The miscellaneous postings section is where I put stuff that doesn’t categorise well anywhere else.
The Internet Archive runs the "Wayback Machine" at www.archive.org to archive pages from websites maintaining copies of them at several points in time. If you do not wish to have your website archived in this way you can prevent this using a robots.txt file.
I kept getting transaction declined errors when using a test DPS/Payment Express account for processing credit cards on a website I’m working on. (DPS or Direct Payment Solutions is the biggest player in New Zealand for providing credit card processing gateway services). This post looks at why I got the error message and the solution. …
GoDaddy is a domain registrar, web host, email provider etc. I recently needed to change the login name and password for a GoDaddy account but couldn’t work out where to change it. After a little messing around with their options I found it in the "Account Security Information" section. This post looks at how to change your login and password at GoDaddy, along with screenshots showing how to do it.
So Apple have announced the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus, featuring bigger phones than before. As a web developer creating responsive websites, does the size matter?
While it might be an issue for app developers, it shouldn’t be if you’re a web developer, because there already a bazillion screen resolutions and you should be designing for breakpoints, not resolution.
I liked this Tweet, which I think sums it up perfectly:
Dear responsive web devs: • iPhone 6: 375 × 667 px • iPhone 6 Plus: 414 × 738 px • If you care about this, you’re probably doing it wrong.
— Adrian Roselli (@aardrian) September 10, 2014
Here’s a couple of good articles on the subject:
Defining Breakpoints (“Breakpoints are the point a which your sites content will respond to provide the user with the best possible layout to consume the information.”)
Logical Breakpoints For Your Responsive Design (“There are several tactics for deciding where to put breakpoints in a responsive design. There is the rusty idea that they should be based on common screen sizes, but this doesn’t scale well. There are no “common” screen sizes. Another popular tactic is to create a breakpoint wherever the layout breaks.”)
I added this on September 13th 2014: What iPhone 6 screen size means for developers was posted on Clean Crisp Code.
A PS/2 Y splitter is a clever little adapter or cable which lets you plug a PS/2 keyboard and PS2 mouse into a single PS/2 socket in a computer. This is especially useful on laptop or notebook computers which typically only have one PS2 socket.
Although you can get PS/2 to USB adapters there may be circumstances where you would like to connect both devices to the same socket, for example: if your laptop doesn’t have any USB ports; or you want to connect it to a KVM switch which lets you share keyboard, mouse and monitor between two or more computers but it only supports PS/2 mice. I use this with a laptop and my desktop computer using a Belkin 2-Port KVM Switch.
PS2 Y splitters are very cheap and you should be able to pick one up from your local computer store or an online merchant fairly easily. They work in most laptops without any problems.
Sometimes they do not appear to work. You plug both the keyboard and mouse into the Y splitter and you can use the keyboard but not the mouse. The trackball or trackpad on the laptop still works but the mouse doesn’t, and rebooting has no effect.
This is known problem with some Belkin PS/2 Y Splitters and may also be a problem with other brands as well. I bought a cheap unknown brand splitter and it had this same problem. It turns out that the adapter is moulded incorrectly and the little mouse and keyboard icons are in the wrong position. Try swapping them around and then reboot to see if that works.
If you are still experiencing problems after this, try another mouse and/or keyboard to see if that solves the problem (assuming you have spares, that is). Remember that depending on your operating system you will need to reboot between attempts as PS/2 devices are generally not hot-swappable (ie you can’t unplug and plug it back in and expect it to keep working). If it still doesn’t work I would suggest returning it to your retailer.
Examples of a PS/2 Y Splitter
Generic Y splitters should work on all laptops that support this functionality but sometimes they do not, and you may need to buy a specific hardware addon from the laptop vendor. Sometimes cheaper hardware can also present you with problems and it may pay to spend a little more. Talk to your retailer and they should be able to give you the best advice.
Some laptops/notebooks and brands that Y splitters are know to work on are as follows:
– Toshiba TE2100
– Toshiba Satellite series
– Toshiba 2750DVD
– Compaq EVO
– Compaq Armada
– NEC
– AST
– Gateway 2000
– Winbook
– Dell
– IBM Thinkpad
– HP Omnibook
– Dell Inspiron (the faq for these states they are not actually supported but I’ve read a newsgroup post that suggests they will work but with some “annoyances”)
