"Those who know and know they know are wise, listen to them. Those who do not know and know that they do not know are intelligent, teach them. Those who do not know and do not know that they do not know are dangerous, smite them." -- unknown, paraphrased

Fun with Yii · 4911 days ago by John

So, I’ve started working with Yii to see if I can make something quickly. Every time I take up one of these frameworks the context seems to get in the way. Mostly I just want better data management and better user management. Let’s see what happens.

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Firefox and Thunderbird by Mozilla · 5155 days ago by John

You may have heard of Firefox before (no, not the movie where Clint has to think in Russian to steal a Soviet plane) and that’s because it is awesome. The Firefox I’m talking about is a web browser like the Internet Explorer you are probably using. The difference is that Firefox is used by a much smaller portion web surfers. That makes Firefox far less attractive to people who spend time writing code to exploit web browsers. In addition, upgrading Internet Explorer is clunky and often too late to save you. The Mozilla Foundation, while a world-class organization, isn’t burdened by the same sort of bureaucracy as Microsoft.

Thunderbird, also by Mozilla, is an email client. Most people use web-based email accounts these days, but for those of you using regular email clients (like Outlook Express), Thunderbird is for you. Take a look, download it… enjoy!

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Saving Your Computer · 5258 days ago by John

Here are a couple easy tips to keeping your computer from blowing up from viruses, malware and other things you don’t want to be associated with.

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$699 for Adobe Photosop? Most people don't need it. Get GIMP. · 5270 days ago by John

Adobe Photoshop is an awesome application. I love it. It is powerful, easy to use and ubiquitous. But it’s also $699! For high-end photographers, print advertisers and the like, it is well worth the cost. For everyone else, get GIMP The GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is very powerful in its own right and, with a little time reading the manual, you can do amazing things with it.

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Stop Paying for Microsoft Office - Get OpenOffice instead · 5315 days ago by John

Microsoft Office has become a real goat over the years. It’s almost impossible to use quickly and efficiently with its crazy menus and odd feeling interface. Then, on top of that, they want an arm and a leg for it. So, the next time you replace your computer (or today for that matter) get OpenOffice . This is a free suite of MS Office-like products which can do the majority of things you do with MS Office. And, it’s free!

It also has the ability of saving documents in Office 97/2000/XP format which is readily readable by all modern versions of MS Office. And, it has a built-in PDF document creator which can be read by Adobe Reader

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Take Back the Web with Firefox