Category Archives: Tech

Gizmos, widgets, and doodads.

Bing Maps Photosynth Mashup

I’ve always been a big fan of Google Maps. . [...]

Posted in Tech | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Most Useless iPhone 3.0 Feature

In the iPhone OS 3.0 update, there were a lot of nice features added. Some of them are fairly major and useful, like cut-and-paste. Some of them are subtle and useful, like the 30-second rewind button when playing a podcast. But there’s one feature that sticks out to me as totally useless: “Shake to Shuffle”.

I guess there’s some tiny “cute-factor” to it. But in practical terms, it’s pretty darned useless. When you’re using your iPhone or iPod Touch to listen to music, you’re probably either: on the move (in your car, jogging, biking, mowing your lawn, etc.) or in a passive environment (working at a desk, connecting your iPhone to an external amplifier/speaker system, etc). [...]

Posted in Tech | Tagged , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Dougal’s must-have iPhone app list

My brother-in-law, John, recently got an iPhone 3Gs (lucky dog). Knowing that I also had an iPhone (though mine is the older “2G” model), he asked what apps I recommended. I’ve got a ton of apps installed, many of which I never really use, and should probably delete. But here are the ones that I actually find myself launching with some regularity, grouped into rough categories, all free, except where noted:

Productivity/Utility

Evernote
This is a great note-taking app. [...]
Posted in Tech | Tagged , , , , , , , | 19 Comments

XCache Object Cache Plugin for WordPress 2.5+

download

Download: xcache-plugin.zip
Version: 0.7d
Updated: August 29, 2008
Size: 1.94 KB

Powered by Drain Hole

This is another one of those articles that will be of interest to a minority of WordPress users. [...]
Also posted in Plugins, WordPress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 69 Comments

Macbook + Coffee = Bad

Everybody knows that you shouldn’t keep beverages too close to the computer, right? The reason is because eventually, your toddler is going to run up to give you a big hug before she leaves for daycare, and is going to bump your leg. Your leg, in turn, is going to bump the TV tray where you set your coffee cup. The cup is going to tip over and spill several ounces of coffee directly onto the keyboard of your Macbook. And as a consequence, the Macbook is going to cease to function.

Yes, that’s what happened here at Castle Campbell last Friday morning. I tried to disconnect power and battery as quickly as possible, tried using a blowdryer on it, sat it out in direct sunlight for about an hour, and continued to let it air out for quite a while after that. [...]

Also posted in Hardware, Linux, Operating Systems, Personal, Software | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 15 Comments

WordPress 2.6 Released

The release of WordPress 2.6 is now official. In addition to the features I highlighted previously, Ryan has details on his blog about the improved support for SSL, and some new helper functions which will be useful for plugin and theme authors. And the official dev blog post has details on other new features. One of the more interesting things that I didn’t yet know about was that the Press This bookmarklet has some nifty autodetection which will make it easy to automatically embed content from sites like YouTube and Flickr.

In addition to the new features, I’d also like to point out that there has been a recent effort to improve the inline source documentation (using PHPdoc). [...]

Also posted in Announcements, Community, News, Software, WordPress | Tagged , , , , | 31 Comments

Whither Spam?

When I switched to my new Slicehost server, I spent a while trying to decide what I wanted to do about email for my domains. I contemplated using Google’s domain email service, or some other third-party email hosting. But I just hated giving up that much control of my email setup. [...]

Also posted in Hardware, Linux, Servers, Services, Software, Spam | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Atlanta PHP

Tomorrow night, I will be attending the April Atlanta PHP meeting. My friend Glen Gordon will be giving a presentation titled, “I’m a PHP dev! Why should I care about Microsoft?

There are a host of technologies and tools from Microsoft that can add value to your PHP solutions, save you time, and are just plain cool. [...]

Also posted in Community, Development, Operating Systems, Servers, WordPress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Roadwork Next 15 Miles

I am preparing to move all of my web and email hosting to a new server. I’ve been fortunate to have an in-trade hosting arrangement for many years now (thanks to Jeff at Iguanasoft!). But my host’s owner is winding down some of his equipment, and I had outgrown the server I was on. I’ve secured a new server at Slicehost (a 1024slice running Ubuntu), and I’ll be transitioning my data over the next couple of weeks, as time allows.

I mainly mention this as warning that if my site appears to be down, email bounces, or any other strangeness occurs, it might be because I’m in the middle of moving things around. [...]

Also posted in Announcements, Blogs, Personal, Servers, WordPress | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , | 22 Comments

Internet Explorer 8: Progress!

It seems that Microsoft has reversed their previous decision to make Internet Explorer 8 crippled by default. They will be enabling the standards compliant mode by default in IE8, and webmasters will have to use the X-UA-Compatible header to force it into IE7 mode, for sites that can’t be updated immediately. Huzzah for progress!

And on that note, I’ll mention that Internet Explorer 8 Beta 1 is available for download. [...]

Also posted in Browsers, CSS, Community, Design, Development, Standards, Web Design | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 6 Comments