This is a slick little javascript bookmarklet that lists the attributes of various on-page elements:
Just save it to your bookmarks toolbar (or wherever). When you want to use it, simply click on it and then mouseover the elements you’re curious about. When you’re done, simply hit escape.
This is a pretty nifty little too for quickly figuring out column widths, etc. when poking around on a site.
Check this out… If you go over to montastic.com you can set up an account and enter any domains that you wish to monitor. You can enter up to 100 domains and, once it’s set up, they’ll periodically ping the sites on your list and e-mail you if there’s a change in status (i.e., site is down, site is back up).
This is a great little set-and-forget tool for alerting you to downtime so you can follow up with your host and get things straightened out. Likewise, if you’re using any affiliate programs, you might want to monitor them to protect against possible outages — this is especially valuable if you’re running pay-per-click campaigns, as downtime = wasted advertising dollars.
The monitoring can be a bit haphazard at times, in that it pings at somewhat random intervals. For example, of the sites that I’m currently tracking, one hasn’t been pinged in four hours whereas all the others have been pinged within the past hour. Regardless, it’s free and easy to use, so you have nothing to lose by setting it up — this is especially true if you use any sort of “budget” web host.
This is a quick note to WordPress users our there… I have always felt that you should never rely on a plugin to do something that can just as easily be done by hand, especially when it comes to content creation.
Now I have an example to back this up:
This is a slick little plugin that creates fancy html tables. The problem, as stated at the top of the download page, is that:
This plugin do not support WordPress 2.5. Currently I don’t plan a new version…
This means that anyone that has relied on this plugin in the past has a choice to make:
(1) Don’t upgrade beyond WordPress 2.3.X
(2) Upgrade, stop using the plugin, and lose all of your tables
(3) Go back and hand-code your tables before upgrading
Fortunately for me, I only played around with this plugin briefly, and had only one table to fix. But if you had relied heavily on this plugin, you’d be in a pretty tough spot right now.
While plugins can a great tool, it’s important to remember that you’re dependent on the developer to maintain compatibility going forward. Thus, when it comes to content creation, you’re better off biting the bullet and future-proofing your articles from the very beginning rather than relying on third-party add-ons.
This is pretty amazing:
Richardson wins state team title alone
Bonnie Richardson ran. She threw. She jumped. And when it was time to hand out the team trophies, Richardson accepted the 1A team championship for Rochelle High School — by herself… Richardson was the only Rochelle athlete to qualify for the state meet and stunningly won the team title.
Wow. That’s impressive.
[via: foldedspace]
After having been told by Apple that it would take 3-5 days to send me a replacement for my MacBook Pro power adapter that shorted out, I was thrilled when the new one showed up on our doorstep today (the very next day). That’s the good news.
The bad news is that they shipped my the 60W version instead of the 85W version. While the 60W adapter works with the MacBook Pro, it’s designed for the regular MacBook and it doesn’t really have enough charging capacity and it takes forever to charge the battery if I’m using the computer at the same time.
Unfortunately, Apple’s tech support line was closed by the time I discovered the problem. Oh well, it’s works well enough to limp along until things get straightened out.
Last night while I was busy putting together a post about minimizing debt while you’re in college, I noticed that my MacBook Pro was only charging sporadically. A short while later, the light on the “MagSafe” plugin flickered a bit and then went out.
To make a long story short, I discovered that the wire leading from the power brick to the MagSafe plug (which goes into the computer) had shorted out. As you can see from the pic below, it burned right through the wire insulation. Scary stuff. As far as I know, there’s not a recall for this (yet).
(Sorry for the crappy cell phone-quality picture.)
The good news is that my computer wasn’t damaged and the house didn’t burn down. Since I have AppleCare, I called them up to report the problem and to get a replacement. They took an incident report and then agreed to cross-ship a replacement. The bad news is that it will take 3-5 business days to arrive. I objected, as they’ve sent stuff to me overnight in the past. But this time they wouldn’t relent, saying only that 3-5 days was the best they could do.
Fortunately, my wife has a plain old MacBook, and the power adapter is compatible with my MacBook Pro, so at least I’ll be able to compute between now and when it arrives.
Hello, and welcome to jammer(six). While many people strive to write a lengthy, meaningful post introducing their weblog, that’s not how I roll. Instead, I’ll just say this…
I have a personal finance site, I have a credit card site, and my wife and I have a parenting site.
This one is for everything else. Daily life, fitness, politics, productivity, webdev, etc. If it doesn’t fit elsewhere, then you’ll probably find it here. Or at least that’s how I envision things right now.