Category Archives: Geek

Upgraded to WordPress 3

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The upgrade process went smooth. Did a backup beforehand just in case. Also because I wanted to work on the organization of the site. It is coming along now. I made some progress today, but still lots more to do.

Messing around with the new default theme, Twenty Ten. It is much easier to customize than Kubrick was for the general user.  As you can see I have modified the header and background Image. This is done all within the admin panel.

The new menu builder kicks ass! It is highly customizable. You can also store different menus, in case you want to switch it up. This is going to make themes a lot more flexible and easier on the theme developers. They won’t have to add as much functionality into their themes with it now already built into the core.

Magento Admin CSS

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magentocss

Looks like they screwed up some CSS in the admin panel of the new version. (1.2.0.1)

Removing the Developer Tools

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I was looking for a way to removing the developer tools folder and found a perl script that removes the developer tools from your system. It is located in /Developer/tools and the name of the script is uninstall-devtools.pl.

You can run it from the terminal by typing:

# sudo ./Developer/Tools/uninstall-devtools.pl

Tested on 10.4 and it removes everything but one folder.

Network Speed Chart

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13.21 Gbps    OC-255
10 Gbps       OC-192
4.976 Gbps    OC-96
2.488 Gbps    OC-48, STS-48
1.866 Gbps    OC-36
1.244 Gbps    OC-24
933.12 Mbps   OC-18
622.08 Mbps   OC-12, STS-12
466.56 Mbps   OC-9
155.52 Mbps   OC-3, STS-3
100 Mbps      CDDI, FDDI, Fast Ethernet, Category 5 cable
51.84 Mbps    OC-1, STS-1
44.736 Mbps   T-3, DS-3 North America
34.368 Mbps   E-3 Europe
20 Mbps       Category 4 cable
16 Mbps       Fast Token Ring LANs
10 Mbps       Thin Ethernet, category 3 cable, cable modem
8.448 Mbps    E-2 Europe
6.312 Mbps    T-2, DS-2 North America
6.144 Mbps    Standard ADSL downstream
4 Mbps        Token Ring LANs
3.152 Mbps    DS-1c
2.048 Mbps    E-1, DS-1 Europe
1.544 Mbps    ADSL, T-1, DS-1 North America
128 Kbps      ISDN
64 Kbps       DS-0, pulse code modulation
56 Kbps       56flex, U.S. Robotics x2 modems,
33.6 Kbps     56flex, x2 modem communications rate
28.8 Kbps     V.34, Rockwell V.Fast Class modems
20 Kbps       Level 1 cable, minimum cable data speed
14.4 Kbps     V.32bis modem, V.17 fax
9600 bps      modem speed circa early 1990s
2400 bps      modem speed circa 1980s  

Units of Measurement
bit   = smallest unit of digital information, i.e. ones & zeros
byte  = a set of bits
bps   = bits per second
Kbps  = kilobits per second =1000 bits per second
Mbps  = Million bits per second =1,000,000 bits per second
Gbps  = Gigabits per second = 1,000,000,000 (one billion) bits per second
Tbps  = Terabits per second = 1,000,000,000,000 (one trillion) bits per second
(Network speed is mesured in 1000 units, memory and storage space in 1024 units)

This is a list of different internet access connection speeds over a variety of different types of material. OC stands for Optical Carrier or in other words fiber connections. The method for communicating over fiber is called SONET (Synchronous optical networking). The connections listed above that do not start with OC are over traditional copper, twisted pair (Cat5) ethernet or coaxial cabeling.

How to add people on Flickr

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  1. Go to Flickr.com

  2. Do you have a previous Flickr account or yahoo email address? If so, click on the Sign In link in the upper right part of the page. You may also click here to goto the sign in page. Skip to step 4 in these directions.

  3. If you do not have a Flickr account or Yahoo email address, click on the pink Sign up! button on the right.

    You may also click here to goto the sign up page.

    4. a. On the “Sign in to Yahoo!” page click the “Sign Up” link in the lower right part of the page


    b. Fill in all the form fields, choosing a Yahoo ID!

    c. Click the I agree button after “reading” their Terms of Service. If you entered an Alternate Email, be sure to check that email account and click on the link to verify the alternate email address.

    d. Click the Continue to Yahoo! Flickr Button. If you don’t want spam from Yahoo you might also click “Edit Marketing Preferences” and uncheck all the boxes.

    e. If there is a security warning, click continue

    f. Click the “CREATE A NEW ACCOUNT” button after choosing a Flickr screen name

    g. Click the Flickr Logo or the Explore Flickr Link.

  4. Now that you are logged into Flickr, you can add people as a contacts.  Under the Contacts menu there is a link for “People Search”.

    Another way to add people is if they send you a link to their account. For instance, if you want to add me, go here:

    http://www.flickr.com/people/llbbl/relationship/

    If I am a friend or family you can check the boxes, otherwise click the Ok button.

  5. That is all there is to it. If you added me as a contact I will be notified and all you have to do is wait for me to reciprocate.

Good Day to Download

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Two new versions of free software were released today. Thunderbird 2.0 a email client for Linux, OS X and Windows; as well as Ubuntu 7.04 (Feisty Fawn).

If you are running windows and still using Outlook I would give Thunderbird a try. Definitely better than Outlook Express and Outlook 2000. If you are using Outlook 2003 or newer it is hard to say what is better, 2003 seemed buggy to me and I have yet to use 2007.

Ubuntu is perhaps the best “version” of Linux to replace Windows. They keep getting better and better with each release. If you are still using Windows, stop, Ubuntu is the way to go.

Installing X11 on OS X

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If you are running OS X Tiger version 10.4.x, you will need to install X11 in order to use applications like OpenOffice and other Linux ports. It is located on the first disk of the installation DVD.

System/Installation/Packages/X11User.pkg

After inserting the installation DVD, make sure to scroll down to find the System folder. X11 can also be found when installing Tiger under the advanced option. There is an older version of X11 for previous versions of OS X that can be found on the web.

Diggable WordPress Plugin

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Diggable is a plugin for WordPress that adds Digg This buttons to websites. This will make it easier for your website visitors to submit content while it also allows them to see the Digg count for content that has already been submitted.

Features

General Features

  • Admin Menu with options for button placement and customization
  • No template modification, so you aren’t required to have any programming knowledge
  • Buttons placed at the end of the content post and only visible if you load the page for a particular post
  • There are options to display the buttons on pages and posts and on the front page of the website
  • You can also select between the compact and normal version of the button. Currently the display options are basic but will be expanded soon.

Download

Download Diggable

Support

Google Group

The Sociable and Gregarious code helped a lot with development, so thanks goes out to Peter Harkins. Let me know what you think.

Setting Passwords that Expire in Linux

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The /etc/login.defs file controls the parameters we are interested in changing inorder to enable or disable passwords that expire in Linux. It contains a number of other configuration setting for user accounts on your machine. The following are the ones that we are interested in.

  1. PASS_MAX_DAYS: Maximum number of days a password may be used. It controls how often users must change their passwords. Any passwords older than this will force the user to change their password the next time they login. To disable set to 99999.
  2. PASS_MIN_DAYS: Minimum number of days allowed between password changes.This prevents people from changing their password 5 times in one day. To disable set to 0. 
  3. PASS_MIN_LEN: Minimum acceptable password length. No short passwords will be accepted. 8 characters is a recommended length.
  4. PASS_WARN_AGE: Number of days warning given before a password expires.

open the file /etc/login.defs using your favorite text editor.

# vi /etc/login.defs

edit the file (sample):

PASS_MAX_DAYS 90
PASS_MIN_DAYS 0
PASS_MIN_LEN 8
PASS_WARN_AGE 7

Save the file.

List of the Best Freeware

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I compiled a list of the best free software currently available. I am open to suggestions, let me know your thoughts on my selections.

Apple Linux Windows
Address Book Mac OSX Address Book Yahoo Address Book Yahoo Address Book
Bookmark Manager Del.iciou.us Bookmarks Del.iciou.us Bookmarks Del.iciou.us Bookmarks
Browser (online privacy, pop-up blocking, security and adblocking) Firefox Firefox Firefox
Calendar Google Calendar Google Calendar Google Calendar
Download Manager DownThemAll DownThemAll DownThemAll
Email Mail with Google Gmail Thunderbird with Google Gmail Thunderbird with Google Gmail
FTP Cyberduck gFTP FileZilla
File Compression Zip built in Ark 7-zip
File Sharing Azureus Azureus uTorrent
Image Viewer XnView XnView Irfanview
Instant Messanger iChat Gaim Trillian (all in one)
MP3 Player iTunes XMMS Winamp
MP3 / CD Ripper iTunes Grip CDex
Spyware / Adware Not Needed Not Needed Spybot + Ad-Aware
Text Editor VIM or Bluefish VIM or Bluefish ConTEXT
Photo Organizer None Free Picasa Picasa
RSS Reader Google Reader Google Reader Google Reader
Virus Protection Not Needed Not Needed Active Virus Shield

The Mac programs like iChat and Mail aren’t exactly free because you pay for the operating system when you buy a new Mac, but they are included with the operating system, so assuming you paid for OSX you will have them. Also it is interesting to note that wikipedia has a good comparison of text editors.