Late Night PC

I'm an occasional hardware hacker and a packrat. That can be a messy combination. A big part of that mess is the hug mass of cables that I've accumulated over years of dealing with every kind of incompatible technology. The solution? Baggies. Zip lock sandwich bags (or the cheapest off-brand alternative). I now have a drawer in my filing cabinet with hundreds of cables all rolled up and sealed away. This isn't new for me, I started on the system when I commited myself to a clean office months ago.

Getting together a good development environment for PHP websites isn't that hard any more. On a Windows machine, I recommend a pretty simple approach. Install Xampp, install Eclipse PDT, install XDebug. For bonus points set up Subversion and get TortiseSVN (or, I guess, whatever other version control works for you).

I'll give a quick rundown here on how I set up a development environment on a Windows machine, I tested it as I was writing it and I don't think it took but 2 hours.

Usually I have to get on a plane to get to really talk to anyone else that blogs. We won't make it out to Vancouver for Northern Voice this year, but we did go last February. Then there was BlogHer in Chicago last year and San Jose the year before. Come to think of it I've been doing this blogging thing for a few years now. I've never really considered myself a typical blogger though. I mean, sure I write about my own life sometimes and I do a bit of navel gazing, but I write more about Azeroth than I do about the city I call home. No, here in Windsor I've always felt like a bit of an anomaly. Sure there are businesses here that have a "web presence" or publish a menu on the web for their restaurant but by and large you get blank stares at the word 'blog'. I think that the sheer number of blank stares I've had to withstand has led to the dismissive tone that I take on when I say "well I blog sometimes..." then drift off incoherently. It was such a long time of Windsor websites looking like abandoned shacks that I think I may have stopped looking for local content. In the meantime, Candace has been working steadily on BlogWindsor and following the local blogging scene. Apparently something's really been happening out there. We've got local blogs. There's the Windsor Municipal Shadow, International Metropolis and Out of the Driver's Seat to name a few. If Candace weren't on the ball then I would have missed out on the first WE Speak Bloggers Meet tonight. A bunch of us met up the Mill for drinks and edibles. Among the crowd I got to meet Pina who writes for the most helpful Windsor Eats and on the other side of me was Mark Boscariol of ...Scale Down, Windsor. We all had a great conversation ranging from the usual topics about why we blog and opinions on mainstream media but we also got in to how blogging impacts Windsor. I like to hear other people explain why it is that they blog and what they get out of it. But, more than just explanations, I really enjoy hearing the tone of voice that conveys the new and unusual passion that blogging builds. I like to see a face light up relating the deeply personal satisfaction that blogging can bring. And I love to hear that happening right here in Windsor. I really wish we could have stayed longer - there was a lot left to hear and say - but with kids at home we couldn't be out too late. Here's hoping that someone has the ambition to get us all together again soon.

Click here to install the Flickr Creative Commons OpenSearch plugin

Late Night PC and the resources it provides are not affiliated with or endorsed by Flickr. Visit Flickr here. Flickr's a great photo-sharing site that you've probably heard of already. A lot of people don't know that you can restrict searches on Flickr to only find Creative Commons licensed photos. This is in the advanced options somewhere. Someone I know asked me to come up with a search plugin that would work in Firefox and make it easy to search for just photos available under a Creative Commons license. Unfortunately Flickr doesn't let you refine the search by exactly which CC license is chosen but at least this eases things somewhat.

Install UPS Package tracking OpenSearch plugin

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This site and the resources it provides are not affiliated with or endorsed by UPS. Visit UPS here.

Install OpenSecrets.org Politician search

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This site and the resources it provides are not affiliated with or endorsed by OpenSecrets.org. OpenSecrets.org provides excellent searchable information about US politicians and the money in US politics, visit their site to learn more.

If you're not familiar with search plugins, look at the box on the top-right of your Firefox window. Firefox comes with a few of them and the default one searches at Google. Click the arrow between the "G" and the text box and you get a list of other search plugins, like Yahoo!, Amazon and Wikipedia. Click the install link and you'll get a popup that asks you if you want to install it. Accept and you'll get a new icon in your list of search plugins. Then just type the text you want to search for and Firefox will take you straight to the search results page. The search query goes directly to the site you're searching, not necessarily back to the site that installed the search plugin. If you're looking for info on how I make them or how to make your own, there's a helpful page in the Mozilla Developer Center (specifically the Technorati example they point to makes it easy), and they've got another page that explains how to offer a search plugin from a web page. Some of my search plugins work on Internet Explorer 7 and some only work for Firefox. This usually happens because Internet Explorer doesn't support the HTTP POST method for searches. I recommend Firefox or Opera as a web browser anyway. If you'd like to switch, you can get Firefox here, Firefox with the Google Toolbar here, or Opera here.

Click here to install THOMAS Library of Congress Legislative information search on Firefox. Late Night PC and the resources it provides are not affiliated with or endorsed by The Library of Congress. Visit the Library of Congress here or use THOMAS directly here. I found Thomas to be a very helpful tool when I was doing a little reading about a Bill on taxing Internet access and what's excluded from that bill. Here's the post I wrote at the time, which inspired me to write this OpenSearch Plugin.