Recently I had to wade into dirty waters and set up a service that would send daily emails to a set of addresses that had opted-in for these updates. On initial testing, I found that it took over 60 seconds to send an email from PHP. Since I don't mess with the command line much, I was working with sendmail, and needed to figure out what was causing this huge delay. For quite some time, I thought there was some fundamental problem with CentOS or sendmail that was to blame. It turns out that it was just a DNS problem. Here are the DNS settings I had to enter to make sure that DNS checks would go through properly and make sending emails a sub-second process (these settings apply to a server with the FQDN 'MyServer' under the address 'myserver.mydomain.com':

File /etc/nsswitch.conf had to have a line exactly like this:

hosts: files dns

File /etc/resolv.conf had to have a line exactly like this:

domain myserver.mydomain.com

Finally, file /etc/hosts needed these lines:

127.0.0.1       localhost localhost.localdomain loopback me
127.0.0.1       MyServer myserver.mydomain.com

And that's it! With the right DNS settings in place, email sending took less than half a second… as it should have.

Not even kidding, it's a plastic mouse covered in rhinestones. I highly doubt this thing is comfortable, and even if they paid me to take it away, I still wouldn't want it. But I'm sure someone out there is staying classy with the Bling Mouse ™. More power to them!

Aim: Voxbiblia has been hunting for ways to equip churches and Christian bloggers with tools to spread the Word. The 2010 Voxbiblia WordPress Theme Design Competition aims to do just that – To generate free templates for churches/bloggers to build up a nifty website easily.

There are THREE categories where you can compete in:

Category 1: The Pro

In this category, we’re looking for entries with professional/mature looking Christian themes that are suitable for church websites and church member blogs.

Category 2: Funky Designer

Here we’re looking for funky and cool themes that youth and young adults alike are proud to show off! Use your imagination, just keep it clean!

Category 3: Kids for Christ

Prizes go to the best design for little tots! Make it cute, cheery and full of love

Prizes up for grabs!

To encourage everyone to get started on this competition, Voxbiblia is sponsoring TWO prizes for EACH category! There’s no limit to the number of entries you can send in, but you can only win one prize per category – if you’re that good!

• 1st prize for each category: 16 GB Wi-Fi iPad
• 2nd prize for each category: 8 GB iPod Touch

The deadline is May 4th, 2010… that's 1 month so you better get started! Click the flyer below to enter:

Flyer

When I sold my Macbook, I kept this adapter, assuming that it would work with my new Macbook Pro. Maybe I should have done my homework, but I finally discovered the truth yesterday when I had to make a presentation on my laptop. I had my adapter in hand, and was about to connect it to the laptop, when it just wouldn't go. I must have looked like an idiot because I started trying every single port possible… at one point I was trying to jam it into the ethernet port, and that's when I had to give up.

I was disappointed, to say the least. There's no reason why the old mini-DVI port wouldn't fit the current design of the aluminum unibody Macbook. Apple just had to come up with something better, and I was left to make the presentation with a small crowd seated in a semi-circle behind me, hoping that my laptop screen would be large enough for them all. My one saving grace was that my presentation was not a sequence of slides or a lot of visuals. I was just sharing some information, and for the most part, talking… but it was still embarrassing.

While I'm on the topic of gripes, I hate the fact that my Macbook pro has only 2 USB ports. 2!!! How am I supposed to use a laptop in 2010 with only 2 USB ports? To make matters worse, when I plug in my clunky Verizon broadband modem, for working on the go, I can't plug in anything else, because the adjacent port is half-obscured. I carry around a small USB hub to help my situation, but even that can't be plugged in when I'm using my modem. My wife's smaller, much cheaper Dell Inspiron has 3 ports, and it's on the low end of the Inspiron spectrum.

But my gripes about the hardware are minor; what I really can't stand these days is Finder. If there is one thing Finder is horrible at doing, it's finding things. The search feature pales in comparison to the Windows Explorer search that comes with Windows Vista & Windows 7. In Windows, I can find anything quickly and easy, even when searching a terabyte of data in a non-indexed location like an external drive. And the results look great, are easy to sort, and can be viewed in a variety of ways. Finder isn't like that at all. When I'm in a folder and I start typing a search, it starts searching my entire Mac every time. I always have to select "search this folder," even though being in that folder should make it obvious that I want to search that folder. To make matters worse, searching by file name is always a lot harder than it should be, and searches tend to be very slow, sometimes not working at all. I can't explain why it fails to find files that I know are present, but it does. And as I continue to do my work on my laptop, and have more and more important files to find, the shortcomings of Finder continue to eat further and further into my productivity. That's just search; don't even get me started on how lousy the views are… I mean, why even have Coverflow at all?

This is one of those areas where Apple just doesn't think very practical in their product design; while I like my Macbook a lot, and I don't intend to go back to plastic laptops, ever, I'm continually frustrated by things that seem to shout for necessary improvement, but continue to go unchanged by Apple. And as much as I wish there were more competition to offer me a better alternative, there just isn't. I need a sturdy laptop in a small form factor that runs Unix under the hood and has well-designed software (like Coda, which I use every single day). If there is something out there that offers all that, without the shortcomings I've mentioned here, I'd love to try it. In the meantime, I better get myself a new mini-DVI adapter.

It's also in the top 100 CSS books on Amazon right now (#53 at this moment). Make sure you get your copy!

Borders, on the other hand, did not have it stocked in-store here in Princeton… that's the last time I visit them.