July 15th, 2008 / 1 Comment » / by Andrew Wells
I recently bought an Epson Stylus Photo R280 printer, and I thought I would make a CD cover for Ubuntu’s latest release. I did a search for one, and didn’t really find one that I liked, so I designed my own.
March 7th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Andrew Wells
Let’s take a break and talk about the weather, shall we? Although I’m mostly a programmer, one of my hobbies is monitoring the weather, and I even do a bit of storm chasing. Usually, storm chasing is done in the Spring, Summer, and sometimes the Fall. Surely not in January, right? Wrong. Read more…
February 25th, 2008 / 2 Comments » / by exporter
Writing secure SQL queries can be one of the most important factors in your site’s security, yet I see so many people that don’t do it. So many programmers write queries that “just work” taking little consideration of the malicious potential of unsecured code – SQL queries included. This post is going to show some examples of bad queries in MySQL and how to correct them.
February 5th, 2008 / No Comments » / by Andrew Wells
My blog was starting to get several registrations a day. I had a total of ~100 user registrations, and I am pretty sure most if not all of them were bots. Because I am sick of bots registering, I deleted all of them and disabled user registration. So…if I deleted your account by mistake, I apologize. Please send me an email, and I will restore your account right away.
January 2nd, 2008 / 5 Comments » / by Andrew Wells
I wanted to test Firefox 3.0b2 on my computer, but I didn’t want it to interfere with my current Firefox profile or even my current system. I decided to create a separate user and use that user specifically for running Firefox. No, that doesn’t mean that I have to sign out and sign back in as that new user every time I want to use it. I can run Firefox 3.0b2 under its own user at the same time as all of other programs. I can even run both versions side by side for comparing and testing.
December 27th, 2007 / 35 Comments » / by Andrew Wells
A short time ago, I wrote on how to get your X10 CM17A Firecracker module working in Linux. Since then, I have migrated to a new home server, and I am left with no serial ports. That means that I have to get a USB module working. I already have the CM19A here at home, so I went on a task to find a driver to work for this one. I did succeed, so read on to find out how you can get it working yourself.
November 5th, 2007 / 11 Comments » / by Andrew Wells
Haven’t you always wanted to control your Christmas lights with your Linux server? Being able to control X10-enabled devices opens up your world to a whole new level of geekness. There are several other powerful reasons to put your computer in control of your lights and appliances including programming simple timers and controlling your lights from anywhere in the world. I’m going to show you how to do it with the CM17A interface. There are plenty others out there like the CM10A, CM11A, and others. You may be able to tweak this article to your needs if you have a different interface other than the CM17A.
November 1st, 2007 / No Comments » / by Andrew Wells
Since the Ubuntu 7.10 Gutsy release date, I have upgraded my laptop and desktop as well as done several test installations. The Ubuntu team has made great improvements in some areas, but failed attempts in others. I will discuss several new features exposed such as desktop effects, graphical display configuration utility, restricted drivers, themes, and more.
October 30th, 2007 / 1 Comment » / by Andrew Wells
It seemed that Ubuntu’s icons have always been larger than the icons are on Windows. This may be trivial for some people, but I wanted my desktop and nautilus icons to be a bit smaller. Changing the icon sizes as well as the font size is fairly easy. These steps are based on Ubuntu Gutsy 7.10.
October 29th, 2007 / 1 Comment » / by Andrew Wells
When you first install your version of Ubuntu, you are left with a plain looking desktop with only icons of your mount points. I wanted to add icons for my computer, trash, home folder, and more. This article explains how to do it. This tip works for Ubuntu Gutsy, Feisty, and possibly older.
Working with computer software since my sophomore year in high school, I have learned VB 6.0, C++, C++.NET, Java, HTML & CSS, Javascript, PHP & MySQL, and Oracle. Yes, I know that HTML is technically not a programming language - but I know the syntax. I am very familiar with Windows and Linux, but not Mac.
I have been freelancing since 2005 and been working in the IT department of a company with ~10k computer users since early 2009.
