Laravel
I have been programming PHP since 1997. Frameworks of various flavors came about in the early oughts. Some were decent. Others weren’t worth the hard drive space they occupied. They all tended to...
View ArticleGlances
Modern computers and operating systems are complicated. Add in a bunch of running applications, virtual machines, storage devices, networks and who knows what else … you’re want to find out what else....
View ArticleiThemes Security Pro
The TL;DR: If you have a WordPress site, you need iThemes Security Pro. It’s the very first plugin I install once a site is up and running. The. Very. First. The bad news is that sites powered by...
View ArticleFirefox
Long, long ago (around 1994), there was a browser called Netscape Navigator. It was the first big browser. Then came Microsoft’s Internet Explorer which ignited the browser wars. There were other...
View ArticleChrome
Chrome is still my primary desktop browser. The desktop version has thousands of extensions, apps, plugins, and themes that extend a basic browser in many useful ways. Add in an excellent set of...
View ArticleWP Super Cache
WordPress has a little secret, and that secret is that is can be a little “heavy”, as in taking a long time to load a page. Add in a handful of various plugins, and each page can take seconds to load....
View ArticleSynology NAS
NAS (Network Attached Storage) is just that: computer storage attached to a network. In reality, it’s a specialty server. Having one is great since all of your devices can be given reasonably secure...
View ArticleCloud Station
People get mystified by “the Cloud” but it’s really not that complicated. I have one of my own and I let Cloud Station, a part of Synology’s NASes, control the files I want “out there”. The nice part...
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View ArticleClementine
Finding a decent music player for Linux is surprisingly difficult. I have a large-ish collection of MP3 files, and I prefer to have them all as local files and play them directly. There’s a player...
View ArticleAndroid
For some people, operating systems, especially mobile ones, can turn from nice discussion into religious war. While I did have iPads for a while, I’ve never really been a fan of Apple’s walled garden....
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Rolling your own Synology NAS
My Synology DS215j is a great little machine, and has been chugging along without issue for nearly 3 years. Being one of the least-expensive Synology NAS units, it’s also one of the least capable....
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Synology’s DS718+ SSD caching is crippled
Synology DS718+ The Synology DS718+ is one of Synology’s flagship models and it’s an excellent NAS with high-end features. One of those features is the ability to add SSD caching. After experimenting...
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Get the red root prompt back in Linux Mint 19
The Linux terminal is one of those indispensable tools that I spent lots of time in. Linux Mint recently released a new version, 19, to replace 18.3. There were several good upgrades, including a major...
View ArticleVisual Studio Code
A text editor is at the heart of a developer’s workflow. I recently switched my primary coding editor from Sublime Text 3 to Visual Studio Code (VS Code). Sublime Text is a great editor, but some...
View ArticleUsing tablets as desktop external monitors
Both my work laptop and my personal laptop have 15.6-inch “full HD” screens, which are a decent size. But sometimes — especially when on the go — I’d like a little more screen real estate. Carrying an...
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