Google recently updated Google Maps and while it looks nice, I actually had to go back to the old (classic) Google Maps to find how to get the embed code to embed a map into a website. If you need to embed a Google Map into your website, you can follow these steps:
1. Go to maps.google.com and search for your location.
2. If you see the new Google Map, click on the gear in top right and select “Classic Maps”
Adding icons to a website can easily make it look more polished, but it can also be a hassle to find good fonts and deal with resizing them or styling them as images. I came across this site called Font Awesome that offers 361 fonts as icons so you can style these icons easily via CSS and easily include them into your site.
http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/
When it comes to search engine optimization and internet marketing, getting inbound links from high quality websites (those that have a high Google page rank) is very important. One way to do this is by writing articles related to your website and including links from it to your site. Finding quality sites to submit articles to and managing your submissions can be a lot of work.
Following is a list of article submission sites with their Google Page Rank
Recently, I had to take and prepare a video for uploading to Kickstarter. Since I wanted a high quality video and I did this all by myself, I just used my phone (Samsung Google Nexus), put it on a tripod and filmed myself in HD. I then transferred the video over USB to my Windows laptop, opened it up in Windows Movie Maker, added some still images, and then saved the output in 1280×720 which has a 16:9 aspect ratio.
It turns out, for some reason, Kickstarter uses the old 4:3 aspect ratio for videos. Since I wanted to show as much of the video possible without any black bars, I had to crop the video from a 16:9 aspect ratio to 4:3. The width of the Kickstarter video area is 620px wide so I wanted the video to be that wide. I decided to just go with 640 px wide and crop the video to 640 x 480 since that’s a common size. I did this by downloading HandBrake and automatic cropping as shown in the following screenshot. I used the High Profile for the highest quality output. Click on the image to enlarge. Handbrake will automatically crop the black bars.
Continue reading Preparing a Video on Windows for Kickstarter
Here’s a nice, scalable, customizable map of the United States.
http://intridea.github.io/stately/
I wish this existed for all countries.
There are many password management tools and password generators. Here are two that I’ve used that seem pretty good.
Password Generator
Password Manager
Dashlane can also sync your passwords across multiple computers and devices so you don’t have to manually do so. It also has a nice interface.
Sorting lines of text is easy. Many text editors include that functionality built in. But, what if you need to sort blocks of text, e.g. a PHP classes. Here are some ways to do it.
1. Convert each block of text to a single line by replacing each line break with a unique identifier. Run your built-in line sorting function. Replace each unique identifier with a line break again.
2. Write a regular expression that will match each block of text and sort using a regular expression.
Recently, I needed to edit a php file in Vi and although I need the line of the error, I didn’t see line numbers like I normally do in my Sublime Text 2 editor. It turns out that if you’re in Vi/Vim, you can type
:set numbers
or
:set nu
and line numbers will show up. Much better! But, that only works for the current Vi session. If you want Vi to always show line numbers, edit the .vimrc file in your home folder
vi ~/.vimrc
and append “set number” to it.
SVN is a version control system often used by programmers to keep track of versions or changes of code. It makes it easy collaborate on code projects and keep a backup of every change you’ve made. Following are some common tasks you may need to perform.
This copies files from your trunk folder in SVN to a folder on your local computer. The folder on your local computer is your “working copy” where you make changes.
Interesting documentary. A must-see! Is it better to invest in indexes instead of individual funds?
And here’s a nice explanation of how much your managed investment fees can cost you.
