To improve the experience when sharing an AtomicQuote URL on Twitter or Facebook, I needed to dynamically generate share images that include the quote and author with multiple background images. To do this, I could have generated millions of photos. Based on the number of quotes that AtomicQuote currently has, this would result in 17,673,360 images. Each image is around 60kb. So to store all the images, it would take over 10 TB of storage. To avoid paying for this storage, I planned to generate them on the fly and cache the result for a few days. So far, this has worked well and has improved the sharing of quotes on social media. See the example below: Read More
Category: How To
Bluebird House with Camera
Bluebird houses are quick and easy to build and great projects for using leftover wood from the scrap pile. They can be inexpensive, depending on how complex you want the house to be. You can also get your kids involved and teach them a little about woodworking and birds at the same time. I went with a simple design that I modified to allow me to add an outdoor Wyze wireless camera to record the bluebird nest. I built the house a couple of inches taller to fit the Wyze camera inside. I also added a door to make it easy to clean out the old nest and charge the camera. Bluebirds can be picky about where they build their nest, so make sure you follow these important steps.
How to Control MacBook Volume When Connected to External Display
When I plug my Mac into a DisplayPort or HMDI monitor that has built-in speakers, Mac’s volume controls become disabled. Not being able to control my monitor’s sound has annoyed me for years, but I’ve never looked for a solution. When upgrading to the new MacBook Pro M1, I hoped Apple would have fixed the issue. Unfortunately, the problem still happened, so I when searching for a solution.
I came across several articles that were outdated and recommended Soundflower. I kept searching for a better solution and came across MonitorControl. After a quick install, I found MonitorControl to be a great solution to my problem. MonitorControl has tons of options, such as controlling the brightness of your monitor and keyboard shortcuts. I can now control the volume and mute from my Logitech MX mouse. Read More
How to Pin Chrome Extensions in the Toolbar
To pin an extension to the Chrome toolbar, click the extension icon on the toolbar and click the “Pin” icon next to the extension.
A couple of years ago, Google Chrome redesigned the way it shows extensions in the toolbar. By default, now extensions have to be “pinned” before they will show in the toolbar. In this video below, we will teach you how to pin a chrome extension to the toolbar.
