Web Development, Beer, Music, and Beer

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  • When I started learning how to play guitar, I was using a Stella, which is a Harmony brand guitar. These guitars are cheap and kind of crappy, but I gotta say, I love them like no other guitar!

    I learned all the basics on a crappy Stella. This one went through shear hell. She'd been dropped at least a hundred-thousand times. She also went on long road trip with me, in the trunk.

  • Lately I've been hearing lots of trendy music. There's been an uproar of popularizing indie rock. Get that? Indie rock is now mainstream. They've even got their own music video station. MTVU I think, or something like that. Those that know me know very well that I don't watch that shit.

  • I've put together a cheat sheet of some of my most-used keyboard shortcuts and hot keys. I use the crap out of these, and I can say they really save me chunks of time every day.

  • I spent a good chunk of time trying to find the best solution for controlling inventory on an Übercart I've been developing for a client.

    The biggest issue is that by default Übercart doesn't stop customers from purchasing out-of-stock products.

  • You can speed up your drupal load times a bit if you compress or aggregate your css files. Drupal can do this for you!

    Simply visit Admin > Site Configuration > Performance and enable Aggregate and Compress CSS files. Submit the page and check out the results. All of those @import() calls will be condensed and you'll notice just one css is loaded.

  • For simple websites it's handy to separate elements that are shared across pages, such as your header and footer.

  • You can clear the DNS cache on Mac OS X Leopard in the Terminal application.

    Open a terminal window and type:

    beer$ dscacheutil -flushcache

    That's it. If it didn't work, then your network server probably needs its cache cleared, or the DNS just hasn't propagated yet.

  • Often when developing Drupal, you'll have multiple roles that you'll need to test. Generally, I'll be logged in on one browser as admin. I'll have another browser open for another role.

    So I go in and make a change as admin, then visit the other browser to see how the change affects the other role.

  • I've played in a good number of bands. I've written at least a few hundred songs. I've recorded several bands for income. I've spent thousands of hours recording music in my own small studio. I've played all the instruments and all the parts.

    I'm not sure how many of you are out there, but your dreams of being a rockstar band are pretty much pointless.

  • What's the main difference? Well, it's actually quite simple.

    Yeast ferments beer. Some yeast likes to float at the top; other yeast likes to sit at the bottom. This is pretty much the main difference, with the exception of the temperature of the brew.

    Ales

    Ale yeast is a top fermenting yeast, so it sits at the top of the brew while it does its job.

  • Markdown vs Textile... this is a tough one. I use both pretty regularly, and each has its perks and weaknesses.

    When to Use Markdown

    I usually choose Markdown over Textile when I'm:

    • Jotting down general notes
    • Drafting client proposals
    • Reformatting HTML content

    Markdown is much easier to read during editing, even without converting the document to HTML.

  • If you've ever dealt with Dreamweaver based templates, then you'll know all it really does it insert static blocks of code wherever the template/library item tags are located. Dreamweaver does a pretty good job at this, but once sites grow to over 1000 files, it's a bit more complicated and time consuming to modify every page easily...

Random image

My first black & tan; not the greatest.