Category: DIY

  • Wonderful Pistachios: Should You Buy Them In The Shell?

    I’m a sucker for a good deal, so when I see delicious food at Sam’s Club, I have to resist the urge to stuff it into the already-packed shopping cart. But the last time we went to Sam’s, I saw that Wonderful Pistachios (the brand, although they are inherently wonderful) come in a 3-pound bag…

  • PHP script to send test emails on a schedule to make sure you are able to receive email

    Ever wondered if your email was actually working? I’ve had numerous people over the past few years wonder the same thing. Ideally you would use a consistent, dependable email service provider (think Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo!, etc.). But sometimes that isn’t an option. If you think you might be receiving email intermittently or not at all,…

  • How to backup your website

    Everyone knows (or should by now) that cheap web hosts (Bluehost, Dreamhost, MediaTemple, etc.) don’t backup your data for you. So you’d better do it yourself. If you’re on any respectable host, you should have ssh access to the box. Connect to your box via ssh and run the following commands to create a backup…

  • Speed Up That Cheap Website with Cheap Amazon S3

    Do you have an economy-grade website host? Me too. BlueHost is great for only $6.95 per month but its response times and transfer rates are terrible. Fear not — Amazon S3 to the rescue. For pennies a day you can supplement your cheap website host using Amazon’s Simple Storage Service (S3). Amazon S3 is storage…

  • DD-WRT for the win!

    Today I was faced with a difficult wireless networking scenario: looooong house, many thick walls.   The topography is as follows: Comp A Router Comp B The house is older so the walls are very, very solid and RF-absorbing. The old setup involved a Linksys WRT54GX (802.11 b/g) as the router in the middle, a…