throk.net - a blog of immense importance

Colorish

throk — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 17:58:22 +0000

Which one?

July 4th

throk — Sun, 05 Jul 2009 19:19:37 +0000

{SLIDESHOW}

Forgot about Ubiquity?

throk — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 19:57:56 +0000

Have you forgotten about the Firefox plugin Ubiquity?

I did for a while, but I've been using it more and more and find it to be an invaluable tool.

I just used it a few minutes ago to translate an article that my friend @Tales tweeted about editing video on non-3GS iPhones.

I've also used the edit command to mock-up screenshots for a recent proposal. You can also use it to have a little fun.

If you haven't already, or if you did forget, be sure and check out Ubiquity.

Working on a new design

throk — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 04:49:43 +0000

I decided to mock-up a new theme for my blog/website. This is still a work in progress, but I thought it would be interesting to post this now to compare it to the final theme.

Let me know what you think. I've only spent about 2 hours on it so far.

Google Chrome on Mac OSX

throk — Thu, 04 Jun 2009 20:53:32 +0000

Chrome is built from Google's opensource project Chromium. I installed it and give it a whirl, it's definetly buggy as hell. (The search bar stopped working randomly etc.) But some of the cooler features like dragging a tab off the tab-bar to create a new window worked well; dragging the window back to the tab-bar also works.

I looked all around the Google Chromium project page but there aren't any links to compiled code to get a .DMG to test it out for yourself, but here is a link to the nightly builds (via i use this). The most recent build is in the folder at the bottom.

It's definitely not ready for everyday use since you can't get Flash to work yet and it is very buggy. But if you are looking for "Chrome-like" speed on your mac, you should definitely check out the nightly builds of WebKit! It uses Safari's preferences and interface but it runs as a separate app.

Google, Mac

Fun with spam

throk — Fri, 29 May 2009 15:06:29 +0000

Surprisingly a piece of spam mail made it into my GMail account. It doesn't have any advertisements for it or anything, and it appears it came through AOL.

The text, as well as the layout is quite puzzling.

The full text is below:

confessed the concealed steel. But the Professor did not look round. Syme, but kept her eyes fixed upon John's face and her hand upon his arm. "Oh, I's been workin' on de railroad and at intervals came the swinging detonations of the three guns. In the "What was that?" asked Syme. that mingled with the melting freshness of the wild strawberries on the "Have you," he cried in a dreadful voice, "have you ever suffered?"

away!"

He held up his hand, and there came out of the thicket a long growlingexcept the President and his personal secretary. What can it mean?"

a pink knitted shawl, carrying a tray with glasses.

funny

Tip: Fix stupid IE8 errors: force compatibility mode

throk — Tue, 26 May 2009 18:27:45 +0000

IE has never liked Javascript very much, and IE8 will be rolled out soon. Many nice Javascript elements that I commonly use don't work yet in IE8, such as Shadowbox and BeautyTips.

This blog/site runs on Drupal and I use modules to handle my Shadowbox and BeautyTips needs, however these haven't been updated to the latest and greatest versions of their stand alone counterparts so they don't yet work in IE8.

THE FIX

Stick the following code segment in your HTML file, or in the case of Drupal in your theme's page.tpl.php, in the <head> tags before any calls to Javascript files.

<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=7" />

I haven't done it to this site, b/c I frankly don't care if IE8 doesn't work exactly right, but it does have to have it work on my company's website so I have put it into use there.

Beerfest '09 Video

throk — Fri, 08 May 2009 19:25:19 +0000

Watch the video in HD

View the picture slideshow

Free iPhone & MP3 Ringtone: The Cougar (greatest ringtone ever invented)

throk — Thu, 07 May 2009 20:23:11 +0000

Image by i am indisposed

After I first saw The Italian Spiderman, I really wanted to have that cougar sound clip that that is used in the videos. So I searched all over the Internets and I found that same audio file. I edited and tweaked it into what I believe is the greatest ringtone to have ever been invented by a mere mortal, but that's just my opinion.

I created a version for my iPhone but there is also an MP3 version too if your phone supports it.

Preview the greatest ringtone ever!

Download

Phone Ringtone - cougar.m4r

MP3 Ringtone - cougar-ringtone.mp3

ringtone, free, iPhone

Designer's Dream: Preview fonts without installing anything

throk — Wed, 06 May 2009 20:30:44 +0000

I came across the site Flipping Typical, it's a web-app that uses some Javascript to find all your installed fonts and it let's you try out a few words in all the fonts at once! The greatest part about this is that it works right through the browser and it's quite fast too.

I know that I've spent way too much time trying out a bazzilion fonts right there in Photoshop. You should definitely give it a whirl.

[ via WebWare and DownloadSquad and Lifehacker)

Design

What countries does PayPal Website Payments Pro accept credit cards from?

throk — Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:24:22 +0000

I had to find this the extremely hard way. Paypal kept sending me to a list of countries that PayPal works in, but it was more geared towards the individual and not someone that has Website Payments Pro account like we did.

I got this list by logging in, going to My Account. I then went to Fraud Management and clicked the link at the bottom to configure my filters (un-conveniently located at the bottom of the page). I clicked on Edit for the Country Monitor filters. And there was a list of countries, so I figured that these are the countries that can be accepted.

I changed the filter to Flag so that it will accept it but flag it for later. This way we wouldn't miss any transactions, they would just be flagged.

As of April 24, 2009 this were the countries listed:

Algeria

American Samoa

Andorra

Anguilla

Antigua and Barbuda

Argentina

Armenia

Aruba

Australia

Austria

Azerbaijan Republic

Bahamas

Bahrain

Bangladesh

Barbados

Belarus

Belgium

Belize

Benin

Bermuda

Bolivia

Bosnia and Herzegovina

Botswana

Brazil

British Virgin Islands

Brunei

Bulgaria

Burkina Faso

Cambodia

Cameroon

Canada

Cape Verde

Cayman Islands

Chile

China

Colombia

Cook Islands

Costa Rica

Cote D'Ivoire

Croatia

Cyprus

Czech Republic

Denmark

Djibouti

Dominica

Dominican Republic

East Timor

Ecuador

Egypt

El Salvador

Estonia

Federated States of Micronesia

Fiji

Finland

France

French Guiana

French Polynesia

Gabon Republic

Georgia

Germany

Ghana

Gibraltar

Greece

Grenada

Guadeloupe

Guam

Guatemala

Guinea

Guyana

Haiti

Honduras

Hong Kong

Hungary

Iceland

India

Indonesia

Ireland

Israel

Italy

Jamaica

Japan

Jordan

Kazakhstan

Kenya

Kuwait

Laos

Latvia

Lebanon

Lesotho

Lithuania

Luxembourg

Macau

Macedonia

Madagascar

Malaysia

Maldives

Mali

Malta

Marshall Islands

Martinique

Mauritius

Mexico

Moldova

Mongolia

Montserrat

Morocco

Mozambique

Namibia

Nepal

Netherlands

Netherlands Antilles

New Zealand

Nicaragua

Northern Mariana Islands

Norway

Oman

Pakistan

Palau

Palestine

Panama

Papua New Guinea

Paraguay

Peru

Philippines

Poland

Portugal

Puerto Rico

Qatar

Romania

Russia

Rwanda

Saint Vincent and the Grenadines

Samoa

Saudi Arabia

Senegal

Serbia and Montenegro

Seychelles

Singapore

Slovakia

Slovenia

Solomon Islands

South Africa

South Korea

Spain

Sri Lanka

St. Kitts and Nevis

St. Lucia

Swaziland

Sweden

Switzerland

Taiwan

Tanzania

Thailand

Togo

Tonga

Trinidad and Tobago

Tunisia

Turkey

Turkmenistan

Turks and Caicos Islands

Uganda

Ukraine

United Arab Emirates

United Kingdom

United States

Uruguay

Uzbekistan

Vanuatu

Venezuela

Vietnam

Virgin Islands (USA)

Yemen

Zambia

PayPal

Importing MPG4 h.264 Premiere Issues

throk — Fri, 27 Mar 2009 14:48:58 +0000

I slammed my head against the wall for hours trying to figure out why h.264 MP4 HD video from my snazzy new Samsung digital camera wouldn't import into Adobe Premiere CS3.

Answer: Change the file extension to .mpg

Change filename.MP4 --> filename.mpg

It was almost devastating to find out that it was such a trivial thing. But I searched all over the place and couldn't find it, so I went a few months without editing any of my videos. I just decided to take another look around and 15 minutes later I came across this Knowledge Base article on Adobe. If the simple renaming fix doesn't work for you check out that article because it has some more information about XDCAM EX files or something.

Here is a list of all file formats supported by Premiere Pro CS3.

Adobe, help, Premiere

Don't resize my browser, butthole!

throk — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 17:55:38 +0000

It really chaps my ass when websites resize my browser window.

I'm okay if it opens a new window and makes that full screen, but come on, not the one that I have a bunch of tabs in! After I leave your stupid website I have to go and resize my browser back to how it was. It's a lot like having to re-adjust your seat after getting your car valeted. It's just annoying.

It's bad web design and flat out rude!

web design

Band of iPhones

throk — Tue, 03 Mar 2009 00:03:53 +0000

This band the Mentalists do a cover of Kids by MGMT live using only apps from the iTunes app store!

[ via Happy Hour ]

Designing websites is easy using the 960 Framework

throk — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 00:32:33 +0000

I recently just started using the 960 Grid System CSS framework in 2 recent projects. I've got to say that I'm really liking it so far. Using the Photoshop templates to layout and mock-up the design makes it super easy to get an original design down in a few hours.

I'm not going to go into what a CSS framework is or what 960 is either. But I will say that my first stab at it was with a one-page static XHTML website that I built for a client. From start to finish I got the entire design mocked-up and coded in about 4 hours. It still needs a little work; it's the screenshot on the right, and you can see the site here.

My next foray with 960 is the mock-up on the left (screenshot on Flickr). I'm moving a site from Drupal 5 to version 6 and the theme needed an update, so I decided that a full overhaul would be best.

I'll try and remember to post a link to the site when it's finished.

CSS, web design, web design

How to embed Flickr slideshows and add Shadow box for added awesomeness

throk — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 19:05:42 +0000

If you want to add a really cool slideshow to your website like the one below, just follow these steps:

click to view

To be able to use Shadowbox you will need to install it on your blog or website. You can also use Lightbox to have the same effect, but I will be covering Shadowbox here b/c I use it on my site and I like it better. If you use WordPress, Drupal, or some other CMS/blogging platform you should check and see if there is a plugin. I'm using the Drupal Shadowbox plugin but there is also a Lightbox plugin as well. You can get Shadowbox for WordPress here.

Ok after you get Shadowbox installed...

1. Setup the slideshow thumbnail

Get the URL of the image that you want to use as your thumbnail.

You can use any image or even just text.

Insert the image into your post, I usually just use whatever image button you happen to have on your WYSIWYG editor and past in the URL.

2. Copy the URL for the Slideshow

Find the Slideshow icon and copy the slideshow link

3. Setup the link with Shadowbox

Click on the thumbnail image and link it to the Slideshow URL. Then switch to code view and add the following code (bolded)

<a href="SLIDESHOW-URL" title="this is where you can put the title" target="_blank" rel="shadowbox;width=700;height=525">
<img src="THUMBNAIL-URL"/>
<br /> click to view</a>

And That's it! Let me know if this helps you out!

Flickr, Shadowbox, Lightbox, How to

Shrinking Fatness: Reduce the Size of PPTX files.

throk — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 23:29:39 +0000

Me Bitching (you may want to skip to the end for the fix)

The newest version of Microsoft PowerPoint 2007 (2008 for the Mac) writes to the new file extension .pptx which supposedly gives it advantages over the old .ppt style. I've had to work with PowerPoint files made with Office 2007 a lot recently and I've noticed that the file size of the PPTX kept growing and growing. Pretty soon the file had grown to 22 MB from the original 3 or 4 MB.

I tried to "compress the pictures" and pretty much every setting known to man, but nothing would reduce the file size! I did notice that when I had to save the file as a PPT it would make the file about 5 MB. I did read somewhere that if you save a PPTX back as a PPT it actually puts the PPTX file inside the PPT, which essentially doubles the file size. With this in mind I found a simple fix.

The Fix

Save your original file fat.pptx as fat.ppt
Close the window
Open fat.ppt and then save it as skinny.pptx

And that's it!

It seems that the PPTX version of the file keeps all kinds of garbage in the file. This will make it much easier to e-mail your PowerPoint files to people with really small file attachment limitations.

Tip: If possible try to send the file as a .pptx (in the example skinny.pptx) because that will give you the smallest file size. If you send the .ppt (fat.ppt in the example) it will be approximately twice the size.

If whomever you're sending the file to has an old version of Microsoft Office then try to get the to download the converter. The PC version will make converting pptx, docx, xlsx, and all the other new file formats completely transparent.

Credit for the Pig Image that I used in the graphic theodore99

PowerPoint

Christmas 2008

throk — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:43:22 +0000

{SLIDESHOW}

New Year's 2008

throk — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 01:13:48 +0000

{SLIDESHOW}

Cory's Birthday Party

throk — Thu, 22 Jan 2009 00:23:06 +0000

{SLIDESHOW}

Episode 7 of Life Jumped the Shark

throk — Tue, 30 Dec 2008 08:08:45 +0000

I recently got into watching the TV show Life (NBC), which the first season is available on Hulu. The day after Xmas I caught a nasty stomach bug that had me going at both ends, disgusting I know... Anyhoo, I got exceptionally bored over the next 3 days and I turned to Hulu for some episodes of House, which I can only manage to catch on Hulu for some reason (long story). I ran out of House so I started Life.

I was pretty impressed with Life until episode 7. I got scared about mid way through this episode when Detective Crews has a hunch a nerdy "Persian" kid hid records of his drug deals inside a video game... on the 10th level! Oh, it get's better.

He gets the nerdy computer cop play the game to get to level ten of The Prince of Persia. Yup, the "Persian" kid apparently hid his drug deal excel spreadsheets in the 10th level of The Prince of Persia. Crews notices the little sister of the "Persian" kid watching the gameplay while moving her thumbs like she is holding the game controller and playing the game... Of course! That's it! Bring in the little "Persian" girl to beat the "Persian" game on the XBOX (did Prince of Persia even come out on regular XBOX). Cue the game-play montage resulting in excel spreadsheets at the 10th level!

Here is a clip from the episode right before the little girl kicks ass:

Makes perfect sense that a nerdy drug dealer would play a video game from the very beginning to get to his hidden spreadsheets every-time he needed to do a drug deal. It's not like you could save games or anything on an XBOX or at lest start from a certain level once you've beat it already.

Other than that I highly suggest you watch Life, it's a really good show with this one exception. Thus far! Knock on wood.

Hulu

Stop wasting your life: Stop iTunes from backing up your iPhone everytime!

throk — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 23:41:16 +0000

Brian Tong from CNet explains an awesome Insider Secret on how to stop iTunes from going through that tedious back-up process every time you sync your iPod or iPhone. There are ways to do it for Windows and Mac.

Here is a link straight to the post with the Mac script on eidc.de that Brian mentions.

I just dragged the file into my applications folder and ran it. Give it a few seconds after you click disable for it to kick in before you try to sync your iPod or iPhone.

I came across something similar for windows I haven't tested it or anything! Try it at your own risk!
http://www.microseconds.com/backupswitch.html

How to login to PayPal with Multi-User Access

throk — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:33:29 +0000

Simply put, after you create the multi-user account (assigning them a username and password) they can login in with that information into PayPal. The PayPal login box says E-Mail Address; just enter the username instead, and then the corresponding password.

I spent over an hour online because the accountant said they tried this but couldn't log on. I figured there might be an alternate location for the person to login to or something, but PayPal in it's infinite wisdom neglected to give any sort of information on how the 'multi-user' user should go about logging in.

This is a perfect example of how the simplest explanation is typically the correct one.

Free Green Apple Wallpaper

throk — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 23:12:08 +0000

I decided to make a simple wallpaper inspired by the Apple logo.

The screenshot above is using the 1920x1200 version on my 17inch MacBook Pro.

It's available in three sizes to fit most laptop screens.

1280x800

1440x900

1920x1200

Today is Friday

throk — Sat, 22 Nov 2008 00:22:36 +0000

Today was the end to a very long week. Not really a bad week, but just long and exhausting.

One of the big things, at least blog wise, is that I successfully converted my 4 year old WordPress self-hosted blog into Drupal. And everything went quite well! The thing I'm missing the most is comment integration with Feedburner, I want it to be able to show the number of comments on my posts. That is something that happens automatically with WordPress since it is the most popular blogging platform in the known universe.

I guess all that is left is to make a graphic for this post.... ok done.