Guides on Taylor Jasko

Deploy Web Applications Easily with SVN

Thu, 17 Jan 2013 22:39:28 +0000

A few days ago I posted a tweet while I was fooling around with my scripts that handle all of my website deployments. I knew I have always done deployments of my web applications differently than everyone else (you’d be surprised on how many people don’t have a truly automatic way of deploying), so I thought I’d share with you how I handle my deployments, which requires very little work by me.

How to Disable Inverted Scrolling on Mac OS X Lion

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 12:49:28 +0000

There's a video below on how to disable inverted scrolling!

There has been a ton of hype about the newly released Mac OS X Lion, but one thing Apple has tried to do with their brand new operating system is to give it more of a mobile feel. Because of everything Apple tried to do to make Mac OS X more like iOS is add in things like their mission control and inverted scrolling.

With the brand new inverted scrolling feature, lots of people weren’t too happy with this new “feature”. Basically, the inverted scrolling made it when you move down on your trackpad/mouse, it’ll go up and vice versa, just like on any mobile device. Some people may like this feature but personally, I am not one of them.

Shared Hosting vs. VPS Hosting

Sun, 13 Feb 2011 16:09:38 +0000

When I switched Tech Cores to a VPS back in early August of 2010, it was a turning point for us. Before that, we were using shared hosting which in the long run, started to hurt us more than anything. We switched from InMotion Hosting to a VPS for many reasons and quite honestly, I was done with shared hosting.

I manage quite a few websites for friends and colleagues; if you add them all up, you're talking about at least twenty websites. I've worked with a good chunk of the 'best' shared hosting companies so let's just list them out:

How to Start Up Your Own Blog

Mon, 27 Sep 2010 10:42:25 +0000

Setting up your own blog isn't the easiest thing out there. In fact, it's easily one of the hardest tasks to do on the web for many reasons. There are many blogs out there failing to get noticed (we were one of them) that are going downhill quickly despite all of their hard work.

The thing is, the number of your blog posts you have isn't going to work in this game. Basically what I mean is, you're not going to get suddenly popular even if you have 1,000 blog posts.

WordPress vs Joomla vs Drupal

Sat, 11 Sep 2010 14:29:47 +0000

In the very beginning when I was setting up Tech Cores, I had to choose between what CMS (Content Management System) I was going to use. This was in fact a very hard decision for me. All three of these have their best and worst features. In this post, we’ll cover which CMS is best for what types of website. Every one of these systems I’ve had a great deal of work with. And Tech Cores was running on every single one of these before also.

Photoshop In 5 - Creating an Aurora Wallpaper (Episode #2)

Tue, 07 Sep 2010 15:12:52 +0000

I've been making wallpaper since I can remember. The very first wallpaper I created was in Paint and it was an extremely easy (and rather amateurish if you ask me) wallpaper. Let's face it, if you ranked people on how many wallpapers they own, I would be easily on the top ten. I have over 10K wallpapers just sitting on my hard drive and 80K wallpapers that's on my external drive. People have always asked me, "Why so many?" Basically, I love variety.

Photoshop In 5 - Color Replacement (Episode #1)

Thu, 19 Aug 2010 09:46:59 +0000

I've been using Photoshop for a number of years now. In the very beginning stages of learning how to use the more advanced features of Photoshop, I remember watching videos that were not even fifteen minutes. To watch a video that long and to only learn one new feature is just ridiculous in my mind. That is why Photoshop In 5 was created. In this series of videos and blog posts, we'll have a video attached to every one of our posts that will be under five minutes long. No more of being bored when watching tutorial videos or grabbing a coffee just to wait for that fifteen minute HD video to load.

Looking for Great Paid Mac Apps? Let's Start a List!

Wed, 02 Jun 2010 13:22:30 +0000

When it comes to a lot of those Mac applications out there, sometimes you just don’t know what to get exactly. The time when I first got my Mac, I already knew of all of the popular Mac applications mainly for the fact that I read so much on the internet.

The very first application I ever installed would have to be my IM client, in this case, Adium (or Pidgin on the Linux/Windows side of things). Adium is very needed for me because I have many friends who live exactly halfway across the world from where I live. Because of that exact reason, it’s hard to call them (because prices are out of their wits when it comes to international phone bills; I know I could use Skype, but sometimes that internet connection isn’t the best out there either) or even e-mail them mainly because of the time differences. So any IM client is needed for me. I always need to be in contact with all of my friends worldwide; Adium is that important.

Learning How to Develop? Get These Tips First!

Mon, 24 May 2010 16:04:29 +0000

I've been developing for a number of years now. My very first programming language I tried to learn was Visual Basic .NET. As like learning anything on your own, comes hard challenges. This was the very first programming language I tried to set my hands upon.

After learning the basics of Visual Basic .NET, I basically gave up. And at that point, I started learning (X)HTML. That was easily five years ago. I learned the basics of (X)HTML, but at that point, things like CSS weren't ever so popular.

IMAP VS. POP3 - Who's the best?

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 16:02:34 +0000

If you remember way back in the day, when you first registered your e-mail account, it was probably with an online service like Yahoo Mail, GMail, Hotmail, or even AOL Mail. A good amount of people still use the same e-mail address that they did from the first time they signed up for their e-mail address. A good amount of that population doesn't even use e-mail clients like Thunderbird, Outlook, and even Windows Live Mail. A lot of businesses still use Lotus Notes. A lot of my friends haven't even touched a software-based e-mail client. But for those who have, there's an option they need to decide upon when creating

Windows 7 Keyboard Tricks

Wed, 18 Nov 2009 09:37:16 +0000

Windows 7 came out not too long ago, and with every brand new product, comes brand new features. Windows 7 comes with a variety of keyboard shortcuts to make your life a lot easier. The thing is, if you know a lot of these main keyboard shortcuts, your life will be a lot easier and it'll be significantly easier to manage your windows; hence why they named Windows the way they did.

Being a Website Designer and Webmaster - Part Four

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 03:47:52 +0000

In the past posts, we have talked about what type of tools can help you out when you create a website. But there's something else you're going to have to think about, and this is called website maintenance. This can be a lot of work, but there's several things you can do to help out. More info after the break!

Being a Website Designer and Webmaster - Part Three

Wed, 29 Apr 2009 08:40:23 +0000

Earlier, we discussed what tools you need to become a webmaster & designer. Now we are going to talk about the total opposite: what tools can help you to become a webmaster & designer. When we say tools, we mean things that can run on most servers to help you create and manage your website a lot easier. Here will just be a list of the tools you could use. Click on the read more text on the bottom of this blog post to find out all the pieces of software you could use on your server!

- Content Management Systems (CMS) -
A CMS is a type of software that can run on your server that can help you create your whole website. A great example of this is a piece of software called WordPress (read below to find out more). You can find that most blogs run on some type of software like WordPress. It basically helps you manage your site and keep your content organized. Although not all the time… All of the CMS’s we have here support plugins, modifications, and of course templates! Now, all of these CMS’s listed do not mean you can get away from HTML, PHP, CSS, and much more.

Being a Website Designer and Webmaster - Part Two

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 09:20:42 +0000

A webmaster and a website designer are two completely different jobs, but here at Tech Cores, we master at both of those positions. Today we’re going to teach you what it takes to become one. We are going to start out with the basics. After this blog post, you’ll know how a website really works and what you need to create one.

Being a Website Designer and Webmaster - Part One

Sun, 12 Apr 2009 16:26:51 +0000

When I first got into website design, there was a lot of things thrown at me. I can say honestly, when I first started out, I had no clue on what I was doing. I started out on a 25MB server-space that was hosted by my internet service provider, or ISP. Now this was probably way back around 2005. I started learning HTML, and with this language, I was able to create very basic webpages.

A PHP Tip - Show the Current Time with Daylight Savings Time Support!

Thu, 02 Apr 2009 09:54:29 +0000

If you've been keeping up with the latest technology these days, you should know that the programming language, PHP, is one of the widely used web-based languages today. With PHP, it offers so many features, it makes it so easy to use. But the thing is, PHP cannot tell whether it is Daylight Savings Time (DST), that is, if you're in the USA. This can be a huge problem for lots of people. There's no feature (or function for the programmers out there) that can control this. But there is a way to fix this that'll display the correct time.

I know other developers, like myself, are wanting to know how to do this. I've had to learn how to do this by myself, and I will share it with you.

Now this might be confusing at first, but I'll help explain it to you (read the comments in the code for more help).

Now there's probably a million ways you can do this, but this is the way I did it. I hope this will help someone out who is needing to do the same. All you need to do now after you're done is show "$Current_Time" somewhere!

Yes, it takes 123 lines of code (really 16 lines without the comments) in order to display the time! No one ever said coding was easy, but I hope this makes it easier for you!