learning to be human, since 1984
workflow
Restoring PC Stickies
Jul 18th
I use a program called “Stickies” to temporarily keep track of notes throughout the day (similar to the OS X program with the same name, but for Windows). It creates resizable, styleable post-it-note-esque boxes on my desktop that can be repositioned, deleted, or serve as reminders (visually, and with audible alarms). I restarted my machine a few days ago and was prompted to choose a file from which to restore my stickies settings. My heart sunk as the backup restoration failed – but I knew somehow I’d get them back, and I did. Here’s how:
- Right-click on the stickies icon in the taskbar hidden icons area
- Select “About Stickies v7.0beta” – yours may say something different
- A window will open. At the bottom, click the ellipsis (…) to go to the data directory folder
- Right-click again on the stickies icon in the hidden icons area and select “Exit” to quit the program
- Go to the data directory folder you just opened and duplicate the last file that contains usable data (you can usually tell if the file size is larger, or open it with a code editor and search for significant text)
- Duplicate the backup file by copying and pasting it (ctrl+c, then ctrl+v)
- Find the file stickies.ini in the data directory and rename it stickies.ini.old
- Rename the file you copied stickies.ini
- Restart your Stickies program, and you should be back in business
Using Windows 7 Symlinks
Mar 29th
I ran into a problem with integrating my web development/design projects on my computer with my local webserver. To further explain:
- I keep all my professional work, including client files, on a separate hard drive partition so that I can easily and regularly back them up, let’s call it g:\
- Client files for web projects are organized as such: g:\clients\client-name\project-name , so that if a long-term client wants a site redesign, I can easily keep these separate rather than dumping them into a single public_html directory for each client
- My local testing server is pointed at a different partition, let’s call it h:\
- I want to be able to serve individual projects via the testing server, but only work on the project files
Naturally, I thought of unix aliases but I’m currently running Windows 7 so I tried shortcuts. Didn’t work. After a little digging, I found the solution: symlinks (which work in numerous OSes – thanks for the correction). From the command line, type:
mklink /D H:\target\directory\linkname G:\clients\client-name\project-name
mklink /D creates a symlink, or a soft link that is the Windows equivalent to unix aliases. The first argument is the directory where you want the link to be placed, and the second is the source directory. Easy as pie.
Be careful when deleting/writing content – the linked directory allows you to manipulate the original file!
Testing for IE6
Feb 2nd
I recently got a new laptop and needed to get my machine ready for web development . I’d previously been using MAMP on my Mac and running Parallels for testing in the IEs. After some deliberation, I decided on XAMPP for Windows – I’m running 7. XAMPP installs Apache, MySQL, PHP, Perl, ASP, Mercury, FileZilla, and a slew of other daemons/services. There are some potential conflicts with the PHP/MySQL versions used for Drupal, but after testing, I haven’t run into any issues. Even if it becomes problematic, I can always manually configure a different version of either PHP or MySQL.
After getting my testing server up and running, I needed a way to test for IE6. Yes, I’m on Windows – but Windows 7 never shipped with IE6 or 7, unlike Vista – so standalone solutions no longer work. I just found a program that solves this issue – and is able to render pages simulating IE5.5-8. IETester v0.4.2 is the current version, though it has been out since March of 2009. Somehow, it entirely missed my radar – probably because I was still running XP and didn’t broaden my queries.
I should say this: IE6 support doesn’t come for free. Clients whose user-base is heavy in the IE6 department can’t afford to not support those users. So, while I can develop for such users – they won’t be getting the same experience – and certainly not without an increased cost. It is my job to push internet standards, including A-level, modern browsers; efficiencies in development/production cut costs over the long-run especially for larger clients. When I have to dick around making tweaks because one idiot browser still won’t die, it’s annoying. For all business owners, large and small: please entertain this suggestion:
Encourage your users to upgrade their browsers.
Obnoxious/semi-invasive design via javascript-based browser sniffing would do wonders to bump browsers into gear. Hell, even showing a simple survey that asks “Do you ride a dinosaur to work? Why do you use an ancient browser?” followed by multiple choices that lead back to a site that encourages browser upgrades.
This tangent is officially over.
I had been running Sun’s Virtual Machine with an XP installation to do IE6 testing, but this alternative has made things easier. The only real issue is sharing files between the host – Windows 7 – and the guest – Windows XP in the VM. That shouldn’t be too difficult, but time is important and I’d rather stick with what works for now.
With that said, my nose is back to the grindstone (though it won’t really move much at all).
Private (Vomit) Practice
Jan 24th
Get out that big imagination paintbrush in your brain:
As I write this, I’m laying in bed with my girlfriend. Naturally, I am building a database and naturally and she is watching Private Practice. It’s her guilty pleasure – a stress relieving wind-down before bed. All of the sudden I hear a familiar voice – the voice of Mark Sloan. Yes, Mark Sloan of Grey’s Anatomy fame. Now, I know what you must be thinking. You recognize his voice? What a doofus.
But, yes. Yes I do recognize his voice. You know why? Because. Because there have been many nights that while I was working, she was watching Grey’s anatomy – enough so that I’ve loosely become familiar with the shows.
So fuck me in the ear: what the fuck is Sloan (McSteamy that is, not his daughter – whose first name is Sloan but last name is Riley) doing on Private Practice? I shit a brick. A huge brick. I turn and ask, “Why is McSteamy on Private Practice? That is his nickname, right? And the other one is McDreamy?” She tells me I’m right, after which I pull open the elastic of the oversized women’s basketball sweatpants I’m wearing and vomit into my underwear.
Fake doctor shows have cross-over episodes. Holy fuck. What is the world coming to? I’d rather vomit on my balls than deal with this nightmare.
So, I write this, and relocate to the dining room table.
Windows 7 Task Manager and Fixing Taskbar Auto-Hide Glitch
Jan 18th
It seems as though Windows 7′s taskbar auto-hide feature doesn’t work from time to time. Whether it be because:
- heavens, a new program was installed
—or— - blast! your computer has been on for a few hours
that still-clunky response to the OS X dock is, well, still clunky. To enable auto-hide to begin with:
- Right-click on the taskbar and select Properties
- In the Taskbar tab, uncheck “Lock the taskbar” and check “Auto-hide the taskbar”.
- press Apply/OK et voilà.
If no “et voilà”, here’s a quick fix that tends to fix any Microsoft OS GUI (at least they’re consistent)—but please, save all important working files before doing this (I am not responsible for your machine or data losses!):
- Run the task manager. You could do the old shortcut (alt+ctrl+del), or jump straight to it with ctrl+shift+esc.
You get bonus nerd points for doing it with two fingers.
- Stop the explorer process! There may be multiple explorers running—order them by memory usage, and stop the largest one. Alternatively, just stop them all.
- With task manager open, go to File>New Task(Run…) and type:
C:\Windows\explorer.exe
or, wherever your explorer executable is. Unless you’re a super dork and had a reason to move it, it should be here.
- Your taskbar should now work appropriately. If not, yell: “THANKS BILL” and shake your nerd-fist.
Saving Illustrator CS4 Preferences
Jan 7th
While Adobe products are industry standards, they are still not without serious workflow issues.
One of my major gripes is Illustrator’s inability to save and load preferences from within the program. This would come in handy when working in different units, as I regularly do; The 10px grid I use for web work isn’t compatible with an imperial or metric grid for print work, and vice versa. Luckily, I’ve devised a workaround.
- First, you’ll need to find your Ai preferences file. For Windows 7, it can be found in a hidden folder:C:\Users\Username\AppData\Roaming\Adobe\Adobe Illustrator CS4 Settings\en_USFrom your explorer window, drag the en_US folder to your start menu and Pin it there. In OS X, you can similarly make a link to the folder and keep it in your Dock, desktop, or wherever you fancy. The file we’ll be renaming later is named AIPrefs (no extension)- we’ll deal with that soon enough. If you don’t have hidden folders visible, here’s how. If you’re on a different OS, or using a different version of Illustrator, have a look here, or search the nets.
- Open Illustrator, start a blank document, and set your preferences. The document type doesn’t matter.
- Close Illustrator.
- Open the folder you linked in step 1, copy and rename your preferences file to something descriptive like AIPrefs[web]. It’s crucial to copy so we don’t accidentally modify or delete our manually defined preferences.
- Repeat steps 2-4 for each grid-setup or preferences variation you need.
- Now you’re ready to use your custom preferences. Before you reopen Illustrator, delete the current AIPrefs file.
- Copy the preferences file you want to use and rename it to AIPrefs.
- Start Illustrator and behold the glory.
Obviously, if the last thing you worked on is for web, and the current thing you worked on is for web, you don’t have to change the AIPrefs file, so it might be helpful to keep a note of which file is currently active. You can also search the AIPrefs file to see how Illustrator is modifying the contents. It’s for the most part readable alpha-numeric content. If anyone knows of a better way to do this, please let me know. Ciao.