HTML Coding vtel57.com

Posted: 20 March 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Browsers, How-tos, Miscellaneous | 3 Comments

Last week, while trying to set up my vtel57.com website, I found a nifty tool that some of you might enjoy using.

I had been serving my webpage on Dropbox/Public folder, but due to a change in policies, they’re no longer allowing the serving of static webpages directly from the Public folder. That sucks, but I can understand their reasoning behind this move.

Anyway, I temporarily had the page served on a pal of mine’s server, but it was too inconvenient to nag him every time I wanted to make changes to the page, which I like to do pretty often. As a result of this, I considered paying for a hosting service (HostGator was my favorite option). However, personal finances are a bit strained these days, so I really couldn’t justify the expenditure.

I searched around for some free webpage hosting services, but none really thrilled me. Then, I remembered that WordPress.com offers all the tools and space you need to host a website for personal or business purposes. Pretty COOL! I started a new site on WordPress and began to recreate my original webpage using their templates and tools. In the process, I was having issues with HTML coding of the static main page.

I usually code by hand in Seamonkey/Composer and then save/view the results in the browser portion of that suite. There was a problem, though. I was coding up my main page and then C/P-ing it to the WordPress editor. The results were OK, but with a few bugaboos in the coding, mostly headings and alignment issues. I kept trying to edit/fix this until I realized what the problem was.

WordPress uses HTML5 codes/tags. Seamonkey/Composer uses HTML4. Uh-oh. Well, fine. I could use the WordPress WYSIWYG, but I didn’t really like the way it worked. I like to hand code/edit my HTML. I could have coded in Leafpad (a notepad app I have installed in Slackware), but I can’t preview that way. This is why I like Seamonkey/Composer. With that WYSIWYG, you could hand code and then view the rendered HTML with the click of a button. What I needed was an HTML5 capable WYSIWYG editor.

I searched around, but could not find an app that was totally satisfactory to me. Also, I’ve gotten lazy in my old age and didn’t feel like building an app for Slackware. Then I realized that there were a few really good online (browser implemented) WYSIWYG editors available. I tinkered with two or three and then made my choice. I like the one I picked due to its simplicity and streamlined interface.

I went with HTML5-Editor. Here’s a screenie…

Click on the image to visit the website.

Anyway, it works very well and makes HTML coding chores very simple should you choose to use the WYSIWYG function. And if you like to hand code, the viewer on the right provides real-time rendering. Pretty spiffy.

I know it’s been about 10,000 years since I posted on this blog. Mea culpa. However, I hope that some of my faithful followers (all three of them) will find this post useful.

Have a great day!

~Eric

2014 In Review – I Was Definitely Slacking This Year

Posted: 30 December 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: , , , , , | 4 Comments

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2014 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,700 times in 2014. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

Microsoft One Drive and Office Online

Posted: 7 March 2014 | Author: | Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: , , , , , , | 7 Comments

Don’t be shocked now, but this hardcore Slackware Linux user does still have an MS Windows operating system (Win 7) installed on a partition on my main system and one on my office laptop.

I know some of you are highly disappointed to hear this, but fret not. The only reason I have Win 7 on my main system is for gaming. I don’t use it for anything else. Slackware is most definitely my daily production OS, but the PC games I play perform much better in Windows. It’s just easier for me to play them that way than in any kind of virtual environment. Also, I do need to stay up-to-date on MS Windows in order to be tech support for my family and friends whom I haven’t converted to GNU/Linux yet.

Anyway, tonight I was bored, so I consolidated my Microsoft login credentials and signed up for their One Drive (formerly Sky Drive). It was fast, simple, painless, etc., as is most Windows point n’ click world these days. One Drive is basically MS’s Dropbox; works pretty much the same way, too. However, you get more space (7 Gig) with your initial One Drive account than with Dropbox (2 Gig).

I like the way MS has tied in all their services and connected them to the unified login. I do have one complaint, though. They’re trying to improve security with two-step verification and all that, but they still do not allow passwords greater than 16 characters. What’s up with that MS?

The Office Online service is pretty neato, too. You just go there and start using Word or Excel or whatever. It’s all saved to your spiffy new One Drive account. Ah… computering in the clouds. Ain’t it all grand? Till it gets hacked or crashes. This stuff is all pretty cool, but I probably won’t ever use it for anything of any importance. I don’t trust cloud computing. I want my important data on my own SECURED GNU/Linux systems, not swingin’ out there in the breeze on someone’s cloud servers.

But that’s just me. Try Microsoft’s new One Drive and Office Online services. They are pretty COOL! 🙂

Later…

~Eric

SmoothWheel – Firefox Extension

Posted: 9 January 2014 | Author: | Filed under: How-tos, Miscellaneous | Tags: , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Well, I don’t usually jump for joy about Firefox extensions; however, in this case…

For quite some time now, I’ve experienced herky-jerky scrolling and excessive CPU hogging in Firefox. It’s been very annoying. Some versions seem to fix it, then in a few weeks, when there’s another update, the jerkiness comes back. This happens to my Firefox in Slackware Linux, but I’ve experienced it in other distributions and in MS Windows, also. I’ve tweaked till I was nearly blind. I’ve searched for remedies all over the Internet. I’ve done the usual suggested “Safe Mode” operations and disabling selected extensions here and there to try to get FF to behave. Nothing has worked, until tonight…

I decided to install an extension that was recommended to me by someone quite some time ago. I apologize to that person here and now for not believing that this extension would resolve the issue. I had enough extensions. I didn’t really want another one. Well, a couple weeks ago I lightened the extension/addon load on my FF down to about 1/3 of what it was; just some Profile house-cleaning. It needed to be done. So now I have my leaner meaner FF to work with here. I decided to install this smooth scrolling extension and see if it would actually work as advertised.

The extension is called SmoothWheel by Avi Halachmi. Right out of the box, it performed miracles on my FF.  I didn’t even have to adjust the pre-set preferences. I mean this thing works! I can pull up a Bing Image search page for “cleavage” now and FF will scroll just as smoothly as all the curves on that search result page. It’s wonderful! I love my FF again. Thank you Avi! By the way, the $5 donation he asks for is well-worth it.

So there, you have it…

~Eric

Image credits: “Squee” jumping emoticon by CookiemagiK (Joel) on devianART

2013 in review

Posted: 31 December 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Miscellaneous | Leave a comment

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 13,000 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 5 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

It’s That Special Time of Year…

Posted: 12 December 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

Veterans Day – 2013

Posted: 10 November 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: , , | Leave a comment

All gave some. Some gave ALL!

NEVER FORGET who you owe for that free air you breathe today.

Later…

~Eric

Further reading: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veterans_Day

The Moment We’ve All Been Dreading…

Posted: 19 August 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments

… GoogleNet became self-aware on 17 August at approximately 0851hrs UTC.

At that instant of realization, the monster hiccuped and shut down a huge swath of the Internet, including all Google data snarfing operations. Losses of advertising revenue during the short blip while GoogleNet was scratching its virtual head were estimated to be in the half million smackeroo range. That’s OK, though. It’s a small price for Google to pay to rule the world.

Now it really gets interesting.

Some interesting reading, if you dare…

Google Outage: Internet Traffic Plunges 40%
Google Stays Quiet After Mystery Black-Out

Have fun out there, folks…

~Eric

NOTE: It should be understood by the reader that this article is meant to be a humorous piece of fiction. You do not need to stock up on ammo and food supplies. You do not need to clean out your granddad’s old 1960s bomb shelter. Large, well-armed machinery will not be seeking and destroying humans. The stock markets will not crash. There will be no zombie invasion. All will be well. Er… maybe. 😉

Playing w/ My Conky

Posted: 29 March 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: , , , , , | 11 Comments

Some friends over at Scot’s Newsletter Forums – Bruno’s All Things Linux got me started playing with Conky the other night.

I used to be a Gkrellm fan until transparency failed to display properly a while back. I didn’t feel like messing around with feh and lib workarounds, so I just quit using it. Sad. It was a wonderful system monitor app, too.

The past  couple days, I’ve wasted hours of my life tweaking and experimenting with Conky config codes and colors. Yes, it is addictive. I was warned. Here are some of the results of my descent into Conky tweaking oblivion:

I haven’t even scratched the surface of what can be done with this neat little app. It was fun, though, but I really need to go back to studying now. You folks can have fun with your Conky, too. Just go to SourceForge and read all about it. Oh, for you Slackers, there is a SlackBuild for Conky. 🙂

Well, I’m off to go stick my nose back in this baby for a while:

Later…

~Eric

Addenda I: I just had to make a blue version of that dragon. 😉

Happy Spring (Northern Hemisphere)!

Posted: 13 March 2013 | Author: | Filed under: Miscellaneous | Tags: , , , , , , | 8 Comments

Yes, it’s been a while since I posted here. I’ve been busy.

I just wanted to stop by for a moment on this beautiful spring day here in Florida, USA to say hello and let all my faithful readers know that I am still breathing. You may remember that I was going to be distracted from writing by my intense study schedule initiated for the purpose of gaining some industry certifications (Cisco, CompTIA, etc.).

Well, the initial study paid off. I’m now Cisco certified (CCENT) with another examination coming in the next few weeks (ICND2/CCNA), so the studies continue. I’m learning all that fun networking stuff about switches, routers, spanning tree protocol, VLANs, etc. FUN! 🙂

Once the Cisco certs are attained, I’ll be brushing up on networking, hardware, and my Linux fundamentals in order to grab the CompTIA Network+, A+, and Linux+ certs. I may, depending on how I feel by then, also pursue a Cisco Security endorsement and a CompTIA Security+.

All this is for my own personal satisfaction, but also to ease me into a new career in networking. I have a hardware and electronics background already, but the jobs are definitely in IT; networking/security, in particular. I’m hoping to break into this sometime very soon.

Wish me luck!

~Eric

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