“Open Source” collection
Discover the best in free, community-driven software and transparent digital platforms. These evaluations focus on versatile, accessible tools that empower users through open collaboration and innovative digital freedom.
HTD Tech Briefs
View all →February 26, 2008
DD-WRT + OpenVPN + LaCie Ethernet Disk Mini Home Edition = Listen to my Home Music at Work!
To write this all up would probably take way too much time. But for a while I have been trying to find the ultimate solution for listening to my iTunes library where ever I am. There are obviously other combinations of this that would work, but this is the latest iteration that I have come up with that I'm happy…
Read more →December 27, 2007
Fix It: HemingwayEX without UltimateTagWarrior in WordPress 2.3
As mentioned in my previous post, in order to speed things up on my blog, I have removed the UTW (UltimateTagWarrior) plugins. Unfortunately, the theme that I use (and subsequently modified) relies on UTW for a lot of things. One of these was causing issues for users coming from a Google search related to Tags. For example, if you Google…
Read more →December 27, 2007
Blog Optimization…it’s WAY too SLOW!
I use a couple of 3rd party monitoring sites including site24x7.com and mon.itor.us to check to ensure my blog is up and running. Over the past few days, I have only had a 94% uptime on my blog (according to site24x7.com) and this concerns me. I had personally experienced issues (e.g., not being able to connect to the mySQL db,…
Read more →October 19, 2007
iPhone: AppTapp Installer 3.0b3 released
The NullRiver folks have released a new version of AppTapp Installer for the iPhone. I have just installed version 3.0b3 and I must say that it was a needed upgrade. The number of apps have grown so much that there was the definite need to reorganize how they were structured. So without further ado, here are the new/change features (with…
Read more →October 15, 2007
Today is Blog Action Day – October 15th
October 15th is supposedly Blog Action Day. What is that exactly? Well, from my understanding it is a day that is to highlight the power that is "blogging." For me, I'm coming up on 2 years of blogging about Technology, Gadgetry, Software and Hardware and how it relates to my life as a father. However I note that many of…
Read more →September 25, 2007
Blog Fix: Twitter Tools plugin and WordPress 2.3
I'm going through and reviewing my site after updating it to WordPress 2.3 and it looks like there are still some hidden "issues" stemming from the migration to the new Category/Tagging structure. The latest one that I found is related to the "Twitter Tools" plugin. Update: Some people were reporting that "term_ID" was not working where "ID" was in capitals…
Read more →September 25, 2007
Blog Fix: HemingwayEX and WordPress 2.3
Last night I upgraded to the latest version of WordPress 2.3. See my previous posts (here and here) for more information. However during the upgrade process, I found an incompatibility with the new Category and Tagging functions and the theme I was using (HemingwayEX). On my homepage, I was getting the following error: WordPress database error: [Table ‘weblog_td.wp_categories’ doesn’t exist]…
Read more →September 24, 2007
Blog: TechDadBlog updated to WordPress 2.3 with some issues
I took the plunge and installed WordPress 2.3. For the most part, it was pretty straight forward. Do follow the standard upgrade instructions (including deactivating your plugins). I didn't do that and left the Ultimate Tag Warrior enabled. After running the upgrade.php, I had issues still, referencing UTW. So I went to the plugin directory and deleted the plugin manually.…
Read more →September 24, 2007
Blog: WordPress version 2.3 scheduled to be released Sept 24, 2007
A fairly significant update to WordPress is slotted to be released today (09.24.07) with some interesting new features, including: Plugin Update Notification Tags! Improved Post and Draft Management Pending Review Advanced Visual Editor Buttons Pretty URLs Updated Default Blogroll Other "advanced user" stuff More details on the features/changes are below: Plugin Update Notification Not only are you now notified about…
Read more →September 22, 2007
Blog: New tweaks to my WordPress Theme now live!
Well it has been a long night but a few beers later, I think that I have some things that I like. CSS has never been my strong point, nor some of the newer HTML tags (I'm a bit too used to seeing "div" and "class" and "id" for now!) So, before I go to bed, here are a couple…
Read more →September 19, 2007
iPhone: New “Pirate” app for TLAPD
Just in time for "Talk Like a Pirate Day," a new application was released for the iPhone that lets you snap a picture of a person/thing and let you "piratize" it. It's at version 0.2 as of this writing...pretty fun! Just press the START button and your phone snaps a picture. Then drag the 3 other images around and voila!…
Read more →September 18, 2007
iPhone: TechDadBlog now optimized for iPhone with automatic theme!
For all of you new iPhone and iTouch users out there, this blog has been updated with a new theme (yes ANOTHER theme) that is specifically optimized for viewing on an iPhone or iTouch. Those people who are viewing through a computer browser will continue to see my black/red theme but readers who have one of those great new Apple…
Read more →