Here’s a nice tool to find shades of a color. You can even send a URL to someone with a base color so they can pick which shade they want.
Change Website Colors in Real-Time
TIP – Testing in Production
My Favorite Web Development Tools on Windows
Raw Text Editor
- Sublime Text 2
- HTML Tidy Plugin
- HTML Encode Plugin
- NotePad++
WYSIWYG Editor
- Dreamweaver (good for updated large tables)
SSH Client
- mRemoteNG with Putty (for UTF-8 support, select UTF-8 in the Translation setting in Putty)
Terminal / Shell / Console
- Console
- PowerCmd <- current favorite
- TakeCommand
SOAP Web Service Testing Tool
- soapUI
Diffing Tool
- WinMerge
- BeyondCompare (includes image differ)
- Araxis (includes image differ)
Bulk File Renamer
- Rename Expert
File / Directory Listing
(S)FTP / Synching Tool
- WinSCP
SVN Client
- SmartSVN
HTTP Monitor
- Fiddler
- HTTPDebugger
Web Inspector
- Google Chrome Inspector
Raster Graphic Editor
- Photoshop
Vector Graphic Editor
- Inkscape
Screen Capture
- DuckCapture
- SnagIt
Virtual Machine
- Oracle VirtualBox (for testing different versions of IE)
Video Encoding
- Quicktime Pro
- Miro Video Converter
Amazon S3 Manager
- CyberDuck
Chrome Extensions
- JSONView
- PageRank Status
- Show Title Tag
- Web Developer
- jQuerify
- AdBlock
- Pendule
- Awesome Color Picker
- Tape
- CSS Diff
Font for coding
- Consolas – 9pt
- http://www.sitepoint.com/top-10-programming-fonts/
Installing Apache, PHP, and Postgres on Windows 7 64 Bit
Installing Apache on 64-bit Windows
0. Download
Go to http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=30679 and download Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 (VC11) which is needed for the next step. Double-click and install it.
1. Download
Go to http://www.apachelounge.com/download/and download the 64-bit version (httpd-2.4.12-win64-VC11.zip)
2. Unzip
Unzip the Apache24 folder to c:/Apache24 (that is the ServerRoot in the config).
Default folder for your your webpages is DocumentRoot “c:/Apache24/htdocs”
When you unzip to another location, change ServerRoot, Documenroot, Directories, ScriptAlias in httpd.conf. Also, when you use the extra folder config files, change to your location there as well.
3. Install Apache as a service
Start > cmd (Run as Administrator)
c:\Apache24\bin>httpd.exe -k install
4. Install ApacheMonitor
Right-click on c:\Apache24\bin\ApacheMonitor.exe, Run as Administrator,
Make a shortcut of ApacheMonitor and put it in your Startup folder.
4. Test Setup
Go to http://localhost and you should see “It works”.
5. If you already have configuration files from a previous installation that you would like to apply to this new installation, do the following:
– rename C:/Apache24/conf/httpd.conf to httpd-original.conf
– rename C:/Apache24/conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf to httpd-vhosts-original.conf
– rename C:/Apache24/conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf to httpd-ssl-original.conf
– rename old C:/Windows/System32/drivers/etc/hosts file to hosts-original
6. copy and paste the config files from your old installation into the new installation
C:/Apache24/conf/9264078_local.dev.XXXX.com.cert (SSL cert)
C:/Apache24/conf/9264078_local.dev.XXXX.com.key (SSL key)
C:/Apache24/conf/httpd.conf
C:/Apache24/conf/server.crt (SSL cert)
C:/Apache24/conf/server.nopassword.key (SSL key)
C:/Apache24/conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
C:/Apache24/conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf
7. Some useful (necessary) settings to have in httpd.conf
- LoadModule php5_module “C:/php-5.6.5-Win32-VC11-x64/php5apache2_4.dll”
- LoadFile “C:\php-5.6.5-Win32-VC11-x64\libpq.dll”
- PHPIniDir “C:\php-5.6.5-Win32-VC11-x64”
- DirectoryIndex index.html index.php
- AddType application/x-httpd-php .php
- Include conf/extra/httpd-vhosts.conf
- Include conf/extra/httpd-ssl.conf
Continue reading Installing Apache, PHP, and Postgres on Windows 7 64 Bit
POV (Point-of-View) Marketing
There are many different types and ways to marketing something, and I’ve read many books on the subject, including “buzz” marketing. Two categories of marketing are advertising and PR. Advertising is expensive. Getting mentioned in a popular blog can be expensive (to hire good PR people) but it doesn’t have to be. Pitching news to a journalist to write about your story / information is usually where people get things wrong. I just came across this article on what the author calls POV marketing. It’s a pretty nice summary with examples of how you should pitch your stories to bloggers if you want to get a write up.
Why Your Marketing Campaign Sucks
mRemoteNG: Better Than Plain Putty for SSH
I can’t stand using Putty for SSH on Windows. It’s ugly and very non user-friendly. I even got a Mac laptop which I often use for just SSH using Mac Terminal. But, yesterday I discovered mRemoteNG from a coworker, which is a wrapper to Putty, supports tabs, and offers a much better overall SSH experience from Windows. If you need a terminal on Windows, I’d recommend Putty + mRemoteNG. Learn more and download at
http://www.mremoteng.org/
In addition, to fix the ugly color scheme that comes with Putty, use one of these custom themes.
http://www.igvita.com/2008/04/14/custom-putty-color-themes/
Documentary: Last Train Home
Interesting documentary on how crazy it is for millions of Chinese people to take the train home back to their villages for the Chinese New Year and a look at their living conditions and lifestyle.
Documentary: Park Avenue: Money, Power & The American Dream
Must see documentary by all US taxpayers.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6niWzomA_So]
Watch the full documentary at http://www.hulu.com/watch/417228
Setting Up PHP to Support UTF-8 / i18n International Characters
Instead of specifically writing string manipulation code that is multibyte-safe, e.g. mb_substr() instead of substr(), you can configure PHP to do this automatically. Just update the following lines in your php.ini.
mbstring.internal_encoding = UTF-8
mbstring.func_overload = 7
mbstring.strict_detection = On
zend.multibyte = On
zend.script_encoding = UTF-8
mbstring.func_overload will automatically cause any non-multibyte-safe functions to use their multibyte-safe counterparts.