Open Architecture Security Cameras

About a month ago, I got a pair of security cameras for the house. It took a bit of research to arrive at the right ones. There are a lot of cameras on the market, and most of them are cheap things locked into a vendor ecosystem. It was a bit more expensive, but I … Continue reading Open Architecture Security Cameras

The Game Grid is powered by Unix

I first saw the most recent Tron Legacy trailer when jwz posted the video a week ago.  I remember seeing the brief scene when the kid is looking at the computer console and being mainly focused on the on-screen keyboard.  “Oh yeah, I remember that from the original Tron.  They had iPad keyboards long before … Continue reading The Game Grid is powered by Unix

On Google Chrome (Mac, Linux, and nightly builds)

On Google Chrome As you may have heard, Google is working on a web browser called Chrome. There have been beta versions out for Windows and Linux for some time. The Mac version is still playing catch-up. Because Firefox, the browser I now use, has appeared to get more slow and clunky over time, I … Continue reading On Google Chrome (Mac, Linux, and nightly builds)

Pardon our dust -or- Netninja on Thesis

As you can tell by the ubiquitous ’90s-era nontransparent animated shoveler graphic at right, Netninja.com has been under construction this weekend. Everything looks fine now, but this is a warning that there may still be some loose coverplates hiding sparking wires. You see — today, I installed the Thesis theme engine for WordPress. What does … Continue reading Pardon our dust -or- Netninja on Thesis

Shortening with YOURLS and Tweetie 2 for iPhone

A few months back, around the possible demise of the tr.im URL shortening service, there was a sudden rise in popularity with running your own URL shortener on your own boutique URL. That was when I set up Ninja Me (nja.me) using YOURLS. At the time, I reverse-engineered the undocumented API enough to hack Twitter-Tools … Continue reading Shortening with YOURLS and Tweetie 2 for iPhone

OS X VPN?

Does anyone have a good resource (I’ve seen several bad ones, but not a great reference) that explains how to set up a free L2TP/PPTP VPN on a consumer-level OS X workstation? I’m not talking OS X server, because that ships with server out of the box with a nice GUI configuration tool. OS X … Continue reading OS X VPN?

Apple Keyboard

After playing with the new Apple keyboard for 5-10 minutes at the Apple Store the other week (the sales folks were curious as to why I was writing what looked like code into a TextEdit window), I decided to get one. The key spacing isn’t a big deal at all–they just squared the beveled edges … Continue reading Apple Keyboard

My Firefox Plugins

This is mainly for my own reference, although I figured the list could be beneficial to others. These are the plugins and Greasemonkey scripts I am using under Firefox. They’re also documented (and updated) at http://stackoverflow.org/wiki/My_Firefox_Plugin_Setup Adblock Plus @ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865 Ever been annoyed by all those ads and banners on the internet that often take … Continue reading My Firefox Plugins

Synergy

Eight years ago, I worked at a company where I had both a Linux desktop machine and a Linux laptop.  The laptop was the primary machine — for coding, documentation, and carrying around to meetings (back when WiFi was cutting-edge technology that few people knew about.)  The desktop was the workhorse for large builds and … Continue reading Synergy