Archive for the ‘Random’ Category

New Hosting

I have to apologize for any problems anyone may be having in the last few days, I recently discovered some problems with my current hosting provider so I’m in the process of switching over to a new host.

I will give more details when the switch is complete, I just wanted to give a fair warning to anyone that may be reading this and is having problems with anything, it “should” all be fixed tonight some time.

thanks!!

Posted by mnoga on November 4th, 2006 No Comments

Basic HTML and CSS - Centering Text

Here are is some basic HTML code that can be used to jazz up a web page. I will cover how to bold, italicize and underline text, as well as change the color of text.

There are better ways of accomplishing these task such as using CSS, but I will cover that another time.

Lets start with centering some text.

If you'd like your text to be centered, you can use the <center> tag. Like all HTML tags, it will need to be closed, you do this with the </center> tag. Although this tag is no longer considered to be in active use by the W3C, it is still usable today.

EXAMPLE;

<center>Follow the white rabbit</center>  

You also have the option of using the <p> tag to center a paragraph of text.  At the start of the paragraph, you would enter the tag <p style="text-align: center;"> and close the tag with </p>.  This is the correct way to center text, using CSS (cascading style sheets).

EXAMPLE;

 <p style="text-align: center;"> A paragraph about the white rabbit </p>

Posted by mnoga on November 2nd, 2006 1 Comment

Theme Change…

Sorry for the semi regular theme changes, I am trying to find one I really like so I can stick with it and just do modification rather than full changes.

I think I have one now that I really like, it's simple and I think I can do a lot of little changes to really make it an awesome theme.

Let me know if you have any ideas or suggestions.

Thanks!!! 

Posted by mnoga on October 27th, 2006 No Comments

Windows keyboard shortcuts

I thought I would share a few keyboard shortcuts I recently found out about.

Windows key + D - toggles Show Desktop

Windows key + L - locks computer, this one only works on Windows XP

Windows key + E - starts Windows Explorer

Hope you find them useful!

Posted by mnoga on October 5th, 2006 2 Comments

A quick note on Security

Security is a process that you engage in, not a state that you acquire.

I have no idea who originally said it, but I thought it was worth posting!!!

Posted by mnoga on September 16th, 2006 No Comments

Open links with Firefox by right clicking

While developing web sites and applications I primarily use Firefox, but I don’t have Firefox set as my default browser. I do this for an important reason, by leaving IE as my default browser I often just double click on files to view them and they open in IE. This reminds me (forces me) to test my pages in IE.

However, there are many occasions where I really just want to view the link or file in Firefox so having a right click context menu item to allow this would be great., and here is how you can make one.

Just be careful, this is a registry hack!!!

Open a text file, I use notepad, and add the code below to it;

REGEDIT4

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTInternetShortcutshellFoxOpen]

@=”Open with Firefox”

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOTInternetShortcutshellFoxOpencommand]

@=”\”C:Program FilesMozilla Firefoxfirefox.exe\”\”%l\”"

If you did a custom install of Firefox you will have to change the last line to the location of your firefox.exe file. Make sure you use the double slashes as I have. Now save the file as “FFopen.reg” and double click on it, click OK on the pop up and you’re all set. If the file just opens and you see the text you entered then the file extension was not changed to .reg and is still .txt. Try saving the file again and this time include the quotes “FFopen.reg”, this will force notepad to save it as you named it and not FFOpen.reg.txt.

Now when you right click you should see an extra menu item that says “Open with Firefox”

Posted by mnoga on September 5th, 2006 5 Comments

Testing with Windows Live Writer

So here we have a test, I am writing this with the new Windows Live Writer (Beta). I will write more soon after I get to test it a bit, but so far it looks really nice.

More to come…..

Posted by mnoga on August 16th, 2006 No Comments

IDE’s on the mind…

Lately I have been trying out several different IDE’s. What is an IDE, ok, it stands for Integrated Development Environment. This definition is key to picking a good IDE. I’ve asked the question “What IDE do you use” before and I’ve been asked it of myself, and I have noticed that lot’s of people use this as a lead in to bash some IDE’s and promote others. No big deal, every one has their favorite and I’m cool with that.

My problem is with the people that say “Stay away from ones like Dreamweaver or Eclipse their too bloated and resource intensive, I use Notepad (or insert what ever text editor you want)” Other will say “What do you need an IDE for all you need is a text editor, that’s what real programmers use”

These kinds of remarks bother me to no end, because Notepad and the other TEXT EDITORS out there like it are NOT IDE’s!!! And what exactly is wrong with using an IDE. Why spend more time and energy doing every little thing by hand, don’t get me wrong I firmly believe to be a good programmer you should know how to do it all by hand. Believe me when I tell you there will be times when you won’t have access to your IDE and still need to make a change or times when starting up the IDE just is not worth it when you only have a little change to do. But what’s wrong with features like intellisence and code highlighting that truly cut back on development time.

An IDE is more than just an app to code in; it offers other really helpful features, like Project Management, Debugging and Version control. And I have not seen one text editor yet that has good project management built in. And no, being able to work on the live server through FTP as though it was a local drive does not count. Now it is true that some Text editor have some of these features built in, like FTP or Version control, but they do not have all of them and non as feature rich as an IDE.

Personally I think Dreamweaver gets a really bad rap and it doesn’t deserve it. I’ve used it quite a lot in the past for HTML, Cold Fusion or PHP (these are the specific languages I have used it with, there may be more), it performs really well. Especially the new version with Code Folding and background file transfers. The project management in it is impressive as well, just the built in FTP alone makes me love it. I don’t know of any other software out there weather it be a stand alone FTP app or another IDE that has the ability to let you choose a file on your local drive no matter how deep the directory it sits in is, and upload the file with out forcing you to first navigate to the remote directory it needs to go to. Basically it maintains directory structure for you so you can simply upload the file you’re working on really easily and not worry about it going to the wrong remote directory. If anyone knows of another app that does this PLEASE let me know what it is.

I have also been using Eclipse with the PHPEclipse plug-in and the ZendIDE plug-in, and Zend Studio. Now Zend studio is nice and the debugger in it works really well, but it is a PHP only IDE, and to really use all of its features you have to have some software installed on the server as well. Eclipse on the other hand is amazing, it is an Open source Application built in Java, so the only big down side is that you have to have Java runtime environment (JRE) installed to use it. But most computers come with it preinstalled and if you happened to have one that does not have it already you can download it for free. Now to the good stuff, Eclipse has a great plug-in architecture. There is tons of free Open Source plug-ins out there, if you look, you will find one that does what you need. There a plug-ins for SVN, CSS, XML, Web Services, PHP, Cold Fusion, Ruby, Ruby on Rails, Python the list goes on and on. And if you’re a Java deloper you can just build your own.

The verdict is still out on which IDE I will end up using, but I’m leaning toward Eclipse, here are some of the main reasons;

·        It’s Open Source (basically it’s free)

·        Activly being worked on and inhanced

·        Great plug-in system with tons of free plug-ins

·        It’s Java, so by nature it is platform independed, that means it works on Mac OS X, Linux and Windows

I’m still open to suggestions, so if you use an IDE (not a text editor) feel free to tell me all about. Coments are open!!!

Posted by mnoga on August 11th, 2006 No Comments

Hello…Hello….Optimum Voice, you suck

I just hung up the phone because I was not able to speak to my wife on the other end. I could hear her just fine but she could not hear me. This has become a common problem over the last few months with my Optimum Voice phone service.Try calling them and they just try to tell you that it must be a problem on your end because they don’t show any network issues. Come on Cablevision!!!

All I can say is I’m glad I’m moving, in the next month or two we will be in a new house and at that time I will be signing up with Vonage. I know a few people who have Vonage already and they say it’s better than the Cable providers VoIP services they had before, I guess I will see for myself soon enough.

Posted by mnoga on August 11th, 2006 No Comments

The Lego Aircraft Carrier!!

Ok, so I know this is nothing very important but it is really cool.

It seems you really can build anything out of Lego’s!!

http://www.ezprezzo.com/crazypics/lego_aircraft_carrier.html

Posted by mnoga on March 28th, 2006 No Comments