Mac Lab: An Apple Macintosh OS X & Mac / PC Blog

Perhaps I should categorize this post under “Things that make you go hmmmm”.
My wife has always been a PC person. She is an Assistant Principal, and is close to a power user with Outlook, Internet Explorer, Excel, Word, all the usual suspects. She has always preferred the PC and has used my Macs with some [...]

Time to do it: backup your Wodpress database, deactivate all of your plugins, ftp the new WP files (make sure to keep your themes, plugins, and config file), update the database, and you are done. Wordpress 2.7 is awesome. It has a slick new admin interface, it is easier to find settings and features, and [...]

What is a portable program ? : A portable program is a piece of software that you can carry around with you on a portable device and use on any other computer. It can be your email program, your browser, system recovery tools or even an operating system. The coolest part about it is that [...]

In writing PHP code, several characters need to be “escaped” for the code to run properly. If not, the browser will be blank or show errors.
The following characters have to be escaped, which means you write a backslash ( \ ) in front of it.
For example: \- (the hiphen) or \. (the dot).
Other special characters [...]

Here are a few ways to password-protect your Mac, and keep it safe from prying eyes.
1.  Open System Preferences: Accounts: Login options
Change Automatic login to Disabled.
This will require a correct login after starting up the machine.

2.  Open System Preferences: Security: General
Check “Require password to wake this computer from sleep or screen saver”.
Check “Disable automatic login”.

3.  [...]

Google has done it again with its Google Labs. They have enabled you to see your Google Calendar and Documents all within the Gmail email page. The “Gadgets” make it much easier than going to each separate page to view your Calendar or Documents.
1.  Sign into your Gmail account.
2.  Click “Settings”, upper right.
3.  Click “Labs” [...]

Ruby on Rails started the framework race, so we’ve been trying several of them. Since we are PHP developers, we tried CakePHP. We liked it, but its configuration is complicated. We stumbled upon CodeIgniter and were surprised how easy is was to install; in, fact it’s zero config! Here’s a summary from EllisLab:
“CodeIgniter is a [...]