The original Ninjakin, carved Halloween 2007.

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Ninjakin »

I’m Marshall Oram, a web designer & WordPress developer by day, ninja in training, technology enthusiast by nature, and nature lover at heart. In my spare time I enjoy running, exploring technology and taking in the outdoors.

When others ask how? I figure it out. What I learn, I’ll try to share here, but it will be infrequent. If you find it interesting, subscribe or follow me. If you disagree, comment. Cheers!


Reminders App Badge Stuck on (2)

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After upgrading to iOS6 my reminders app was showing one uncompleted reminder I could not get rid of. Very frustrating, but it turns out it’s rather easy to fix. When iOS 6 updated it hid all local reminder lists, if you had any open reminders in those lists they still contribute to badge count but don’t appear in the app. You have to search to reveal them. Here’s how:

  1. Search a single letter, I used ‘C’.
  2. Uncompleted reminders will appear at the top.
  3. Check them and viola.

Here’s the article I found on how to do it.

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Passwords and Security

A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.

Simple rules that have been trumpeted a lot “don’t reuse passwords” and “create strong unique passwords”. PR and public education efforts fall on deaf ears. It’s human nature. People are more likely to know how to beat IT password policies to keep their lame,  reused password, than how to find and use a good password manager.

With a string of high profile sites being hacked this kills me. Basically it doesn’t matter how secure my password is, it only matters how many people have used terrible passwords. These weaker passwords allow hackers to reverse engineer the encoding hash of the site and break everyone else’s encrypted passwords. So the … read more


Argue your Limitations

The human body is capable of amazing physical deeds. If we could just free ourselves from our perceived limitations and tap into our internal fire, the possibilities are endless.

Dean Karnazes
The phrase “argue your limitations” is listed at the bottom of my RoadID braclet. The biggest thing I’ve found in myself since getting into running is my competitiveness. Every time I hear someone talk about something they did (their hayday accomplishment) I think “I can’t do that” then Barney Stinson cuts in with “Challenge accepted!”

Competition isn’t always a bad thing, I’ve crushed almost all the goals I’ve set out to. Goals set motivation and motivation is powerful stuff.


Custom Maintenance Page in WordPress

When you run a WordPress core update or plugin updates WordPress puts up a maintenance page, that is pretty basic: Black, bold, serif text “Briefly unavailable for scheduled maintenance. Check back in a minute.” at the top of a blank white page. Straight and to the point, but it can do more for you. As a developer you often need to correct a small bug or logic gap, duplicating a site to do that is often overkill. I mean it’s a “2 minute fix”. Create a custom maintenance page and engage maintenance mode.

How to Create a Custom Maintenance Page

It’s easy to create a custom maintenance page for WordPress that is independent of your theme and safe from core … read more


Comprehensive Mac Backup Plan

A good backup is incremental and protected “off-site” (or as near as possible).

Time Machine built into Mac OS X since Leopard (10.5) is an all around good backup of your system and data. It’s only shortfall is that it backsups to a connected or internal drive. If that drive should fail, theft, fire, or other natural catastrophe then you’re out of luck. My solution is to use two Time Machine backup drives. One attached, one safe and swap them on a monthly basis. I put the detached disk in a fire safe box just in case. This is a pretty good method, in the worst case you’d only loose at most 1 months of data.

On

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