Combo address / search bar in Firefox

By cburyta | Published: August 2, 2010

Google Chrome nailed it in my opinion with the address bar. It’s a typical address bar, but if you type something there that is not an URL, it guesses that you want to search it. Perfect! I find myself frustrated with Firefox, Safari and other browsers when I get errors after typing my search in the address bar.

In Firefox at least, it’s easy to get the search bar to work that way. I found this page offers a great walk through. It’s a quick 1 or 2 min tweak, and it uses Google as the fall back search.

After yo apply the tweak, you can totally remove the search bar from the Firefox interface in the top right.

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Siteurl and home settings durring WordPress developemnt

By cburyta | Published: July 28, 2010

When I develop sites I start on my local machine, and edit my /etc/hosts file to point to my local system. E.g. website.dev is the dev domain I might use to work on website.com locally. (This would be opposed to pointing all sites to localhost/folder/someotherfolder/website_dev or something. I just find it eaiser.)

It works great, but for WordPress sites the SiteURL and Home settings are in the database, so they need to be updated EVERY time you change domains (e.g. when I push code and database changes I was writing under website.dev to stage.website.com or something.)

A quick few lines you could add to your theme (or probably in a plugin too) to update the siteurl and home settings would be as follows.


// at top of functions php
update_option('siteurl', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);
update_option('home', 'http://' . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']);

Placing that at the very top of your themes functions.php file would allow you deploy your site under a couple domains without going through the process of logging in or anything.

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Set up a Linksys e3000 with DD-WRT and an old WRT54G

By cburyta | Published: July 25, 2010

My goals

Update my router, and get a network attached hard drive setup allowing me to backup my MacBook Pro over the network via Time Machine (possibly over the internet, but that might be a long-shot?) I’ll write about the backup process later, but here’s some references to get a network setup supporting full G speeds and also support B/G (all running DD-WRT.)

How I decided on the Linksys e3000

I finally upgraded to a wireless n network. After looking at a few high performance dual band routers (Negear WNDR3700, Linksys e3000, and the Apple Airport Extreme Base Station) I decided on the Linksys e3000.

The Airport Extreme wasn’t as customizable as I wanted. And the main deciding factor between the Netgear and the Linsys was just brand loyalty really. All were close in price.

After I bought the Linsys I almost took it back for an Airport. I wanted to Time Machine from my MacBook Pro over the WiFi via an USB attached hard drive. But the Linksys e3000 didn’t offer the support for that type of hard drive sharing.

I instead decided to install DD-WRT onto the router, after all I’ve done that before with my trusty Linksys WRT54G and it was great. The only holdup… DD-WRT didn’t officially support the router yet (as of July 25 2010.) It was however supported in the forums, and I decided to try installing that.

Step 1: Setup the Linksys e3000 with DD-WRT firmware

Here’s the link to the thread on the DD-WRT forum I read through after some Googling. Note: page 14 has the version of the firmware I installed in the end.)

I wanted DD-WRT because I was used to it and didn’t want to be limited in any way with the Linksys factory firmware. As I mentioned, a USB hard drive attached to the router was not very useful for my needs using that factory firmware.

  1. First I installed a standard build (dd-wrt.v24-14567_NEWD-2_K2.6_std_usb_ftp-e3000.bin)
  2. Then I installed the “big” build with all the extra features, it fixed some bugs and why not? I ended up with this build at the time (http://www.dd-wrt.com/dd-wrtv2/downloads/others/eko/V24-K26/svn14826/dd-wrt.v24-14826_NEWD-2_K2.6_big-e3000.bin)

I configured the router with WPA2 WiFi security and the basic settings I would want in a day-to-day router setup.

Step 2: Setup my old WRT54G as the G and N WiFi hotspot

I had older B and G devices in the house, and I wanted to separate the traffic from those off the wireless of the newer e3000 router. I guess it helps with speed (keeping the N speed up to true N speeds) and I felt it may also help avoid a bit of wear and tear on the newer router, I don’t know but I did.

I already had DD-WRT installed on it, here’s the walk-through I used to setup the old router to use the internet through the new router through ethernet and keep the DNS settings the same as if there was one router.

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Add shortcuts to rate current iTunes track from anywhere (Snow Leopard)

By cburyta | Published: July 22, 2010

A while back I wrote this post describing my efforts in looking for a way to rate iTunes shortcuts anytime with a quick shortcut on Mac. After upgrading to Snow Leopard, I found the steps to enable this site wide was a bit different, thus this post was created.

First, use Automator to create the Services needed. Services will be available no matter what app is in the foreground.

  1. Open Automator
  2. Create a new “Service”
  3. Under “Utilities” under the Library, add “Run AppleScript” as the first and only step in the Automation
  4. Paste the following code in place of “(* Your script goes here *)”

    tell application "iTunes"
    set the rating of current track to 20
    end tell
  5. Save under the name “Rate as 1 star”
  6. Change “20″ to “40″ then Save As “Rate as 2 stars”
  7. Change “40″ to “60″ then Save As “Rate as 3 stars”
  8. Change “60″ to “80″ then Save As “Rate as 4 stars”
  9. Change “80″ to “100″ then Save As “Rate as 5 stars”

    10. That finishes up the Automator work. Just be sure you used “Save As” and not “Save”, you don’t want to overwrite your services, but create 5 different services.

    Now, go to System Preferences, Keyboard, Keyboard Shortcuts. Select “Services” on the left window, and in the right window you should see (at the bottom) the 5 services you created.

    You can click in the white space to the right of the services (not intuitive really, but there is a little spot on the right you can double click to edit the short cuts for all the items in that list.)

    Once you add a shortcut there you should be able to use the short cut from anywhere!

    Be warned, I found it very tricky to find a short cut that worked for me in all apps, since some apps or services (mainly iTunes) had shortcuts similar to them. (Snapshot utility for example is Cmd-shift-4, which may be a shortcut you wanted to use.)

    I found that the Cmd-Option- worked for me best (where

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Just bought a Razer Orochi

By Techie | Published: July 16, 2010

Oh man, went to the store and ended up dropping way too much on a mouse. Well worth it, but $80 was not my intention that day.

I recently got a new MacBook Pro with Snow Leopard and I needed a good notebook mouse. I had a 5 year old bluetooth Kensington mouse, but it was not responding very smoothly. It would kill my batteries and didn’t work well enough. So I almost bought a Logitech mouse but waked by this thing.

I didn’t even realize Razer made a notebook mouse. It’s bluetooth, and even though originally wanted to avoid bluetooth (due to battery life and having had bad luck with another bluetooth mouse) but this one had an interesting feature. I could optionally use it as a corded mouse.

Sweet right? I love the Razer brand but their old Pro|Click mouse for the mac just is not well supported anymore. Annoying, but whatever. I didn’t want to drag a desktop mouse with a long cord around with my laptop anyway.

So far it’s going good. I love having back the programmable buttons. One trick I found was in using Macros to assign keyboard buttons, I could avoid the conflict with the OS when in games. Expose would override any in-game buttons, and being so customizable, I no longer need to wait for Valve or Apple to fix the problem.

Oh, and even though it’s nowhere on the outside of the box, it does work as a corded mouse with no batteries. I’ve yet to see how long the mouse works in wireless mode though since I just purchased it.

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Razer Lazer Mouse for Mac

By Techie | Published: January 9, 2010

(Say that title 5 times fast.)

I am very picky about the hardware I use. I’m on the computer a lot of the day developing websites, and I won’t settle for a keyboard / mouse setup that is not comfortable and responsive.

(95% of the reason I switched to Mac was due to the keyboard on the late Powerbooks and original Macbook Pros)

I tried the Copperhead by Razer for my PC, and loved it so much that I ended up getting the mouse Razer markets towards the Mac. Meet the Pro|Click

The software for the mouse is nice. The best thing about the Razer mouses is the ability to change the sensitivity on-the-fly. You set up a button on the mouse and when you hould it and scroll your mouse becomes more or less sensitive.

Perfect for switching between graphic editiong, coding or general web browsing.

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Laptop for the Mom on the go

By Techie | Published: May 5, 2009

Mothers Day is coming up here, could she use a new computer?

Netbooks (net not note) are smaller notebooks. The screens are usually 10 inch or less. The don’t pack the punch that a larger laptop does. So this won’t replace the computer that handles all the family videos.

However, they also are very mobile and can be found for as little as around $350. They are great when traveling, perfect for email and light office use, and could be perfect for poking around the internet on the couch.

Here’s a link to an example. It’s at TigerDirect. Like many places they offer a lot of Netbooks, so look around.

Lenovo IdeaPad S10-1211Ubl Netbook PC – Intel Atom N270 1.6GHz, 1GB RAM, 160GB HDD, 10.2″ WSVGA, Windows XP Home, Blue

The only thing I’d reccommend would be to find one with a VGA port, so if you want to you can hook it up to a larger screen when at home.

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Gaming tower under 600 dollars

By Techie | Published: May 1, 2009

This will be the first of many posts. Computers cost less these days, and you don’t need to spend a couple grand to get a good gaming computer.

XFX nForce 680i LT SLI Barebone Kit – Intel Pentium D 965 Extreme 3.73GHz, 4GB DDR2-800 OCZ SLI, 1TB, Clear Side Case, 550W PSU

I’d recommend one this card. Nothing special, an average card that will drive the games out there well.

That totals to about $540.

This system is a one of many barebone systems at Tiger Direct. This is the tower, so make sure you have a keyboard, mouse and monitor.

It also comes with a blank hard drive, so you need to make sure you have a copy of windows. I haven’t seen a game yet that requires more than Windows XP.

Also, you need to buy a graphic card. It supports PCI Express graphic cards, and supports SLI, so I’d stick with Nvidia cards.

What does all that mean?

SLI means that the motherboard is able to support up two graphics cards. So you can get a couple of low cost or high cost cards and double up your power.

Note though, the power supply is only 550 watts, so if you get a couple of cards, a nice future upgrade might be to get a new power supply. If you get a couple high cost cards for this, you would almost need to upgrade the power supply.

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Facebook push notifications on iPhone

By Techie | Published: April 27, 2009

So, I just updated the facebook app on my iPhone, and was pleased to find that they added Push notifications!

So far, I notice that when someone send a direct message to me I get an alert telling me there is a message waiting for me in my Facebook inbox.

I wish though that the alert told me a bit more. Maybe the subject.

Also, I wish I could go directly to the message from the alert instead of the only option being to close the window.

It’s nice either way.

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Random mac restart?

By Techie | Published: April 23, 2009

So I had just sat down at my computer and for the first time ever I was asked to restart my mac due to a crash!

It was bound to happen someday, I’m suprised it took 3 years to see my first OS crash on a mac though.

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