My flight up was originally supposed to be FLL to IAD with a stop at EWR, but thanks to hurricane Sandy, the EWR-IAD leg was cancelled, so United put me on a later US Scareways flight direct from FLL to DCA. At PNF, the shuttle driver asked what airline, and it being Halloween I responded "U.S. ...SCAREways, muahahaha". That fell kind of flat on my audience. Neanderthals. FLL was surprisingly quiet; there was literally no line at the first security checkpoint. I opted for the backscatter scan for once,... (...more)

What good is setting error_reporting = E_ALL in php.ini, when even PEAR libraries (Pager, looking at you) throw E_STRICT errors no matter what you do? Specifically, Pager by design rejects non-static method calls... but its methods are coded non-static. So of course E_STRICT carps that non-static methods shouldn't be called statically. If you like to have the server display errors in dev, and hey that's pretty handy, then whoops, there's an ugly error littering your perfectly functional page. You could wra... (...more)

What exactly goes into securing an XAMPP installation? First, on a fresh MySQL install, user 'root' has a null password. This is a big gaping hole because even though root in a fresh-install scenario can only access the MySQL service from the local machine, the Apache web service is shipping phpMyAdmin right off the bat. So either run the mysql command-line console, or browse to localhost/phpmyadmin and go to the SQL tab, or use SQLyog, whatever you're comfortable with -and issue the commands UPDATE mysq... (...more)

Lots to love about Chrome, but there's always a BUT.... Today it's the hoops we have to jump through to copy a legacy Chrome extension from one computer to another. And by "legacy" I mean "used to be in the Chrome store but has since been removed". And by that, I specifically refer to v1.2 of a "Facebook Share" extension, from a developer called "one click". "But, my dear old bean", you say, "Facebook Share button extensions for Chrome are a dime a dozen. Why trouble yourself over this one particular zombi... (...more)

Dreamed long dreams where I was lodging (not sure if I was renting or hotelling or what exactly) with Dad and Pam and cousins all occupying other units, until the landlord woke me knocking at minutes to 10AM. Paid TWO whole weeks rent so there's no awkwardness when I'm away at D.-'s next month. (edit: the landlord called looking for rent daily until he physically showed up and I reminded him I'd paid ahead already... twit) Ironed out a number of issues with the new-to-me Lenovo lappy, and tweaked the Wi... (...more)