Easily Remove Background From Photos

Posted on Dec 18, 2018

When building a website, you’ll often find yourself needing to remove backgrounds from photos of people. This can be especially difficult when a person’s hair is wispy and its color blends in with the background. Though not perfect, there’s a free, quick and pretty decent online tool to remove backgrounds from photos of people. No login is required. Just go to remove.bg and upload your photo.

Here’s an example of a subject that would be hard to remove the background from manually. As you can see, Remove.bg does a pretty good job but they’re also modifying the subject’s hair somewhat. This is most evident when you replace the background with a solid color of high contrast compared to the subject’s hair color.

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Test and Debug Websites in Internet Explorer 11 on a Mac Using VirtualBox and Serveo

Posted on Dec 11, 2018

As of this posting, the global usage of IE 11 stands at 2.5% according to caniuse.com. If that percentage is still too high for you to ignore, then you’ll need to test your website in IE 11.

Many developers use Macs for web development. Though you can test websites in Chrome, Firefox and Safari on a Mac, you can’t install and therefore test IE 11 on a Mac. You can get a separate Windows machine for testing IE 11 but that’s a hassle and overkill. Here are some steps to test and debug websites in IE 11 on a Mac using VirtualBox and Serveo.

1. Set Up VirtualBox

1. Go to https://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Downloads and download VirtualBox for OS X hosts (Macs) and install it.
2. Get Windows 8 Virtual Machine
   Go to https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoft-edge/tools/vms/ and download a precompiled VirtualBox for Windows 8 with IE 11

2. Open Website in Local Browser

On your Mac, open your website on your local web server in any local browser (e.g. Chrome, Firefox, or Safari) and not the URL. It may be localhost or localhost:8080 or localhost:3000, etc.

3. Set Up Tunnel Using Serveo

1. Open Terminal
2. Run the command ssh -R 80:localhost:3000 serveo.net using the correct local URL and port number
3. You will see a response saying “Forwarding http traffic from https://abc.serveo.net” where abc may be different
4. For more information, go to http://serveo.net. You can also use ngrok but Serveo is easier with nothing to install.

4. View Website in IE 11

1. Run the virtual machine you just downloaded by double-clicking on it. Open IE 11 and enter the Serveo forwarding URL, e.g. https://abc.serveo.net
2. Make changes to website files
3. Reload IE 11 in VirtualBox to see the changes

Console.log Displays Incorrect JavaScript Object Values

Posted on Nov 28, 2018

When you’re debugging some JavaScript in a browser, you might get confused to find that when you dump an object’s value to the console, you get unexpected results. Consider the sample code below.

See the Pen Test JSON Dump by Abdullah Yahya (@javanigus) on CodePen.

Here’s what you see in the Chrome console.

The first console.log statement is showing the final value of the object as opposed to the value at the time the console.log statement was called. That’s because console.log is displaying a reference to the object, not the copy of the object at the time the console.log statement was called. To solve this, always stringify (serialize) the object which makes a deep copy (deep clone) of it before consoling it out. To see a prettified display of the object, parse the stringified object. This is what’s done in the 2nd console.log statement which shows the expected value of the object.

Car Tire Specifications

Posted on Nov 26, 2018

When you buy new car tires, you’ll either go online and enter your car’s year, make, model, and trim or give that information to someone at a store. Unfortunately, the tire specifications you get in response will not necessarily be correct. For the past 13 years, I’ve been buying car tires for my 2003 Honda Accord DX and the tire specs I’d be given are

This information was taken from tires.costco.com and from the tire specialist’s computer at a Costco Tire Center. It says that my tire size is P215/60R17. The tire specs in the driver side door, however, says this:

It says that my tire size should be P205/65R15. While it may be okay to go with a slightly different size, it’s probably better to go with the manufacturer’s recommendation. Read More

When to Change Your Car’s Tires

Posted on Nov 25, 2018

Tread Depth

In the US, car tire tread depth is measured in 32nds of an inch. New tires typically come with 10/32” or 11/32” tread depths, and some truck, SUV and winter tires may have deeper tread depths than other models. A tire is legally worn-out if the tread depth is 2/32nds.  Therefore, a typical tire that starts with 10/32″ of original tread depth has only 8/32″ of usable tread depth. A tire that started with 10/32″ of original tread depth and has worn off 4/32″ (down to 6/32″ of remaining tread depth) is 50% worn. Though 2/32nds of tread depth is the legal minimum, you should change your tires when they reach 4/32nds of tread depth. At tread depths less than 4/32nds, you may experience hydroplaning when driving in the rain and lose control of your vehicle.

Tread Depth Gauge

There are manual and digital tread depth gauges. I’d go with a manual one so you don’t have to worry about replacing a battery.