I have been at Apple's Worldwide Developer's Conference (WWDC) in San Francisco over the last week. I think the below graphic adequately describes how much I am looking forward to Chicago weather when I return.

It seemed simple enough.  I wanted recent photos that were posted on my Facebook account to auto-magically be posted my blog. However, due to either my ineptitude at searching or the non-inutitiveness of Facebook, I was unable to figure out how to do this after hours of searching on Google.  Finally, I figured it out and was embarrassed by how simple the process was. 

1. Go to your facebook Profile Wall.
2. Click on "Create a Profile Badge" (on the lower left)
3. Click "Edit this badge"
4. Modify to your heart's content and click save.
5. Copy the resulting HTML to whatever part of your website that you desire.
   

P.S. I also use TwitterFeed to automatically update my Twitter status when I update my Facebook status.

I am a Mac guy; that is no secret. But my hatred for Windows, or more specifically Compaq (bought out by HP) is growing by leaps and bounds.

Let me back up. A client brought me a desktop machine a couple of weeks ago with a dead hard drive. I ran a hard drive recovery tool, Spinrite, on it and was able to create the most agonizing grinding sounds I have ever heard a hard drive make. The drive was toast. No freezing this one. No problem. I replaced the hard drive. After ordering restore CD's (the original was scratched) and loading the 12 of them (Compaq evidentally never heard of a DVD), the fun began. I got a System configuration error, stating that I should call “Customer Care” with “Error Code Purple.” 

Code Purple is the sign of a booby trap placed in HP and Compaq computers that will prevent it from booting if you reinstall the system after replacing any piece of hardware (in my case, a hard drive).  I instant messaged HP support. They told me to bring it in to a service center. I thought I was supposed to be the service center! (Transcript included in the extended story).

I found the fix at http://www.billoblog.com.  The short of it - if you have Win XP, empty the contents of  C:\hp\bin\ConfigCheck\cfgchk.bat and just leave an empty file with that name. I used a Ubuntu Live CD to do so, but could have just as easily transferred the drive to another working Windows (oxymoron) machine, and edited the file there.

The moral of the story: don't buy a Compaq or HP machine unless you like booby traps!

Alright, I admit it. I have been sucked into Facebook. I have known about it for years (or at least 4 - it was started in 2004). However, ironically, it was my wife that pulled me into it. She started using it about 2 months ago. That and seeing that Twitter didn't seem to be going anywhere, I decided to create an account on Facebook.

For the uninitiated, Facebook is a social networking website where you can create a network of friends, amongst whom you can post short status updates, photos, notes, and generally stay in touch with each other, all on one messy website "wall". 

After a week, I really enjoy it.  I have re-met up with friends that I haven't seen in 10-20 years. If you haven't tried it, I encourage you to give it a run. And if you do, be sure to add me as your "friend".

Most of us have a wireless router at home, usually stuck in some corner or by the sole remaining desktop in the house.  Most of us are very content to let the thing sit and ignore it, as long as it is working. But some geeks end up loading custom firmware on it.  As mentioned in a previous article, I loaded dd-wrt on my router a few years ago.

Wanting a few more features, I decided this weekend to change to Tomato firmware for my router. So far, I have been very pleased. The upgrade went smoothly. Many settings where transferred over from dd-wrt.  Read the docs about the password before you upgrade though!  A few of the advantages that Tomato has over dd-wrt follow:

• Bandwidth stats and graphs that will save to a SMB share, so they are kept even through a power loss (dd-wrt had bandwidth stats, but they were not saved)
  
• Dynamic DNS will update 2 servers (dd-wrt only did 1)
• Dynamic DNS will update OpenDNS (I didn't see this on dd-wrt)
• Ability to write and save scripts to the router firmware
  
• Very clean, simple interface
• Hopefully, stability -- time will tell (dd-wrt would occasionally lock up on me)

All I need now is the Ketchup firmware!

Our church website was just given a face lift a couple of days ago. I wish I could take credit for the design, as it turned out quite nicely in my opinion. The only part I was responsible for was the sermons portion of the site.

Colleen has been working very hard on creating a new website for the library, and it also is turning out very nicely.