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Sharing a Site with DNS Pointing Elsewhere

I'm working on a site for a tech-unsavvy friend, and I'd like to let him look at the site. Normally (as I do on my machines) I'd have the guy set the non-www. domain name in his hosts file to point to the new IP address, but he's unable to do that.

So what are my options? Again the domain.com is currently pointing elsewhere for everyone, but I have some spare domains I can use. I'm surely brain farting on how to use them, because I've set one up as an alias and that's not worked, and on the server side I've tried symlinking the public_html folder on one domain to the other.

Again, I'm surely brain farting, but why? What's the easiest way to point someone to a site that's pointed by all DNS elsewhere without actually moving the files and database to a new domain (which may break some of the links, particularly in a WordPress powered site)?

Trying CyberPower for UPS, Replacing a Battery in the APC

The APC Back-UPS RS 1500VA LCD that I got in July, 2008 (product page) has served me well. It's an 865 Watt, 1500 VA unit that gives me around 18 minutes or so of battery powered backup when it's new.

A few weeks ago we lost power, and my computer didn't last very long. When power came back I noticed the battery was behaving poorly, and due to its age, I bought a replacement from ATBatt.com.

I left the batteries to charge for over 16 hours (per the manual), and booted the computer to find this:

APC 1APC 2
n

Ugh, Forums

Ugh, the modern world of forums is a real pain in the rear.

I'm looking to start a new (small) forum for disc golf technique and instruction.

XenForo (I use this elsewhere) hasn't seen an update since March. phpBB and MyBB are small and have hideous themes. Vanilla Forum charges a lot and their host-it-yourself version lacks a LOT of features. vBulletin and IPB are costly (which might be okay) but awfully large.

Seriously, what gives? What's a good, lightweight forum package with a reasonable feature set?

WordPress Want – A Basic “Upcoming Events” Widget

I'm developing a small site for someone and I've already hacked together a custom widget to show recent posts on every page of the site (the "blog" is more of a "news" thing while the main site uses pages), but I haven't yet found a good solution for an "Upcoming Events" widget.

If it were me, I'd just read in a PHP file with arrays in it or something and spit out the data. No muss, no fuss. But the guy who will be managing this will want a nice GUI for everything.

I found one plugin and widget that works with .ics files but I don't know that I can rely on the customer being able to create a .ics file.

Plugins like this one seem like massive overkill.

Update: In the end I hacked up a copy of External Events Calendar, which since the site is new and began after WordPress 3.5, required the Links Manager plugin to expose the links capabilities within WordPress again.

Merry Christmas!

That is all.

The bulk of our day was spent watching some guy who shouts "Live action!" every four minutes.

iTunes 11 Play Count Not Updating?

Turn crossfading off. You might even be able to turn it on again after you quit and re-launch iTunes ((It worked here for me doing that.)), but turning it off fixed the problems right away.

Weird bug.

P.S. I have an "Unrated/Unplayed" smart playlist that contains songs I haven't played OR haven't rated, and it was frustrating to play 20 songs in the list, rate them, and have them play again because they weren't disappearing from the playlist.

Winner Is

I only see loser's here.

I award 72 :doh:s to LongHorn Steakhouse.

Winner's

PulpFiction Icon Progress

PulpFiction ProgressFound this GIF while cleaning up my Downloads folder.

It's interesting how many little changes took what was the first icon (inspired by actual pulp fiction) to the final icon.

PulpFiction and its replacement Cyndicate remain two of my most favorite applications I've developed (including some I've never released but which I use weekly).

Ho hum.

Four Kinds of Tie Knots

Ties

Husqvarna Traction Drive Spring

The traction drive spring for the Husqvarna 10530 SBE is part #532180926.

What King Became President of the United States?

I heard this trivia question while on hold:

What King became President of the United States of America?

Gerald Ford, who was born Leslie Lynch King, Jr. before being semi-adopted and changing his name on December 3, 1935.

2012’s Worst Words and Other Stuff

AppleScript for Quickly Opening New Posts on a Forum

I mentioned in the comments on this post that I'd write this up, so here goes. What follows is an AppleScript I activate via FastScripts with the keyboard shortcut cmd-opt-f. It scrapes the page, filters the text, builds a list of URLs to click from the "new post" links (often an image is linked), and then opens them in reverse order, oldest to newest.

This lets me quickly read (or mark as read, even if I just quickly close that particular thread because I am not interested in it) all the new posts on any of the forums I visit regularly.

Note: a simplified version of this script is available here: http://cl.ly/1i1G0G3C2X1n.

Instagram’s Change to their ToS

Instagram's new ToS (Terms of Use, technically), effective January 16, 2013, says:

Some or all of the Service may be supported by advertising revenue. To help us deliver interesting paid or sponsored content or promotions, you agree that a business or other entity may pay us to display your username, likeness, photos (along with any associated metadata), and/or actions you take, in connection with paid or sponsored content or promotions, without any compensation to you.

Where by "metadata" they mean location data.

But that doesn't necessarily bug me that much - it's the advertising as a whole thing that bugs me.

This article suggests users pay $5/month, but that's too much. If users had to pay $0.99 for every "24-pack" of photos or something, that would be a good way to go.

I'd also willingly pay $10 to never have to see ads on Instagram again. I've already opted out of ads on the Kindle and they're not even super intrusive or annoying, from what I've heard.

I just don't want to mess with 'em. Ever.

Happiness is a Worn Gun

A good article that's neither pro-gun nor anti-gun.