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Because I am a graphics guy, my buddy asked me to make him a wallpaper for his mother-in-law’s cell phone. I needed to know her screen dimensions to make it and he didn’t know what they were. So I searched good old Google to find the dimensions and instead, I stumbled upon this great little website.

http://wallpaper.hellaphone.com/  This site is a great free tool to make custom wallpapers for virtually any cell phone. You can either upload your own image or link to one on the web. The phone I had to make one for has a front and inside image. The website created both images for me.

The free wallpaper tool is a great find and very easy to use.

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Recently I noticed that my site was loading uber-slow. I never really thought much of it, but then more and more people were complaining so I took a closer look at it. There were a couple of issues that I uncovered.

The first big issue was the social networking plugin I was using had a server that was down, that is why I don’t have the bookmark links at the end of posts right now. I removed that and it sped up a little bit, but it was still lagging. This is when I discovered a downfall with WordPress.

Upon doing an audit of my WordPress, I found out that I had a bunch of plugins activated that I wasn’t using, some of which were calling 404 pages. This was draining my site big time and making loads take forever. Once I deactivated the unused plugins, load times dropped. This site still has a few issues that are causing a not-so-optimal load time, but it is more along the lines of normal now.

Firefox add-ons turned out to be my best friend for this task. I used FireBug and YSlow to determine the issues. Both these tools provided me with the insight I needed into my site’s issues and then with a few clicks, I was able to remedy the majority of the issues.

Now that those extra plugins and error pages are gone, my site is running much better. I am a little baffled as to what to do next. Some of the plugins I am using are pretty standard these days and I like them. They are Web 2.0 and are easy to implement via plugins in WordPress. The only downfall is now my site is calling out to multiple servers and loading tons of javascript code. The only workaround is to write these modules myself. I don’t know about you, but I don’t have the time to write all of this custom interactivity myself, so for now, I will just sit back, be happy with what I have and wait for the developers of the plugins to eventually write lighter weight plugins.

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Mac OSX - Leopard DVD Ejecting Issues SOLVED!!!
take me to the solution »

I fought off buying Leopard as long as I possibly could. I finally broke down and purchased it from some pawn shop on ebay. The disc came in the mail and I quickly opened it up. From watching videos online, I was prepared for an easy process. However, when I opened up the package, I could not find a registration code or anything to input when prompted (turns out you don’t need one). This made me a little worried that I didn’t purchase a legit copy. Being from a pawn shop and $50 under retail value, I figured either the copy was stolen or a fraud.

After doing a full system backup, I put the dvd in my laptop and prepared to move foward. The DVD spun, made a few loud noises, repeated two more times and then ejected. I think I was scammed. I tried again… same result. I became very irritated, because I can’t really call Apple Support because I didn’t buy it from them. I can’t do much with the pawn shop either, they just sold it, they don’t offer support, and the fact that they only had 12 copies meant I probably couldn’t mail it back for a replacement disc.

So, I jumped online. Turns out many people have been having the same issue, put the disc in, and it pops back out.

Here are the possible solutions I found:

1. Burn a duplicate of the disc on another machine and then try the new disc
2. Have Apple send you a new disc
3. Burn a new disc image without the XCodeTools directory
4. Reset pram - reset machine, hold down control + option + p + r, let it chime three times
5. Boot from disc - restart, hold down c
6. Choose boot disc - restart, hold down option

Unfortunately, none of these worked for me, so I am sure others are stuck too, however, I did find a solution.

THE SOLUTION:

• I grabbed my wife’s 5 year old iBook and put the Leopard dvd in, and it worked! Sweet, one step closer.
• Then I grabbed a firewire plug and plugged the iBook into my MacBook Pro
• Next, I shut down the iBook and rebooted in target disc mode - hold down t while it reboots (must be plugged in through firewire)
• The iBook mounted as a disc drive and so did the dvd drive
• I opened up the dvd and ran the install process successfully

This process took a lot longer to install than it normally would. This is because the dvd player was running off of another laptop through the firewire connection. But it did install! The process was supposed to take about an hour as good ol’ John stated in the video. It took me about 4 hours. Almost 2 hours were spent trying to find the solution and prove that the disc was not a fraud and then a little over two hours for the 1 hour install.

Now, Leopard is installed and it is running great. I am cruising around the machine checking out all of the new features. So far, I like it, but the over powering drop shadows that they rave about are kinda cheesy.

Hopefully this will help a few get Leopard installed. As long as you have an older Mac with a dvd player, you are good to go.

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What are icons used for?
Icons are used for labeling folders, cds/dvds, desktop icons, favorite icons, etc…

What is the .ico extension?
Icons used for a web page favorite icon are .ico files. I am pretty sure it stands for icon. A .ico file is a windows format icon that can be used to label folders, bookmarks, favorite icon for web pages, desktop icons and the bar at the bottom of the window.

Can I just make a .gif file and change the extension to .ico?
Sure, but it won’t work 100% of the time. But don’t worry, making an icon is easy and free.

So, how do I make a real icon?
If you need a .ico file, simply download the free .ico plugin for Photoshop. Save it in {/Applications/Adobe Photoshop CS3/Plug-ins/File Formats/} once it is in there, restart Photoshop. Now when you do a “save-as” you will have .ico as an option in the format menu. That is it, save it out and you are done.

The .ico file doesn’t work on my Mac…
The .ico will work on a Mac for somethings, such as a favorite icon for a web site. However, if you want to use your sweet new icon to label a folder, you need to create a .icns file. This is easy and free too. Download the img2icns application and then dump in you Applications folder, you may have to put in your admin password. Once it is in there, double click to open it. Drag your image file, no matter what it is, onto the target and let go. Done.

Enjoy your new icons…

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