Ryan Collins

Ping.fm bookmarklet for multiple Ping.fm accounts

// March 1st, 2010 // No Comments » // RC Tips, Software, Web 2.0

Since Ping.fm doesn’t allow you to add multiple Twitter accounts to one Ping.fm account, I’ve resorted to have two accounts with them, one for my personal accounts (Twitter, Facebook, MySpace) and one for my professional accounts (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn). To update my status for either Ping.fm account I use the special email addresses they offer and my email client.

My problem was when I wanted to post the current page I’m reading to either account. Ping.fm offers a bookmarklet, but it uses the current logged in ping.fm account, so I would have to continually log in and log out. I decided to put together my own bookmarklet that starts up a new mail message in my default email client addressed to the correct Ping.fm account. To get started, drag the following link to your bookmark bar:

Ping.fm

Once there, right click on the link, select edit and replace YOURPRIVATEPINGADDRESS with your private Ping.fm email address (just the part to the left of the @). Would you like to do it with GMail? Drag this link:

Ping.fm

And once again, right click on the link, select edit, and replace YOURPRIVATEPINGADDRESS with your private Ping.fm email address.

You can drag the links multiple times, editing the email address and the name of the link so you can associate each one with a different Ping.fm account.

Facebook’s new privacy settings

// December 13th, 2009 // No Comments » // Online Tools, RC Tips, Security

photo credit: ekurvine

Facebook has begun rolling out new settings for who can see your Facebook profile and what they can see on your profile. I suggest you double-check what is viewable about you. I try to keep my personal FB totally separate from my Facebook Page, so my profile is pretty much locked down. Over at Digital Inspiration they’ve written an article on How to Cross-Check Your Facebook Privacy Settings.

OS X not saving passwords?

// April 8th, 2009 // 2 Comments » // RC Tips, Software

About a month ago I noticed that passwords weren’t being saved in apps in OS X like Safari, Omniweb, etc. I didn’t bother trying to figure out the problem, until today when I would go to a site in Safari and it would ask to save the password. I said yes everytime, but it still didn’t save it. Finally I tracked down this blog post, OS X Keychain Not Saving Passwords…:

I struggled with this one for about a month before I finally dug into what was wrong and how to fix it. It all started when I reinstalled because I couldn’t get BootCamp installed because of volume fragmentation. Since then, my applications, specifically Mail.app and Adium, weren’t remembering passwords even if I checked the little “remember” box.

Basically, for some reason, the keychain file at ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain was now owned by root instead of by me. To check and fix from the commandline ($ is the command prompt):
$ ls -l ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain
-rw-r--r-- 1 ryan admin 781380 Apr 8 11:17 (*deleted...*)

My username is ryan. If it says anything else, use the following to change the ownership:
$ sudo chown ryan ~/Library/Keychains/login.keychain

It will ask for the administrator password, and then change the ownership of the file. I don’t think repair permissions in Disk Utility would fix this problem.

Skills You Should Know (SYSK) – vi

// April 6th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // RC Tips, SYSK, Software

I’m starting a new category, that goes along with my blog post Yes I will lead. The new category is called Skills You Should Know – SYSK. Little bits of information that through my experience aren’t something that you may not necessarily use every day, but may someday save you a ton of trouble.

Today’s topic is vi. Vi may be the only editor installed on a new unix based system, and a few commands will get you to the point where at least you can edit a few files before installing something a little more user friendly such as pico (or nano).

Vi has two modes, command and insertion. It was designed this way because sometimes the keyboard you would be using might not necessarily have all the keys we take for granted today, especially when it comes to the arrow keys. In command mode you can move the cursor around with the arrow keys or hjkl keys. To do an editing, you’ll need to switch to insertion mode. Vi defaults to command mode when it is started.

i – Switches to insertion mode
<ESC> – Switches to command mode

In a nutshell, you’ll start the editor with a file:

vi somefile

Once the file is open, you’ll press i to switch to insertion mode. Make the changes to your file. Press <ESC> to switch back to command mode. To exit you’ll press the following (these all start with the colon):

:wq – Write the file and then quit
:q! – Quit the file without saving the changes. A great way if you mess up and just want to not save your changes

These preceding commands should at least get you started. For more info, you may want to visit the following pages:
vi – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Vi Cheat Sheet
Mastering the VI editor

Inventory control

// March 26th, 2008 // No Comments » // Hardware, RC Tips

Keeping track of inventory can be a difficult, and it seems like every four months someone is asking about what product to get to use for inventory control. I created a simple database in Filemaker Pro to keep track of our inventory. Why Filemaker Pro?

• We already had it.
• I didn’t need anything that fancy.
• We also had FMP Server and FMP Unlimited (version 5.5) so I could easily publish the database onto the web, that way it can be updated from anywhere with a web connection.

I’m not a big fan of using barcodes on our equipment. Our asset tag numbers are only 5 digits long, it doesn’t take time at all to easily type them. We do use a barcode reader when inventorying new equipment. It cuts down on errors when entering serial numbers or MAC addresses. The barcode reader can read the barcodes right off of the box.

To enter new equipment, we use a spreadsheet. Once the spreadsheet is filled out, it is imported into the FMP database.

I don’t track help desk requests along with hardware. We have approximately 700 machines, and it’s very rare that a piece of equipment will have one hardware failure, let alone multiple failures that need to be tracked.

Yes, I will lead!

// March 24th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Professional Development, RC Tips

I was thinking about my blog post from last week, contemplating on how I should be more positive. People using technology in schools are already facing enough of an uphill battle without me picking on them.

Stealing Alvin’s Efficiency Tips idea, I want to post little tips, tricks, ideas to help the technology support staff in the education sector. Some of my ideas may seem to be esoteric (such as learning vi), but others should have more common appeal (imaging machings). There are conversations that happen on the Technology Coordinator’s listserv that also need to be condensed and posted.

Does this seem like a good idea? What about also creating handout sheets to help with professional development?

Tags: RCTips