"Those who know and know they know are wise, listen to them. Those who do not know and know that they do not know are intelligent, teach them. Those who do not know and do not know that they do not know are dangerous, smite them." -- unknown, paraphrased
Fun with Yii · 4712 days ago by John
So, I’ve started working with Yii to see if I can make something quickly. Every time I take up one of these frameworks the context seems to get in the way. Mostly I just want better data management and better user management. Let’s see what happens.
Firefox and Thunderbird by Mozilla · 4955 days ago by John
You may have heard of Firefox before (no, not the movie where Clint has to think in Russian to steal a Soviet plane) and that’s because it is awesome. The Firefox I’m talking about is a web browser like the Internet Explorer you are probably using. The difference is that Firefox is used by a much smaller portion web surfers. That makes Firefox far less attractive to people who spend time writing code to exploit web browsers. In addition, upgrading Internet Explorer is clunky and often too late to save you. The Mozilla Foundation, while a world-class organization, isn’t burdened by the same sort of bureaucracy as Microsoft.
Thunderbird, also by Mozilla, is an email client. Most people use web-based email accounts these days, but for those of you using regular email clients (like Outlook Express), Thunderbird is for you. Take a look, download it… enjoy!
Saving Your Computer · 5058 days ago by John
Here are a couple easy tips to keeping your computer from blowing up from viruses, malware and other things you don’t want to be associated with.
- Never click on a popup. Many of them take you to sites you don’t want to be associated with or which will steal from you. If you see something you’re interested in in a popup, close the popup and type in the address of the site you want to visit into your browser. The link on the popup may very well not be taking you where you think you want to go.
- Never click on an address in an unsolicited email. The worst of this category are fake sites which want you to go to them, look like your bank’s site and want to trick you into typing your username and password into their site. One again, if you need to go to a site you are familiar with, type it into the browser or use a shortcut you’ve created.
- Go to Snopes
- Learn what cookies are. And learn why they can be good and why they can be bad.
- Set up the wireless protection on your wireless router. Get the manual out and do it.
$699 for Adobe Photosop? Most people don't need it. Get GIMP. · 5070 days ago by John
Adobe Photoshop is an awesome application. I love it. It is powerful, easy to use and ubiquitous. But it’s also $699! For high-end photographers, print advertisers and the like, it is well worth the cost. For everyone else, get GIMP The GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is very powerful in its own right and, with a little time reading the manual, you can do amazing things with it.
Stop Paying for Microsoft Office - Get OpenOffice instead · 5115 days ago by John
Microsoft Office has become a real goat over the years. It’s almost impossible to use quickly and efficiently with its crazy menus and odd feeling interface. Then, on top of that, they want an arm and a leg for it. So, the next time you replace your computer (or today for that matter) get OpenOffice . This is a free suite of MS Office-like products which can do the majority of things you do with MS Office. And, it’s free!
It also has the ability of saving documents in Office 97/2000/XP format which is readily readable by all modern versions of MS Office. And, it has a built-in PDF document creator which can be read by Adobe Reader