key muck

#37. Firefox and other browser blocks insecure content

2013-12-02T10:17:00.000-08:00

You have a website and firefox or other browsers block your ads or other content?
And it also shows an alert about insecure content?

Maybe you are using https in your website, then probably the cause is that you are serving this content without security (http) and browsers usually complain about it.

A simple way to fix this common mixed content error is removing the protocol from the url, so if you have an url to your content like src="http://yourcontent/contentpage" leave it like src="//yourcontent/contentpage". This way the browser will connect using the same protocol as the container page and allowing the content.

#36. BlockUI fires ready event in the message content

2013-08-27T08:00:00.000-07:00

After playing a little with BlockUI I found out a strange behavior, in my opinion. BlockUI fires the ready event in the elements of the message, if the element contains the typical ready event handler of jquery it may cause some problems as happened in my case.

Here you can check an example of the problem.

You can solve it easily extracting the javascript code of the element to use as message, and, of course, not use javascript inline as the best practices say.

#35. Use Github for Windows behind corporate web proxy

2013-07-09T09:00:00.000-07:00

For some time I wasn't able to connect to Github with the windows official app at work. At work we have a corporate web proxy that filters some content, and after not seeing any option to configure the proxy on the app I gave up.

But the other day I wanted to share a simple project to ping websites, WebsitePinger and I couldn't upload the code, doing a small research I found out that simply to configure GitHub for Windows, you just need to edit the .gitconfig file typically found at C:\Users\.gitconfig or C:\Documents & Settings\.gitconfig and add

[http]
proxy = http://yourcompanyproxy.com:8080

[https]
proxy = http://yourcompanyproxy.com:8080

I shared this on stackoverflow where a fellow companion was also not able to connect through proxy and seems that he did not find a working answer for him, I shared my resolution as probably someone will have the same problem as mine.

#34. The Google combo box and usability: how to forget the user

2013-07-04T18:00:00.000-07:00

This is an old post that I had on my Hubpages account criticising Google Reader, and with Reader's disappearance I want to re-post again here instead of Hubpages.

What's happening in Google? They have forgotten users? Gmail and other products have been famous for letting users be as fast as possible with keyboard shortcuts but recently I have noticed that in some pages they are using some kind of custom combo box that does not fulfill those parameters.

In Google Reader if you want to search for a post in just one of your subscriptions you have to scroll down until you find it, until now you could press a key where the combo entry was its initial and the combo would scroll down until it finds it, as almost any combo box in any website. Scrolling down almost a thousand subscriptions to find one is not funny. I thought maybe they starting to forget Google Reader in favour of other products.

But today found out the same problem in the advanced search, trying to filter by country, wait...that's Google Search, the king's jewel, how can this be happening too? Maybe they are starting to forget us, maybe they are becoming the next Microsoft?

As some partners have said to me, maybe this change is due to tactile devices, as you may have seen on your mobile or tablet when touch a combo box it opens in a dialog and you don't have a keyboard so you have to scroll. I don't really know the reason, you can check the image.

#33. Chrome hangs internet connection in Atheros LAN chips

2013-06-26T20:00:00.000-07:00

As it turns out, the drivers for the Atheros L1 Gigabit Ethernet controller, when using Windows 7 or, as I found out recently, in Windows 8, are unable to support task offloading, resulting in disconnecting current internet connection which can only be solved disabling and re-enabling the connection.

To fix this problem you need to go to Device manager>network adapter>properties>advanced>task offload:value=off.

#32. Google reader closure. Hail Feedly

2013-06-12T18:30:00.000-07:00

After many years already using Google reader to follow blogs and websites, thanks to their update tracking capabilities, I want to dedicate this small post to this fallen product. As you may know on the 1st of July of this year (2013) is going offline, and after waiting a few weeks if Google reconsidered their decision and with no change at all, I started looking for alternatives.

After trying the most renown readers that promoted themselves to occupy the place of the falling king of readers, the winner IMHO is Feedly, which initially I discarded because it needs to download an extension to work and is not completely web based.

That made me try Pulse, but the magazine interface did not convince me at all, I wanted something similar to the old reader, and after finally trying Feedly I am pretty convinced that is the best alternative I found until now. It lacks some features that I miss, and I expect that some day they will implement, like a search bar for posts, to find something that you read some time ago and you want to read again. It helped to do a seamless change that they imported all the data from reader in your first login, so if you are still stuck with Google reader it is the time to change and let it die as many web products have already disappeared. Bye-bye reader.

Thanks for reading!

#31. LINQ - Find duplicates in a list

2013-05-22T09:44:00.000-07:00

After reading some of the Linq Pocket Reference from (O'Reilly) I have become quite the expert in LINQ in my office. A partner asked me how to find if a list has duplicates, that he did a fast search online but could not find a simple answer, so I coded him a simple test that shows us how to find duplicates in a list with LINQ, which you can find below. Also, if you want to check for duplicates in a class list you only need to group by with the field you want to use to find the duplicates, easy as that.

Feel free to ask for more in the comments. Thanks for reading!

#30. AppHarbor is the best hosting for beginning freelance .Net developers

2013-03-24T19:30:00.000-07:00

AppHarbor is a cloud computing service where we can create web applications in .Net, those applications can be continuous integrated with our github or bitbucket repository. The service downloads our newest revision in the hooked repository and executes all tests in the solution before publishing the new revision.

AppHarbor is free of charge with some limitations, but with enough possibilities for starting freelancers, like me.

So, if you are starting your freelance career as a .Net developer you should check it out. I am just promoting as a satisfied user, nothing more.

For example the homepage of Wishlist Manager is hosted in AppHarbor.

#29. Overcoming a work slump

2013-01-31T18:00:00.000-08:00

Without posting for a few weeks and with the new year I am starting to get motivated to continue posting, blogging and developing some software.

I want to prepare a new app for my website putinyourbasket.com, and soon I will be posting about it.

Meanwhile you can check what I consider are the best post that I made in the last few weeks:

#28. Migrating to Disqus

2013-01-30T13:49:00.001-08:00

I have started to migrate to Disqus the comments on my blogs putinyourbasket.blogspot.com and shoppingforcharity.blogspot.com, as currently are the ones that I post more on, Disqus has a good integration with Blogger and really looks like a great community.

It's really easy to integrate, just create an account and add the Disqus gadget to your layout, maybe you can find that it does not add to your blog and maybe it is because you have a modified template, then you will need to add the widget manually, following the instructions of disqus website is relatively easy.

interlude: work slump

2012-11-08T09:50:00.002-08:00

I am in the middle of a work slump, not blogging for a while, I should refresh my motivation, any ideas?

#26. Keep working even with a failing video card, even with BSOD

2012-08-29T11:03:00.001-07:00

Recently my video card, the more or less old 8800GT, is getting its last moments of glory. A few days ago could not run some games properly, they would fail unexpectedly, after trying other games to discard it was a problem of a specific game the problems were getting more constant, and a few BSOD and graphic glitches appeared, as the weather was getting hotter.

Even reran the Windows Experience Index and got a 1.0 on my video card. So the problem was clear.

I was fast enough to get a new video card on amazon, the best video card for the money on a budget pocket, but meanwhile I was not able to get my system stable to work.
After trying underclocking the video card, the only method that got result was getting on safe mode, using the option with network I can work ok with a stable system, but no music ;).
Remember, after the bios messages and before the windows startup press F8 to get the "safe mode menu"

#25. For a less painful development

2012-07-28T09:02:00.000-07:00

I was repairing a component that automatically historifies changes in datasets through an abstraction, found out some problems with wrong assumptions in a rushy development. As this code was not made by me, it felt like in this comic, and repairing the component give me the inspiration to take some guide patterns for future developments in our current project at work.

- make functions as test friendly as possible, decompose when you can
- use tests to assure you do not break anything and even it costs more, make tests that build the data they use, don't depend on a DB that may change in the future, so favor functions that receive simple data so they can be easily testable.
- favor composition over inheritance, it gets simpler to make a change of behaviour and extend it
- put code where should go, if you use an instance in a function too many times to access its fields maybe you should consider to put this function inside the class of the instance, if it is your code.

Follow these simple rules and you will be happier at your work also read Refactoring: Improving the Design of Existing Code, a must read.

#24. move a folder and compress it on-the-fly showing progress

2012-07-09T09:04:00.000-07:00

#23. Clear a complete list in your gamespot profile

2012-07-03T09:34:00.002-07:00

With this you will get all combo boxes changed to delete, you can also use it to change to another value, the you only have to click the Save Changes button.

Use this piece of javascript code:

If you need help on how to execute it, please leave a comment! Thx

#22. Add Adsense in 3 simple steps to any blog that allows frames

2012-03-28T23:59:00.000-07:00

The idea is to use a frame to show AdSense from another website so you can show them in your blog page, in wordpress.com even frames are limited so this solution won't work. Basically, we can achieve it in 3 simple steps:

1. Get the AdSense Javascript code If you know how to get the AdSense Javascript, just skip this step. Otherwise, you should enter the AdSense website, click in "My ads" tab, "Content", "Ad units", and create a new ad unit, configure the block as you wish, so it is compatible to your site layout and get the code to insert AdSense to your page.

2. Create a free page Searching in Google for a free hosting website service, you can use a page in for example a free blog service like Tumblr, where you can add simple web pages to your blog, this pages can be html so you can add anything, at least I tried with ads.

3. Insert an iFrame in your Blog, this might be the hardest part since it requires some basic HTML knowledge. You should access the manual theme customization and select where you want to insert the ads. Then you have to insert the following code snippet:

You should replace "http://youradaddres" with the address of the page you created in the previous step. The width and height parameters should be adjusted for your layout, add some extra space to the teoric size of the ad because if it's too adjusted it may create scrolling bars.

I tried adding to the left bar a Wide Skyscraper type and in each post a Medium Rectangle, we can customize when this ad appears if our template gives us any number to identify the post number. As normally Adsense will only show 3 ads per site.

Also if you want to add ads in your feed you can use feedburner to add it automagically :)

Interlude - Other people's code

2012-03-27T12:07:00.004-07:00

Found on Reddit

#21. Java generics, type erasure and lazyness

2012-03-06T10:50:00.001-08:00

I've been doing a little personal app in Java, and recently found out that generics in Java erase type information so generics would have retro-compatibility (or at least it's what I learnt from reading this post). I can’t deny that I don’t understand the idea and the drawbacks aren’t much but what’s the meaning of doing something halfway. I was just trying to get the type of a generic variable. I don’t think that this was the only option but probably was the easiest.

#20. Sorry tumblr, ifttt rules

2012-03-05T08:09:00.001-08:00

I’ve been thinking of changing the blog to try another blog management site, currently I don’t want to host it myself so one of my options was tumblr, it’s a simple and easy to manage blogging site but as I was going to try couldn’t use windows live writer with it, searching for a solution found out that they don’t use a standard API, so I won’t be using their site directly, I’ll probably use ifttt a service to post indirectly through conditions.

#19. loaded pc, granola and blue screen of death

2012-03-01T14:17:00.001-08:00

Recently I posted about my current workstation config, also some days ago I tried to re-use an old audigy card, after installing it my system became unstable with random hangs and even some times a BSOD with a internal power error. Of course, I removed it.
After removing it the random hangs stopped, but the general speed of the system had been lowering in the recent months. But I thought it was a typical problem of windows getting bloated with software and updates.
Today my pc had the same problems, constant random hangings and even BSODs after some time. I thought it was a hardware problem, SPU or motherboard fail probably. Looked the voltages into HWMonitor and found lower than normal voltages. I was desperate so I went into failsafe mode, and found that the system was stable and found that granola wasn't running, eureka! Went to bios and looked in hardware monitor it was more or less ok. So finally granola got uninstalled, problem resolved.
This is my experience today, probably it won't affect everybody but be cautious, I don't recommend granola for a workstation (sorry environment) as it probably will waste more of your time that savings it will get you. I'm sorry but I won't use it again. Remember to prioritize everything and your working tools should be as speedy as it can be.

#18. Renew TOR identity in python with vidalia bundle to automate worldwide testing of your website

2012-02-22T11:56:00.000-08:00

First of all you need to have the Vidalia Bundle, and configure the torrc config file, find the value HashedControlPassword and uncomment it, next you need to create the hashed password, to do it, you can execute in a command line "tor --hash-password {pass}"
Copy the hash and save it in the config file. Restart Vidalia.
Taken this code from Moshe Basanchig, I've written this code wich authenticates against TOR:

Be careful, you should pass to the function the password you created the hash for, not the hashed string!. Also check out this book, it is a good and fast read:

#17. Data analysis in detail

2012-02-02T13:49:00.001-08:00

If excel can’t satisfy your needs in data analysis you can have an online MySQL database ready in 2 minutes, create a DB in www.freesql.org and download the portable version of HeidiSQL. Two thumbs up!
Edit: After using freesql DB for a while found the limitation of 1600 operations....well now just one thumb up ;)

#16. Merge CSV to import to Excel

2012-01-31T14:09:00.001-08:00

I’m doing some data analysis for a first client (a friend ), he has some csv files and wants to remove duplicates. Each file is a different category for the data, so he wants a new column to know where it came from. First I tried this simple solution but needed the column and with my lack of scripting knowledge decided to go straight for a little program in .net.

I posted the complete project on Bitbucket or you can view the important part on this gist:

#15. new year resolutions

2012-01-30T04:51:00.001-08:00

One of my new year’s resolutions was to increase my freelance profile. Last week I saw code52 webpage and got inspired, soon I’ll start something and I’ll try to rise my online activity, to get the attention of some possible clients.
Thanks also to Scott Hanselman who also today posted an example of simple freelancing. Thanks for the inspiration!

#14. My daily WTF

2012-01-28T03:19:00.001-08:00

At work some days ago I received an incidence where a user complained about random crashes, doing some code review I found this: