The Flitter screencast series by Eric Berry (Teach Me to Code) is perhaps one of the best screencasts for learning Ruby on Rails quickly. It is a 6 part series and goes through the entire process of creating a Twitter-like clone in Rails. Perhaps the best thing about the screencast is that it is largely unedited so you can see Eric’s thought process as he develops the application.
960 Grid System
The 960 grid system consists of a single CSS file together with templates for Fireworks, Inkscape, Illustrator, OmniGraffle, Photoshop & Visio as well as printable sketch paper. It was created by Nathan Smith to assist in web development projects.
Make sure you also check out the screencast A detailed look at 960 grid system from NetTuts+.
January 21, 2010 | In Web Development | 1 Comment
TrueCrypt
TrueCrypt is a free/open source disk encryption system for Windows. It creates encrypted volumes on a hard disk and allows users to mount these volumes as drives in Windows using a secure encryption algorithm, passkey and optionally keyfiles for two-pass authentication.
Mounting a volume using the command line
truecrypt.exe /v C:\VolumeName.example /lC /a /q
Note: use the parameters /l + drive letter e.g. C:\ = /lC
Dismounting a volume using the command line
truecrypt.exe /q /dC
Note: use the parameters /d + drive letter e.g. C:\ = /dC
Also see the TrueCrypt Documentation
January 21, 2010 | In Software | No Comments
The hosts File
The hosts file is text file is used by your TCP/IP connection on the Internet before DNS to map IP addresses to domain names. For really good discussion on what the hosts file is all about, check out the following Security Now Podcast (this is an MP3 file). The hosts file is used in Windows, Mac and Linux systems.
In windows, the hosts file can be found under: C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc (presuming C:\Windows is your default Windows directory. Otherwise use %WinDir%\System32\drivers\etc.
You can download hosts files that block bad sites by mapping known, bad addresses to localhost (127.0.0.1) which is your own computer. So instead of going to the bad domain name, it just redirects your browser back to your own PC preventing it from loading a known ad, malware or otherwise bad site.
You can download a comprehensive hosts file from MVPS.org.
Note in addition to the hosts file, there is an lmhost file (Lan Manager hosts) used in Microsoft Windows for the Windows Internet Name Service (WINS) protocol.
An example file is provided in %WinDir%\System32\drivers\etc called lmhosts.sam.
This article explains how WINS resolves names and where the lmhosts file comes into play.
The lmhosts file has the same basic syntax as the hosts file with some additional options. After you add entries into it, re-register your dns cache using the following command through command prompt:
$ ipconfig /registerdns
January 21, 2010 | In Software | No Comments
Disabling ipv6 in Linux
Make the following modifications to disable ipv6 in CentOS (Redhat) Linux:
/etc/modprobe.conf
alias net-pf-10 off
alias ipv6 off
/etc/sysconfig/network
NETWORKING_IPV6=no
/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0
IPV6INIT=no
Also check the otherl ifcfg-eth0…n and wan0…n scripts.
January 21, 2010 | In Software | No Comments