RSS2.0 Feed button

"When a thing ceases to be a subject of controversy, it ceases to be a subject of interest."
William Hazlitt

Sam Devol

Running with Scissors

Author Page

Make ColorZilla work in Ubuntu - Firefox

Posted in March 6th, 2008
Published in Computers
Tagged with:

ColorZilla has the ability to work with Ubuntu, but not the way it is packaged. If you install the regular ColorZilla_1.x.xpi the library that does not work with Ubuntu gets installed and you get the ‘mode not supported on your platform’ error message.
The ColorZilla_1.x.xpi (both the one on Mozilla.com and the beta at iostart.com) [...]

read more from Sam's post

Cleaning up WordPress database after UTW

Posted in October 3rd, 2007
Published in Computers, Things, WordPress
Tagged with:

After upgrading to WordPress 2.3 and trying to re-evaluate tag usage, I decided to re-visit an old pet-peeve of mine: The relatively massive (read: gi-normous) size of my wp_postmeta table. It was always the biggest table in my database (thanks to UTW), so whenever I was poking around in the database it caught my eye [...]

read more from Sam's post

Recent site and forum issues

Posted in October 3rd, 2007
Published in Computers, Things
Tagged with:

Between the theme change, settling into 2.3 final and trying to bring some style continuity from the new theme into my forums, there have been some short periods of down-time. Last night and this AM were more significant however, so I wanted to post some info:
Last night I made a ‘quick’ change to the site, [...]

read more from Sam's post

489th Bomber Group

Posted in September 27th, 2007
Published in People

A friend of mine approached me and asked about cleaning up a WWII era photo of his Father (Holtmeier) and other B-24 crew members taken in England in 1944. Unfortunately the photo was missing emulsion (the part of the print paper that actually contains the ‘image’) but I think the historical significance and character of [...]

read more from Sam's post

Recent changes here at samdevol.com

Posted in September 22nd, 2007
Tagged with:

I have been meaning to post a note about some of the recent changes here, but have been busier then a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs (been dying to use that phrase for some time ;’)…
I’ve adopted a new theme called nobus, designed by Dezzain Studio. The UI is not [...]

read more from Sam's post

6 simple steps to hardening WordPress

Posted in September 16th, 2007
Published in Computers, Things, WordPress
Tagged with:

There are some basic steps you can take to help limit your exposure to malicious behavior directed at your WordPress blog. My intention with this article is not to make your website bullet-proof (if such a thing exists) but to cover the most common exploits/weaknesses. File and directory permissions have been discussed elsewhere but I’ll [...]

read more from Sam's post

Text-Link-Ads tech support lacks interest in WordPress

Posted in September 13th, 2007
Published in People
Tagged with:

This began as a casual note, a reminder, if you will, to techsupport (at) text-link-ads.com. It escalated to where I wondered just how Text-Link-Ads (a MediaWhiz Holdings, Inc. Company) developed it’s hiring practices…
Having signed up I was directed to download a plugin for WordPress. I noticed it was a raw PHP file (rarely done because [...]

read more from Sam's post

Display posts ticker-style in WordPress with Zazz

Posted in September 12th, 2007
Published in Computers, Things, WordPress
Tagged with:

I was thinking about a way to showcase older posts and happened across the Zazz Post Tickerplugin by Stew Houston.
I thought “Here we go, another chance for me to totally bork my blog with some unknown piece of code…” So I picked up the scissors and blah-blah-blah (you get the idea).
I took a quick look [...]

read more from Sam's post

missunderstood theme — Big update

Posted in September 1st, 2007
Tagged with:

Just released the new version (0.94) of the missunderstood theme. Some major changes, lots of clean-up, added functionality:

Built-in Optimal Title (for SEO)
Built-in slimbox (faster, lighter Lightbox effect)
Separate lists for comments and trackbacks
Fancier blockquotes
Built-in pullquotes
Prettier search box
Code-block style with numbers and zebra striping

A lot of generous people have brought my attention to problems with the earlier [...]

read more from Sam's post

Integrate PunBB into your WordPress site

Posted in August 28th, 2007
Published in Computers, Things, WordPress
Tagged with:

I wanted to add a forum to my WordPress blog but everything I came across did not integrate well (design/page continuity, etc.) or was too simple for my tastes… Then I came across a tutorial here (there are a few around, that’s just the one I tripped across). Following the tutorial I had a somewhat [...]

read more from Sam's post

About The Site

myimg

Observations of a Troubleshooting Monkey and

ex IT Director

ex Digital Video Director

ex Missile Mechanic

ex Motorcycle Mechanic

Work Background Contact me