Recently I had need to extract my password hash for use on other computers. I spent some time poking around to see if there was something that already existed, I didn't immediately find anything to use, and I thought this would be a fun challenge, so I put this together. It did the trick and I'm back in business. (more...)

I've been wanting to start a yeast library for some time now. At first there were grand visions of dozens of different yeast strains, all available in the freezer at a moment's notice. After spending a couple of weeks researching propagation and quality control techniques, I think I scared myself out of it.  A few months passed, and I finally picked up where I left off. I realized I could step into this slowly, just like I did with homebrewing. I don't need a 400x oil immersion lens, a hemocytometer, or a -80˚C lab grade freezer yet-- just some vials, a pressure cooker, and fresh yeast (OK, and a few other things). (more...)

What if people just gave things to one another because they could. What if one day you were walking down the sidewalk, and a person approached you, just to hand you a flower. How about a person standing on the sidewalk playing a 12 string touch guitar, just giving their music to the world around them, with no expectation of receiving anything in return. It happens, and it's truly beautiful when it does. These are the events where a real connection happens. Sure it's nice to meet people working at your favorite music store, or pizza place, but it's an entirely different interaction.

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It's been a few months that I've been toying with Ruby on Rails. And to be totally honest it's been very very frustrating. But I can't hold Ruby or Rails accountable for that. Most of it is just me. This is my first ever MVC framework. The moment a project is generated, you instantly have about 20 moving parts. That's because it makes all sorts of assumptions about what you want to do, and that's spectacular, but it can really make your head spin at the beginning. I've got about four unfinished books on Ruby on Rails. They all pretty much seem to take the same course, which is stepping through the creation of some simple application, like a blog.

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I've been consulting in the IT field for about four years now. The last two have been with a small company. I specialize in Mac OS X. I am certified for helpdesk. I routinely work with the server version of Mac OS 10. For the past two years I've been working with a company in San Francisco called MacCentric Solutions. (more...)

Since the dawn of time, parking in San Francisco has been impossible. The DPT was born to protect the parking turnover rate, and ensure running errands was possible. Time limits in permit neighborhoods were enforced to protect the resident's ability to park. But somewhere along the line something went terribly wrong.

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Unlocking the super secret unreleased table of contents (toc) in the Mac OS X 10.6 Server Wiki. I don't know if you've noticed Wikipedia's brilliant table of contents at the top of their articles. It's really really nice. When you click on a particular section, it brings you right to it. Well, sure you could do that with your very own anchors, no big deal. But, as you update your content, the table of contents wouldn't automagically update. Sure their are other Wiki solutions out there, but Apple's Wiki service that comes bundled with 10.6 server is completely idiot proof (as far as editing pages goes), and it's super slick. (more...)