In Search Of A Good Alarm Clock App

Written by Aijaz Ansari. Filed under Computers, Reviews. Tagged , , , , . No comments.
Android Phone
When I recently switched from the iPhone to HTC Evo running Android, I found the Evo's Alarm Clock app surprisingly primitive. I looked for replacements on the Android Market and found mobitobi's Gentle Alarm, one of the best-written Android applications I've seen so far.

Processing A List Of Files In bash

Written by Aijaz Ansari. Filed under Computers. Tagged , , . 1 Comment.
Under the tracks at Washington and Canal
When you’re working in Unix or Linux or even Mac OS X, there are often times when you need to apply the same command to a list of files.  In this post I’ll show you a couple of quick ways to do this using the bash shell. Let’s assume you have a command called that [...]

Backing Up Data With rsync

Written by Aijaz Ansari. Filed under Computers. Tagged , , , . 1 Comment.
The Agra Fort
This post shows you how to use the 'rsync' command to back up data from one directory to another (or one drive to another).

Google Now Considers Website Speed In Its Ranking

Written by Aijaz Ansari. Filed under Computers. Tagged , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment.
PageSpeed Results After Optimization
Google reported yesterday that their search engine will now include a website’s speed in the list of factors it uses to decide how high to rank the site in its search results.  In this post I consider what this means for web developers and what steps you can take to make your site faster.

Firefox Search Shortcut

Written by Aijaz Ansari. Filed under Computers. Tagged , , . 1 Comment.
Adding a Keyword to the CPAN Search Box
Wow.  This cool Firefox feature has been around since 2005, but I just found out about it a few months ago!  I swear I haven’t been living in a cave all this time.  So if you’re like me and don’t know about this yet, listen up:  In Firefox, you can bookmark a search with a [...]

TaskForest Write-up at SourceForge

Written by Aijaz Ansari. Filed under Computers. Tagged , , . 3 Comments.
TaskForest Logo
SourceForge.net has a blog in which they feature a different hosted project every day.  Today’s blog entry features my open-source job scheduler, TaskForest.  I’d like to take this opportunity to thank SourceForge for their support of open source software.

Communicating During A Crisis

Written by Aijaz Ansari. Filed under Computers. Tagged , , , , , , , , . 1 Comment.
Question
A couple of recent outages in the internet industry got me thinking about the importance of communicating with clients during a crisis. I write about the four key points to consider when trying to communicate with clients during crises.

The Performance Cost of Using WordPress

Written by Aijaz Ansari. Filed under Computers. Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , . 4 Comments.
Safari's Web Inspector
I recently tried to switch a website over from a homegrown content management system to WordPress. The results were thoroughly disheartening. This post illustrates the steps I took, and how I managed to move in the opposite direction and optimize my site even more.

Don’t Submit Photos To Frommer’s Contests

Written by Aijaz Ansari. Filed under Photography. Tagged , , , . No comments.
A Stop Sign
When you submit a photograph to Frommer's not only do they want the rights to use it for the stated purpose, they also want all rights to do anything with your picture, even license it out to others for perpetuity. In other words, they are asking for the rights of the photographer, without paying for what those rights are worth. Unchecked, these policies will wind up killing the freelance photography business. I urge you to boycott Frommer's products in protest of their licensing policies.

David duChemin On Being A Professional Photographer

Written by Aijaz Ansari. Filed under Photography. Tagged . No comments.
I recently discovered David duChemin’s blog.  I’d like to share a couple of  his posts with you.  In ‘Just?’ he offers advice to people who consider themselves ‘just an amateur photographer.’  In his follow-up piece ‘Confessions of a So-Called PRO’ he serves up an ‘anti-pep-talk’ that demonstrates that professional photographers aren’t necessarily that different from [...]