Category Archives: geek
Solid State Drives Thoughts & Recommendations
Asus U36SD-A1 with OCZ Vertex 3 SSD
I recently made the mistake of getting an OCZ Vertex 3 drive for my Asus U36SD laptop. The Vertex 3 is an incredible SSD, one of the fastest in existence. Unfortunately for me, other Vertex 3 owners, and the manufacturers OCZ, it’s also got one of the highest failure rates.
Hard Disk Drives (HDDs) have long been the biggest speed bottleneck in modern computer systems. Drive manufacturers have had their replacement, Solid State Drives (SSDs) on the consumer market since about 2006/7, but it was only from 2010 onward that they really become affordable.
SSD’s are awesome – the speed increase they can bring to a system has to be seen to be believed. It’s not like comparing a Lamborghini with a Toyota, it’s like comparing a Lamborghini with a bicycle. (more…)
Because of Their Perseverance and Consistency
These guys have been spamming my sports blog for nigh on 10 years now, with pretty much the exact same message year in, year out. (My thanks to Askimet for nuking 99.9% of their submissions.)
I was bloody annoyed at first, but after a certain number of years, you have to admire certain spammers for their consistency and bloody-minded perseverance.
(more…)
How to Take Screenshots on Windows or Mac
I’ve needed to capture a screenshot – a picture of what’s on screen – on several systems recently. Normally I hit the “Print Screen” key – sometimes marked “PrtScr” – to copy the screenshot to the clipboard for pasting into Photoshop etc.
Some of the systems I needed to take screengrabs on did not have a working Print Screen button. Here are some handy ways to take a picture of the current screen or application if you don’t have access to them.
Windows On-Screen Keyboard:
Click Start, RUN, type “OSK”, hit Enter. You now have a floating keyboard which has a Print Screen – sometimes labeled “PSC”, “Prt Scrn” or “Print Scrn”. Tip: create a shortcut to the OnScreenKeyboard: right click on the desktop, click New Shortcut, type “OSK”, click next twice, and there you have it. Note: you will get a picture of the keyboard in your screenshots.
More about this from Microsoft.
Windows on an Apple Keyboard
New reading materials (sf and f)
I was just complaining on Twitter that I’m all out of Charlie Stross and I need some new scifi to read. I am a pretty avid scifi reader (to say the least: it’s like crack cocaine to me).
Ross, Janet and Joanna had some great suggestions and we had a good chat about various options. This blog post is mainly a Note to Self for me on what they suggested so I can fill up my shopping cart next time I’m book shopping.
Here’s suggestions of stuff (that I haven’t read only) so far:
- Cowl by Neal Asher
- Grass by Sherri S Tepper
- Simon R Green (both fantasy and scifi were good esp Deathstalker and Hawk & Fisher)
- The End of Mr Y by Scarlett Thomas (some comments on that: “most perplexing book I have read in a while” and “@JoannaSchaff oh dear Jo that’s just cruel, I know it’s Alister but still, actually given that it is him it’s worse” – hmmmmmm
Ok, give me more.
How To Stop Skype Changing Your Website Design
If visitors to your website have Skype installed, it may reformat what it thinks are phone numbers on your website. This can be very annoying if you’re a web designer and you get an angry phone call from a client asking why the design is broken (and worse, you can’t see the problem because you’ve disabled Skype in your own browser)!
The image here shows the contact page of one of my websites, WebsiteDoctor.com. Note the phone numbers at the top of the image, and the one in the middle of the text. Before I fixed this, Skype was reformatting all numbers, which severely affected the balance of the banner design (see the site to see why).
What I needed to do to prevent it is include a Skype specific meta tag in the header of my webpages to tell it not to reformat numbers by default (so it doesn’t change the top number). Then I added some more code to tell Skype that it is allowed reformat the 2nd instance of the number only (the one you see with the Irish flag in the picture). Here’s the code to do that.
First, add this META tag to the <head> section of your webpage or CMS (putting this in header.php somewhere before the </head> tag will work in most WordPress themes):
<meta name="SKYPE_TOOLBAR" content="SKYPE_TOOLBAR_PARSER_COMPATIBLE" />
At this stage, Skype will not reformat ANY numbers. If you just want to remove all Skype formatting, you’re finished now!
To tell Skype that you are allowing it to format a number you need to wrap the number with the following html comments. Note you can also specify “File As:” text for the Skype application:
<!-- sphoneid telnr="+35314404342" fileas="WebsiteDoctor Office (Dublin)" -->01 4404 342<!-- sphoneid -->
I hope this helps you out. If it does, or if you need any further help, please leave a comment below.
Dear Google, Please Index…
Dear Google,
Please add the following sites to your almighty index:
Thank you!
Testing a Spambot Blocker
I’m testing a spambot blocker courtesy of Augusto over at Spanish SEO. So if you can’t read this blog post, please let me know asap :)
It displays a nice big STOLEN sign, as seen on the right here, to mess with their splog display.
You should be able to block bots via robot.txt instructions, but spammers aren’t known for following rules. This solution blocks the bold bots at the Apache httpd level using .htaccess instructions. See Augusto’s spambot blocker article for more information.
Removing date from WordPress permalink: .htaccess 301
I just updated my permalinks structure on amdsoft.com to remove the dates from the URL. This is slightly better for SEO, and is nicer looking also.
So now we get URLs like
http://amdsoft.com/essential-software-for-new-macos-box/
instead of
http://amdsoft.com/2009/03/12/essential-software-for-new-macos-box/
In WordPress, this is changed at www.yourdomain.com/wordpress/wp-admin/options-permalink.php, select Custom Structure and just use
/%postname%/
Here’s the 301 redirect (replace amdsoft with your domain):
RedirectMatch 301 /([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/([0-9]+)/(.*)$ http://amdsoft.com/$4
Make sure it appears all on one line in your .htaccess file, and that it’s above the WP code in there.
Thanks to Aaron over at SEO book for this htaccess code. Edit: someone just pointed out to me that this is originally from Yoast tweaking websites blog- so thanks Joost (and also to Aaron for bringing it to my attention)! I highly recommend reading both of these guys, they’re both awesome.
23 Inch Full HD Widescreen for 186 EUR delivered
Friend of mine just pointed out this deal to me:
Dell S2309W 23-Inch Full HD Widescreen Flat Panel Monitor – Black
http://accessories.euro.dell.com/sna/productdetail.aspx?c=ie&l=en&cs=iedhs1&sku=184923
Use 20% off coupon: S2309WFP (Expires 29 December 2008) to get it for 186 EUR.
Nice deal eh?