Tag: software

Keystroke Shortcuts

Nick Momrik19 Comments

I spend a lot of time on computers. That means a lot of time with my hands on the keyboard. Wouldn’t it be great it there was an easy way to make every computer work faster? There is…they’re called keyboard shortcuts and I use a ton of them. Most of them have become second nature I use them so often. Last week when I was taking the VB.Net course my partner kept asking me how I did this or that. This guy had worked for 17 years as a program and didn’t know the shortcuts that I use everyday! I believe that some of these shortcuts are essential skills for a programmer and I wouldn’t be able to live without them.

A few notes…These shortcuts should work in *most* Windows applications, but not all. Some people don’t know what the Windows key is (I’ll use WIN as an abbreviation), so I’ll explain it. It’s the key on a PC keyboard that is usually between the Ctrl and Alt keys on the left side and between the Alt and Context key on the right side. It has the Windows logo (flag) on it. I will not be stating the obvious shortcuts such as Page Up/Down, Delete, etc. but will include a few that I never see people use when they should.

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The Photos Are Missing

Nick Momrik7 Comments

They weren’t kidnapped, I just got fed up with using Gallery to manage my photos, so I ditched it. I’ve found something that looks pretty sweet and should be a nice replacement. Markku is developing a PHP-based application for publishing photos and I like the looks of it. He is either caling it iPAP or SPAM, I’ve seen it called both in different places. Personally I like iPAP better…SPAM is used for too many other bad things, such as that nasty canned “meat” and the flood of messages in my INBOX. Now if only I could get my hands on a test version of his software. 💡

Look for the photos to be back up and running when I get back from my trip.

WordPress Plugins

Nick Momrik3 Comments

WordPress 1.2 is in final testing and the final release should be available sometime this week. There is a nice new plugin structure to replace the previous hacks functionality. As a result, I’ve ported some of my hacks over to plugins.

Everything has been moved over the to WordPress Plugin Repository. See my list of plugins.

I’d also like to welcome all of the new WP users that have migrated in the past few days due to Moveable Type changing their licensing.

Update: The Tabbed Sidebar instructions have been modified. I found a problem with the cookie code that is now fixed.

Comment SPAM Protection

Nick Momrik4 Comments

I just installed a hack by Mark (Laughing Lizard) on my site to filter comments. Believe it or not, there are people out there that will visit blogs and post comments advertising viagra or other such things. This hack is designed to help prevent this from happening. If an address or certain words are recognized, the comment will be marked and will not appear until I allow it too. So it adds a level of moderation, which should keep me protected. Most of you shouldn’t even notice this in action and your comments should go through right away. If they don’t, I’ll get to allowing them as soon as I can.

Gallery Upgrade

Nick Momrik1 Comment

I just finished upgrading the Photos section of the site to use Gallery 1.4.2. The only reason I upgraded was because they had found a pretty big security hole in the previous versions of the software. I didn’t feel like having someone hack into my web server. The upgrade went pretty smoothly, except that I’ve lost all the hard work I put into hacking the Gallery code to make it valid XHTML 1.1. Oh well!

You’ll notice some design changes with it since I decided to use a portion of one of the skins that came with the new version. Gallery is a great piece of software, but I just wish they had worked a little bit at using some standard code. The first time I installed Gallery I took at least a few hours to hack the code so that it would all validate XHTML 1.1. I think I’m going to leave it this time around…at least for the time being. I’d rather get Windows installed on my new server (I had initially put Linux on it) so that I can install Linux on my old PC. The server is just too much power to have Linux sitting on it when all I really want to do is play around with Linux. It’s much smarter to harness that power for my main machine.

Running Linux

Nick Momrik2 Comments

My new server, with Linux installed, is up and running. I’m making this post from it right now as a matter of fact. It will take me some time to get used to it and learn my way around. It’s been a few years since I’ve had a Linux box, so there is quite a bit new and different. If anyone knows any good sites for tutorials and configurations, let me know.

Bookmarks And Favorites

Nick Momrik2 Comments

For the purpose of this post, BF = bookmark/favorite. Most people use BFs in their browser to make it easy for them to browse their favorite websites with a single click. They also store the sites so that they don’t have to remember the lengthy addresses some sites have. Whoever invented them made it very easy for the rest of us.

I use the Internet all the time for everything. What would you say if I told you that I don’t use BFs in my browsers at all? Not here at home, not at work, or anywhere else. Since I am around computers a lot, I would need to keep several different versions of my BFs synchonized, which would be a major pain in the ass. I also use several different browsers, especially for my web developing purposes. Some browsers will allow you to import/export BFs, but that just adds to the pain and suffereing of updating more lists. Can you see what I’m getting at? A centralized list of BFs is the solution. Something I can access from any computer that has access to the Internet.

A year or two ago, I stumbled upon a site called MyBookmarks while searching for a solution. It is a free service where I store all of my BFs. I can create and remove folders, add and delete BFs, change the colors of the page where I view my BFs, move BFs, sort them…and the list goes on. You can even import BFs from your browser into your MyBookmarks account so that you don’t have to go through the hassle of typing everything in.

So, instead of keeping track of BFs all over the place, I simply set the home page in my browser as the link to my account at MyBookmarks and I have easy access to all of the sites I use. Whenever I open up a browser, I’m greated by a nice list of all my BFs. It makes life a whole lot easier.

Access your bookmarks online — anytime, anywhere.

TFS Statistics

Nick Momrik9 Comments

I just finished installing TFS Statistics on my web site. The configuration was a breeze and the instructions were top notch for the installation.

From their website:

TFS is a Web statistics package written in PHP.

Features: Web site statistics by day, month, year, OS, browser, bots/spiders, referrers,last visitors, last bots/spiders, page hits, visitors by country, average visitors/bots and % function on all counters. In the last bots/spiders and last vistors overview you can click a link so you can see what pages are requested by the visitor, spider, or bot. Referrers are listed by domain if you click on the domain you will see the pages where your site is listed. You can also exclude ip adresses, so they will not show up in your statistics.

I did run into a conflict between their code and WordPress. I was getting “is not a valid MySQL-Link resource” error messages from some of the WP queries, but the errors went away when I turned off the TFS includes. I ended up finding a fix for the problem and documented it on their forums.

So far it looks like a great package that gives me all of the information that I want about the visitors to my site.

Instant Messengers

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Instant messenger (IM) programs have had a large impact on communication. It is a form of instant communication like talking on the phone or in-person. We can send a message and get an immediate response from someone else. We can hold conversations (or chats) with several people at once, which we cannot do on the phone or in-person.

The most popular IMs are AIM, MSN, Yahoo!, and ICQ. I have accounts on all four (I’ve never used my ICQ account), but prefer them in the order I’ve listed. I also have the most contacts/buddies/friends on each IM in that order.

Back in the day, to have a conversation with someone that was online you either had to respond back and forth through email or join a chatroom. Both are a pain in the ass. IMs have improved this immensely and have added a lot of extra features. The greatest advantage IMO is the ability to see when other people are logged into the service and if they are “away” or not. Away messages could be a whole new topic in itself. AIM has the most customizable away messages in my experience.

I can remember being back in college and instead of walking into the next room or yelling to a roommate, we’d chat on IM. We didn’t have to go find the phone and call downstairs to find someone who wanted to go grab some food. We could just switch over from the paper we were writing to IM and hit up multiple people at once. It was a whole new definition of laziness. Because of IM, the “freshmen 15” has turned into the “freshmen 20.”

IM is so convenient and easy that I can’t think of something that could take it’s place. I’m sure that someday something will (maybe some new form of video chat), but it will have to be easy to use, full of features, and just amazing. IM is here to stay for awhile. Send me a message…what are you waiting for!