Category Archives: HOW-TOs
Slow printing to Lexmark C522 from OS X 10.4
After a user complained that a 28-page PowerPoint document was taking an hour to print on our networked Lexmark C522, I narrowed the problem down to OS X 10.4 (in my case, 10.4.11). Solution: use this PPD. In other words: … Continue reading
Using EDID data in xorg.conf
I have two Hanns-G JW199D (19″ 1440×900) LCDs connected to an nVidia GeForce 8400 GS video card. They worked great until I upgraded from openSUSE 10.3 to 11.0; Xorg seemed to have problems configuring the LCD connected to the video … Continue reading
PHP zlib.output_compression fails to set Content-Encoding
This is what the PHP docs say about the zlib.output_compression INI directive: Whether to transparently compress pages. If this option is set to “On” in php.ini or the Apache configuration, pages are compressed if the browser sends an “Accept-Encoding: gzip” … Continue reading
TortoiseSVN “connection closed unexpectedly”
This burned several hours of my time so I thought I’d add this post to the others that I found on the Intertron. I had debugged every possible angle when trying to get a Vista machine to checkout a repo … Continue reading
CRT monitor recycling and disposal in Gainesville, FL
Problem: you have upgraded your computer monitors to LCDs and want to get rid of your old CRTs in a way that won’t dump a bunch of lead into the environment. Also, you live in Gainesville, FL where there is … Continue reading
How to copy email to DreamHost with imapsync
I recently had need to move my email from a VPS to my DreamHost account. I thought I could simply use Thunderbird to copy the folders, but that process didn’t work very well. The DreamHost wiki has an article about … Continue reading
Downloading files over SSL with IE7
Problem I have a script, call it download.php, that pulls files from a database and serves them up to the user. For example, download.php?fileId=69 might return some headers and data that cause the user’s browser to download a PDF and … Continue reading
Precipice of Darkness and 64-bit Ubuntu 8.04
I was very excited to see that Penny Arcade‘s new game, On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness (Episode One), was available for Linux. My excitement blossomed further when I found that the game came with an innovative mini-game. The mini-game … Continue reading
Flash with 64-bit Firefox on openSUSE 10.3
I wrote about how I got Flash working with 64-bit Firefox on openSUSE 10.2, but I had to briefly struggle with it again on openSUSE 10.3. In this version of the distribution, I was pleased to find that nspluginwrapper was … Continue reading
How to check if a variable exists in PHP
Go ahead, look at the PHP type comparison tables and snicker over how the language is a cobbled-together hack. I still love it, but I did run into a little bit of confusion today. Here is the basic issue: $a … Continue reading