PNG Compression Tool for Mac OS X Lion

Since the main use I have for PNG image files is as website graphical elements (button backgrounds, background images, style elements, etc., and they are usually loaded on every page of a website I design, it's important for me to be able to compress every byte out of the file that is possible. Most utilities that generate PNGs (besides the latest Photoshop CS5 edition, it seems) like to add about 5-15% of overhead to the file that actually doesn't make


AirPort Express - Flashing Yellow Light, Not Getting DHCP Address from Cable Modem

I spent the greater part of this afternoon trying to get my AirPort Express to connect to the Internet and share an IP address using a Motorola SB5101 Cable modem (with Charter Internet)... and since the solution was so simple and annoyingly stupid, I thought I'd post it here, for my reference and for anyone else spending an afternoon thinking his AirPort Express is dead.

As it turns out, the cable modem (this one, and likely many others ) will only remember the


The Church and New Media - Book on Catholic New Media use

The Church and New Media

I've heard about this book here and there the past few months, but it's getting all official now, with a spiffy website , a trailer (hey, I thought only movies had those!), and A-list endorsements .

From the endorsements:

“This book demonstrates how New Media is already impacting the Church and outlines many practical steps for dioceses, parishes, and individual Catholics to embrace it more broadly…Everyone involved in Communications and Evangelization ministries for the Church should read

Making an old iPod Mini Awesome Again

What's better than having every song you've ever purchased available wherever you are, without worrying about an expensive MP3 player getting stolen?

I've had my music library on my iPhone and iPad for some time now, but I find it cumbersome to listen to music on one of those devices, and I don't like taking them with me for a run, or setting them somewhere they might get stolen (like at a party, plugged into a stereo or sound system).

And I


PHP: Calculating Monthly/Yearly Billing Dates - Same day next month

On a recent project, I needed to generate the timestamp for the 'same day, next month' for billing purposes. This can be tough in some circumstances, like when a user signs up on the 31st of August. What happens in September, when there are 30 days? If I were to simply try something like strtotime('+1 month') , I would get back the first day of October rather than September 30th. Same problem happens when someone hits February (oh


Disabling Autocomplete on forms in Drupal 6 or 7 - Forms API

With the awesome new #states implementation in Drupal 7, and for form usability in general, it's often good to be able to selectively, or completely, disable form autocompletion for your users. One example I just encountered was a form that has two fields that are alternatively shown or hidden depending on the value of a checkbox earlier in the form. However, Google Chrome, in its infinite wisdom, was autofilling the hidden field, which shouldn't have a value if hidden, so I had to set


2011 Ordination Season Over

A shout-out to another one of my friends / former classmates, Rev. Syring , from the Diocese of Omaha (Nebraska). He will be an amazing priest, and I was privileged to be able to photograph his first Mass as a priest:

Syring First Mass 180

Please pray for our priests!


Adding Images to Search Results (Drupal Search)

For a while (earlier in my Drupal career), I was avoiding adding imagefield-attached images to nodes that appeared in my search results, because I remember the first time I tried doing so, I was still quite confused by the way drupal handled search results theming.

Well, after another crack at it, I finally have a nice, performant way of displaying images from nodes added via imagefields (or in drupal 7, image fields) inline with search results, and it didn't require much work at

Images in Search Results

Programmatically adding and removing roles to users in Drupal

[UPDATE: Here is a much simpler method for editing a user's roles .]

I thought there might be some sort of API function that allows me to add a user role to a user object by the role id (rid), but after looking at user_save() and some other information around the Drupal universe ( like this thread ), it looks like it's not as easy as I'd hoped. Definitely not like node_save(), where you just modify the


Tips for Using a MacBook (Air, Pro) in Clamshell Mode

On this page, I will compile all the knowledge, tips and tricks I have for using a MacBook, MacBook Pro, or MacBook Air as a desktop replacement, in clamshell mode.

I've used a variety of Mac laptops in the past few years (starting with a PowerBook 100, moving on to a 190, then a 1400, a 5300c, a G3 Wallstreet, an iBook G3, iBook G4, PowerBook G4, MacBook