I just got a new computer and wanted to see what it took to get it “all set up.” Each step along the way, I realized there were other things I wanted to set up, or little problems in the process, so I kept track of them, in the hopes that this will contribute to … Continue reading Setting Up a New Macbook Pro: The Steps
I always find myself needing to look up this exact syntax. mysql> create database MY_DATABASE character set utf8; Query OK, 1 row affected (0.04 sec) mysql> grant all privileges on MY_DATABASE.* to ‘MY_USERNAME’@’localhost’ identified by ‘MY_PASSWORD’; Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.06 sec) Continue reading Create MySQL Database and Give User Permissions
In today’s post I want to demystify the term HTML. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language, and it is the way that you write web pages. A markup language, according to Wikipedia, is a way to “annotate the text” to provide some additional information. Every webpage has HTML, which includes a set of “tags” to … Continue reading How the Internet Works 9: HTML
There were a ton of comments here telling me that the Facebook bookmarklet that I made broke, and this happened because Facebook changed the name of the file they were using. I’ve updated the post, so the bookmarklet there should work now. Continue reading Facebook Friends Ranking Bookmarklet Works Again
I wrote recently about how everything in computers is stored as 0s and 1s, and the language of computers is binary. You can read about that here. However, one bit or a few bits doesn’t really contain that much information. In general you will be dealing with thousands, or millions, or billions, or even more … Continue reading How the Internet Works 8: Bytes, Megabytes, and More
I’ve used this setup so many times now that I wanted to write up a list post explaining how I do it. This method is something I found on this site, but I just wanted to add my own commentary. The idea is that you are developing a website locally using git, and you want … Continue reading Lightweight Deployment With Git
Hobson’s choice: the choice of taking either that which is offered or nothing; the absence of a real alternative. Origin: 1640–50; after Thomas Hobson (1544–1631), of Cambridge, England, who rented horses and gave his customer only one choice, that of the horse nearest the stable door, from dictionary.com. I just joined another site yesterday. Or … Continue reading Terms and Conditions: A Hobson’s Choice
We made a juggling video this past month. Lots of cool angles, fun patterns, and really nice video editing by Charlie Dunn. Check it out! Continue reading Down With Gravity: Juggling Revolution
Part of my goal with this series of posts it to demystify a lot of the jargon that you find when people talk about the internet. Each of these topics has a whole literature and special part of the internet dedicated to it, but just knowing what the general idea is a step in the … Continue reading How the Internet Works 7 – Clients and Servers
This is going to be an extremely brief and high level overview of what a programming language is. My goal here is that if you don’t know what a programming language is before reading this, you have an idea of what it is after. A programming language is just the way that you tell a … Continue reading How the Internet Works 6 – Programming Languages