Latest Posts

Make Chrome Auto-Accept Your Self-Signed Certificate


Make Chrome auto-accept self signed certificateAs developers, sometimes it's necessary to create self-signed certificates on our servers, but it sure is annoying every time you visit the page and you have to click through Chrome's privacy warning screen. 

Luckily, there is a simple way to let your copy of Chrome always trust your own SSL cert.

Please note: you'll want to view our previous blog post, on how to create a Self-Signed "SAN" Certificate, which is required for Chrome to auto-accept it.

Creating a Self-Signed SAN Certificate on Ubuntu (Which Makes Chrome Happy)


Creating a self-signed SAN certificate on ubuntu, which makes chrome happyAs a developer, you often need to create a secure environment on a real server (not just localhost) while you test things out, prepare for demonstrations, etc.  This blog post will go over how to create not just a self-signed certificate (which is free), but how to also configure it as a "SAN" or Subject Alternative Names certificate. 

This so-called SAN certificate is important later, if we want to let our desktop Chrome automatically accept it and not show a privacy warning screen.

Oracle_query() and Other Oracle Convenience Functions


Oracle_query() and Other Oracle Convenience FunctionsIf you're used to using MySQL with PHP, you already know of the simple and easy to use functions like mysqli_query(), mysqli_fetch_object(), mysqli_affected_rows() and so forth.  But, if you've ever gone to query from an Oracle database, you've no doubt noticed that Oracle's oci_* functions are much less pleasant. 

So, I decided to create a set of functions similar to mysqli.

Why Your Applications Should Look "Cute"


Why your applications should look cuteSince computers first entered the workforce, business applications (that is to say, all applications which weren't games) have been boring and to-the-point. 

This seems to be a holdover from the stark green-on-black mainframe screens, which themselves were holdovers from printed paper forms. 

Read on to see why having a "cute" UI needs to be featured in all your applications-- and not just the ones for kids or millennials.

Do We Still Need Mobile Apps?


Between around 2009 and 2019, it seemed like every business, every web site, every university, etc, had a mobile app on both the Android and iOS app stores.  If you didn't have a mobile app, you weren't cool, plain and simple. You were behind the times. 

But these days, with so many junk apps out there, and with the mobile web being easier than ever to develop, do we really still need mobile apps at all?

Lightsail: Amazon AWS, Made Simple


When shopping for server space, especially for a client, you need the name recognition and trust of a company like Amazon.  But Amazon AWS can be a daunting ecosystem to navigate, especially for those that just need the basics:  a server and a database.

That's where Amazon Lightsail comes in.  Still hosted on the framework of Amazon AWS, the UI for setting up a new server, database, adding storage, etc, is greatly simplified and much easier to manage, and while still costing a similar rate as other VPS vendors.

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