Category Archives: Musings

I’m switching to Chrome (on a trail basis)

I thought I would be a Firefox user till I died, but holy crap Chrome is fast! I can launch Firefox, go make a sandwich, launch Chrome and be browsing before Firefox loads. This is particularly nice on our crappy Windows machines at work. JavaScript is noticeably faster. Chrome seems more stable and [...]

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Wordpress Error: Unable to create directory / Is its parent directory writable by the server?

If you get this error when you try to upload an image to your WordPress blog, there are two things you can do:

Go to Settings > Miscellaneous in your Wordpress admin area and make sure that ‘Store uploads in this folder’ is set to the default: wp-content/uploads (notice there is no ‘/’ before wp-content/uploads).  Try [...]

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Use your user’s public_html directory to serve webpages

Using a public_html file in your home directory is much more convenient than /var/www for a local website development environment. The following commands create a file called public_html in your home directory and enable the UserDir module in Apache.
From the command line, enter:

$ mkdir ~/public_html
$ cd /etc/apache2/mods-enabled
$ sudo ln -s ../mods-available/userdir.conf userdir.conf
$ sudo ln [...]

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The difference between a working tree, repository, branch, and checkout in the Bazaar version control system

I wish this was in huge type on the front page of the Bazaar web site because it is essential to understanding just what the heck is going on when you place you files under version control.
I’m going to use an example to explain this. These events are listed in the order that they [...]

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Fixed my site

LastPass, my fave password manager, was doing funny things with WordPress, reposting and deleting my blog posts. Weird. Fixed now.

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iPython is super sweet!

You were right Evan, I was lost but now I’m found:
http://ipython.scipy.org/moin/
HUGE improvement on the beautiful Python interpreter. Tab completion! Bash commands! Yes!

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Something is wrong with my blog

It keeps deleting posts. I’ll figure it out tomorrow.

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Ubuntu Jaunty headphone sound fix

I was getting no sound on my headphones or external speakers on my MacBook 2-1 until I found this post:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/201957
Follow these steps by Polera:
1. Right click on volume control.
2. Click ‘Open Volume Control’
3. Go to Edit –> Preferences
4. Check off ‘Surround Sound’
5. Close Preferences
6. Un-mute ‘Surround Sound’
7. Plug [...]

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Ubuntu Features I Heart

I’m working mostly in Ubuntu now a days, and its been a joy since I discovered (read: desperately scoured the earth for) these fantastic applications that give me all the workflow magic I take for granted in OSX.
GNOME Do
A very fast and extensible launcher that does all the stuff I use Quicksilver for in OSX. [...]

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Emoticons are *gulp* useful

Hard to admit because they’re so cheesey, but emoticons are useful.  Ever want to say something pithy in an email without sounding curt? Emoticon smiley to the rescue!
See, its really easy to mistake someone’s tone in an email, particularly a short one.  So save a couple of exclamations points
(I feel dirty for some [...]

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