Category Archives: Featured

FinderPath Extension for Alfred

I use Alfred for all of my application launching, number calculating and folder-finding needs. It usually does a good job at finding what I’m looking for, though sometimes you already have an exact file path in mind and want to jump right to it. One example is the Library folder. I find myself digging around in there regularly for whatever reason (retrieving Minecraft screenshots, diagnosing crashy apps, etc.) and it just takes too long to get there manually. Lion and Mountain Lion made it especially vexing, as it’s hidden by default. (And it re-hidden after each software update, even if you change the setting with a terminal command.)

So I made an Alfred extension that will open any supplied path in a new Finder window. No fancy searching, just a direct “open this.” It uses the standard “cd ~/Documents/GitHub” syntax experienced users of the command line will be familiar with. It even escapes spaces automatically.

Installation Instructions

  • Download the FinderPath extension
  • Unzip the archive and double-click the resulting FinderPath.alfredextension file
  • Alfred should do the rest

Ditching GoDaddy? Here Are Some Alternatives

Whether it’s because of the recent major outage, their brazen support for SOPA, or their longstanding questionable business practices, there are many reasons one may wish to avoid doing business with GoDaddy. (Archive.org has a mirror of the old NoDaddy site if you’re curious…

File Upload

Handling File Uploads with PHP

So you want to add a file uploader to your site. It’s quite easy to do with PHP, but first you must understand the inherent risks. You’re going to allow just anyone to take a file and put it on your server. That file…

Minecraft Icon

Checking the Status of a Minecraft Server with PHP

Have you ever needed to have a script check whether a Minecraft server was online, or retrieve its listing information, like the “Message of the Day” (server description) or the number of active players? Maybe you run your own server, and want to display…

An Apple

Commonly Misused Proverbs

It’s interesting how commonly-used aphorisms eventually become used in a context opposite to their actual meaning. One particularly egregious example is the phrase “it’s just a few bad apples,” frequently used to defend a group or organization from the actions of a few. Variations…

Animating a CSS Sprite With JavaScript

Take a look at this demo, and guess how the animation is achieved. It’s not an animated GIF. It’s a PNG sprite that is brought to life with a little bit of JavaScript. The sprite image is a long strip containing each frame of…

Kuler

10 Web Apps for Web Design

If someone asked you what tools you commonly use for constructing web designs, you would probably mention the obvious: your favorite text editor and graphics program, the web inspector in your preferred browser, things like that. But what about those nifty web apps that,…

Webmaster-Source Version 6.0

Meet Webmaster-Source 6.0

It’s been about four years since this site last had a design refresh, and it’s high time it did! Version five really hasn’t changed much over the four years since its launch, and it’s looking a little stale. So today I bring you, the…

Full Circle: The Return of Static Blog Generators

WordPress is the most popular blogging software today, powering a majority of the top one hundred blogs. Like many of the systems that are popular nowadays, it’s dynamic. The server pieces together pages on the fly when they are requested, pulling content from the…

Pure CSS Blockquote Styling

Ever since the days of print, it has been common to style quotations and cover blurbs with oversized quotation marks floating along the left side. The practice is alive and well in the internet age, though the technique usually used is a background image.…