TipsFor.us

First Post in 6.5 Years

Fri, 13 Dec 2019 16:48:56 -0600

Hello, everyone.

Greeting and salutations! This is the first post for TipsFor.us in 6.5 years, and it's my personal first post in 7.5 years. Times have changed, that's for certain. What makes me create this post? I can't say for sure. While the site has effectively been dead for several years, I can't seem to let go of it. Perhaps I'm more tenacious than others.

Much has changed

Since 2013, the time of the last posting, the world is a radically different place, for the website as well as for its authors. From what I can tell, Everett is working full time as a programmer/developer. James is working a career as a lighting designer, and I (Brian), have been expending my efforts as a Professor of Music Theory and Composition.

As far as I know, Everett in living in Los Angeles, CA. James - to my knowledge - is living in Lawrence, KS, and I am living in San Antonio, TX. I can't speak for James, but I know that Everett has had two children, and I have had three children since our last significant posting. That's what ultimately led to the demise of the site: who had time to maintain a hobby website, once full-time careers and children came into the picture?

About

Mon, 09 Dec 2019 22:28:00 -0600

TipsFor.us is run by:

Brian Bondari (Site) – technology enthusiast, skilled composer, ruler of the free world, and lover of fine wine, cheese, chocolate, and music. Brian is also our spell-checker-in-residence and typo-spotter.

Everett Griffiths (Site) – contributor, world traveler, visionary, guitar hero, and Perl programmer extraordinaire.

James Diemer (Site) – lighting designer, Blender maestro, Linux guru-in-training, and coffee enthusiast.

About this site

TipsFor.us was started in October 2003 by Brian on a personally-hacked-together codebase. This site leans toward our ever-burgeoning interest in technology, specifically relating to operating systems, freeware, and open-source software.

In 2005 I (Brian) discovered that I enjoyed putting together articles relating to technology. One of my first articles, a review of Fedora Core 2, was picked up by OSNews and the traffic knocked my site off-line. A later article on Ghosting Windows XP for Free hit the front page of Digg.com, garnering over 1400 diggs and yes, causing my poor hosting package to cower in the corner once again.

In August 2006 I replaced my underlying code base with WordPress to ease the maintenance time and allow for more frequent updates. In March 2008 I retired the previous difficult-to-remember (and pronounce!) “habibbijan” domain and re-badged the site as TipsFor.us. After all, most of the content is in the form of tips and tutorials. Everett and James also joined the team in 2008.

Though we write about a variety of topics, we proudly support GNU/Linux.

Support Us

TipsFor.us does not currently display ANY advertising or utilize any intrusive tracking utilities.

Want to help support TipsFor.us? Don’t worry, we won’t beg you for donations. Instead, all we ask is that you consider using our Amazon.com link (US) the next time you want to make a purchase for yourself. A small percentage of your purchase will be donated to us, and none of it costs you an extra penny. Thank you!

Some Frequently Asked Questions

Here’s a short list of questions that we receive most often:

Can I e-mail questions or comments to you?

Of course! Please see the contact page. We try to respond to all mail from readers.

Why don’t you write about [insert topic here]?

Maybe we just haven’t thought of it yet. Most topics that deal with technology are fair game, but we try to only write about free products and offerings. We’re open to ideas, so please see the above question.

Why don’t you post new articles every single day?

At the moment, TipsFor.us is just a hobby project, and none of us make our living as tech writers. Plus, we try to focus more on quality than quantity, and the average article that we post is 1,000+ words.

Sure, we’d love to post every day, and it IS a long-term goal. Right now, it’s just not feasible.

Can I republish your articles on my site?

NO. We’ve spent countless hours researching and writing the content for this site, and all of it is copyrighted. There’s nothing wrong with writing a similar article for your own site, or copying a blurb and posting a link to the original article, but please do not copy and paste all of our text and screenshots.

Can I write an article for TipsFor.us?

YES. Please contact us, and we’ll work out an arrangement. We’re open to both guest writers and full-time authors (paid positions).

Do you have a privacy policy?

Yes. Read it here.

Top 5 Script Kiddie Mistakes

Wed, 10 Jul 2013 01:29:00 -0500

These are the most common and most annoying mistakes I see in web development code on a daily basis. Well, Ok, it’s the things that annoyed me most TODAY, but it’s not unique. It’s mostly PHP and MySQL stuff here, but the same abuses take place anywhere the language allows it.

1. Database prefixes. I find so many database tables that use a “table” or a “tbl” prefix. Are you serious? Do you think we don’t already know it’s a table we’re looking at? Likewise, some developers find it somehow necessary to use “column” or “col” in their column names. I mean really… do you pin your own name upside down on your shirt? Seriously, this type of labeling is completely unnecessary and it probably reveals you as the half-baked amateur that you are. Label your column names descriptively: too little info is bad, but too much is no better.

The one exception I make to this rule is this: be verbose with your primary keys because you’ll use those in all of your join statements. I know it’s easier to code if every table uses the ubiquitous “id” as the primary key, but if you ever have to do complex MySQL joins for reporting queries you’ll appreciate the fact that user_id or post_id references the same thing no matter which table it’s used in.

Help! My Site Was Hacked!

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 21:50:17 -0600

This can happen to the best of us. Hacks suck. There is no formulaic response to them that is guaranteed to fix your site, but I’m going to outline a few steps that might get you back in the saddle and hopefully help you identify the extent of the damage. The most common type of hack I see is against sites running known systems (like WordPress) where the hacker modifies the index.php file and prints extra code into the pages. This causes visitors to inadvertently download malicious code and it causes Google to black-list your site. Did this happen to you? Keep reading…

1. Verify that no sensitive data was on the server. It’s a whole other ballgame if you were storing credit card or social security numbers. In a nutshell, never store sensitive data on your server! It’s too hot to handle! Let a professional store that stuff. If you did have sensitive data on your server, you can stop reading now, because you need to hire a professional security consultant (and possibly a lawyer) to help dig you out of this mess.

Securing Your Email via 2-Step Verification

Fri, 11 Jan 2013 14:53:14 -0600

It is vitally important to keep your email account as secure as possible. Google is one organization that emphasizes security, so take advantage of it! For Google Mail, it is easy to enable 2-step authentication. The idea is simple: in order to log in, you must provide something that you know (your password) and something that you have (your phone).

Think about this for a moment… normally if someone gets ahold of your email password, they could read your email (or impersonate you!). Think about it a bit more: once a hacker is in your email, they can visit other sites (like Facebook, PayPal, or ???) and they can easily click the “I Forgot my Password” link, and POOF: they’ll be able to log into any site that uses that email address.

The bottom line is that a hacked email account can start a chain reaction that can destroy your digital life. But with Google Mail, there are steps you can take to prevent this.