David's blog

Another duplicity backup script template

David — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 02:09:14 +0000

After much deliberation, I've decided on a backup strategy. I will backup any given computer on a computer in my local network, or a USB hard drive. In addition to that I will give a hard drive to one of my friends for safe keeping and backup to that hard drive from time to time, when I visit him. It isn't an ideal backup solution for several reasons.

How to create user with role when using Drupal's simpletest framework

David — Sat, 08 Sep 2012 17:15:44 +0000

I was surprised to find out that Drupal's simpletest framework does not have a built in function to create a user with a role. After searching around the net I came across this blog post which helped me: http://mediatribe.net/en/node/49

How to access websites with different IPs but the same URL on the same computer for web development purposes

David — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 02:44:43 +0000

In developing a complex site you may find yourself needing a production, development and localhost website in order to separate changes appropriately. If this is the case, you may also find yourself needing to use the exact same URL for each site. In order to access your sites you probably have been changing the hosts file over and over again to switch which site you would access. For example:

How to run multiple Chrome profiles for website testing

David — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 17:25:09 +0000

For many web developers is may be helpful to run multiple instances of Chrome to test multiple user types at the same time without having to constantly login and logout. Here are examples of how to do this by launching Chrome from the command line.

Ubuntu

chromium-browser --user-data-dir=/home/$USER/.config/chromium-profile-test

Mac OS X - Lion

Ubuntu 11.10 boot freezing at Checking Battery State because LightDM fails to load

David — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:16:45 +0000

It is always a scary experience upgrading Ubuntu versions because it seems like about half of the time somethings goes wrong. (Although, to be fair, usually things are also fixed.) From my recent update from Ubuntu 11.04 to 11.10 my boot froze after the Checking Battery State [OK] status line.

Sending an email from the terminal using javascript

David — Tue, 30 Aug 2011 19:49:41 +0000

For those interested, this is how I went about sending an email from a javascript script. I used NodeJS to process the javascript. I used the mailer module (node_mailer) to send the email through SMTP. I used the SendGrid SMTP service.

Quick tips on configuring a static IP wireless bridge

David — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 18:29:04 +0000

If you're like me then you don't like to run wires all over the house to connect your home network. It is often easier to simply use wireless throughout most of the home. That is, until you want to connect devices that don't have wireless capabilities. In my case, I have a desktop computer which does not have a wireless card. Instead of buying a wireless card for the desktop, I decided to configure an old access point to work as a wireless bridge instead.

Fix for awful audio static while playing full screen video

David — Mon, 06 Dec 2010 19:26:24 +0000

If you have every had audio static while trying to listen to music or watch a video you know how incredibly distracting/annoying it can be. I struggled with this problem on my Windows Vista computer over a year ago. I thought, at the time, it was related to drivers because I had just done a windows update. Here is are just some of the things I tried that did NOT fix the problem:

Resources for using Duplicity on Debian Lenny

David — Wed, 17 Nov 2010 04:15:22 +0000

For anyone interested in backing up their Debian server, Duplicity is an excellent solution. Of course, I cannot simply just say use Duplicity. As with most things there are several caveats and gotchas that will make Duplicity much more difficult to setup without the resources I'm sharing here.

Installing uploadprogress on Debian Lenny

David — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 13:04:36 +0000

If you are running Drupal on Debian 5.0 Lenny then there is a good chance that you have notice the following status warning on your Drupal install.