Archive for the 'Software' Category

Living with PulseAudio via PulseAudio Device Chooser

« 6 January 2010 | 10:30 | Computers & Technology, Hardware, Linux, Open Source, Software, Usability | No Comments »

Telecommuting is a pretty sweet gig with a good number of benefits. To name a few, while I’m working I can:

Toss some laundry in the machine
Start my lunch and work while it cooks
Sign for packages when they are delivered

And that’s just the tip of the iceberg. However, to make telecommuting possible, there are some technologies [...]



Asynchronous PHP

« 16 October 2009 | 13:46 | PHP, Software, Web Development | No Comments »

I needed to “asynchronous PHP” recently and it took me a little while to find the solution. What my script basically does is generate a PDF file for the user to download based on some parameters they have chosen. The problem was, the PDF generate take a while and during that time I needed to [...]



Ubuntu 64-bit, Firefox and Flash

« 23 April 2009 | 16:17 | Computers & Technology, Linux, Software | No Comments »

OK, so you have this sweet new computer (much like myself) running 64-bit Ubuntu like a champ. Except for one thing; Flash elements on webpages in keep flaking out. That is, from time to time, instead of seeing the Flash content, you see a grey box that doesn’t do anything. It just sits there, mocking [...]



How NOT to Sell MP3s

« 16 March 2009 | 1:43 | Computers & Technology, Linux, Software, Usability | 4 Comments »

I recently came across the band 3 on last.fm and absolutely love them. I managed to find all of their albums via torrents, but I thought I would actually buy their stuff since they aren’t on an RIAA label. Their website didn’t help at all and CDBaby didn’t have any of their stuff. I was [...]



Remote Backups with Amazon’s S3

« 9 February 2009 | 20:40 | Computers & Technology, Linux, Open Source, Software | 2 Comments »

Recently, my SATA controller on my RAID box failed, silently corrupting my entire array. Fun stuff, I assure you. Luckily, I had backed up the array about a month before the failure and was keeping a nightly rsync running. I had a few things that weren’t included in the rsync backup, but I didn’t really [...]



Fallout 3 Terminal Hacker

« 30 January 2009 | 20:53 | Games, Javascript, Software | No Comments »

I recently started playing the game Fallout 3 a little more and I came across a terminal I could actually attempt to hack. After a few failed attempts at it, I thought I would poke around on the Internet and see if anyone had any guides for hacking the things. Instead, I found this online [...]



Building a Better CAPTCHA

« 3 January 2009 | 0:46 | Computers & Technology, Software, Usability, Web Development | No Comments »

CAPTCHAs can be good for stopping SPAM, but the last thing most of them are are usable. Don’t take my word for it, it’s a fact. One of the coolest ideas I ever saw was a HotOrNot mashup where you had to pick the three best looking ladies to prove you are a human. It [...]



Drupal’s On Hold

« 17 November 2008 | 18:16 | CodeIgniter, Drupal, Open Source, PHP, Software, Symfony, Web Development | No Comments »

I know I said before that I would be replacing Wordpress with Drupal around here, and I did start working on that. However, the more I read about Drupal, the harder it seems to do custom things. Actually, it’s more a problem of poor documentation than it is a lack of flexibility. Still, if I [...]



Media Playback in Ubuntu

« 23 August 2008 | 13:32 | Computers & Technology, Linux, Open Source, Software | No Comments »

So, I had some Real Media (rm) videos that I wanted to view in Linux. But, like so many other sane people out there, I didn’t want anything to do with the official Real Player for Linux. I’ve never been a fan of Real and I’ve always thought their software was a bloated mess. Plus, [...]



Farewell Wordpress

« 18 August 2008 | 22:09 | Drupal, Open Source, PHP, Site News, Software, Symfony, Web Development | No Comments »

In an effort to save time when I put together sites for people, I’ve been working on a universal engine I can use. It is modeled loosely off the MercuryBoard code and, for the most part, has served me pretty well. Recently, I’ve tried to revamp it with more object oriented code, integrating PEAR and [...]