Trae Was Here

[traeregan]

Dreamhost Moved You to a New Server and Your Site Shows an 'Internal Server Error'

If you had a custom php.ini setup on your website, using http://sxi.sabrextreme.com/dh-phpini then this post is to help you fix the Internal Server Error after a Dreamhost server migration and then restore your previous custom php.ini entries.

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Step 1. Delete these lines from ~/<yourdomain.com>/.htaccess

#--- DH-PHP handlers --- AddHandler fastcgi-script fcg fcgi fpl AddHandler php-fastcgi .php Action php-fastcgi /cgi-bin/dispatch.fcgi

After this your site should work again, without the Internal Server Error, but you’ll still need to put your custom php.ini values back in-place with the subsequent steps.

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Step 2. Set domain to use PHP 5.3 in Dreamhost Control Panel (Manage Domains -> Click ‘Edit’ Under Fully Hosted User For Domain You Want to Update -> Web Options / PHP Mode Select: PHP 5.3.x FastCGI (default) -> Click ‘Change Settings’ -> Wait 10 minutes or so before doing step 3)

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Step 3. Per http://wiki.dreamhost.com/PHP.ini#phprc “In your user’s home directory /home/<username>/ make a new folder .php. This folder name starts with a ‘.’ or dot, and if you’re using an FTP program you may need to turn on “view hidden files and folders” to see it after you make it. Inside that make another folder 5.3. The shell command for all that is:”

mkdir -p ~/.php/5.3

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Step 4. In ~/.php/5.3/ create a new text file called: phprc

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Step 5. Put any php.ini custom values in phprc, for example if you wanted to increase your upload filesize limit:

upload_max_filesize = 50M post_max_size = 50M

To note, you should be able to look through your previous custom php.ini values in /home/<username>/<yourdomain.com>/cgi-bin/php.ini

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Step 6. (optional) Run this terminal command to apply the updates, or optionally just wait 10 minutes or so for the updates to take effect on their own.

killall php53.cgi

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Step 7. Verify your new settings were applied by viewing the output of the following in a PHP page:

<?php phpinfo(); ?>

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Hopefully your website is working 100% again at this point.

[traeregan]

DIY Stand Up Desk

Posted from: FL, USA

I spend a lot of time at the computer and I keep seeing articles that say sitting is “killing me”. Despite already having a nice ergonomic (supposedly) setup, I’ve noticed that my posture is getting bad and I’ve experienced frequent discomfort in my neck, back, and shoulders. So rather than sitting around and committing some kind of slow, akward suicide, I’ve built a stand up desk in my office.

Today is day number ten with the setup and I’m really enjoying it so far. I’ve probably been spending 75% of my work-day (10 to 12 hours on-average) at the desk, which was rough on my feet and knees at first (even wearing shoes), but now I’m gaining a little more standing-stamina every day and I would almost call it comfortable.

My only complaint so far is that I’m using a laptop on the desk and looking down at the screen is making my neck a bit sore over time. I am considering either mounting an iMac on the wall, above the standing desk, elevating the laptop with a stand and then using an external keyboard and touch pad, or (least likely) mounting an external display, for the laptop, on the wall.

Here are some links to some stand up desk resources that I referenced when planning how to build my own:

The ergonimics of a standing setup (graphic). Be sure to check out the Tinkering Monkey Custom Standing Desk too, if you don’t feel like building your own. They created the graphic I linked to - they get it.

The Geek Desk. This is the most popular manuafactured desk, from what I’ve read. It was way above my budget though, and much larger than I needed.

A round-up post with a bunch of DIY ideas. The one that most inspired my setup is ‘The $40 Standup Desk’, although I ended up spending around $85.

The materials that went into building mine:

Medium Density Fiber Board Handy Panel: One of the employees at Home Depot cut this to the dimensions I needed.

22in. Titanium Brackets: You could probably get away with shorter brackets, but I wanted something really sturdy. Mission accomplished. The desk is rock solid.

Vinyl Cherry Casing / Trim: I know, I know, it doesn’t match my floor. It does match the rest of my office furniture though. Anyway, this is just for decoration and certainly optional.

Hopefully some of the information has been helpful for you. If you end up building your own, post some pictures!

UPDATE: About a week later, I added another level, to put my laptop at eye-level.

UPDATE Nov. 10th 2012: I just added this “anti-fatigue” mat and I really like it. I’ve also put up some development cheat sheets and a headphones holder. Could stand to better organize all of the cables for sure.

[traeregan]

DIY Stand Up Desk

Posted from: FL, USA

I spend a lot of time at the computer and I keep seeing articles that say sitting is “killing me”. Despite already having a nice ergonomic (supposedly) setup, I’ve noticed that my posture is getting bad and I’ve experienced frequent discomfort in my neck, back, and shoulders. So rather than sitting around and committing some kind of slow, akward suicide, I’ve built a stand up desk in my office.

Today is day number ten with the setup and I’m really enjoying it so far. I’ve probably been spending 75% of my work-day (10 to 12 hours on-average) at the desk, which was rough on my feet and knees at first (even wearing shoes), but now I’m gaining a little more standing-stamina every day and I would almost call it comfortable.

My only complaint so far is that I’m using a laptop on the desk and looking down at the screen is making my neck a bit sore over time. I am considering either mounting an iMac on the wall, above the standing desk, elevating the laptop with a stand and then using an external keyboard and touch pad, or (least likely) mounting an external display, for the laptop, on the wall.

Here are some links to some stand up desk resources that I referenced when planning how to build my own:

The ergonimics of a standing setup (graphic). Be sure to check out the Tinkering Monkey Custom Standing Desk too, if you don’t feel like building your own. They created the graphic I linked to - they get it.

The Geek Desk. This is the most popular manuafactured desk, from what I’ve read. It was way above my budget though, and much larger than I needed.

A round-up post with a bunch of DIY ideas. The one that most inspired my setup is ‘The $40 Standup Desk’, although I ended up spending around $85.

The materials that went into building mine:

Medium Density Fiber Board Handy Panel: One of the employees at Home Depot cut this to the dimensions I needed.

22in. Titanium Brackets: You could probably get away with shorter brackets, but I wanted something really sturdy. Mission accomplished. The desk is rock solid.

Vinyl Cherry Casing / Trim: I know, I know, it doesn’t match my floor. It does match the rest of my office furniture though. Anyway, this is just for decoration and certainly optional.

Hopefully some of the information has been helpful for you. If you end up building your own, post some pictures!

UPDATE: About a week later, I added another level, to put my laptop at eye-level.

UPDATE Nov. 10th 2012: I just added this “anti-fatigue” mat and I really like it. I’ve also put up some development cheat sheets and a headphones holder. Could stand to better organize all of the cables for sure.

[traeregan]

SEO Best Practices Per Google

Here are some notes I took while reading Google’s ‘Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide’ (PDF File). Hopefully you will find them useful.

Ideally, you should create a unique title for each page on your site.

The contents of the title tag will usually appear in the first line of the results

Typically snippet underneath title in search result is the meta description tag (but not always).

Clicking “cached” link in Google will show last crawl date.

Site links is the section of links that sometimes shows below a result. Google decides which get them.

Create a unique meta description tag for each page on your site.

The description meta tag might be a sentence or two or a short paragraph.

Don’t be generic i.e. “a page about baseball cards” in the meta description.

Use words in your friendly urls but try not to repeat keywords in the same url.

Don’t have multiple urls that access the same page.

Google likes breadcrumb links in pages, to outline the hierarchy of the site.

Allow for the possibility of a part of the URL being removed. Consider what happens when a user removes part of your URL - Some users might navigate your site in odd ways, and you should anticipate this.

Prepare two sitemaps: one for users (HTML page), one for search engines (xml)

Use mostly text for navigation.

Have a useful 404 page.

Google provides a 404 widget ( http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/08/make-your-404-pages-more-u… ) that you can embed in your 404 page to automatically populate it with many useful features.

Write good anchor text, that accurately describes the content on the page you’re linking to.

Use alt tags on all images that are used as links

consider consolidating your images into a single directory

Supply an Image Sitemap file: http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=178636

Restrict crawling where it’s not needed with robots.txt (Generator and more info here: http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com/2008/03/speaking-language-of-robot… )

rel=”nofollow” all user added links

Another use of nofollow is when you’re writing content and wish to reference a website, but don’t want to pass your reputation on to it.

[traeregan]

Panoramic Photos of Southeast Alaska

All were taken on a cruise in early September, 2011, on an iPhone 4 using Pano: http://debaclesoftware.com/iOS/

[traeregan]

Panoramic Photos of Southeast Alaska

All were taken on a cruise in early September, 2011, on an iPhone 4 using Pano: http://debaclesoftware.com/iOS/

[traeregan]

DigiNotar Google SSL Hack - Securing Your Mac

1. Open Keychain Access (Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app):

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2. Hit the padlock in the upper left to unlock the System Keychain:

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3. Select “System Roots” from the list of available Keychains in the upper left:

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4. Click the arrow box to expand Keychains if you don’t see “System Roots”:

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5. In the System Roots list, find and select “DigiNotar Root CA”:

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6. Press Command+I (uppercase i) or click the “i” at the bottom of this window:

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7. Open/expand the “Trust” section at the top and under “When using this certificate”, select “Never Trust”:

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8. Close the info window and Keychain Access - you’re done (and safer!).

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[traeregan]

DigiNotar Google SSL Hack - Securing Your Mac

1. Open Keychain Access (Applications/Utilities/Keychain Access.app):

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2. Hit the padlock in the upper left to unlock the System Keychain:

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3. Select “System Roots” from the list of available Keychains in the upper left:

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4. Click the arrow box to expand Keychains if you don’t see “System Roots”:

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5. In the System Roots list, find and select “DigiNotar Root CA”:

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6. Press Command+I (uppercase i) or click the “i” at the bottom of this window:

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7. Open/expand the “Trust” section at the top and under “When using this certificate”, select “Never Trust”:

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8. Close the info window and Keychain Access - you’re done (and safer!).

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[traeregan]

Coding HTML Email - The 40,000 Foot View

Here are some general tips for coding HTML email that have worked for me:

<html>, <title>, <head>, and <body> tags are all unnecessary as they typically just get stripped out anyway

All <table> for layout, no <div>

All inline CSS

No shorthand CSS

No Javascript

600 pixels, or less, in width

Use one wrapper table with align=”center” and set explicitly to your maximum width

Put any font styling in the td nearest the text it applies to

<span> tags are okay in most cases

If an <img> tag is the last piece of content inside of a <td>, close the </td> immediately following the <img>

It’s HTML, not XHTML, so self closing tags such as <img/> and <br/> as not necessary

Include alt and title tags for all images that you want some representation of if the user can’t see images in their mail client

Use target=”_blank” for all href’s

1x1 transparent images used for spacing or tracking tend to trigger spam filters, so either use different dimensions or avoid them altogether

Anywhere a background image is used, also apply a background color of the primary color of your background image to maintain your general layout look and feel if the user can’t see images in their mail client

Remember that Outlook 2007 doesn’t support background images

Be sure that all of your images are hosted externally and that the <img> src for each image is an absolute URL

TEST your email using MailChimp’s Inbox Inspector - It’s $14 for every 3 tests, but I don’t know any better way to see how your HTML email looks in so many mail clients - very easy to use too!

Once everything looks good in Inbox Inspector, send your HTML email to [email protected] with ‘TEST’ in the subject line and you will quickly get a response

Resources:

http://spamcheck.sitesell.com/

http://www.mailchimp.com/features/power_features/inbox_inspector/

References & Continued Reading:

http://articles.sitepoint.com/article/code-html-email-newsletters

http://www.mailchimp.com/articles/how_to_code_html_emails/

[traeregan]

OS X SQLite Management App - Base

Menial put together a sweet SQLite Management GUI with their app, Base.

Check it out here: http://menial.co.uk/software/base/

Base is an application for creating, designing, editing and browsing SQLite 3 database files. It’s a proper Mac OS X application. Fast to launch, quick to get in to and get the data you need.

[traeregan]

Mass File Renaming on OS X - Name Mangler

This app rocks for mass file renaming: http://manytricks.com/namemangler/

[traeregan]

Where did the "More" menu go in Snow Leopard? Converting your Automator Workflows to Services.

If you’ve upgraded to Snow Leopard and miss the “More” -> “Automator” context menu used to access your Automator Workflows then this post is for you: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?t=775257

Once you’ve done one workflow to service conversion the rest are easy. There are also less steps to access the services than with the previous workflows system, so hurray for efficiency!

[traeregan]

Adobe BrowserLab for Cross-Browser Testing

Do you design, slice, and code websites?

We do, and we use this tool a lot: https://browserlab.adobe.com

If you prefer to read about it before diving in: https://browserlab.adobe.com/en-us/features.html

[traeregan]

Dynamic Variable Names in Lua

I’m not sure if this is the “right” way or not, but it certainly worked for me.

myVarPrepend = "month" function countMonths()     for i = 1, 12 do         _G[myVarPrepend.."foo"..i] = i     end end countMonths() print( monthfoo8 ) -- Will output "8" FTW

[traeregan]

Clipboard Managers Are Awesome

I recently started using a clipboard manager and if you do a lot of copying and pasting, I would highly recommend you use one as well.

I’m using this free one for OS X: http://jumpcut.sourceforge.net/

The concept is simple, the program maintains a history of things you have recently copied.

[traeregan]

iPhone Provisioning Portal and App Store Submission Demystified

This is as good as I’ve seen this topic explained, especially the certificates portion. Hopefully you will find it as helpful as I have.

http://developer.anscamobile.com/content/iphone-provisioning-portal-and-app-store-submission

The only note I’d add is, to install certificates on multiple devices I simply dragged them from the Provisioning Profile menu item in Xcode’s ‘Organizer’ window to the intended device above. The device you’re installing the certificate(s) to has to be plugged in as far as I know.

[traeregan]

Motivation to Start That Project You've Been Putting Off

A tad dramatic, if you ask me, but a good read nonetheless:

http://intermittentintelligence.com/2010/08/youre-a-developer-so-why-do-you-work-for-someone-else/