Tag Archives: Technical Notes

Posted in case anyone else out there is having trouble figuring out a good way to do it:

.hang {
	text-align: left;
	text-indent: -3em;
	margin-left: 3em;
}

So, what’s the difference between this:

<!--#if expr="${GETDOC3}"-->
<!--#include virtual="doc3.html"-->
<!--#endif-->

and this?

<!--#if expr="${GETDOC3}" -->
<!--#include virtual="doc3.html" -->
<!--#endif -->

Answer: the stupid space before the --> marker. Without that little space, your server side includes won’t play nice with Apache 1.3.

I’ve been doing some massive geek-outery at work again. It’s some really cool stuff involving doing the navigation for a huge website using server side includes and variables so that I only have to write something once and it’ll look different depending on where you are in the site.
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One of my coworkers just got a new Powerbook. Everything works great, except for printing. The print dialog box would come up, but the print button itself did nothing. It didn’t even act as if it had been clicked on. The only button that did anything was “Cancel”.

Anyway it’s fixed now, and since it took a bit of searching to find the solution I figured I’d post it here to help anyone in a similar bind:

Delete the contents of the /Library/Printers/PPD Plugins folder

That’s it. Everything worked great once that was done.

Server upgrade is all done! Things seem to work, but I’m kinda punchy and may not be thinking straight enough to test everything out.

Took a lot longer than I expected, mostly because I decided to be extra careful and backed up the internal drives from the old server onto an iPod using Carbon Copy Cloner. Took nearly five hours to copy four gigabytes… I was astounded at how slow it was. Tack on another 45 minutes for me to run home, get a screwdriver and run back and the whole process should have been over around 7:30, 8 pm.

Just fair warning to all and sundry that the ‘blog may be going for a bit of a wander in the semi-near future. I’m getting an order in to the Apple store for a nice little Mac Mini for home server use. When it arrives and is set up to serve then this whole shootin’ match will be lovingly boxed up and relocated elsewhere.

Just a handy tip for anyone using WebRemote on my recommendation: take it slow. Don’t just click track after track to add them to the playlist. You need to give it time to finish reloading the interface each time or it’ll lock up and start using all the processor time it can. I’ve sent an email to the author and heard back from him already, so this may get taken care of in a future update. We’ll see if he can match the excellent standard set by NIXANZ software’s amazing Snail Mail…

So you say you want to control iTunes remotely, without having to bother with all those pesky things like a remote desktop connection or a web interface? How about a command-line based scripting tool?

Check it out at acmetech…

Found two handy work related / fun utilities recently. The first lets you stream the contents of your iTunes library, the second lets you remotely control an iTunes jukebox on a remote machine.
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We’ve got the stereo system hooked up in the new office now! And what better way to send sound to the big subwoofer than to hook up a tiny little iPod shuffle? For those of you who haven’t seen one yet, it’s the little white rectangle to the right of the Pepsi can that I put in for scale… It really sounds quite good.