Tech Otaku

Google Public DNS: Faster Internet Access?

Steve

Internet

3-minute read

G

You may have heard about Google’s recent release of Google Public DNS which, amongst other claims, aims to speed-up your browser’s interaction with DNS servers thereby making the internet appear faster. Well, that’s my interpretation anyway.

Google states that “…Google Public DNS takes some new approaches that we believe offer more valid results, increased security, and, in most cases, better performance.”

I was particularly interested in the possible speed increase after finding these benchmarks where the comparative speed of Google Public DNS (8.8.8.8), Level 3 (4.2.2.2) and OpenDNS (208.67.222.222) were tested.

Using these same DNS servers, here are my results for a handful of sites I visit regularly:

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Setting Dimensions of OS X Finder Windows

Steve

Mac

3-minute read

S

One small annoyance I have with the OS X Finder is its apparent inability to let me set a default Finder window size. However many times I resize windows with the mouse, the Finder will eventually reset them to some arbitrary dimensions.

If, like me, you find this aspect of the Finder’s behaviour particularly irksome then try this AppleScript.

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Vertical, Horizontal & Diagonal Spry Sliding Panels

Steve

Web Development

4-minute read

V

I was recently looking to give my photo gallery an overhaul. I’m quite a fan of Adobe’s Spry framework, so I thought I’d give the Sliding Panels widget a try. There are several examples on Adobe’s site showing panels sliding vertically, horizontally and in any direction. The direction is controlled by some CSS and after successfully playing around with vertical and horizontal sliding I couldn’t figure out from the examples how to get the panels to slide in any direction. That is until I realised how the panels are laid out and the importance of one particular CSS declaration.

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Installing PEAR Mail Package on MAMP and XAMPP

Steve

Local Server

4-minute read

I

If you want your visitors to be able to send you an email from your site there are several options including mailto, sendmail or Postfix. There are also numerous sites offering contact forms for free. I was using the excellent swiftmailer which performed perfectly on both my local and remote servers for a while, but subsequently ceased working on my remote server – presumably because of some configuration change by my hosting provider which I never did get to the bottom of.

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Starting XAMPP’s Apache Server at System Startup on Mac OS X

Steve

Mac

5-minute read

S

Until I recently switched to XAMPP I had been using MAMP to provide a local server environment on my Mac. A small but none the less important feature of MAMP is an option to have the Apache and MySQL servers started when you open the application. So, by checking this option and including MAMP as a Login Item my MAMP servers were up-and-running when I logged in. Unfortunately, XAMPP has no such option. Including XAMPP as a Login Item merely opens XAMPP Control.app and I have to start the servers manually. An extra step I’d rather not have to do.

So, how can I have my XAMPP servers running whenever I login? The answer, by using a daemon.

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Configuring Virtual Hosts in XAMPP on Mac OS X

Steve

Local Server

5-minute read

C

A while back I posted about configuring virtual hosts in MAMP. More recently I noticed that MAMP hadn’t been updated in nearly a year and their support forum resembled a wilderness. Thinking that maybe the writing was on the wall for MAMP I started looking for an alternative and came across XAMPP.

XAMPP provides a similar local server environment to MAMP, but configuring virtual hosts is a little different. Unlike the Pro version of MAMP , XAMPP doesn’t have a nice GUI to allow virtual hosts to be configured easily. So, there is no alternative but to do it manually.

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Configuring Virtual Hosts in MAMP on a Mac

Steve

Local Server

12-minute read

C

If you need to easily set-up and maintain a local server environment on your Mac then look no further than MAMP. MAMP comes with Apache, MySQL and PHP and provides a local server environment independent of that installed as default on macOS. And it’s free.

However, out-of-the-box you’re limited to a single local host. This can prove inconvenient when developing multiple sites each requiring their own local host. The most convenient and cost effective way to overcome this limitation is to use virtual hosts.

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