Richard’s Ramblings

When you work with a team of Java developers of varying experience levels, you will often see compiler warnings that are ignored by Java 5 — and thus just as often ignored by the developers who figure that if it isn’t important to Java, it isn’t important for them to fix either. I find the [...]

Ever thought about creating your own WordPress theme from scratch, but were just too confused where to begin? If you’re hosting your own WordPress installation, it’s actually much easier than you think.
The most important thing to realize is that the basic structure of a WordPress theme mirrors the same structure of just about every template-based [...]

There are many reasons you’d want to permanently remap IP addresses and hostnames on your computer by editing its HOSTS file, the most common being to prevent access to harmful websites.
Sometimes, however, the reason is more benign; a local web application won’t allow itself to be run by visiting http://localhost or http://127.0.0.1 — like a [...]

Say “You know, you sure ask a lot of nosy questions for a rent-a-cop.”
When asked if you have anything to declare, say “Yeah, my wife talks too much!”
When asked the purpose of your visit, reply “I’m running from the law.”
Tell the patrol official, “Please hurry the fûçk up!”
Pull out a passport randomly from a large [...]

Back in October, a hacker broke into a security-themed blog named Light Blue Touchpaper. The hacker then promoted himself to an administrator. I am not aware of any damage caused by the perpetrator since the blog owner rapidly discovered the break-in, disabled the account, and tightened up security. In doing so, he examined the database [...]

There’s a lot of stuff running by default in Windows Vista that you probably don’t need. Disabling them may speed up your sluggish computer.