Better Renaming through Perl

charles 18 May 2010

I come across a million postings about the best way to rename multiple files at once from the command line. Of course there are nearly as many solutions. Sure, it's possible (and sometimes desirable) to write a shell script using a combination of sed, awk, mv, and so on. But the solution I've found most useful and flexible for everyday file operations is a Perl script by Larry Wall and available at the CPAN repository

Download & Install

Subversion and CodeIgniter

charles 17 May 2010

Subversion is a robust, open source version control system for software development. CodeIgniter is a powerful but lean Object Oriented PHP-based web development framework which utilizes the Model-View-Controller approach.

For quite a while, I used CVS for my revision control, but recently migrated to Subversion due to it's superior capabilities. If you're developing multiple CodeIgniter web sites which share system code and you're looking into implementing a revision control system. Here are some guidelines.

Setting up an SVN Server

Ubuntu/Linux as a Time Machine Server - Updated for 16.04

charles 15 May 2010

Since my household is primarily Mac based, I wanted to setup my Ubuntu server as an AFP/Time Machine backup server for the LAN. Not surprisingly, this proved possible, but not trivial. First I'll provide a summary of the necessary steps, then detailed instructions for the terminal savvy folks.

On the Linux Side

  1. Download, build, install & configure netatalk (AppleTalk & AFP services)
  2. Configure the afp daemon
  3. Setup your AFP shares
  4. Install and Configure Avahi (Bonjour service advertising)

On the Mac Side

Mac OS X "Open With" Context Menu Shows Duplicate Entries

charles 11 May 2010

Like many of its underlying features & functionality, Mac OS X inherited context menus from the NEXTSTEP operating system. Also known as "contextual menus" (which I find clumsier to say), they pop-up upon user interaction such as a right-click of the mouse. For all you die-hard, one-button mouse users, they are available by holding the control key when clicking the mouse button. But you probably knew all that already or you wouldn't be here.

Infrequently Asked Questions of FAQs

charles 7 April 2010

Infrequently Asked Questions of FAQs - We take FAQs for granted as part of our site's content, but do they really work, or are they a band-aid for poor content? FAQ-hater R. Stephen Gracey explores the history and usability of FAQs. Learn how to collect, track, and analyze real user questions, sales inquiries, and support requests and use the insights gained thereby to improve your site's content, not just to write a FAQ.

BOINC and SETI at Home

charles 6 April 2010

SETI@Home

Carl Sagan made a compelling argument for the existence of life elsewhere in the universe. And, as Douglas Adams said, "Space is Big. Really Big." For years, the SETI (Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence) folks at UC Berkeley have been scanning the skies and collecting radio telescope data from locations such as the Arecibo Observatory. Unfortunately, they collect more data than they can process wither their available computer resources.

Quicktime Movie from JPEG Images

charles 17 December 2009

My latest idea for an art project that I can complete in a fairly short period of time involves the animation of still images. My first thought was to go for a walk and take pictures every so often, holding the camera at approximately the same level each time, pointed forward. When spliced together into a movie at, say, 10fps, you'd get a really choppy video where each image was visible for just long enough to register but not long enough to absorb much detail.

Web Site Pre-Flight

charles 3 April 2009

When taking a site live onto a production server, it's always tempting to rush the last few steps, especially if you're under a launch deadline, or if you've been working on the same site so long that you're sick of it. At this point it's important to sit back, take a breath, and be sure to go through the following pre-flight checklist:

  1. Check for broken links
  2. Disable any debugging lines in your code
  3. For PHP-based sites, set error_reporting to NONE. Errors should be redirected to a log file.

Ruby on Rails

charles 10 December 2008

A Web Development Toolkit

Although I don't have it yet, apparently Mac OS X 10.5 "Leopard" comes with ROR. I'm still on "Tiger", so I had to install it manually. Fortunately, I found a great Tutorial at Dave Benjamin's Site.

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