Archive for News
Odd Roku Remote Pairing Failure
I’m a fan of refurbished electronics. In my experience, they’re just as reliable (if not moreso) than new units, and they’re much, much cheaper. That said, every once in awhile, you run into something weird.
My Top 5 less than obvious Roku channels
There are a number of streaming set-top boxes on the market these days. My box of choice happens to be the Roku. These are a few of my must-have channels beyond the obvious (Netflix, YouTube, Hulu+, etc.) ones that everyone uses.
Movies, and cameras, and DVRs… oh my!
Some of you might remember my first serious foray into the world of hardware. Well, as it turns out, I’ve come to consider it something of an ongoing project. It just keeps evolving.
Why broadband should be reclassified as a common carrier
If you follow tech news at all, you’ve probably noticed an awful lot of discussion about net neutrality and/or reclassifying broadband lately. Hell, you may have heard something about it even if you don’t follow tech news. Why? Because it’s actually a pretty big deal.
CakePHP… when WordPress isn’t quite customizable enough
These days, I work almost exclusively with WordPress. But there was a time not so very long ago that I shunned pre-built CMSes in favor of hand-coding (I was kind of a masochist back then…).
Why Direct TV is right in dropping the Weather Channel
I ditched cable awhile back, so I don’t watch the Weather Channel anymore to begin with… but that said, it’s still interesting to see Direct TV dropping the channel due to failed contract negotiations. And frankly, I think Driect TV made the right choice.
How cheap can you build a decent PC?
I started this project way back in June 2013 to see how cheap I could build a halfway decent PC. It took me awhile waiting for online sales and hunting through garage sales and Craigslist’s free section, but I finally finished it. Here’s the results:
Fun with routing… or, how I finally got my server to freaking work
Just to prove to you that even people that consider themselves tech-literate can do stupid things…
WordPress 3.7 and Automatic Updates
So, WordPress 3.7 has been released, and as of version 3.7, Wordpress now has an automatic core update feature. Awesome, right? Wordpress does all the updating for you, so all those pesky security patches get applied automagically.
Radio Station WordPress plugin is now translatable
Well, it took me awhile to figure out how to go about doing it, but I’ve finally managed to get the Radio Station plugin to the point that I can localize it.
Why I don’t sell my WordPress plugins
So a friend of mine asked me an interesting question to other day. They wanted to know why all of my WordPress plugins are free when I could be selling them, or at least selling a “pro” version of them. There are actually a few reasons for this.
Installing Ruby on Rails and Redmine with XAMPP on Windows 7
I like Xampp. It sets up a full Apache/MySQL/PHP development environment with very little hassle, which means it’s installed on just about every computer I use on a regular basis. I recently had a need to look into Ruby on Rails (specifically so that I could use the Redmine project management web app) and figured it would be easy to integrate it into my existing dev environment. It kind of… wasn’t.
Peeling an image off a white background
A lot of times, I need to remove the background from an image in Photoshop as part of a layout. Until recently, I was using Photoshop’s magic wand tool, which, as I’m sure anyone who’s familiar with Photoshop is aware, is kind of hit or miss. Sometimes the result looks great… other times you end up with jagged edges or halos around the image. As it turns out there’s a much cleaner (though more complex) way of doing this.
Cutting the Cord – One year later…
It’s been almost exactly one year since I cancelled my subscription to cable TV. It’s taken some experimentation, but at this point, I can honestly say that I don’t miss cable. At all. It has definitely been an interesting transition, with some pretty great benefits (not the least of which is the fact that I’m no longer paying Comcast a ton of money).
My first real hardware project… building a home media server
Some of you may be wondering how I spend my free time when I’m not designing websites or writing Wordpress plugins. Generally, the answer is “really geeky things”. This past weekend, for instance, I set up a media server on my home network that can stream to the Roku set-top-boxes on my living room and bedroom TVs.
