Week in review – 05/06/13 – 05/12/13
So, this week, I was asked to write a chunk of PHP code to interact with the PayFlow Pro APIs. It was my first ever chunk of production PHP code. I have to admit, I was not necessarily impressed with...
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How to create a complete mirror of a website, using wget
This is a pretty good trick to know. It will grab the rendered version of your website, even if the original is database-driven. wget -mk http://steinbring.net
View ArticleWeek in review – 05/13/13 – 05/19/13
So, this week, I was approached about doing a project in a language that I have never written in before. I do not have the project yet but I was left wondering how much time to budget to learn the...
View ArticleHow do I schedule a task to run daily/weekly/monthly on Ubuntu?
There are folders where you can place your script. For hourly tasks: /etc/cron.hourly For daily tasks: /etc/cron.daily For weekly tasks: /etc/cron.weekly For monthly tasks: /etc/cron.monthly
View ArticleWeek in review – 05/20/13 – 05/26/13
This past week, I was reminded of the reason why it is important to do proper analysis of a project. I was handed two project. One was hot and the other wasn’t. I was asked to do the not-hot one...
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What is the gold standard and what is fiat money?
History of Money As early as 12,000 BC, Anatolian obsidian was distributed as a raw material for stone-age tools. In the 9th millennium, organized trading appeared. Items like this could be...
View ArticleWeek in review – 05/27/13 – 06/02/13
This past week, I started to about “better” ways of handling crud operations. A lot of what I do as a developer is to allow the user to input a collection of things and then output that list of things...
View ArticleWeek in review – 06/03/13 – 06/09/13
This past week, I saw Marcos Placona‘s post about running Railo in AppFog for free. He does it by installing the Railo WAR file into a java instance. I was able to get a Railo 4 instance running...
View ArticleHow to detect a device type, based upon window width
These days, it seems like there are an almost infinite number of device types. There are phones, tablets, phablets (AKA really big phone), small laptops (like netbooks), big laptops, and desktops....
View ArticleWeek in review – 06/10/13 – 06/16/13
This past week, I was asked to work (together with the other developers) on a standards document for application development. This is the second time, in three organizations, where I was asked to work...
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Week in review – 06/17/13 – 06/23/13
This past week, I started looking at how to figure out the sales tax rate for a particular location. If the Marketplace Fairness Act would have passed, it would have required every online store to...
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How to take screenshots in OS X
This is one of the first questions I had when I got this new laptop. It’s fairly simple (even if it isn’t all too memorable). Command-Shift-3: Capture the entire screen and save it to a file on the...
View ArticleWeek in review – 06/24/13 – 06/30/13
This past week, I replaced my trusty chromebook with new Macbook Air. I got the 11.6″ one with a haswell i5 CPU, 8gb of RAM, and a 256gb SSD. It should be significantly more powerful than the...
View ArticleWeek in review – 07/01/13 – 06/07/13
This past week, I signed up for MoviePass. I first heard about it, a few months ago when one of my coworkers signed up for it. The way it works is that you pay a monthly fee for “unlimited” visits to...
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Dynamic creation of variables, based upon a database table
The other day, as I fiddled with my weekend project, I stumbled into a concept that I had not thought of previously. I was looking to make it as easy as possible to make the app multi-lingual. In...
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Better living through database normalization
Database normalization is a process meant to reduce or eliminate data redundancy. Typically, a normalized database exists in first normal form (1NF), second normal form (2NF), or third normal form...
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How to convert decimal to unsigned binary in JavaScript
Ok, I do have to admit that this has limited value. I did this mostly as a thought experiment. I wanted to see how easy it would be to script the conversion from decimal to binary and back again, in...
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Moto X on Republic Wireless: One Week Later
For the past few years, I have been using an unlocked Samsung Galaxy Nexus on Straight Talk. Straight Talk is a MVNO that offers service on your choice of AT&T‘s network or T-mobile‘s network for...
View ArticleHow to use Nmap to identify what a server is running
Whether you are attacking a computer or protecting it, proper intelligence about a computer is important. A very powerful option for learning about a given system is Nmap. According to Nmap’s...
View ArticleCheapskate Post: What is the cheapest cellphone service?
Over the past two years, I have been fairly focused on reducing unnecessary costs. The way I look at it, debt minimization or elimination is the key to freedom and the easiest way of achieving that is...
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