I love trailers where they mix and match!

Star Trek + Looney Tunes would make an epic movie!

Star Trek Into Duckness – Intergalactic Trailer originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Star Trek Into Duckness – Intergalactic Trailer appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

They also had an art wall that showcased some pretty cool, Facebook inspired artwork.

One of the things I liked was the simplicity. Facebook didn’t line the walls with expensive art, they lined them with motivational sayings.

Simple & Effective

Facebook’s Motivational Quotes & Art originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Facebook’s Motivational Quotes & Art appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

Back in October, Echofon released a statement saying that they were ending support for their Mac Twitter application. They had no plans on updating to Twitter’s API version 1.1 and so it’s days were numbered.

However, just today, they quietly updated the desktop app with API 1.1 support so it’ll live on. Not only did they upgrade the API support, but they also had various bug fixes. Oddly enough, it seems that my ads are gone too.  Actually the ads are still there, they are just so subtle that I don’t always notice them.

Interestingly enough Echofon has not said a word about it. It’s not on their blog, it’s not been tweeted, and it doesn’t show on Facebook. Nothing.

I’ve been using Echofon everyday and have been holding on as long as I could. I’ve tried many other Twitter apps but nothing has the feature set that Echofon has.

Echofon has inline images (including Instagram and Youtube) highlighted phrases, ability to maintain scroll position when new tweets arrive, shows display name & username on tweets, menu bar icon that highlights when you have new DMs or mentions, multiple account support, searches synced with Twitter, unread sync so you can keep your devices all up to date, and other cool features. Plus it looks nice.

Sure, a lot of other apps have some of these features, but not all.

I’ve been looking at switching to Osfoora but the highlighting of the menu bar icon on new tweets annoys me. It may seem like a tiny thing, but it’s not to me.

TweetBot looks great, but I can’t get past the $20 price tag.

I’m holding out for a sweet Twitterrific 5 update, but it’s not here yet.

And Twitters own client is behind in the game. Until recently, it didn’t even support Twitter URL shortening or Twitter image uploading. That’s how far behind it has fallen.

The number of good Mac twitter application is dwindling and I’m just happy to have Echofon for just a bit longer.

Echofon for Mac returns from the Twitter deadpool. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Echofon for Mac returns from the Twitter deadpool. appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

I asked Siri if strawberries like the sun or the shade more and she looked up strip clubs!

Also, I checked out Time Music Agency and it’s not a strip club. Just saying.

And just so you know, strawberries like the shade, but want at least 6 hours of sunshine.

No Siri, I’m Not Looking for a Strip Club. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post No Siri, I’m Not Looking for a Strip Club. appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

Sadly, you can not just plug it and be happy. That’s too easy. Instead, D-Link created Shareport. Shareport is their software that is supposed to make the magic happen, but it sucks. I hear it works OK on Windows, but not very good, if at all, on Mac. But there is hope.

What you’ll need to go is go over and get SX-Virtual Link. This free 3rd party software works great. I had my printer setup and printing wirelessly in under 5 minutes. That of course doesn’t count the hour I spent trying to figure out how to download D-Link’s software and trying to make it work.

The downside however is that you’ll need the SX-Virtual Link application open whenever you want to print, however it allows you to set up a printer and turn it into a wireless printer. So the downside is actually not that bad.

My successful experience was with the following hardware and software:

• D-Link DIR-655 Wireless N Gigabit Router
• Epson Stylus Photo R200 Printer
• Mac OS X 10.8.3

Setup a Wireless Printer with D-Link’s Shareport originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Setup a Wireless Printer with D-Link’s Shareport appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

As a WordPress developer, I often setup new sites and have to create dummy posts so that I have something to develop and test with. One or two aren’t bad, but when you need 11 or more to test pagination and other features, it’s not quite as fun. So I created a plugin.

CBZ Auto Create Posts is a simple plugin that just creates cat, bacon or zombie lorem ipsum posts for you. Tell it how many you want, pick the flavor, and it creates them all in a few seconds.

Download

Tests have proven that it can create over 6,000 posts! For a developer, that’s huge! Ok, so you don’t need 9,000 posts, but 10 seconds to create 21 is a lot better than one at a time.

At this time there aren’t a whole lot of features, but it is on GitHub so if you want to contribute, feel free.

Also, thanks to these folks for the fine lorem ipsum.

• Cat Ipsum | A Furrier Alternative to Lorem Ipsum
• Bacon Ipsum | A Meatier Lorem Ipsum Generator
• Zombie Ipsum: Frightful Filler for Your Damned Designs

Cats. Bacon. Zombies! – CBZ Auto Create Posts WordPress Plugin originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Cats. Bacon. Zombies! – CBZ Auto Create Posts WordPress Plugin appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

1. Strong Passwords
This should be a no brainer, but people continue to use simple passwords. I’ve seen major companies using horribly easy to guess passwords. WHY?!

Now you don’t need to go all crazy and make something you’ll never remember, just get creative. Like cowsEatingIceCream4fun! or I’mBrining$xyBack4u. Those passwords have a lot of characters, include a number, and a special character, however, chances are you can remember them. According to one of the password testing tools, the sexy one will take a computer 364 quintillion years to crack. That’s a long time!

2. Remove the admin user.
Every WordPress blog has an admin user by default. Not sure why. You’d think that WordPress would stop setting this up, but it still happens.

It’s really easy to remove too. Just create a new account in your blog and set it up as an administrator. Then log out and back in as that new user. Now delete the admin user and transfer all the posts to your new user. Done. Takes about a minute.

3. Limit the number of login attempts.
If a hacker is going to try to break into your site, they are going to try over and over and over again. You can actually limit login attempts with a number of different plugins. This plugin basically says that if someone fails to log in 4 times in a row, lock them out for 20 minutes. If they continue to try to fail, lock them out for a day.

Security on the internet is a big issue and unfortunately it’s taken too lightly. I’ll admit that some of my passwords are not very good, but I’m getting better. Having a password application like 1Password really helps. With this, I can create crazy passwords that I’ll never remember and let that app remember them all.

Take 10 minutes right now and remove your WordPress admin user, update your password, and install a login limiting plugin. Then you can rest easy knowing that you’ve made it harder to get hacked.

Secure Your WordPress Site with 3 Simple Changes originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Secure Your WordPress Site with 3 Simple Changes appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

To fix it, I simply took a paint stir stick that I found in my garage and placed it on top of the sensor making sure the sensor lens was completely in the shadow. Fix time, 10 seconds.

It’s worked like a charm every day for the past month. No more confused garage door.

Don’t have a stir stick? Then place anything on it to give your sensor a shadow. Just make sure to test the system after you place something on top of the sensor. We don’t want to disable it, just keep the sun out of its eyes.

Quick & simple fix to stop the sun from confusing your garage door sensor. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Quick & simple fix to stop the sun from confusing your garage door sensor. appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

The basics:

• Facebook Home is an application that puts people first, apps second.
• It’s not a phone, although Facebook partnered with HTC and ATT to build phones that are built around Facebook Home.
• Facebook now has ‘Cover Feed’ this is the main feature of the new app.
• Cover Feed allows you to see the latest posts from friends by just glancing at your phone.
• It’s kind of like a fancy Facebook screensaver with some other cool features.
• It’ll be available for download on April 12th for free on some Android phones via the Play store.
• Not available for Tablets just yet.
• No other phone or desktop OS are supported.
• No developer API documentation yet, other than this page which outlines what it is.

All the official details are on Facebook’s Home page.

You can listen to us talk about it on NerdCast #14.

And, of course, TechCrunch has tons of opinions.

Overall, I think it looks like fun but I’m not sure if I’d want it front and center 24/7. I’m also concerned about privacy as they don’t talk about any lock screen. What if I lose my phone?!

It’ll be fun to play with and I should be able to get my hands on it on the 12th to give it a spin.

Facebook Home – Facebook’s Android Announcement originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Facebook Home – Facebook’s Android Announcement appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

I was lucky enough to be on the team Go Ahead, Caller which built the Urban Boatbuilders website. We had a great group of people and a well prepared, flexible non-profit. We all worked very well together and are very proud of the work that we completed.

The site, which isn’t live quite yet but is ready to launch, was built with SquareSpace and includes a responsive design, eCommerce, a parallax feature, photo galleries, blog, donations, email templates, and a branded MailChimp account; just to name a few things.

The website won Best Design/UX, Biggest Impact, and Best in Show!

As a gift for all our hard work, Urban Boatbuilders presented us with a handmade oar signed by employees and apprentices in their organization. Did I mention how much our non-profit rocked?!

This is actually the first time a Nerdery team has won the Overnight Website Challenge which makes it even sweeter.

About Urban Boatbuilders:
Urban Boatbuilders is a non-profit youth development organization that uses wooden boatbuilding to support personal growth, strengths building, academic achievement, and the cultivation of hard and soft skills that help youth find and keep jobs while growing valuable life skills. Urban Boatbuilders work with at-risk youth in a variety of settings. They build youth one boat at a time.

2013 Overnight Website Challenge Winner – Urban Boatbuilders originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post 2013 Overnight Website Challenge Winner – Urban Boatbuilders appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

To add media, you need to be an author. At the author level however, the user gets the ability to publish posts. That’s not good when someone wants to review them before they go out.

The good news is that there are a few lines of code you can drop into your functions.php file that will allow Contributors to upload images.

1
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3
4
5
6
7
8

/**
 * Allows the Contributor role to upload files.
 */
function add_theme_caps() {
    $role = get_role( 'contributor' );
    $role->add_cap( 'upload_files' );
}
add_action( 'admin_init', 'add_theme_caps');

If you want, line 5 ‘contributor’ can be replaced by any other role and line 6 ‘upload_files’ can be replaced with any other capability if you want to change things up a bit.

This code comes straight from WordPress and has worked well for me.

Give WordPress Contributors the ability to upload media. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Give WordPress Contributors the ability to upload media. appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

GoodNotes
GoodNotes is by far the most feature rich app I used. The handwriting is nice and smooth, interface is simplistic and easy to learn, and it does most everything. One of the biggest features is the ability to bring in PDF, or other documents, and take notes on top of them. This would be really handy in meetings. The free version has some limitations, but for $5 you get everything.

Ghostwriter
I want to love this app, but the writing is just not smooth. My handwriting looks a bit rough around the edges and that bothers me. There are a couple different pens, but nothing that matches the quality of other apps on this list. It comes with highlighters as well, but those seem like they are running out of ink. I think some will love it, other will hate it.

MyScript Memo
Nice little app with one great feature; handwriting to text! I can export what I write on the screen to text and it works fairly well. Not sure how often I’d need this, but love the feature. Overall, it’s a really good app.

Bamboo Paper
Even though Bamboo Paper says it prefers a Bamboo Stylus, it still works great without one.  Overall the app is good app with a simple interface and nice handwriting. One downside however is that when you turn the iPad to landscape mode, the navigation is a bit funky and the paper doesn’t rotate. Not sure what’s up there.

Notebook+
Full featured app, but once again didn’t like how the handwriting turned out. Seemed very pixellated and that makes it harder to read. App design was ok and it did have audio notes which is nice, but if I wanted that feature, I’d use Evernote.

Penultimate
Speaking of Evernote, last year they bought Penulimate and integrated it into their app. Because of this, all my notes are synced to Evernote and are searchable. Where as Evernote doesn’t covert the handwriting to text, they can still search the handwriting and display the results. This is really handy. Penulimate is a great app with basic features and unlimited notes and notebooks. It’s missing the bells and whistles, but I can live without that.

At the moment, I’m sticking with Penultimate. Basically because it syncs to Evernote and I get everything for free. However, GoodNotes is in a close second.

What do you use and like?

Quick review of six free iPad handwriting apps. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Quick review of six free iPad handwriting apps. appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

Here are just a few and the space you get for free.

• Dropbox – Free 2 GB
• Google Drive – Free 5 GB
• Box – Free 5 GB
• Microsoft SkyDrive – Free 7 GB
• Apple iCloud – Free 5 GB
• SugarSync – Free 5 GB
• Cubby – Free 5 GB
• Amazon Cloud Drive – Free 5 GB

One thing to keep in mind is that the amount of free space varies, however most sites often give out space as rewards for inviting friends or beta testing a new feature. Sometimes you can easily get lots of additional free space.

Currently I have 24 GB in Dropbox (free space tip), 50 GB in Box and 25 GB Microsoft SkyDrive; all for free. Those are well over the amount of free space I was given when I signed up.

With all this space I can store almost anything. Instead of picking one cloud storage solutions, I’ve decided to use multiple services for different reasons.

Dropbox is my main service. The one that I use to sync my day-to-day digital goods and the one that I have installed everywhere. I also have quite a few apps that store their data in my Dropbox so my programs stay in sync at home, at work and on my phone. I don’t know what I would do without my Dropbox.

I’m using SkyDrive for photo backups. SkyDrive has a nice visual layout for photos so I toss my extras over there. I currently have about 2 GB of photos uploaded to SkyDrive and removed from my computer as I needed some space. I’ll probably be adding more soon.

With Box I’ve started using this along with IFTTT to automatically backup some of the things I do online. Every Instagram photo I take gets uploaded there and I’ll probably be hooking Facebook and Twitter in as well. Since most social services don’t do a good job at letting you search through your history, I might as well push some of my important data someplace else where I can.

Google Drive is currently used for just Google documents. I have lots of spreadsheets and text documents that I work on collaboratively and share with co-workers or family. I have yet to put much into Google Drive as everything else works so well.

The other one I use quite often is iCloud. However, with iCloud it’s integrated into iOS and my work computer and it just works. I don’t store anything in iCloud unless one of my apps does it for me. iTunes has all my music in iCloud along with my iOS apps, AppStore apps and lots of game data. It works well and I don’t have to think about it.

All of these cloud storage systems work well and most have comparable features. However, none of them are prefect. I still backup everything on my computer to an external hard drive and to BackBlaze to ensure all my important data is in multiple places and safe.

If you’re looking for a cloud storage solution the first thing you should do is check the desktop apps and see if they support your system. I know the desktop apps for Box and SkyDrive won’t run on my home iMac so they can never be the main contender in my book; well at least not until I get a new computer. However, all have nice web apps.

You should also check for mobile apps if you are concerned about having your data on the go. Also talk to your friends or co-workers to see what they have if you plan on collaborating with others.

Then just dive in and try one. Cloud storage is great as you don’t have to carry around a USB drive or worry too much about space. Your files are available anywhere there is internet.

Use multiple cloud storage services to strategically backup and sync your data. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Use multiple cloud storage services to strategically backup and sync your data. appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

The first thing I did was create a Fluid app so it could be a standalone app. If you’re on Windows, Chrome should be able to do this as well, however my instructions are for Fluid so you’ll have to adjust as needed.

Next up was getting a better interface, something more minimal. Turns out that @craigmod already created Twitter for minimalists.

Craig’s styles work pretty well, however I did add one more style to hide the .mini-profile as I didn’t need to see my stats all day.

Next up was showing images inline. For that I used the Inline Thumbnail script. Yes, it’s in Japanese but works just fine.

I did edit this script slightly though by renaming twittercom.css to twittercom_x.css. This keeps the image functionality but kills the styles the author created as I didn’t like them. I did add one style though to my custom CSS file that I had set up perviously to make the images a bit bigger and prettier.

.ithumb-img {
    max-height: 300px !important;
    max-width: 300px !important;
    border: 1px solid #ffffff !important;
    box-shadow: 1px 1px 3px rgba(0,0,0,0.3) !important;
}

After that, I wanted keyword highlighting so I got a little piece of JavaScript and set it up to run every few seconds. The code. This may not be the best solution, but it works for now. Turns out that that was causing issues when composing tweets. If you have an idea on how to make this feature work, let me know.

Then I needed a nice icon so I got a Twitter icon from Bartelme Design. You can pick whatever you like of course.

Now it is missing notifications, but if you have Mountain Lion, then you can enable those through the OS. Or you can go without and not have notifications interrupting your productivity.

It’s not a perfect app, but then neither are any of the solutions out there. Everyone likes something different and this happens to be working pretty well as you get all the features of Twitter.com along with a few extras and a better design in a nice standalone app.

I’ve done some light testing and it seems like you can swap Twitter.com for TweetDeck Web and it works well. Additional CSS is needed though to hide some of TweetDecks interface.

I also briefly tested this with HootSuite and where it seems to work ok, the tabs are not really accessible and the compose window is cut off in single column mode. If someone could re-design HootSuite to work in a smaller footprint, that’d be fantastic.

Turning Twitter.com into a nice standalone app with inline images. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Turning Twitter.com into a nice standalone app with inline images. appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

Unfortunately this blizzard is all about wind and not so much snow. We  could get 2-5 inches of snow, but it’s the wind, 34-45 mph, that will cause the real problems.

I’m kind of excited for the blizzard and I hope that people listen to the weather and stay home if they can. Weather is amazing, but deadly when people don’t respect it.

I’ve got a feeling that the storm will be somewhat of a letdown, but it’s still exciting none the less.

There’s a blizzard coming? originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post There’s a blizzard coming? appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

However, after thinking about it and exploring alternatives, it’s not as bad as it seems. I only knew of Google Reader and I never checked out the competition; basically because I didn’t think there were any good ones. However, some great alternatives have come to the surface.

Feedly web looks really nice, however I don’t like having to install an extension just to see my feeds. Feedly mobile on the other hand doesn’t feel right. The design is killing the usability for me. Maybe it’ll grow on me.

I’m hearing good things about The Old Reader. No mobile app for that one yet, but I hear it has Google Reader shortcuts so it’s promising. Plus an API is coming and then maybe someone will make a nice mobile app.

Digg has also said that they are going to build a feed reader. Not sure what they’ll come up with, but I have high hopes.

What I’ll switch to probably depends on what my apps do. I use Reeder on my Mac and Newsify on my iPhone and iPad. If they decide to support a specific service, chances are I’ll move there, as I love my apps.

What it all boils down to is that it is disappointing that Google Reader is calling it quits, but there are many other good services out there. Give it a few weeks and some of or beloved apps will integrate into other feed reading services, we’ll move our feeds, and life will go on. Our productivity will stay intact and Google Reader will fade away along with many of the other services that Google decides we no longer need.

Does the end of Google Reader kill my productivity? Probably not. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Does the end of Google Reader kill my productivity? Probably not. appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

This will be my second year participating. After last year’s website challenge, I told myself that it was fun, but I was not doing that again. Then someone asked me this year to be on their team and I said sure. Hum… something doesn’t match up there.

This year will be better than last year though. Knowing is 1/2 the battle with the Overnight Website Challenge. With one year under my belt, I feel more prepared. Not to mention most of my team has prior experience too.

Not knowing what you’re getting into and not being prepared is hard to overcome. You don’t know what to expect, or how things work. It’s still fun though and a good experience.

Pre-planning is key I think and my team this year seems to have a great plan. I feel confident that we’re going to code like hell, have some fun, and build an awesome website.

Last year I was up for about 30 hours and it really didn’t faze me too much. I’m hoping this year I can stay awake and alert and productive once again. Granted, all productivity goes bonkers at about 3am, but that makes it fun!

Who’s ready to stay up all night and make websites?! originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Who’s ready to stay up all night and make websites?! appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

The Rainforest Alliance works to keep forests standing, protect wildlife, and is working to help curb climate change. All these things will make the planet better for all of us and all you need to do is Follow the Frog when you shop. Simple.

Save the rain forests by following the frog. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Save the rain forests by following the frog. appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

Turns out, the issue was with the DNS. A quick update to the wireless settings on our phone and everything worked again.

To fix your internet connection on iOS6:

1. Open Settings
2. Touch Wi-Fi
3. Touch the little blue arrow next to your active connection.
4. Touch DNS
5. Change the numbers to 8.8.8.8 (Google’s Public DNS)
6. Touch Wi-Fi at the top of the screen to return to the main Wi-Fi page.
7. Give it a few seconds and then try to load a webpage. It should work.

I don’t quite understand why the DNS just suddenly stopped working, but it was an easy fix and has been working smoothly since.

Quick fix for iOS 6′s internet connection issue. originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Quick fix for iOS 6′s internet connection issue. appeared first on Blog on a Stick.

I can’t quite figure out why the three leading eBook companies make it so hard to find books on the iPad.

The other day my daughter wanted a princess book so I opened up iBooks on the iPad and searched. I could search for books in the store, but, much to my surprise, I could not search by category or price. This left us with a ton of search results that we didn’t want.

Then I hopped over to the Kindle app and it was even worse. They don’t even have a way to find other Kindle books. It just amazes me that Amazon has no way for iOS users to search the Kindle store from within the Kindle application. Even a link to Amazon.com would be better than nothing.

The third book app I tried was the Nook. Once again it includes no way of browsing the Nook bookstore.

I’m not so sure why companies don’t make searching bookstores easier from within their own apps. Everyone makes book apps, but then fall short when it comes to finding other books that might interest the user. Isn’t that where you’d make your money? Seems like a no brainer to me.

Why is finding books so hard in iOS book apps? originally posted at http://www.twistermc.com

The post Why is finding books so hard in iOS book apps? appeared first on Blog on a Stick.