iOS AND ANDROID
Topics:
Choose a tag
Being a techie, I get called upon by family members to fix their computers all the time. Today I was called in to clean up this machine that has a nasty virus, and it won’t let me even boot into safe mode. I’ve cleaned up viruses like these in the past by disconnecting the hard drive and bringing it into my own machine to scan/remove the viruses that way. Unfortunately once in the past, the virus from the other hard drive then infected my own machine :( Needless to say, I’ve learned my lesson and stopped doing that.
Most of the time, I can get away with running the Microsoft Safety Scanner, but since I can’t even get to the desktop, it’s not an option. So today I researched a bootable Antivirus CD to see if that was an option and found a great site with 26 of them: http://www.raymond.cc/blog/13-antivirus-rescue-cds-software-compared-in-search-for-the-best-rescue-disk/
I settled on trying the AVG rescue CD and it’s finding a lot of problems on this drive! The way it works, is you download the ISO and burn to a CD (they have USB version also). Once you boot to that CD on the infected machine, plug in your ethernet cable and run the “Network” function to get onto the internet. Go to the “Update” function and get the newest antivirus files which will automatically install. Lastly scan your volume/hard drive and wait. The CD will load the whole program in RAM, and with the updates, you’ll have the newest definitions to scan with. It really helps you get out of jam with a nasty virus without worrying about infecting another machine or if you can’t even get to your antivirus on the desktop. Spread the word on this, I know a lot of folks could use it!
This site has been in my toolbox for quite a while now and still comes in handy when I can’t automate the compression of JS files. You can either copy and paste the JS or upload the whole file and get back the minified JS. It’s amazing to be able to reduce a file’s size by 70% to 80% and still have it work as intended.
If you need reasons for minifying a JS file, here you go:
By default, WordPress orders custom posts by date. This is not very desirable if you are not using them as normal blog posts and want to order the admin page by title, menu order, etc. You can change the order by adding a few lines of code to your theme’s functions.php file:
function set_custom_post_types_admin_order($wp_query) {
if (is_admin()) {
$post_type = $wp_query->query['post_type'];
if ( $post_type == 'name_of_post_type') {
$wp_query->set('orderby', 'menu_order');
$wp_query->set('order', 'ASC');
}
}
}
add_filter('pre_get_posts', 'set_custom_post_types_admin_order');
Just change name_of_post_type to the one you want to reorder.
Here are some parameters that you can order your posts by:
‘ID’ – Order by post id.
‘author’ – Order by author.
‘title’ – Order by title.
‘name’ – Order by post name (slug).
‘date’ – Order by date.
‘modified’ – Order by date modified.
‘parent’ – Order by parent id.
‘menu_order’ – Order by page order specified in edit page.
Wanted to share one of the websites I end up using a lot due to my inability to remember every htaccess command from memory. here’s a list of the commands documented there:
Detect and redirect iPhone
How to create a password for a .htpasswd file using PHP
How to find the full path to a file using PHP
Htaccess redirect
htpasswd – The file to store passwords
Prevent hotlinking
Redirection
Password Protection with htaccess
Hope you find it as useful as I do!
HTML5 gave us the long-awaited feature of adding watermark text to form input and textarea fields. If you haven’t tried it yet, here is the simple code:
<input type="text" placeholder="Your Name">The placeholder attribute will work in the latest versions of Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Internet Explorer 10. For Internet Explorer 9 and below, there is a simple jQuery fix that also utilizes the placeholder attribute so you re not dealing with duplicate content. Huge props to Niko Hagenburger for this simple solution.
Add this code to your javascript file:
$("[placeholder]").focus(function() {
var input = $(this);
var watermark = input.attr("placeholder")
if (input.val() == watermark) {
input.val("");
input.removeClass("placeholder");
}
}).blur(function() {
var input = $(this);
if (input.val() == "" || input.val() == watermark) {
input.addClass("placeholder");
input.val(input.attr("placeholder"));
}
}).blur();
$("[placeholder]").parents("form").submit(function() {
$(this).find("[placeholder]").each(function() {
var input = $(this);
if (input.val() == input.attr("placeholder")) {
input.val("");
}
})
});This code selects all elements that have the placeholder attribute and adds it to the value attribute. The second part of the script strips the value out before submit if it directly matches the placeholder value.
Note that you can use a submit or click function for the last part of of this code – the example shows submit as in Nico’s original, but I used click so that my jQuery validator would fire off.
Check out the original post from Nico to find out more about this script and how to style it.
Found one of our employees junk filtering wasn’t working and had to open up a ticket with the Microsoft Office 365 support team (great customer service btw), and they helped me figure out where the filtering was turned off. Below is a way to do it through powershell for the whole company.
$LiveCred = Get-Credential
$Session = New-PSSession -ConfigurationName Microsoft.Exchange -ConnectionUri https://ps.outlook.com/powershell/ -Credential $LiveCred -Authentication Basic –AllowRedirection
Import-PSSession $Session
Get-mailboxJunkEmailConfiguration
( this command can be used to see if the Junk filtering is enabled or not)
Get-Mailbox | Set-MailboxJunkEmailConfiguration –Enabled $True
A recent project had me looking for a way to add global content that was easy for the client to edit and add to themselves. I ran across a great plugin that does just this: Global Content Blocks. With this plugin, not only can you make global text blocks, you can also make global code and easily add it to your theme through PHP or to your WYSIWYG editor through a custom short code.
Here, I created a global link to Weatherwise on iTunes that can now be used all across my website. I can link it using PHP:
<?php echo gcb("weatherwise_itunes");?>
Or through a short code
[contentblock id="weatherwise_itunes"]
There are other cool things you can do like add variables, import/export blocks from other sites and simply make content editing much quicker. Find it in WordPress’s plugin directory and enjoy the simplicity!
Seemingly straight out of a sci-fi movie, the world’s largest fully operational hexapod at 9.2 feet tall and 2 tons has been built. Constructed by Matt Denton of Micromagic Systems, one of the animatronics contributors in the movie “Prometheus” and called “Mantis,” it certainly is an impressive machine, albeit it moves a bit slowly. It can be piloted by sitting in the cockpit or remote controlled via Wi-Fi.
Check it out in action here.
If you’re wondering if you can buy one of these in stores: sadly, you can’t. But if you want to rent it for your next event, Micromagic Systems has made it available for a price.
A recently funded Kickstarter project by the name of 3Doodler is boasting its capabilities as the world’s first 3D-printing pen, and based off of its video introduction, I have no reason to doubt them. As soon as you see the pen seeming molding plastic in mid-air, you immediately want to pick one up and start doodling. The only downside from my perspective is that there is a lack of interface with a computer to create these models, but a major plus is that you don’t need one, as you are the “computer” in this sense!
Found out about the news of Makerbot making a 3D scanner to go along with their 3D printers. As a user of a Makerbot Replicator, but with zero ability to build 3D models of my own, all I have to say YES!!!
If it wasn’t for RJay, we’d never be able to print out anything at all. Looking at the pictures from Engadget (http://www.engadget.com/2013/03/08/makerbot-3d-scanner/), it follows the same basic balsa wood build as their 3D printers but they’ve attached lasers and a spinning platform.
Besides the price, the inability to create these 3D models to print out easily, is the biggest barrier to getting people to purchase and use these printers. Also, there’s still issues even printing, as the bigger the object you’re printing, the more likely it will fail. RJay has been working on getting better results with the printer and he’s found a few tips that have helped (I’ll see if I can get him to follow up with a blog post). It’s an exciting time as you can see the progression being made with these printers and as they become more stable, the more inexpensive prototyping and manufacturing there is. This leads to more choices and better solutions for various problems around the world.
It’s got LASERS!!!!
