Vinny and Jess.com» Vinny Troia’s Technical Wasteland

First Detailed Photos of Atoms

Vinny — Tue, 15 Sep 2009 15:06:21 +0000

For the first time, physicists have photographed the structure of an atom down to its electrons.

The pictures, soon to be published in the journal Physical Review B, show the detailed images of a single carbon atom’s electron cloud, taken by Ukrainian researchers at the Kharkov Institute for Physics and Technology in Kharkov, Ukraine.

This is the first time scientists have been able to see an atom’s internal structure directly. Since the early 1980s, researchers have been able to map out a material’s atomic structure in a mathematical sense, using imaging techniques.

Read the full article here at Inside Science.org

Linux Baby Rocker – Scripting a CD Tray to Rock a Baby to Sleep

Vinny — Thu, 27 Aug 2009 14:41:14 +0000

This video was embedded using the YouTuber plugin by Roy Tanck. Adobe Flash Player is required to view the video.

This enterprising Linux user wrote a script that rhythmically opens and closes the CD tray on a tower PC; the CD tray is connected to the baby’s rocking seat. As the tray cycles, the baby rocks. Lovely.

Linux Baby Rocker (via Neatorama)

Adobe Dreamweaver CS4 Dark Color Theme

Vinny — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 19:58:59 +0000

I’ve recently been going back and forth between Dreamweaver CS4 and Aptana (Eclipse) for a web project that I’m working on. Dreamweaver’s PHP/MySQL integration is miles ahead of Aptana’s. Anyway, the default light code colorization was driving me nuts. I did some research and stumbled upon a nice dark color scheme, which was actually based on the ‘Green Chaud’ Aptana colors which I blogged about a few months ago.

Click here to visit the author’s website and download the color theme.

Colour Lovers – Color Schemes Inspiration, Palettes, Patterns, Trends and more

Vinny — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 17:00:51 +0000

I ran into an excellent Color website today. It is a fantastic resource for Color Schemes, Patterns, Palettes and more. You can create your own color profile and store your own personal palettes and patterns for later use, and also offers a plethora of download-able options such as PSD, AI and HTM. There’s even a really interesting section on current web and magazine color trends.

Free Social Network Media Icon Sets (Vector, PNG, JPG)

Vinny — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:29:41 +0000

I use these two sites all the time so I figured I would finally share them. They both contain a huge assortment of free social networking icon sets in Vector, PNG and JPG format.

The Best Social Media Icons All In One Place.

30 Amazingly Creative Social Bookmarks Icon Sets : Speckyboy Design Magazine.

How to setup Shared Keys with SSH on Centos 5

Vinny — Sun, 19 Jul 2009 21:41:27 +0000

I found this great article while trying to learn how to setup Shared SSH keys on Centos 5, Linux. It’s a great set by step tutorial provided by Shapeshed.

What are shared keys?

Shared Keys consist of a Public and Private key and allow a remote machine to authenticate a machine trying to connect it. The Private key resides on your machine and is used to identify you against the public key which resides on the machine you are trying to login to. You might think of it as a handshake. The remote machine has a description of what to expect from the handshake. It is unique to the client machine so if the handshake doesn’t match then the authentication will fail.

Why use shared keys?

Shared keys have two main benefits. Firstly they allow you to turn off password authentication. Malicious bots regularly crawl the web trying to login to servers using SSH. They have large dictionaries of passwords and try to get into your server using brute force attacks. You can limit this by having a strong password and changing the port that you use to login to SSH with. You can also completely turn off password authentication if you use shared keys. Shared keys mean that no one can access your server without the shared key.

Read the Tutorial here: Using Shared Keys with SSH on Centos 5 | Shape Shed.

Tiny Robot Invented To Crawl Through Veins

Vinny — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 15:03:35 +0000

Slatterz writes “Scientists from Israel’s Technion University have unveiled a tiny robot, made using Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems MEMS technology, purportedly able to crawl through a person’s veins in order to diagnose and potentially treat artery blockage and cancer. The little robot — with a diameter of just one millimeter — has neither engine nor onboard controls, instead being propelled forward by a magnetic field wielded on it from outside the patient’s body.”

Read the Full Story

Slashdot Science Story | Robot Invented To Crawl Through Veins.

Fix for Auto-update on WordPress 2.8 and ‘Could not create Temporary file’

Vinny — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 16:26:00 +0000

I’ve spent the better part of the last two days trying to figure out why my wordpress would no longer auto-update files without asking for FTP information, and even then, failing when trying to update. The failure message I was receiving is: Download failed.: Could not create Temporary file

I finally found a solution on Keith Garner’s Blog.

The main article, which fixes the auto-update problem, can be found here

It also links to a second article, which discusses the temporary file failure problem.

Enjoy!

Virtual Online Playpen, Windosill

Vinny — Sun, 28 Jun 2009 14:27:14 +0000

This is honestly one of the most fun things that I’ve seen on the web in a very long time.

http://windosill.com/online/

ColorBox – Customizable Lightbox Plugin for jQuery

Vinny — Sat, 27 Jun 2009 01:58:14 +0000

After spending an enormous amount of time trying to customize the zenPhoto lightbox theme, I happened to stumble upon ColorBox. Colorbox is a customizable lightbox plugin for jQuery. It’s hands down the most flexible and easy to configure lightbox plugin on the web. The appearance is completely controlled through CSS. It’s 100% slick.

Check out ColorBox here, at http://colorpowered.com/colorbox/.