See the full gallery on Posterous

Molldeli’s Delicatessen and Franko Small Engines are a couple short-and-sweet websites for local small businesses. Both are on WordPress.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Downloaded from the official site and in no particular order. The last one really makes me miss the White Stripes.

UAC6RFMrNY1GQ9L7.mp3 Listen on Posterous

ogASslNfNT8sSekU.mp3 Listen on Posterous

LgD-C1QuNb_XE2ne.mp3 Listen on Posterous

5wD2BVOWNUoAREK3.mp3 Listen on Posterous

hQDT0FTUNdVPFRgV.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Lonely_Boy.m4a Listen on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

What you'll need:

• A Snow Leopard DVD
• Any incremental updates to reach Boot Camp 3.3. Here's 3.1, 3.2, and 3.3.

The second point is intentionally vague. My Snow Leopard DVD is the original release and includes Boot Camp 3.0. So I need to download all three updates. Your newer DVD might contain 3.1 for example, so you'd only need updates 3.2 and 3.3.

What to do:

• Pop in the DVD.
• Copy DVD > Boot Camp > Drivers > Apple > BootCamp64.msi to your Desktop.
• Copy DVD > Boot Camp > Drivers > Apple > x64 > AppleKeyboardInstaller64.exe to your Desktop.
• Eject the DVD.
• Click Start > All Programs > Accessories. Right click Command Prompt and click Run as administrator.
• Type %USERPROFILE%/Desktop/BootCamp64.msi and hit enter.

We're going through all this because the driver alone won't cut it. You also need the Boot Camp service to manage hotkeys. Luckily, the installer only bothers with drivers it can find. So by copying only what you need off the DVD, you're avoiding installing all the other Boot Camp stuff and potentially screwing up existing drivers.

Futhermore, the MSI needs to run as admin, hence the Command Prompt step. Double-clicking it will not do the trick.

• When the installer is done, don't restart. Instead, install each of the updates you downloaded, in order. Then restart.
• Once Windows loads again, you should notice the gray, diamond-shaped Boot Camp service icon in your system tray. If you try to click it and do anything, you'll get an error. Don't worry about that.
• Hit your volume keys. See that they work. Go about your day.

Additionally, you may want your function keys to behave normally. But you can't get into Boot Camp Control Panel. So do this instead:

• Click Start, type regedit and hit enter.
• Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Apple Inc.\Apple Keyboard Support
• Change OSXFnBehavior to 0
• Log out of Windows and back in.

Now your function keys should work normally, and hotkeys work by holding fn (eg: volume up is fn+F12).

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

In April I signed up for Clear WiMax Unlimited 4G at home. Service started well, but gradually degraded to around 100Kbs, max. My roommate and I could not reliably use the Internet at the same time. That's a big problem for a web developer and a cat-video afficionado.

About a month ago, I called Clear to find out what I'd be charged for cancellation. The CSR said, because I own my own modem, the fee would be an even $40. Not bad. I didn't cancel then, I just wanted the info.

We've since installed AT&T DSL, which downloads about 5x faster. Today I called Clear to cancel. I was on hold four times, transferred three times, and had to verify my account security information twice. Then the following transpired:

• When I said speed was a reason for canceling, the CSR offered to reprovision my modem and give me a free month. Why should my modem have to be reprovisioned if I signed up for the unlimited plan? They'd capped me without notification. Nice.
• When I insisted on canceling, the fee was suddenly $90 and change; over $50 more than I'd been told a month prior. I was given no explanation besides "that's what's in the system."
• When I put up a fuss about the difference, the CSR told me I was misinformed and accused me of mistrusting him. Then he "remembered" a suspension policy whereby I could avoid the fee and just let my contract run out on "hibernation."
• After 5 minutes of prodding him to reveal the catch for suspending versus canceling, he finally admitted I'd have to call back every 6 months to re-suspend. I can only assume I'd start getting charged again if I didn't call back at just the right times over the next 2 years.
• I gave up. Fine, charge me $90 and change. I don't want to have to go through this again. "Would you like to refer a friend or family member for a $40 gift card?" the CSR asked. "If you do, we can also waive your cancellation fee." LOL.

The call ended with me calmly explaining that I don't mistrust him, but I mistrust Clear's policies. Who knows what the fee would've magically become had I waited another month to cancel.

Stay away, friends. Yet another service provider that capitalizes on customers who don't take daily interest in what they're being charged, and don't question what they're getting back.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

A while back I posted about building and installing GAE SDK dependencies without MacPorts. Well, hours of frustration seem to indicate that way doesn't work anymore. Any version of libjpeg refuses to cooperate. So I relent:

• $ sudo port install py25-pil py25-googleappengine
• Add this to ~/.profile for convenience:
  alias gae="/opt/local/share/google_appengine/dev_appserver.py"

$ gae ~/Sites/shiny_new_app will kick things off. Bookmarking the Python Development Server docs is a good idea.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

See the full gallery on Posterous

Gorilla 76 and Get Digital are self-marketing sites that were created simultaneously. Both are rebuilds on WordPress that prioritize contextual calls to action, regular updating, and social tracking. In many ways, they're prototypical of the work we want to do moving forward.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Searched far and wide for this one. The solution is fantastically simple:

# echo "*" > /etc/ftpchroot

Then restart File Sharing.

Yes, FTP is archaic and insecure, but I need it for scanning documents on the home LAN. Still, I don't want the Scanner user to be able to read the entire file system. The above will limit all users.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Though our server is running far below limits (by an order of magnitude), we continue to add Drupal sites and drive more traffic. On the advice of Pro Drupal 7 Development I decided to preemptively install everyone's favorite PHP opcode cache, APC. Here's how it went down:

• A long time ago, installed the Developer Tools
• Logged in via SSH and ran the following commands:
• sudo bash
• cd /usr/local/src/
• yum install pcre-devel
• curl -O http://pecl.php.net/get/APC-3.1.9.tgz
• tar -xvzf APC-3.1.9.tgz
• cd APC-3.1.9/
• /usr/bin/phpize
• ./configure -enable-apc -enable-apc-mmap -with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs -with-php-config=/usr/bin/php-config
• make
• make install
• echo "extension=apc.so" > /etc/php.d/apc.ini
• service httpd restart
• cp apc.php ~/vhosts/example.com/httpdocs/
• Visited http://www.example.com/apc.php to verify installation

Thanks to Amedia Creative Labs and this Server Fault thread for the info. The steps above are just copy-pasta from each.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Butcher | Joseph is a middle-market merchant bank in St. Louis. They hired Gorilla 76 to create a site with strong visuals and no-nonsense copy -- rare things in the industry. The frontend is a custom WordPress theme with touches of jQuery, CSS3 and Google Web Fonts.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

The Korte Company green-lit a frontend overhaul less than a year after the last one. 11 months of learning and Analytics data went into each design decision. The end result is a bolder, more usable site that better showcases Korte's work, values, and social engagement. A Gorilla 76 client.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I get these emails from American Express every month. I signed up for them so I wouldn't forget to make a payment. I like to pay manually to make the damage more real.

The bit that concerns this post is: "If you have already sent or scheduled your payment, please disregard this reminder." Huh? So I get a "reminder" whether I scheduled a payment or not? How is that helpful? I might as well just mark my calendar.

When I login to manage this alert, it says, "We will not send the Alert if you’ve already made a payment for the amount due. However, you may receive the communication if your payment has been made within 24 hours of the Alert delivery date." Obviously that's broken or disregarded, otherwise the email wouldn't pin it on me. And for what it's worth, I did schedule a payment... 3 weeks ago.

The system should check whether I've scheduled a payment, and not bother me if I have. Programming is how you make customers' lives easier. Making me second-guess what I did 3 weeks ago, every month, does the opposite.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

immigrant.m4a Listen on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Thomas Industrial Coatings is an industrial powder-coating and painting company headquartered outside St. Louis, MO. They work on giant structures like overpasses, water towers, and locks and dams. We revamped their site on Drupal to showcase projects from around the country. A Gorilla 76 client.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Google App Engine SDK prefers Python 2.5. Snow Leopard runs Python 2.6 by default. The good news is, 2.5 is also installed, just inactive. Here's how to activate it:

defaults write com.apple.versioner.python Version 2.5

Edit: And Installing PIL on Mac OS X Snow Leopard for use in Google App Engine explains how to add PIL.

Why not just use MacPorts? I tried that first and somehow ended up with 2 extra copies of Python, and an extra copy of X.org, probably because there's no +no_tkinter variant of python25. F that.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

Baptist Medical Group is an affiliation of doctors near Pensacola, Florida. We redesigned their site and ported and reorganized all information. Drupal runs behind the scenes. A Gorilla 76 client.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I use images of (non-fiction) spacecraft as my desktop wallpaper. Why?

1. It's grounding (pun?). None of my creative or professional frustrations remotely compare to, well, anything involving... all that...
2. Similarly, we're ants venturing a few steps from the colony. Anything else we think is a big deal pales in comparison to firing ourselves off the planet. And yet, it's so objectively insignificant. Like we're incomprehensibly far behind. Maybe by 14 billions years or so.
3. I love staring at them (particularly mid-launch) and listening to throwback rock. So here's some of that too.

03_-_Just_Couldn't_Tie_Me_Down.mp3 Listen on Posterous

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I recently switched to Coda for dev. Here's a cheatsheet I made from the keyboard shortcut help file, reformatted to fit on one US Letter page.

coda_shortcuts.pdf Download this file

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

I try not to post personal things here, but am hereby making an exception.

I've spent most of the day installing and configuring various MacPorts packages after a reformat. Suddenly around 5PM I started to smell gasoline in the apartment.

At first I thought maybe the day-old lo mein I'd inhaled hours before was creeping back up, and I was smelling the vapor from my own digestive tract. Hmm, nope, and there it was again. Distinctly gasoline.

I walk into the kitchen to find my roommate "washing out" a gas can. In the kitchen sink. Because it was "stinking up [her] car." Naturally! Naturally...

Oh well, at least the stove wasn't on. Happy Halloween!

Permalink | Leave a comment  »

SOMARK Labstamp is a device that prints UIDs on lab mice. Apparently a lot of labs are still using this marvel of modern science, which screws up results if someone's had too much coffee and/or writes like my girlfriend... hence the need. The site runs on WordPress, plus a few hundred lines of custom PHP and JavaScript for ordering functionality. A long-time Gorilla 76 client.

Permalink | Leave a comment  »