nice little web app that will show you what data is currently public and accessible by these sites. Check it out here: http://zesty.ca/facebook/
So here is a quick overview to help you manage your privacy settings and control what other websites are able to access or how to opt out of the program entirely. (more…)
10 Plugins Every WordPress Site Should Have Part I
This is a little summary/excerpt from my post on the Rivik Media Blog. Here is the short list of Part I.
The first installment of this 2 part series on what plugins every WordPress installations should have, is going to focus on the first plugins you should install. These should be set up before you start posting, it will make managing your website easier and more efficient.
For more details check out the full post on RivikMedia.com
Creating an iPhone Background
There are a lot of place to download iPhone and iPod Touch backgrounds. I wanted to make one though. I wanted a background that matched my laptops background (another one I made). Its very basic just a black background with some text. I’m a big fan of the minimalism look.
I started out by looking up the screen size of the iPhone, 320 x 480. I made a quick background in Fireworks and loaded it on my iPhone. The text didn’t quite line up though, which made no sense to me at the time. Then I realized that the screen of the iPhone may be 320 x 480, but the actually usable space is 320 x 460. The status bar at the top of the phones screen is always present and takes up 20px (the signal strength, time, and battery life bar). I re-did the background with this resolution and everything lined up nicely.
I included a couple blank templates for iPhone and iPod Touch backgrounds that are already set to the correct size. One is just a blank white background, the other is a blank black background. Feel free to use them and create your own backgrounds.
Forgot the Admin Password for Your Mac?
In the office today we had an old Apple iBook G4. The computer had been sitting around in a cabinet for longer than I’ve been working here. Someone decided they wanted to use it to learn their way around a Mac (the office being primarily windows). Seemed like a perfect use for the older laptop. I booted up the laptop and tried to log into the admin account, no luck. The only account I could access was a limited account that wouldn’t let you do much of anything. So now I have the problem of figuring out how to get on the computer, without using the install disks (which had been long gone). The solution was surprisingly easy.
- Boot computer and hold the ‘apple’ key (command key) and the ‘s’ key
- Wait for the terminal to show
- Release keys
- Type (without the quotes): ‘/sbin/mount -uaw’
- Press enter
- Type (without the quotes): ‘rm /var/db/.applesetupdone
- Press enter
- Type (without the quotes): ‘reboot’
- Press enter
When the computer boots back up again, it acts like you just booted up for the first time. It lets you create an admin account and password for the computer (this time I made the password simple enough to remember). The best part though, is that nothing is deleted from before. All the extra software we had on the computer is still installed. Nothing got deleted, all that was done was creating a new admin account. Its a neat trick for older laptops. I haven’t tried this on new computers or OS’s. If you have any luck, leave it in the comments.
Quick Computer Maintenance with CCleaner
CCleaner is a Windows only freeware program for keeping your computer running like new. The program scans your computer for excess files takings up valuable space on your hard drive. The files are ones that are no long associated with programs, are left over from software installations, or things added to your computer while browsing (i.e cookies and tracking files). I’ve been using CCleaner for a couple months now and have really liked it. I run it every time i get off the computer (it usually deletes about 20 mb of data each day and takes about 10 seconds to run). It keeps my hard drive clean, and my computer running up to speed. It doesn’t completely replace running disk defragments or deleting files yourself, but it does provide a nice clean up to keep everything running smoothly. Here is a screen shot of the program, you select to analyze first to see what you are deleting then you can run the cleaner to permanetly delete the files.
Disable Balloon Tips in Windows
One of the more annoying feature of Microsoft Windows in the balloon tips that constantly pop up in the lower right corner of your screen. These things can be specially annoying during your computers start-up or when you are doing work and don’t want to be distracted. Windows doesn’t off the simplest way to remove these balloons but this tutorial will show you how.
- In the start menu select run (in Vista just type the command into the search bar)
- type “regedit” and press Enter
- In the navigation bar on the left side navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion
\Explorer\Advanced
- One you are there right click in the window on the right
- select new -> DWORD
- enter in “EnableBalloonTips” and press Enter
- The number next to the new file should be zero, if not change it to zero
- Close out of the window and log off and log back on
- Balloon Tips are now disabled
Are You Interesting?
I was reading an article by Russell Davies entitled “how to be interesting,” he gave 10 ways to do this and gave a brief description of each way. here is a summary
- Take at least one picture everyday. Post it to Flikr
- Start a blog. Write at least one sentence a week
- Keep a scrapbook
- Every week, read a magazine you’ve never read before
- Once a month interview someone for 20 minutes, work out how to make them interesting. Podcast it.
- Collect something
- Once a week sit in a coffee-shop or cafe and listen to people’s conversations. Blog about it
- Every month write 50 words on a piece of art, writing, music, and film/tv. Blog it
- Make something
- Read
After reading this I did a quick inventory of my life. I do most of the things mentioned on the list to some extent or frequency. So does this make me interesting? A lot more goes into being interesting. The list provides a nice base, but I feel there is more to it.
Interesting people are able to grab your attention and keep it. They engage you in a conversation and involve the person or group they are talking with. It not just about them telling an interesting story, but them seeming interested in what you have to say. It makes you feel good when a person seems interested in you, and makes you like them more for that.
You can apply this to real life by looking at your job. The more you know about your job/industry, the more interested you will become in it. The more you are able to find out and understand, the better your job seems. People don’t like what they don’t understand, so why not understand what you like?
Removing the Blogger Bar
So you’ve got your own domain name and you are ready to create a professional looking blog. One problem, that blogger bar is stuck on the top of your page. A simple css hack can eliminate this from your blog. When customizing your blog go to “edit html” Within the HTML dialog box add this string of text anywhere in the style part of the text (usually near the top of the page where most the lines begin with the # symbol)
#navbar-iframe { height:0px; visibility:hidden; display:none; }
*This hack and others can be found on Make Use Of