14 Feb 2016

Raspberry Pi: SSH using public and private keys

Sometimes it’s necessary to leave a publicly accessible SSH connection available on your Raspberry Pi. While a strong password is essential, a much more secure method for authentication is to use a public and private key system. This guide will take you through all of the steps to creating the keys, configuring the Raspberry Pi, […]

4 Apr 2012

BlackWolf Titanium 35 Backpack review

Update! See my modifications to this pack here. My review of the BlackWolf Titanium 35 day-pack. I compare it to an older generation BlackWolf bag, and a Camelbak Snobound. While the pack is good for it’s price, I do see a few frustration problems! I share my candid thoughts on these issues and my planned […]

2 Feb 2011

JavaScript: Useful number formatting functions

Source code

Recently I’ve been developing a lot of reporting applications in JavaScript and have collected a few helper functions that I use regularly for number formatting. Here’s a look at each function and how you can use it in your own projects. Rounding a number to a defined decimal precision Input: 1234.567 Output: 1234.6 (to one […]

24 Nov 2010

PHP: Easy integrated benchmarking

Source code

When I began developing PHP I found the biggest stumbling block for me was learning the best practices and many nuances for greater performance, especially when querying a database. I found that I could smash out functional PHP for proof of concept purposes, but when it came to optimising my code for release and I […]

15 Nov 2010

Automatically connect to VPN at Windows startup

VPN connection

I use VPN for work quite often, and lately more often than not.  I found that some programs that load on Windows startup and rely on this connectivity were trying to connect before I had a chance to establish a VPN connection.  I needed a way to connect to VPN as soon as possible, even […]

10 Nov 2010

Quick tip: Firebug console output

Source code

I’ve found debugging my JavaScript projects much easier since using the Firebug add-on for Firefox, but more specifically outputting to the Firebug console.  It’s as easy as this: var myVar = 42; console.log(‘my variable: ‘ + myVar); This will output ‘my variable: 42‘ to the Firebug console, just like using System.out.println() in Java. There are […]

10 Oct 2010

jQuery: Automatic HTML element manipulation

Source code

When working on my latest project I discovered a feature of jQuery that wasn’t apparent to me in the API.  When using the .append() method I noticed it would automatically close HTML elements.  After taking a closer look at the jQuery 1.4.2 code, I found that .append() makes use of an internal function called domManip(). […]