Mac OSX: Resize Image on Right Click
I resize a lot of images to the same size for use in my blog and on my web site. This automator script allows you to quickly resize and image from the right click menu.
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I resize a lot of images to the same size for use in my blog and on my web site. This automator script allows you to quickly resize and image from the right click menu.
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It's been almost a year since I switched to using a Mac from a PC. Since then there have been a number of other converts. Our entire household now uses Mac computers and I know other people who are switching as well. I wanted to list out some of the software that I've found helpful over the past year. Note that this is mostly from the perspective of a web devleoper
There are a lot of other programs that I use that are more well known, but these form the foundation of smaller apps that make computing on the mac even easier.
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My wife was reading an article in the NY Times about a man who was rushing into marriage because he need to get onto his girlfriends health insurance before his ran out.
My reaction: Is health insurance the new social glue? How many times have you heard that someone is doing something, staying at a job, even staying in a relationship because of the healthcare benefits? I suspect most everyone has heard someone say something along those lines.
I don't think there is any doubt that this "benefit" is providing a certain amount of glue. Something that I've never thought of thus far is: with the prospects of a nationalized healthcare system, what would become of that glue. My guess is it would lose it's stickiness.
I'm definitely not out to make a political statement on this one, my thinking here is purely philosophical. I'm not out to say it's better or worse without the current glue, but rather: how sad is it that this is one of the core things that's holding our society together is health insurance. Not love, not family, not a sense of duty, but health insurance.
Your thoughts? Comment.
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I am beginning to understand that love is fundamentally messy. Think about God’s seedbed for love, the family. Conceiving children is messy. Giving birth to children is messy. Raising children is messy. There’s absolutely nothing clean or aseptic about this process, it’s a big mess. Move from the family to another display of God’s love, the cross. What a mess: betrayals, denials, beatings, and then finally a bloody crucifixion.
Now when the Pharisees gathered to him, with some of the scribes who had come from Jerusalem, they saw that some of his disciples ate with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (For the Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they wash their hands, holding to the tradition of the elders, and when they come from the marketplace, they do not eat unless they wash. And there are many other traditions that they observe, such as the washing of cups and pots and copper vessels and dining couches.) And the Pharisees and the scribes asked him, “Why do your disciples not walk according to the tradition of the elders, but eat with defiled hands?”
Jesus was not afraid to get dirty. He touched lepers and dead bodies. He hung around with the “dirty people” like the tax collectors, prostitutes and other “sinners”. The Pharisees on the other hand had spiritual OCD. They hated the idea of getting dirty.
Now when the Pharisee who had invited him saw this, he said to himself, “If this man were a prophet, he would have known who and what sort of woman this is who is touching him, for she is a sinner.”
In opposition to the Pharisees, Jesus’ chief teaching on love has to do with someone picking up a half dead person from a ditch. Can you imagine what the Samaritan must have looked like as he pulled into the inn to drop off the injured person? This would not have been a pretty picture.
If we’re going to love we must be willing to get dirty. We must not allow the spiritual OCD of this generation to define our behavior. Instead, we must follow the Samaritan and the Lord down a dusty, dirty road where wounds bleed and blisters ooze.
Perhaps we can do this we can do this because we know the One who can cleanse us and make us whiter than snow. Perhaps we can do this because we believe that whatever dirt that sticks to us in showing love to God’s creatures will become sparkling diamonds of radiance in the kingdom of our Father. Perhaps it would be accurate to say that the dirtier we get in loving, the more brightly we will shine in the kingdom (God loves a good paradox).
Look to the forerunner. He became a mess in his endeavor to love us… and in exchange was given a name that was above every name.
It would be a mistake to relegate all benefits of the dusty, dirty road to the future. Perhaps the greatest glory of walking this muddy path is that Jesus is there with you. It’s a dirty road, but now a lonely road. It’s a messy road, but he’s there with you. With the lowest of the low, you take up fellowship with the King of Kings.
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I installed the Minimalist Gmail plugin (thanks to Life Hacker). The great part about this extension is that it allows you to populate the Google links list with your own custom links.

If you're one of the many user chagrined by Google's recent removal of the reader link in the Gmail header, this is a quick and easy way to get it back. Supposedly they are bringing it back, but until then enjoy the extension.
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Tracking 404 pages is a part of being a web master. I was using a service called Link Patch, but they recently shut down. Why this never occurred to me before I don't know, but I thought, why not just track 404s as an Event in Google analytics. I tried it and it worked like a charm.
Here is the code I placed on my 404 page:
<script type="text/javascript"> // log 404 in google analytics _gaq.push(['_trackEvent', 'Error', '404', '<?php echo $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; ?>']); </script>
This will place the url for the page in the events menu under the "Error" category
What I love about this approach is that:
I think this is going to be a great shift. I just sorry I didn't set it up earlier!
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When I pondered my conversion to Mac, one of the biggest issues for me was the ability to operate two large computer monitors side by side. As a developer this is a huge issue for me, so you can imagine my dismay when after going to the Apple store and talking to “genius” they simply turned around and Googled my question (something I had obviously done many times before). After looking around I did discover that there was a device that would do what I was looking for.
This tutorial applies strictly to Mac Book pros (Mine was new in Sept of 2011 and is running 10.6.5). If you’re using a desktop mac or another mac book I can’t promise similar results but here’s what I did.
The device that allows you to go dual and even triple screen on your mac book is the Matrox DualHead2Go DP Edition. Some of the other device versions will work, but they won’t give you the resolutions you want to run 24” inch monitors. If you want to go big on you monitors you’re going to need to use the DP (display port) edition.
Because I was operating DVI monitors I needed three different adapters! 2 DP to DVI adapters to connect the unit to the monitors and 1 Mini DP to DP adapter to connect the Mac to the Matrox unit. I definitely didn’t appreciate all the extra costs of the adapters, but I was a man on a mission so I did it anyways.
Mini DP to DP Adapter
The software Matrox PowerDesk allows you to tell the OS what monitor (laptop or “dual screen”) should be the primary.
One of the primary annoyances is that it treats the dual monitor setup form the device as a single monitor, so you can see that the task bar is completely stretched out across the top. This really doesn’t cause too much pain except when I need to get to the file menu and I’m using the left monitor.
On the other hand the great part about this is you can stack a ton of stuff in your application bar at the bottom – fill it up as it will stretch all the way across the bottom if it needs to.
Lots of cords need to be plugged in when you “dock” your mac, but nothing too overwhelming there.
You’ll need a USB hub. The Matrox unit takes up the mini display port AND A USB port for power.
Overall I’m very pleased with the results. I work primarily off the two main monitors, but I can put secondary applications like script logs and skype on the less dominant lap top monitor. If you are a developer you’ll definitely benefit from this arrangement. Also, if you like my desk, check out this post.. I made it myself.
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I’m currently working on a project where I wanted to use DOMPDF to export html from magento. With some help from some folks who got DOMPDF to work with Zend I was able to get it working with Magneto.
Step 1
Copy the dompdf folder to the lib directory of your magento install.
Step 2
Edit app/Mage.php to include the following code
include_once 'dompdf/dompdf_config.inc.php'; spl_autoload_register('DOMPDF_autoload');
This goes around line 52 inside the else statement right after
include_once "Varien/Autoload.php";
Step 3
Use the code. Here’s an example of what I am doing inside on of my custom contollers
public function printAction(){ if ($quote = $this->_iniQuote()) { $html = $this->getLayout()->createBlock('crm/quotes_print')->toHtml(); $dompdf = new DOMPDF(); $dompdf->load_html($html); $dompdf->render(); $dompdf->stream("sample.pdf"); } }
Basically that’s it. Pretty straight forward and seems to work like a charm.
NOTE: This was done using DOMPDF 0.6.0 beta1 and Magneto 1.4.0.1
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I have 5 boys, so needless to say there’s a lot of activity in our house. Our 2nd son is by far the most active (at the moment anyhow) and Amy and I couldn’t resist buying him some rock climbing holds for his birthday. Originally I was going to mount them on the back of our garage, or outside somewhere, but the other night the idea came to me. Use some wood I had lying around to build an indoor climbing wall for the basement. I literally thought of this and built it the next day. The kids helped and within a matter of hours they were climbing away and having a great time!
Here’s the finished product.
The ideas was to use two pieces of plywood I had lying around to make a triangle structure. The more I thought, the more refined the idea. Using bolts to connect the wood accomplished a couple of things.
Another port of the idea was to attach indoor/outdoor carpeting. This protected the kids from splinters (it was really rough plywood) and makes it a little more weather proof if I take it outside (If I take it outside I would also paint the side boards because they are not pressure treated.
If you build something like this I hope you’ll use your own creativity to improve the idea.
Once the holes are drilled then you can test fit the structure by inserting the bolts. Everything should come together nicely. If it doesn’t make your adjustments now before you mount the plywood
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We by no means have a lot of children by historical standards, but according to our current culture standards the reactions we get are quite the opposite. One of my little jokes when people remark about how many children we have, I say that I'm just making up for all the people who are not having children. Well it turns out that my joke is really no joke at all. Here's a short video on a stable population.
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Web Developer - proficient in both PHP and ASP.NET.
Rochester, New York
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