Category: Tricks

  • Making a USB printer wireless

    This weekend I decided to make my Canon i560 USB Inkjet printer available on my wifi network using a wireless print server. I picked up a “used” Linksys WPS54G from eBay and configured it to work with both my MacBook and Sony VAIO running Windows 7. It was kind of a pain, but here’s how…

  • Migrate a Firefox profile from Windows to OSX

    My parents gave me a MacBook for Christmas, so in an effort to “learn something new” in 2010 I’ve gotten accustomed to a multi-touch track-pad, command + c/v for copy & pasta and Safari for browsing the web. One thing I couldn’t give up though, was my Firefox with TabMixPlus and ReadItLater. Luckily the combo…

  • Visual Studio 2008 project creation failed error

    I’m still running the Windows 7 x64 Release Candidate and so I expect and deal with the occasional operating system bug here and there, but this was more of a Visual Studio 2008 problem. I VS 2008 Professional (after getting it free from school) a couple of weeks ago and needed to code a console…

  • Setup a Pet Cam with Skype

    I have two cats and checking up on them when I’m traveling can be a hassle. Last year I used a $5 dollar web cam and a trial subscription to some streaming video service I can’t remember but it only kinda worked and the image quality was terrible. This year I decided to use Skype…

  • Get PHPUnit to work in NetBeans 6.7

    Unit testing is one way software engineers can meet quality assurance goals for large and/or critical development projects. PHPUnit is a popular choice among a number of frameworks designed for unit testing PHP code, but as I found out quite difficult to setup on Windows with NetBeans 6.7 and XAMPP. Here’s how to got it…

  • Create an RSS feed web app for the iPhone/iPod

    A week ago I posted an article showcasing a basic RSS feed web app for the iPhone/iPod Touch. In this post I’ll attempt to demonstrate how I built that application so you can make your own. First a little background: Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a way of keeping up with frequently changing published content.…

  • SimplePie + iWebKit + iPod/iPhone

    I spent an evening looking at SimplePie and iWebkit and ended up building a web-based RSS feed application for the iPod/iPhone in just a couple of hours. The application lets me access my favorite APM and NPR podcast feeds without having to download or synchronize/find them with iTunes first. It streams the podcasts directly to…

  • Fix HP 1020 print spooler subsystem crash

    Lets say you’re working one day and thinking to yourself: “Hey you know what would be awesome? If I could print this large PDF file on my brand new HP 1020 Laser printer – because that’s what I bought it for – that’s what would be awesome!” Unfortunately though, when you click print all you…

  • Map Apple Keyboard Fn keys in Windows 7

    I love the new aluminum Apple keyboard, but am too cheap to buy the iMac it usually comes with. I figured if I just picked a used one up on eBay and hooked it up to my Sony VAIO running Windows 7 x64 what’s the worst that could happen? It worked surprisingly well, that’s what…