Category: Hints

General hints I think might help others that I have come across over the years.

Hints

Lacking Speed?

Over the last few weeks I have added several new devices to my home network (iPad, guest computers, two new TiVOs, new router, etc) and have noticed my VOIP phone quality go way down. After doing some initial troubleshooting, taking devices offline one at a time, etc – I decided it was time to call […]

Hints Serenity Now!

Make Opportunities

Several years ago, the company I worked for had a secretary full of life lessons which she would tell me about each morning. Out of everything she ever told me – one thing really stuck. She told me “Jen – don’t wait for opportunities, make them”. There are not too many days that go by […]

Hints HOWTOs

Quick iCal Tip: Set Your Default Calendar

I have been going crazy trying to figure out why all my incoming meeting.ics files were going to my QuickBooks calendar (I have several calendars) and not another one. There had to be a setting somewhere, right? I could not find it, but I did discover how to inadvertently set it: drag the calendar you […]

Hints

Jappler Recommends: Best Tools of the Trade

In the last year or so I have really found a great set of tools that I use for almost any/all projects if needed. If you are considering building a web site or a web application – consider taking a look at the following (and consider using this as your “WWJU (what would Jen use) […]

Business Hints

Quality Assurance (Pre vs. Post)

So many people want to get their sites/projects/etc out so fast they completely overlook quality assurance (QA). I have recently worked with two extremes and wanted to comment on both. Quality Assurance pre-release Any time I work on a project – I always build in time for quality assurance. Quality assurance time is specifically spent […]

Hints

Random Fridays: Taking Vacation

Taking vacation sounds nice to most but to me it is never really been enjoyable. The work pile up when I get home is always out of control and I end up feeling like I do now: run down, overwhelmed, and unable to catch up. What is the trick to coming back to a less […]

Hints

WordPress Wednesdays: Where to Begin

A lot of people want a web site or a blog but do not know where to start or what all WordPress has to offer. If you are looking for a great, easy to use system to publish content on the web – I would start here: Start Free. If you want to simply check […]

CSS Hints Web Development

CSS Tuesdays: Fun With User Agents

If you are going to do any serious CSS development and/or troubleshooting – you need to be able to see the site on as many browsers as possible. Generally – we have several browsers on several operating systems going at once so we can make sure our bases are covered. Last week I built a […]

Films Hints

Media Mondays: RipIt

My son is a super fan of the movie Wall-E and when I tried to rip it for my iPhone and his iTeddy – using Handbrake the entire movie was out of sequence which even though did not seem to phase E, it bothered me to no end that my son was watching a completely […]

CSS Hints HOWTOs

CSS Tuesday: Overide Inline Style

How many times have you worked with either someone else’s code or some crazy dynamically generated code that uses inline styles for everything which you need to change or override but cannot for some reason or another? I have seen this a lot with custom applications written by programmers who think they are doing designers […]

Hints HOWTOs Web Development

PHP 4 or PHP 5? You Pick the Flavor

I recently ran into a situation where there were two versions of PHP on a server and I needed to make sure PHP 5 was being used. To pick the version – all you need to do is add the following into your .htaccess file (assuming you do not have access to your httpd config): […]