Author Archive

For the Love of Seeing – Gunnar Computer Glasses

Monday, March 1st, 2010

I’ve decided that my eyes need a break. That means I either have to get into landscaping or warehouse work, or invest in some more technology. Since the latter is pretty much my thing, I need a pair of these Gunnar eSport PPKs (UPDATE – Ordered on 3/1/10)

My buddy Dan says they rock, and well, that’s good enough for me.   I’ll post my review as soon as I’m qualified.

UPDATE #2 – 3/5/10, I have them in hand, or rather, on head!  I’m still getting used to them, but will post a review after the end of a solid week.

Strange WordPress Attachment Page Error

Monday, March 1st, 2010

I was running into a strange WordPress error on attachment pages that were linked from a gallery embed on a normal blog post, and only for unauthenticated users.  This happened in the both the custom theme as well as the default theme of the site in question under WordPress 2.9.2

The error was “Warning: Attempt to assign property of non-object in /path/to/wp-content/link-template.php on line 999″

The offending code looked like this:

if ( empty($post->post_title)  )
$post->post_title = $previous ? __('Previous Post') : __('Next Post');

Even though the theme the site is using didn’t have a custom Image Attachment Template (image.php), the default theme does, so it led me to believe the issue lied with the core files.  Essentially, it seems as though the post object wasn’t being set, and since I haven’t yet had the time to delve into a more proper method for resolving the error, I simply changed the if conditions to the following.

if ( empty($post->post_title) && !is_attachment() )
$post->post_title = $previous ? __('Previous Post') : __('Next Post');

That cleared the error so at least I can get on with my life, and look into the real source of the problem when some free time shakes loose, preferrably before the next WordPress Upgrade boils the error back to the surface.

The Ubuntu Dev Platform: Part 2 – Install Ubuntu

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

Welcome to part 2 in a series of articles on building, using Sun’s VirtualBox, a basic Ubuntu 9.10 virtual machine (VM) for the development of PHP and Ruby on Rails (RoR) applications.  However, we aren’t quite there yet.  In this step, we are installing Ubuntu Linux (9.10) on the blank Virtual Machine we created in part 1.

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Building an Ubuntu Dev Platform: Part 1 – VirtualBox

Saturday, February 27th, 2010

The goal of this article is to build, using Sun’s VirtualBox, a basic Ubuntu 9.10 virtual machine (VM) for the development of PHP and Ruby on Rails (RoR) applications.  We will be relying on the nginx web server, MySQL database engine, and Phusion Passenger (along with their Ruby Enterprise Edition) in order to keep the development platform consistent with my particular production environment.

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For the love of Sitting – The Topstar Sitness 5

Tuesday, February 16th, 2010

After sitting on one of these at the St. Louis Science Center, I’ve decided it is a must have. Brooke and I both need one, red or black would do.

At time of writing, Overstock.com had the best price.  (89.99USD for the red ones)

Here is a Shot of Brooke’s hand and a green one!

VirtualBox Folder Sharing

Monday, January 11th, 2010

So you read about how much I love VirtualBox and you decided to give it a go.  You downloaded and installed VirtualBox (3.1.2 at time of writing) on your Windows computer.  Then you grabbed the latest .ISO of Ubuntu Linux (9.10) and walked through VirtualBox’s New Virtual Machine Wizard to create  your very first virtual appliance.  Or maybe you went the other route and started off with a Linux machine and created a Windows-based virtual appliance.

Either way, now you want to swap files between the two of them.

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I Love VirtualBox

Monday, January 11th, 2010

Sun’s VirtualBox is a tool I’ve come to rely on for virtualization, and I seriously rely on virtualization.  What is virtualization and why do I rely on it so much?   Virtualization, in the most basic possible sense of the not-really-a-word, is a method of running one or more operating systems inside another wholly separate operating system.  I rely on it so much, because honestly, I have multiple geek personalities to deal with.  One of me has a long history of geeking out to windows tech and is an avid gamer so it is essential to my computing well-being that I keep a decent Windows-based PC around.    Yet, another me has hefty development interests Linux and Open-source technologies.  I don’t see that changing anytime soon, and I have a lot of work ahead of me to bring those skills on par with my lengthy experience in Microsoft technology.  Furthermore, I’m certain there are me’s out there that I haven’t even met yet.

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Hello (Cruel) World!

Monday, December 14th, 2009

My name is Jason, and this is my online journal, or ‘blog, or vanity site, or whatever.  Thanks for stopping by.

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