As much as I love WordPress as a blogging platform, the plugin, theme and upgrade mechanisms have always seemed a little kludgy to me.
There’s too much diving into the filesystem, unzipping downloads, FTPing files and directories to specific locations, and in the case of upgrades, futzing around disabling and re-enabling plugins, backing up the database and files, taking care not to overwrite a few critical files, etc.
With 7 WordPress sites to look after, it used to take me all evening to upgrade them whenever a new version came out.
Enter the WordPress Automatic Upgrade plugin.
This thing is sweet. Once the plugin is installed, it’s just a click to upgrade your site. The plugin will backup your database and all your files, download the latest WordPress distribution, disable your plugins, install the updated files, and re-enable your plugins. It then gives you the link to click on to upgrade your database, and you’re done!
The whole process takes just a couple of minutes per site.
All WordPress needs now is a way to upload plugins and themes via the admin interface.
August 9th, 2007
I listen to a lot of podcasts and audio books on my iPod - while driving to work, jogging, doing repetitive jobs, etc. But I’m a bit of a packrat, and the audio has been piling up faster than I can listen to it all.
Here’s a way to get through more audio: play it back faster!
I didn’t know it until recently, but the iPod supports speedup of audiobooks. Unfortunately, you can’t speed up playback of other audio file types. So you have to trick it into thinking your file is an audiobook:
Step 1: Convert the track to AAC if it’s not already. In iTunes, simply right-click on it and choose Convert To AAC.
Step 2: Turn the new AAC track into an audiobook. For this, you’ll need the Make Bookmarkable script from Doug’s Scripts. Install it as per his directions, then highlight your AAC track in iTunes, and select Make Bookmarkable from the Scripts menu.
Sync the files to your iPod, and you’re good to go.
While listening to one of these tracks, click the iPod’s center button 3 times to bring up the playback speed options, then scroll to the right to set it to Faster. The iPod keeps the pitch the same while speeding up the audio playback, so it’s still very understandable.
The main drawback with this method is that you don’t get much control over the playback speed - it’s just Slower, Normal or Faster. I’d love it if I could speed it up in increments - 1.1x, 1.2x, 1.3x, etc. Some talkers are naturally very slow, and some are fairly fast, so they need different playback speeds.
If you know of a better way to speed up audio playback on an iPod, please post it in the comments!
August 8th, 2007
Have you ever seen a video on YouTube.com and wished you could keep a copy to watch again later? Or perhaps you’ve wished you could transfer it to your phone or iPod to show others?
TubeTV by Chimoosoft is what you need!
TubeTV is an app for Mac OS X that downloads the Flash .flv movies used by many video sharing sites and converts them into H.264 .m4v video that can be viewed on other devices.
August 7th, 2007
Is it overly geeky to want to rearrange the order of the applications in your Windows taskbar?
I’ve installed Taskbar Shuffle to do this. You simply drag and drop to arrange their ordering.
On my PC at work, I tend to have many windows open at the same time - email, todo list, multiple telnet sessions, multiple browsers, Framemaker, Visio, multiple Explorer windows, etc. Keeping related windows together helps me switch between tasks and work more efficiently.
Taskbar Shuffle also lets you rearrange system tray icons, but I’ve never bothered doing that.
July 18th, 2007
I have a damaged DVD that skips badly and is unwatchable when played on a normal DVD player. I ripped it on the Mac (using Mac The Ripper - great program!), and the resulting VIDEO_TS folder seems to play back fine using DVD Player in OS X.
However, I wanted to be able to play it on a normal DVD player again.
One option would be to convert it to an MPG or AVI using something like Handbrake, and then use iDVD to burn a DVD from that. It takes some time to convert and render a DVD, though, and you’d lose some quality.
Then I found this method to turn a VIDEO_TS folder into an ISO image. At the command line, type:
hdiutil makehybrid -udf -udf-volume-name DVD_NAME -o DVD_NAME.iso /VIDEO_TS/parent/folder
Make sure that final path is the path to the folder where VIDEO_TS can be found, not the path to the actual VIDEO_TS folder itself.
It takes a little time, but you get an ISO image out. You can then burn this using Disk Utility, and you’ll get a ‘real’ DVD!
July 17th, 2007
Some work-from-home solutions involve setting up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) that sends all your internet traffic via your connection to the corporate network. And since big companies like to lock things down, this means you can’t access your private email server, Flickr account, instant messaging app, etc while you’re connected to work.
A better way to do this is for them to use “split tunnelling”, where traffic to youremployer.com goes via the VPN and all other traffic goes via your normal ISP. Not all companies get this, though. These companies are often also the ones that only allow Windows PCs to connect remotely, not Macs or Linux boxes.
Using a Mac running Windows via Parallels is, in a twist of irony, often a better solution than a Windows PC in this kind of situation.
When you connect your Windows virtual machine to the corporate VPN, it is only locking down your Windows environment. Your Mac apps can still reach blocked sites, access your private mail server, access IM, etc.
Using a Mac provides you with the best of both worlds!
Update:
Another nice thing about running Windows in a virtualised environment is that you can easily backup the image by simply copying it to an external USB drive or burning it to a DVD-R. If you screw something up in that environment, you can be back up and running in minutes by simply restoring the image.
Also, you can have one Windows image for working remotely, and a separate one for your normal Windows needs. If your employer wants you to install crazy VPN software, antivirus software, patches/updates, etc, or somehow restricts the versions of software (e.g. they need you to have an old version of Microsoft Office installed), you can do so in just that Windows image. You can install all your other software, games, tweaks, hacks etc in your other image without fear of breaking something work-related.
Neato!
July 16th, 2007
Here’s the ultimate in personal gifts - give someone some art made out of DNA.
The question is, whose DNA would you use? Your own? Isn’t that a little arrogant? And how creepy would it be trying to get a sample of the gift recipient’s DNA without them knowing?!
There’s probably a market here for some celebrities to sell artwork made from their own DNA.
At least it’s easier to understand than some of the other things you could do with DNA.
May 21st, 2007
Sometimes it can be hard to find information about a product or category of products, especially when you don’t know what the “golden keywords” are for the topic at hand.
Here are a few tips to make Google cough up some useful information.
If you know of a product that’s kind of what you’re after, but not quite, try searching for terms like “better than blah”, “cheaper than blah”, “sort of like blah”, etc. That’ll turn up lots of alternative products for you to research.
If you know of a product and would like to learn more about its competitors, try some search terms like “blah vs” or “vs blah”. Also try “compared to blah”, “compared with blah”, etc. That should turn up lots of comparison articles, reviews, shootouts, etc.
Once you’ve found a product you think you might be interested in, double-check your decision by searching for terms like “problem with blah”, “blah sucks”, “blah problem”, etc. There’ll always be a few people who have problems with any product, but if there seems to be large numbers of genuine-sounding problems and the supplier isn’t providing support, tread carefully.
Please add your own tips in the comments below!
May 21st, 2007
Fog Creek Software has just released Copilot version 2.0.
Copilot lets you remote-control another PC, much like VNC or RDC, with the advantage that it requires zero configuration, works through firewalls, and leaves nothing installed when you’re finished. Great for family tech support!
And get this - it now supports OS X. So you can control PC to PC, PC to Mac, Mac to PC, or Mac to Mac.
From a Mac point of view, it seems to be getting decent reviews:
I know, you could do this with VNC. But if you haven’t set that up in advance or it’s not currently working, Copilot will get you out of trouble for just $5 for a 24-hour license. Not bad.
January 28th, 2007
Well, my four wisdom teeth came out this morning. Ouch. I wasn’t able to talk for the rest of the day because of swollen and numb bottom lip, jaw and tongue. That makes it really hard to be around inquisitive/talkative one- and three-year-olds! Grace seems to be the only one who understands my grunts :-).
All is going well. I have to pop all sorts of pills for the next couple weeks. I won’t be eating much for the next few days, but everything should be back in good working order for Christmas feasts!
November 21st, 2006
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