How to use the HTML <base> tag
When every byte counts, you can use the HTML <base /> tag to specify a default href and target attribute for all relative URLs on the page. Like a virtual shortcut. For smaller sites with a flat directory structure, this isn’t going to help much; but for sites with deeply nested directories, the <base /> tag can potentially shave a lot of extra weight from your web pages, and also help keep URLs cleaner and shorter. So if you’re micro-optimizing […] Continue reading »
Email Troubleshooting Guide
Email is sort of like the “glue” that holds the Internet together. But it’s the worst possible glue ever. It’s underlying technology is convoluted, complicated, insecure, tedious, sloppy, and archaic. In a nutshell: email sucks but it’s pretty much essential for working online. So what do you do if email is not working, like when you send an email but it never arrives? It can be very frustrating and difficult to figure out what went wrong. To help get you […] Continue reading »
Customer Anti-Support
Email support can be great or it can suck horribly. It’s a spectrum. For my own products and services, my average email response time is around 1 hour in general, and 5 minutes if I am online. Seriously, I am right there ready and glad to help anyone who needs it. Contrast that strategy to what seems to be the typical email support response time of an entire day or much longer. It’s just crazy to have to wait that […] Continue reading »
Watch Cyber Attacks Online
Taking a quick break to watch cyber attacks happening in real time. Continue reading »
My Collection of Facebook Pages
Finally got around to setting up and pimping out official Facebook pages for my main websites. It took awhile to get them all fleshed out with posts, graphics, infos, and so forth. And then took awhile longer to wait until there were enough likes to get those oh-so-special vanity URLs. You know you gotta have those things. And now at this point, they’re all pretty much ready for their close-ups.. and so without further ado, here is my growing collection […] Continue reading »
OS X TotalFinder Alternatives
For years, I enjoyed the advanced Finder functionality provided by BinaryAge’s excellent app, TotalFinder. Mac’s native Finder enables users to navigate and manage their files, similar in concept to Windows File Explorer. Unfortunately, as explained in my rant about things that suck about Mac, TotalFinder no longer is compatible with Mac 10.11+. Fortunately there are plenty of decent alternatives to TotalFinder, even if you’re running the latest version of Mac OS X. Continue reading »
Things that kinda suck about Apple/Mac
I dove into the world of Apple/Mac over five years ago. Overall I think it’s a huge step up from anything Windows related, but there are some things that I feel kinda suck about Mac OS X and Apple products in general. This post rounds up some of my thoughts, hopefully to help promote discussion and encourage some much-needed improvement. Continue reading »
Coda 2 Lessons Learned
I recently switched over to Panic’s Coda 2 for code editing and SFTP functionality. After using my previous editor/FTP software for over 10 years, I was surprised that learning Coda 2 happened so easily. It literally took me like two days of using it before I was back up to full development speed. In the process of learning, I discovered numerous questions and concerns that weren’t covered in the Coda 2 documentation or anywhere online. This post rounds up these […] Continue reading »
Clever Popup Ad? No Thanks.
So these days, I’m seeing more “clever” popups when visiting various websites. For example, do a search, see a result, click to visit.. and then before any content is shown, I’m hit with some annoying popup ad for whatever thing the site is trying to push. Continue reading »
Cool Fractal Videos
Fractals are the best! Here are some of the best I’ve seen on YouTube. Continue reading »
Slowing Down Movies in Quicktime
Just a quick post today.. Awhile ago I was putting together some video screencasts, and needed a way to “slow-down” the video to play certain sections at half-speed. After much trial and fiddling, here are the steps that actually worked to produce a saved copy of the movie (not just run the slow motion effect on the live movie). Continue reading »
List All Files and Folders Recursively via Terminal
From time to time I have occasion to generate a list all WordPress files or similar. As I’m not an expert in Terminal, it took awhile to figure out the magic recipe.. now having collected some useful commands, I want to post ‘em for future reference. Continue reading »
30+ Online Drawing Tools
Here are some great online drawing tools for those who like to draw and work online at the same time. Way back in 2006, online drawing tools were few and far between, especially anything with collaborative functionality for multi-user action. Back then, the choices were basically Groupboard and LiTha-Paint. But the scene is much improved, with some amazing single- and multi-user drawing tools available for getting creative and having fun. Here’s a round-up of our favorites.. Continue reading »
Switching from Firefox to Chrome
I’ve used Firefox as my main browser for years. I’ve always known it to be fast and functional, but for some reason after version 3 or 4, things started getting not so good. For example, each major upgrade leaves me with fewer compatible extensions. And if you don’t remember to disable the auto-updates option, you may be stuck with your favorite extensions not working. I lost some great add-on functionality for the Fx4 -> Fx5 update, but continued using Firefox […] Continue reading »
Switching from PC to Mac
I finally made the switch from PC to Mac. My previous machine was an old Sony Vaio purchased in 2005. It was top of the line then, and actually worked great until about a year ago, when it inevitably began dying a slow, complicated death. The time to finally buy a new computer was fast approaching.. Continue reading »
Lessons Learned after 5 Years of Blogging
This Fall, I celebrate five years of blogging. I have written tons of web development stuff at Perishable Press, lots of helpful WordPress stuff at Digging into WordPress, some creative/artistic stuff at Dead Letter Art, jQuery stuff at jQuery Mix, and some business-related web-design stuff at Monzilla Media. Plus a bunch of interviews, guest posts, and other blogging projects. So yeah, lots of blogging and writing during the past five years. And they just flew by. Despite what the haters […] Continue reading »
