Recently, I was contracted to take cfqfederation10.org and transfer it to WordPress so its member could edit the content themselves. While installing WordPress and the ensuing tasks were a breeze, I was struck with an absolute lack of inspiration when it came to the design. After wasting enough time in Photoshop, I got tired and called for DesignsForCoders‘ help. Joe DaSilva, the man behind it, is a damn great designer and got my design ready for launch in under a week for a mere 300$.

• The Zonet ZEWN2546 (802.11n) is recommended by Argosy. You can find them for around 15$ in the US, and around 30$ in Canada.
• The 802.11N1 1T2R Adapter on MonoPrice sells for around 15$ too, and reportedly works with the HV335T, despite the description that says otherwise.
• According to one of our commenters, the Airlink AWLL6075 also works fine. You can grab it from around 16$ on eBay or Amazon.

I then stumbled upon a post about Dynomighty’s Mighty Wallet. Unlike other wallets, this one is made from the same thin plastic used in Tyvek envelopes, making it slim enough to go unnoticed. On top of being incredibly thin, they come in a variety of cool designs. This YouTube video covers everything you need to know about it.

Since the shipping is ridiculously expensive, you might consider ordering them off eBay, where they sell for about 18$, shipping included.

UPDATE: I’ve received my wallet and have used it for a few weeks. It’s barely noticeable in my backpocket and has a very durable construction. While it does not have separate pockets for every card, it makes up for it by being astoundingly compact. Did I mention it looks damn good, too? I have the Elysium model, but there are plenty of wicked designs available. Go and get one!

Subtle but useful

]]> http://blog.nicolasbouliane.com/?feed=rss2&p=1431 0 http://blog.nicolasbouliane.com/?p=1401 http://blog.nicolasbouliane.com/?p=1401#comments Sun, 18 Jul 2010 01:23:10 +0000 admin http://blog.nicolasbouliane.com/?p=1401 Dashboard Admin Email

Dashboard Admin Email is a plugin for WordPress that displays the administrator’s email on the dashboard. It’s not rocket science, but it’s a time saver for admins who manage WordPress blogs for clients. I can confirm it works with WordPress 2.9.2 and 3.0.

Download this plugin

Dashboard Message

Dashboard Message is a WordPress plugin that displays a custom message on the Dashboard. The plugin will display anything you throw at it, which can be useful for messages to users or quick-and-dirty plugins. I can confirm the plugin works with WordPress 3.0

Using the plugin is very simple: put whatever you want to display in the message.php file in the plugin’s folder. If you need any help, there is the comments section below.

Download this plugin

Fig.1.1: Windows Live Mail, 07/11/10

It turns out most of the spam originates from people I know. Most of them probably fell for a “crack MSN passwords” website and gave away their credentials to spam bots. A simple monthly password change or better access control could rid the servers of that e-waste.

1. It’s 15mb. I have plenty of room left on my hard drive, so 15 000 kilobytes won’t hurt my hard drive space. However, what in hell do you cram in those 15 megabytes? Pictures of kittens? Printable McDonalds coupons? Probably not. I’m sure you don’t need 15mb (which is many, many lines of code) to get a mouse button to do tricks.
2. I need to reboot my computer? Really? What kind of sensational magic can come out of this mouse that is wonderful enough to require me to reboot my computer? I have not yet explored the features of this mouse as I am yet emptying my sack of boiling nerd rage on my blog, but it would have to literally shit golden unicorns to justify this. Does your mouse shit unicorns, Microsoft? We’ll figure that out.
3. It wants to send anonymous usage information. You say it is to improve your products. What kind of information about a mouse could help improve your products? I know this information is anonymous, but what exactly is it about? Unless your motto is something reassuring along the lines of “don’t be evil”, you won’t see any of it.

Get this straight Microsoft: this is a mouse. If I don’t install your crap on my hard drive, it has three working buttons. It shouldn’t take 15mb and anonymous usage tracking to make a fourth one do something. Are you hiring people from HP or is it the new trend among driver developers to play inverted code golf? Oh yeah and the middle click is ridiculously loud, too.

Now let’s reboot and see what this IntelliThing is all about, shall we?

UPDATE:
I’ve fiddled with the mouse for two weeks, and I intend to keep it. It works well and the tiny adapter has an impressive range. The battery didn’t let me down yet, which is an improvement over the deceiving Memory Mouse.

• In some text editors (like Notepad++), holding the Alt key while selecting text will select a rectangle of text instead of lines.
• Double-clicking text then dragging your mouse around will select words instead of characters. Not cool enough for you? Triple-click text to select paragraphs.
• Delete entire words instead of letters by holding the Ctrl key while you press the backspace and delete buttons.
• You can also move the cursor from word to word by holding the Ctrl key while you press the arrow keys.
• Holding the shift key while moving the cursor with the arrow keys will select the text the cursor passes over. This can be used in combination with the previous tip.
• Drag and drop selected text to move it from a field to another.

Web browsers

Most web browser shortcuts can be found on in the browsers’ documentation. Here are the links to the most popular ones:

Firefox | Chrome | Internet Explorer | Opera | Safari

Some interesting highlights:

• Ctrl+Click on a link will open it in a new tab. You can also click links with the scroll button to achieve the same effect.
• In most browsers, Ctrl+K will give the focus to the URL bar and Ctrl+L to the search box.
• Ctrl+Shift+T will restore the last closed tab in most browsers.
• Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab will navigate back and forth between open tabs. Ctrl+PgUp and Ctrl+PgDown do the same thing.

Windows

• Ctrl+Shift+Esc shows the task manager. This is especially useful in Windows Vista and Windows 7 since it skips the full-screen menu page you see when you press Ctrl+Alt+Delete.

iPhone

• To close a buggy application, hold the power button until you see the “Slide to power off” screen, then release it and hold the home button until it disappears.
• To reset the device, hold the home and power buttons for a few seconds.
• Double-tap the top bar in Safari to go back to the top of the page.

A weekend and 15 hours working at Staples later, it was time to get to work. Even if I wasn’t going very far today, save the occasional to-and-fro between the desk and the kitchen counter, it was no excuse to avoid leaving my PJ’s. LifeHacker said it: “no pants, no productivity”, and I wholeheartedly agree!

With a simple rule in mind (don’t check Reddit) and a good night’s sleep, it took me three hours to clear my task list without even checking Facebook or Google Reader. Thanks to a few useful tools, my first day was a success.

Do

• Dress up as if I you were going to work
• Use Remember the Milk to get things done without forgetting anything
• Keep a clean and distraction-free workspace
• Set pauses to leave the computer and do something else

Don’t

• Check Facebook, Reddit or Google Reader
• Work in the basement

When displaying PNG pictures in Internet Explorer or Safari, there is a color distortion with the images. If this will not cause any trouble with isolated pictures, it can ruin your design if you rely on superimposed images with the same background color.

Why?

The gamma correction data included in a PNG image is used by browsers to make sure the image looks good when it’s displayed on your screen. However, this so-called “correction” is not applied equally to all colors and images and thus two superimposed images can look different even if they use the same colors, effectively breaking the design in some browsers.

The full explanation can be found here.

How do I fix this?

The fix to this is to simply not include gamma correction data with the images when you save them.

In Photoshop CS4,when you Save For Web & Devices, uncheck the Convert to sRVB box before you save your image.

You can also achieve this with PNGCrush and TweakPNG.

Source 1, source 2