This is a forum post on the Laravel site that lists some awesome tutorials on using Laravel. I#8217;ve never used a PHP framework, but Laravel is awesome. I#8217;ve read through the first few posts listed there and am really liking it so far.

As a somewhat obscure side note, this is what I wanted to build when I realized I wouldn#8217;t finish Dsgn365 last summer. For an intro project I#8217;m building to teach myself how to use Laravel, I added the Laravel Github repo as a remote and did a fetch to get the latest copy. Then I pushed to my own repo. Now I can build on top of the latest build of Laravel and when he releases a new version, I can rebase and keep everything up-to-date.

A week ago, I came home after a long night of drinking and wanted to vomit. It wasn’t the whiskey. It was the email.

The way I deal with email is only slightly different from MG#8217;s. The ammount of email I get is extremely tame, but I still think the workflow could help a lot of people. It#8217;s something I#8217;ve worked into after hours of listening to Merlin Mann, in various formats, speak about email and time management.

I use my email in very tight conjunction with Things. It could be any #8220;to do#8221; list style app. OmniFocus is another good one. I like Things for its simplicity.

There#8217;s one rule that I have with email, only read it once. That#8217;s not the perfect way to say it. Of course I read emails multiple times, but when I read and email there are three things that can happen.

1. Junk. Delete.


2. I can do this in a minute or two. Do it. Archive or Delete.


3. I don#8217;t have time to do this right now. Put it in Things. Archive.

When it#8217;s something I don#8217;t have time for, I#8217;ll drop a link to the email in the notes field of Things if I#8217;m going to need to reference it again. This obviously requires you have an active to do list that you keep up with. It might seem like you#8217;re just pushing the problem out of email and into another list, but ideally your to do list is more organized that your email. If you read the same email six times before you do something about it, you were wasting your time the first five times. With a GTD type approach, you can quickly look at your list and know what needs to get done and what things you can currently do based on contexts.

This works for me with a small volume of email. I imagine it gets even better the more email you get. The more email you get, the more time you waste re-reading everything.¹

MG writes about how relieving it can be to have the weight of 50,000 emails moved out of your inbox, to a place that you only ever see them when/if you need to. It#8217;s funny because I#8217;m the same way, though I don#8217;t clear my RSS reader every night, it#8217;s something I do regularly. And those red Push Notifications. I don#8217;t think this is uncommon though.

It’s essentially out-of-sight, out-of-mind. I should have known this would be the case since I’m also obsessed with clearing my RSS reader every night (even though I barely use it anymore) and am a slave to clearing red Push Notification dots on the iPhone/iPad.

I only slightly disagree with the final point:

Read most of it. Respond to some of it. Keep all of it. But hide it. Then forget about it. And repeat. And repeat. And repeat.

I don#8217;t keep all my email. There#8217;s a lot of email that I know I#8217;ll never need again. I delete them. Maybe you never get email like that.

RewriteEngine on

RewriteCond %{REMOTE_ADDR} ^12.345.678.90

RewriteRule (.*) /dev/$1 [P,L]

Assuming your IP address is 12.345.678.90, this will forward the root of the domain to the /dev/ directory and your browser won#8217;t know the difference. P means this is a proxy, so the URL won#8217;t change. R would be a redirect which reloads the page at the URL #8211; /dev/ in this case.

Since anyone could potentially spoof their REMOTE_ADDR, security is up to you.

Note: You#8217;ll need mod_rewrite for apache installed for this to work.

This may not be obvious to everyone, but the best todo list app for Android is Todo.txt Touch by Gina Trapani. This thing almost made me drop OmniFocus, but I really like what I#8217;ve got going in OmniFocus so instead I#8217;m using Todo.txt Touch as input.

I#8217;ve written an AppleScript that will look at my todo.txt file stored in my Dropbox and send everything over to OminFocus:

tell application "Finder"

    -- readFile

    set TodoTXT to "lt;Path to todo.txtgt;"

    set foo to (open for access TodoTXT with write permission)

    set txt to (read foo for (get eof foo))

    set eof foo to 0

    close access foo



    set Names to paragraphs of txt

    repeat with nextLine in Names

        if length of nextLine is greater than 0 then



            tell application "OmniFocus"

                set theDoc to first document



                tell theDoc

                    make new inbox task with properties {name:nextLine}

                end tell

            end tell



        end if

    end repeat

end tell

Beware, this is my first iteration of this script. That doesn#8217;t mean I#8217;m promising future versions. I#8217;m only using the Android app as input at this point. It will import all of your todos to the inbox and then blank the file.

Running it

First, Hazel is setup to watch the folder in my Dropbox with a rule that watches for the Created Date to be the same as the Modified Date. This basically means that the file is brand new. It might not be obvious at first why this works. Basically, when the todo.txt file syncs from Dropbox it is replaced with a new version, thus creating a new file in place of the one that was there. When the script then goes and updates the file, either by blanking it or, maybe in the future, updating it with todos from Omnifocus, it is modified locally and not recreated so the two different dates would be different.

The other way I can run the script is from within OmniFocus itself. The script lives in ~/Library/Scripts/Applications/OmniFocus/, which let#8217;s you add it while customizing the menu.

Feedback

If you find this useful, let me know. If you go on to modify it and make it even more useful than it already is, I#8217;d love to hear about that too.

• Project 365
  
  I want to take a photo everyday for a year. This should be a lot easier now that I can take pictures from my phone and post them straight to the web.


• Run more
  
  Since high school Irsquo;ve been running on and off (more on when the weather is good), but I want to get more consistent. I think mornings before class would be the best time.


• Update the Portfolio
  
  My portfolio on the site hasnrsquo;t changed in the past year, which is partly because I havenrsquo;t done a ton of work, but more because I just havenrsquo;t taken the time to keep it up-to-date. I want to get it up to date early this year and then keep up with it.


• Start something new
  
  I love starting new projects and I want to  something new. Irsquo;ve got a couple of ideas for websites, but they need some more thinking before I turn them into something really cool.


• Write more amp; better
  
  There was more stuff I couldrsquo;ve written here, but didnrsquo;t take the time to do it. At the same stuff I couldrsquo;ve taken more time on some of the stuff I wrote here. Itrsquo;s not all bad, but it could always get better.


• Read more
  
  I got a Kindle for Christmas and it has been great. Irsquo;ve got some good books already and Irsquo;d like to keep the reading trend going in 2011.


• Crush it
  
  I started to get involved in some more online communities in 2010 and hopefully we can take that to another level in 2011. Maybe a new project that has something to do with this. Either way, like Garyvee says, I want to ldquo;laugh at the 2010 version of merdquo;.

This list may get longer throughout the month, but I doubt it.

• Project 365
  I want to take a photo everyday for a year. This should be a lot easier now that I can take pictures from my phone and post them straight to the web.


• Run more
  Since high school I#8217;ve been running on and off (more on when the weather is good), but I want to get more consistent. I think mornings before class would be the best time.


• Update the Portfolio
  My portfolio on the site hasn#8217;t changed in the past year, which is partly because I haven#8217;t done a ton of work, but more because I just haven#8217;t taken the time to keep it up-to-date. I want to get it up to date early this year and then keep up with it.


• Start something new
  I love starting new projects and I want to  something new. I#8217;ve got a couple of ideas for websites, but they need some more thinking before I turn them into something really cool.


• Write more amp; better
  There was more stuff I could#8217;ve written here, but didn#8217;t take the time to do it. At the same stuff I could#8217;ve taken more time on some of the stuff I wrote here. It#8217;s not all bad, but it could always get better.


• Read more
  I got a Kindle for Christmas and it has been great. I#8217;ve got some good books already and I#8217;d like to keep the reading trend going in 2011.


• Crush it
  I started to get involved in some more online communities in 2010 and hopefully we can take that to another level in 2011. Maybe a new project that has something to do with this. Either way, like Garyvee says, I want to #8220;laugh at the 2010 version of me#8221;.

Irsquo;m a freelance web designer/developer that hasnrsquo;t had a ton of work recently. Irsquo;m not particularly upset about that right now, as school is starting and Irsquo;m getting back into the student life mdash; class, homework, sleep (working web stuffs into the mix in as we get these first weeks rolling). Irsquo;ve done a few things that Irsquo;m pretty proud of, but my best work always seems to be the personal stuff mdash; when it really means something to me. Irsquo;ve actually been thinking about that a lot lately; trying to use that as a way to make everything I do better, but Irsquo;ll talk about that another time.

Irsquo;ve finally started href="http://joshbetz.com/wp-content/plugins/wordpress-feed-statistics/feed-statistics.php?url=aHR0cDovL2pvc2hiZXR6LnR2">JoshBetz.TV as a podcast, which only means itrsquo;s listed in iTunes. Right now itrsquo;s a sad excuse for a podcast and shouldnrsquo;t really be called a website at all, but Irsquo;ve got some stuff in the works. The only live video is the one about setting up a LAMP server.

Looking Forward

Irsquo;ve got some goals for the next year.

• Establish a real podcast with joshbetz.tv
• Establish a base of clients to work with
• Take more photos
• Better Flickr integration on here
• Grow this list

It was super simple to setup.

First of all, I had to buy the jbe.me domain name ( think J B dot ME ). Unfortunatly jb.me is not a valid domain, Irsquo;m sure someone much more important than I will grab it. Anyway, jbe.me was the next best thing.

One I had the domain I installed the href="http://yourls.org/">YOURLS (You Own URL Shortener) script at that location. Itrsquo;s a series of scripts that talks to a MySQL database with some pretty cool bookmarklets and an API. The API was key for the next step: the Twitter Tools extension. As many people know, I use twitter tools to post new blog entries to my twitter profile. Since I want to get as much of my URL-shortening as possible done through the jbe.me shortener now I needed to get twitter tools to use the new system. Twitter Tools has itrsquo;s own api that will let you create a shortener for any service that you could think of with some hooks that it install for WordPress. Then I threw a plugin together using the YOURLS API and now when I publish a post, Twitter Tools uses the jbe.me shortener to shorten the URLs. Pretty Cool.

id="more-2142">

The plugin isnrsquo;t public, only because I thought that there wouldnrsquo;t really be anyone else who would need something like this. YOURLS does have itrsquo;s own plugin, but I donrsquo;t think it integrates with Twitter Tools and that was a deal breaker for me. If therersquo;s anyone else that would like this plugin just let me know and Irsquo;ll polish it up and put it in the plugin directory.

As a final step I decided to forward href="http://jbe.me">http://jbe.me to href="http://joshbetz.com">http://joshbetz.com with a simple PHP script:

header(quot;Location: http://joshbetz.comquot;);

Irsquo;m sure therersquo;s a better way to do this, but Irsquo;ve run some test and it seems to be performing decently.

The only drawback that I have seen on this whole process is the speed of my shared hosting account. Irsquo;m pretty sure itrsquo;s the actual bandwidth and not a MySQL issue. As always, Irsquo;ll keep trying to increase the performance of this.

When I saw that YouTube and Vimeo were offering HTML5 instead of flash video, I immediately tested both of the above mentioned issues. The fan in the macbook stayed quiet and the Dell Mini didnrsquo;t have any problems when I watched HD content with HTML5 video instead of flash. This is an example of the power of HTML5 video and why Apple decided to skip flash on the iPad.

The other thing that I really like about this is the fact that it pushes the HTML5 spec forward that much more. Obviously Google is involved in developing HTML5, so it shouldnrsquo;t be a surprise to see this on YouTube. Vimeo, however, is not involved mdash; at least that i know of mdash; in developing the HTML5 specification and just wants clean, efficient code. HTML5 is a good way to do that.

id="more-2067">

Finally, Adam Curry recently explained on ldquo;The Cranky Geeksrdquo; that itrsquo;s going to take a long time to derail flash video because of all the money invested in technologies used for ad agencies such as pre-rolls, but I think it would be pretty easy to develop a similar system that work in HTML5.

All in all, this is good for everyone except Adobe and flash developers. Irsquo;m not so worried about the flash developers though, the good ones have the skills to be useful in more than just flash video.

One of the features that I really like is being able to get emails when new comments are posted. I also use the Contact Form 7 plugin which needs to send mail.

The Problem

I recently switched web hosts to Webfaction. Theyrsquo;ve been great mdash; what I think you should be able to expect out of shared hosting.  The only problem is that they donrsquo;t support PHPrsquo;s mail function. They claim itrsquo;s to reduce spam mdash; mail() can be used to send email defining the from address as whatever you want without having to authenticate. It can be very convenient, but itrsquo;s really not the ideal way to send mail using PHP anyway. WordPress does it because itrsquo;s pretty rare to find a server that doesnrsquo;t support it and the alternatives are too commonly uninstalled.

The Solution

To fix this issue we need to find a way to take the email that WordPress wants to send and send them through Pearrsquo;s mail function. Pear is a PHP framework much like zend is to PHP or jQuery is to Javascript. The mail function in particular lets us send mail similar to the way the regular mail function does, but we have to authenticate through an SMTP server.

I found a couple of plugins, but decided to use WP-Mail-SMTP.

Since we need to authenticate, there has to be a real email address that the emails are coming from. I setup wordpress [at] mydomain because thatrsquo;s where the emails would normally come from if you didnrsquo;t have this issue. Since Irsquo;m using Google Apps for my email I used the authorrsquo;s instructions for configuring the plugin for Google Apps and it worked perfectly:

Mailer: SMTP

SMTP Host: smtp.gmail.com

SMTP Port: 465

Encryption: SSL

Authentication: Yes

Username: your full gmail address

Password: your mail password

Hopefully this helps. Irsquo;m sure there could be other causes to why your  mail isnrsquo;t sending, but this is what worked for me. Before you try this, try checking if your host supports PHPrsquo;s mail function. If not, this will probably fix it mdash; as long as they support Pear. If they donrsquo;t support PHPrsquo;s mail function, they most likely support Pear for the same reasons listed here.

The problem is that by default the bottom of images are lined up with the baseline of the text mdash; which means the bottom of most letters, but there is still that small space for the bottoms of letters like p and q.

By default vertical-align is set to baseline. All you have to do to fix the problem is set

a img { vertical-align: bottom; }

Viola! Problem solved.

lt;?php if ( is_user_logged_in() ) { echo quot;lt;a href='http://joshbetz.com/feed/quot; . get_option('siteurl') . quot;/wp-admin/'gt;Site Adminlt;/agt; |quot;; } ?gt; lt;?php wp_loginout(); ?gt;

Makebelieve Help, Old Butchers, and Figuring Out Who You Are (For Now) from Merlin Mann on Vimeo.

Also: The MacLampsX app is activated on my macbook to give a similar feel to the desktop.

The first time your computer is on the internet, ldquo;Microsoft Browserrdquo; opens up with 3 tabs: Firefox, Chrome, Safari. Those are the only 3 websites that will work, and that is the only time that ldquo;Microsoft Browserrdquo; will ever work.

If you decide to forego installing a browser at that time, you lose. Donrsquo;t pass go, donrsquo;t collect $200, and donrsquo;t use the internet.

Alfred Andrews: Hi Josh. My name is Alfred, how are you today?

josh Betz: Irsquo;m good

josh Betz: Irsquo;m wondering how I can cancel my iPower account

Alfred Andrews: I am sorry to hear that you wish to cancel the account.

Alfred Andrews: Could you please let me know the reason for canceling the account?

josh Betz: I have experienced too many issues while Irsquo;ve been with iPower.

josh Betz: My website has gone down too many times

josh Betz: I think itrsquo;s probably because I run a wordpress blog, because a friend of mine runs a static site on ipower and hasnrsquo;t had as many problems as I have

josh Betz: but last week my website was down for 6 hours and I started looking for a new webhost

Alfred Andrews: Okay.

Alfred Andrews: I have noticed that you have already submitted the cancellation form and your account has been scheduled for deletion on August 02, 2010.

josh Betz: Yes, but I know that I can get part of my money back if I cancel my account now. So Irsquo;d like to get whatever unused time back.

Alfred Andrews: Okay.

Alfred Andrews: Could you please hold on for 2-4 minutes?

josh Betz: Yes

Alfred Andrews: Thank you for holding.

Alfred Andrews: I have scheduled the account for deletion on October 12, 2009.

josh Betz: Thank you. Do you know how much money I should get refunded?

Alfred Andrews: Could you please hold on for 2-4 minutes?

josh Betz: Yes

Alfred Andrews: Thank you for holding.

Alfred Andrews: You will receive the refund of approximately $24.

Alfred Andrews: You will receive the refund of approximately $24 after deducting the early cancellation fee of $35.