For an upcoming project, I need to pull in metadata about movies and TV shows — genres, plot summaries, actors, etc. The de-facto source is, of course, IMDB. Unfortunately, they’re behind the times and don’t offer an API to access their data. (At least not one that I’ve ever found.) So, here’s a quick PHP class that takes a movie…
So it’s been two weeks since my Drobo arrived from Amazon. I’m sure they’re selling like hotcakes, but I don’t personally know anyone else with one — I figured I might as well gather my thoughts and post a review. Hopefully this will give a good overview if you’re not already familiar with the device. If you are, I’ll be…
Clever solution from Daniel Jalkut of Red Sweater Software to speed up reading referral links pointing to your website. His script highlights the relevant sections so you can quickly scan down to what was said about you.
[Update: You might also be interested in s3up for storing static content in Amazon S3.] Earlier this week I posted about my experience redesigning this site, focusing on optimizing my page load times using YSlow. A large part of that process involved storing static content (images, stylesheets, JavaScript) on Amazon S3 and using it like a poor man’s content delivery…
It’s been a long time coming, but I finally pushed out a new design for this website last month. I rebuilt it from the ground up using two key tools from the Yahoo! Developer Network: The new design is really a refresh of the previous look with a focus on readability and speed. I want to take a few minutes…
One of the best movies ever made just got even better. The original 1998 release ran 96 minutes and the new director’s cut is about 15 minutes longer, clocking in at 111 minutes. The new cut supposedly has improved special effects and a new and improved sound mix . . . the new release also features two additional commentary tracks….
MercuryMover is a System Preference pane that lets you move and resize windows using only the keyboard. Awesome. Add that to an already lethal TextMate + Quicksilver combination, and I’m inching closer to my dream of unplugging my mouse forever. —via MacOSXHints
Here’s a quick Pepper plugin called Holy Crap! I wrote for Shaun Inman’s Mint software. The idea is simple: it sends you an email alert whenever it detects your site has become popular on del.icio.us, Digg, etc. Think of it as an early warning system. It’s easy to add your own warnings to the Pepper. Out of the box it…
Bank of America has a great online banking system. It’s why I switched to them three years ago. I’ve often wanted them to provide an RSS feed of recent transactions on my account — I’ve emailed them multiple times, but no such luck. So, today I finally got around to doing what I always do — I wrote a script…
For better or worse, most of my coworkers live and die by their Exchange calendars. Unfortunately, as a developer working on a Mac 24/7, there aren’t many options for dealing with the barrage of Outlook invites I receive each day. I can either use Entourage which only kinda-sorta-works, or I can just deal with it and transcribe each invite manually…