What I’ve done is sym link the bookmark.plist and histroy.plist to drop box. Symbolic links work like this in the terminal,

ln -s [TARGET DIRECTORY OR FILE] [SHORTCUT]

Here are the two easy steps I used to sync Safari Bookmarks and History.

1. I created a Safari folder in Dropbox (found at  ~/Dropbox/Safari).
2. Used the terminal to create the sym links (see below)

$ cd ~/Library/Safari/
 
$ ln -s ~/Dropbox/Safari/Bookmarks.plist Bookmarks.plist
 
$ ln -s ~/Dropbox/Safari/History.plist History.plist

Here’s a screenshot of the result.

To Sync, since it wont be done automatically. Just restart your browser.

Warning: I haven’t tested this extensively but it seems to work great. After a day on my work computer I just come home to restart webkit, the bookmarks then are updated..

1. Create a 1Password dropbox folder (optional).
2. Open 1Password preferences
3. Select “move”
4. Select the newly created dropbox folder
5. Repeat 2-4 on all of the computers you want to sync your 1Password keychan

If you’re looking to sync bookmarks and history for webkit and safari check out my second tutorial-Sync Safari Bookmarks and History with Dropbox.

(via Game Boy Pocket fitted with backlit screen, one man’s life now complete)

You know what they say — if you can’t buy it, mod it. Michael “Bibin” Moffitt’s backlighting job on this Game Boy Pocket is a case in point. Unwilling to shell out the dough for a Game Boy Light on eBay (but more than willing to destroy two old LCDs in pursuit of his mad dream), this guy removed the reflective layer and adhesive behind the handheld’s display (”almost as hard as reasoning with a rabid PlayStation 3 fan,” he writes) and built a backlight out of an LED, some perspex, and a diffusive layer. That’s it — now our man is playing Donkey Kong, in the dark, in all its monochromatic glory, and with no noticeable change in battery life. Hit the read link for plenty of naked GBP pics.

Filed under: Gaming, Handhelds

Game Boy Pocket fitted with backlit screen, one man’s life now complete originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 02 Jan 2009 10:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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1. Build my business - create a client list, raise my rates, work 30-40 billable hours a week. I’d like to go to some conferences (write off :)), maybe SxSw and definitely WordCamp.
2. Finish and deliver more Extend projects - I’ve been lacking on support and updated some of my most popular releases
3. Be more deliberate - stop rushing things out the door (like this list, that’s why it’s late :))
4. Take the kids to DisneyLand - if they’re good
5. Read more books - at least one a month, audible counts
6. Write more blog posts - I think I’ll create a life.dancameron.org blog for the more personal stuff (mostly iPhone image posts) or use another service for them
7. The big one (just like everyone else) - workout consistently. I’m about to buy some weights for my office/game-room
8. Be at home more - “at home” means off the computer and with the kids
9. Go back to school - whether it’s online courses for IT/Web or “real” school I need to learn.
10. Prioritize my time better - I wont be able to do any of the things above if I don’t prioritize my time and set attainable goals

Using WordPress to determine what category it is (in_category plus some special sauce) I was able to create two templates, one for the single post page and one for the category page. And without building completely new templates and CSS I was able to build the pages using the existing structure and override element styles with CSS.

The sidebars where a little tricky, since we didn’t want to rebuild all of our custom widgets for this area I wasn’t able to touch the code what-so-ever. I had to rely on CSS overrides only to provide a completely new look with the same underlying html (php).

The result is basically a new category skin on top of the existing template -a pretty drastic change.

I love how the crossed out navigation turned out, originally I had thought about slices, then it dawned on my black text and a black line-why not have the line as a background instead of forcing it above the text?.

This template includes pulling in the latest post from eight subcategories under “special features“. The original spec included using phpThumb to zoom and crop the post images, that later changed into zoom/pad/center on a blackground.

phpThumb is a great resources for generating thumbs and caching the newly generated images. There are a few WordPress plugins that utilize phpThumb, however I can’t recommend any right now since we coulnt’ get any to function the way we needed (we built our own plugin).

Everything else you see is built via CSS - no tables of course. Some js was needed in order for IE6 to utilize the pseudo :hover element but that’s it.

Mine stores the console, four remotes, four nunchucks, power cable, av cable, sensor bar and enough room for the classic controller.

Exporting Favorites:

• Export your favorites - favorites > manage > backup
• Upload the .pfc file to this free online service
• It will give you an .htm file that you can import into firefox

Exporting your Address Book

Couldn’t find any solution that worked, so I was forced to use plaxo.com. I would never recommend plaxo but it’s pretty simple, just add a sync point export them in any format you’d like.

Exporting local E-mail

• Export/Backup the local email folders to a .pcf file. Or find the .pcf (C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\AOL\C_America Online 9.0c\organize)
• Download AOL Dump
• Start AOL-Dump and select DATEI -> PFC Konvertieren

The program create an mbx that you can be used with Thunderbird, I used Thunderbird to import the email to gmail through an IMAP connection.

• Download Thunderbird
• Rename the file.mbx file (just created) to file - basically, remove the extension
• Copy/move the file to the Thunderbird message folder (find it under TOOLS -> Account Settings)
• Start Thunderbird and a new folder will show your email.

I just ended up copying these emails to a new folder under the gmail IMAP.

It took way to long but AOL has one less user and he’s FREE!!

(via Google Reader API is Coming Soon)

Google confirms a Reader API is perhaps only a month away from a public release. Web technologist and blogger Niall Kennedy, recently posted on his site several details surrou…

The excess size caused mysql to sh*% itself.

I can’t research the issue, since (mt) has locked the table and is researching the issue right now.

All I could do is recover a backup from an old backup to a new db then import the missing posts from the offending db. There’s still some quirks, like comments but it looks like intense debate figured out what to do there.

I’ll update this post when I figure this out. I sure hope it’s some bad code from a recent plugin update rather than a security issue. Regardless, I’ll need to look into this further.

I was able to resolve the issue and I wish I took better notes (or notes at all, using my bash history) so I’ll have to go off memory. And even though I spent countless hours trying - it’s worth it.

First, I wasn’t able to use the latest stable release on .7, I gave up near the end of this install and just checked out the latest stable of .8 and viola!

svn co http://redmine.rubyforge.org/svn/branches/0.8-stable/ .

Originally I had commented out the rails version requirement in the enviroment.rb, but I uncommented it when I started this process.

Essentially I uninstalled the re-installed (removed and installed) ruby and all gems. I’m on a (mt) DV so it was good to install yum and break from the existing knowledge base FAQ about installing rails and a test app.

I used:

$yum remove ruby
$yum update ruby
$gem remove rails [got some error, which made me run]
$gem clean rails
$gem install rails -v=2.1.2
$gem install actionview
$rake db:migrate RAILS_ENV="production" --trace
[not sure why I ran] $gem update [then] $gem update --system [before I was able to run]
$rake redmine:load_default_data RAILS_ENV="production"
[could explain why my rails version was update after the specific version I previously installed]

Pretty ugly but it worked.

Here is my latest config.. Mileage may vary.

[root@scatter3d httpdocs]# ruby -v
*ruby 1.8.6* (2007-09-24 patchlevel 111) [i686-linux]
[root@scatter3d httpdocs]# rails -v
*Rails 2.2.2*
[root@scatter3d httpdocs]# svn info
Path: .
URL: *http://redmine.rubyforge.org/svn/branches/0.8-stable*
Repository Root: http://redmine.rubyforge.org/svn
Repository UUID: e93f8b46-1217-0410-a6f0-8f06a7374b81
Revision: 2170
Node Kind: directory
Schedule: normal
Last Changed Author: jplang
Last Changed Rev: 2146
Last Changed Date: 2008-12-19 03:45:33 -0800 (Fri, 19 Dec 2008)

I wish I knew what I was doing exactly, I was pretty burnt at the end of this cycle and I tried a lot of things. All in all, it’s a matter of certain version requirements on ruby and rails and redmine.

(via SitePoint » Top Ruby Frameworks Rails and Merb Join Forces)

The much-hyped Rails framework has enjoyed a ton of time in the spotlight over the past 4 years and powers some of the web’s most used sites and applications, including Twitter, YellowPages.com, Kongregate, A List Apart, Scribd, and Xing. But Rails certainly isn’t for everyone. Many people love the way it does things, but dislike the way it endeavors to have an answer for everything. Rails is a full-stack framework that would rather you use the built in pieces to get things done — i.e., Prototype for AJAX, Active Record for ORM, or test/unit for testing.

Merb, on the other hand, is a Rails-inspired framework that endeavors to focus on the core functionality and rely on plugins for everything else. That makes Merb more agnostic when it comes to what technologies you want to use to build your application. Rails developers have always been able to use other frameworks for development — jQuery for JavaScript, or rSpec for testing, for example — but it is generally considered kind of messy. You can’t easily strip out the pieces you don’t like, so you have to pile on the stuff you want to use and rely on plugins to make it all work.

Now, the core teams from Rails and Merb are merging in an effort to bring the two frameworks together for Rails 3, slated for beta release at RailsConf in Las Vegas in May. “We all realized that working together for a common good would be much more productive than duplicating things on each side of the fence,” wrote Rails originator David Heinemeier Hansson in a blog post about today’s merger. “Merb and Rails already share so much in terms of design and sensibility that joining forces seemed like the obvious way to go. All we needed was to sit down for a chat and hash it out, so we did just that.”

#this is the script
One of the recent projects I gave myself was setting up redmine for project management. I’ve found it to be a great project management system and since I’ve been looking for alternatives to Basecamp-because of the monthly extortion fees-this one stood out. I’ll leave a review for another post but it’s the best tool I’ve found, much better than trac, and since I’m really familiar with it (Shane and Peter, whom I’ve been working a lot with lately, use the tool) it was an easy choice.

The choice may have been easy but the installation and parts of the setup were not.

One issue was getting a simple cron job to run the rake task of fetching email.

I was continually getting errors like:

/usr/bin/rake:9:in 'require': no such file to load -- rubygems (LoadError)
       from /usr/bin/rake:9

Turns out when rake is run in cron, the .bash_profile file is not processed, so you must include the environment initialization in your cron script. I should have figured this out yesterday, instead I spent countless hours figuring this out.

Here is the cron I’m using:

#Crontab runs this every ten minutes (root)
*/10 * * * * /root/scripts/redmine-rake.sh > /tmp/redmine-email.log 2>&1

This is the bash script I’m using:

#!/bin/bash
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/rubygems/bin:/usr/local/rubygems/gems/bin
export RUBYLIB=/usr/local/rubygems/lib
export GEM_HOME=/usr/local/rubygems/gems
cd /var/www/vhosts/scatter3d.com/subdomains/redmine/httpdocs
RAILS_ENV="production" rake redmine:email:receive_imap port=993 host=imap.gmail.com username=redmine@domain.com password=redmine42 ssl=1
cd /var/www/[FULL PATH]/subdomains/redmine/httpdocs
RAILS_ENV="production" /usr/local/rubygems/gems/bin/rake redmine:email:receive_imap host=imap.gmail.com username=[username] password=[password] ssl=YES port=993

For those interested those settings are for gmail apps, so you’ll need to change them accordingly.

My master plan is to wash the (dv) clean, start out using plesk and see how far I go. I want to install redmine first and get all my repositories setup straight before I make the move back.

One thing I have to get working is the auto update functionality on my own server, since the latest WP update I’ve had problems getting it to work but determined it was the result of me locking down my server a little too much. But since I’m on the grid, it just works perfect and I can now see why it’s such a killer feature, since I just updated all of my plugins in minutes and downloaded a installed a few more without having to use s/ftp.

I’m still contemplating moving everything back, especially if the grid lives up to my expectations there would be no reason to move back any of the sites I manage - including this one

Internal private use of that code, like the work I do for clients, is fine but if the theme or plugin is ever distributed in any way then full source code must be offered to everyone. 

Looking back at this post, which I stopped following since it wasn’t going anywhere, I noticed Samuel sums up the entire issue.

This is a really interesting discussion. As someone who has been involved with open source and the GPL for over a decade, it has never ceased to amaze me some of the common misconceptions about the GPL by some of its most ardent and vocal supporters.
First of all to clarify the legal issues surrounding the GPL. It is perfectly legal to sell GPL software. The obligation that a distributor of GPL software has, whether for profit or not, is to provide the source code of the GPL work to the distributee. This is where the GPL doesn’t precisely fit source-only code models. However, I could sell an obfuscated php version of the theme, and I would still be obligated to provide the source to anyone I sold it to. That said, there’s nothing preventing someone I’ve sold it to from giving it away for free after the fact.
The prevailing analysis about copyright is true: Work that is not directly tied to a GPL work (through API’s) is not required to be GPL, therefore images and CSS which can be used independently of the php templates can be released under any license of the creator’s choosing. They can be combined in the same distribution package. The GPL does not ‘infect’ proprietary code it is distributed with. To correctly follow the GPL, however, the php parts that use the API should retain the GPL notices.
This mess could have been avoided by the theme API being under the LGPL which allows linking without license inheritance.
Now as for Matt’s comments about vendors being ‘disrespectful’ to the community, I think that’s an unproductive way of viewing the situation. Premium distributors offer a value-add to the community in a different way than open contributors. Not everyone feels that their time spent coding should be released as a free for all back into the wild. It’s great for us that there are some that do. But open source software in general would not be in the strong position it is today without the aid of commercial support. There’s room for everyone at the table.

Since I’ve moved to 90% WP development I’ve seen a lot of Premium theme shops pop up , I’ve even thought about creating a few but when I look at the long term business model I don’t see it flourishing. Flourishing: for the community and the business as a whole.

This is where I give revolution themes a lot of respect. I love what they’re doing, I’ve even used some of their themes as a base, and I’m sure they’re going to do much better for themselves than they would have just selling premium themes.

Metal Gear should be excellent.

(via Konami to bring Metal Gear Solid, Silent Hill, Dance Dance Revolution to iPhone)

A few hours ago we brought news that, based on a product scan that appeared in Famitsu Weekly, it seemed Metal Gear would be heading to the iPhone.

This morning we found solid confirmation of that. From Konami themselves.

Konami has just issued a news release indicating that they will soon be bringing four new titles to the iPhone platform.

Metal Gear Solid Touch

Metal Gear Solid Touch is an original game in the series that will bring the world and characters of Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots to the iPhone. The game is of the “touch shooting” genre and will use the iPhone’s touchscreen for targetting as well as zoom mode control. The initial release will feature eight stages, with more to come in future updates. Progress in the game will be rewarded by unlocked images and wallpaper from the Metal Gear series.

Metal Gear Solid Touch will be released in Japan, North America and Europe in Spring 2009.

Dance Dance Revolution S Lite

Dance Dance Revolution S Lite is an iPhone adaptation of the highly popular rhythm and dance game Dance Dance Revolution that is considered one of the most original video game releases of tall time, and the inspiration of many, later musical rhythm games. “Tap the arrow icons that appear at the bottom of the screen in time with music.”

DDR S Lite will be released in Japan and North America later this month.

Silent Hill: The Escape

Silent Hill: The Escape is an iPhone adaptaiton of the popular survival horror series, Silent Hill, which brought a game-inspired motion picture release in 2006. It’s a first-person 3D shooter that utilizes both the iPhone’s touchscreen and accelerometer for gameplay control.

Silent Hill for the iPhone will be released in Japan, North America, and Europe later this month.

Frogger

It’s true. Frogger is already in the App Store [link] in some areas. Konami indicates that this classic arcade jumper will see a full Japan, North American and European release later this month. We noted that the original North American release would function only on the iPhone, not the iPod touch. Konami indicated that this would be addressed in the future, and now may be the time.

Konami has just setup touch.konami.net, a site through which more information (in Japanese) can be found regarding the company’s iPhone game offerings.

The arrival of these titles is huge news for iPhone gaming and goes a long way to lend validity to the iPhone as a truly serious gaming platform. Stay tuned for more information on all of these titles as it becomes available.

(via Apple announces final MacWorld, Steve Jobs won’t deliver keynote)

Watch this space folks — it’s the end of an era. Apple has just issued a press release stating that this coming MacWorld in January will be its last, and Steve Jobs won’t be on hand to say goodbye. Instead, Phil Schiller will be heading up the proceedings, thus marking a quiet end to a conference that’s been the launching point of some of the most important pieces of consumer tech in recent memory. In Apple’s words:

Apple is reaching more people in more ways than ever before, so like many companies, trade shows have become a very minor part of how Apple reaches its customers. The increasing popularity of Apple’s Retail Stores, which more than 3.5 million people visit every week, and the Apple.com website enable Apple to directly reach more than a hundred million customers around the world in innovative new ways.

Apple has been steadily scaling back on trade shows in recent years, including NAB, Macworld New York, Macworld Tokyo and Apple Expo in Paris.

[Thanks, JBCornelius]

Apple announces final MacWorld, Steve Jobs won’t deliver keynote originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 16 Dec 2008 16:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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<?php 
	//exclude these from displaying
	$exclude = array("Hood Newz");
 
	//set up an empty categorystring
	$catagorystrings = array();
 
	//loop through the categories for this post
	foreach((get_the_category()) as $category)
	{
		//if not in the exclude array
		if (!in_array($category->cat_name, $exclude))
		{
			$catagorystrings[] = '<a href="'.get_bloginfo(url).get_option('category_base').'/'.$category->slug.'">'.$category->name.'</a>';
		}
	}
	echo join(', ',$catagorystrings);
?>

If you’re looking to exclude the category across the entire theme through a filter, you can add this to your funtion.php file.

function the_category_filter($thelist,$separator=' ') {
	if(!defined('WP_ADMIN')) {
		//list the category names to exclude
		$exclude = array('Something','Something Else','Blah','YAY');
		$cats = explode($separator,$thelist);
		$newlist = array();
		foreach($cats as $cat) {
			$catname = trim(strip_tags($cat));
			if(!in_array($catname,$exclude))
				$newlist[] = $cat;
		}
		return implode($separator,$newlist);
	} else
		return $thelist;
}
add_filter('the_category','the_category_filter',10,2);

Thanks to the WordPress Forums.