This is probably old news to most readers, however it was news to me. You can get free SSL on heroku, by using whats known as “Piggyback SSL”. For your sensitive pages (Login, Credit Card, etc.) redirect from your regular hostname to

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https://your-app.herokuapp.com

then redirect back to your normal hostname using http://.

Of course, for only $20/mo you can use the SSL add-on and install your own certificate, and use

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https://your-domain.com

…however for small and personal projects that really don’t justify any recurring monthly cost, there is this.

Productivity tip: timmorrow.com has a little “how to” to create a Ctrl-A to archive shortcut for Outlook for Mac 2011. If you’re used to the one click “Archive” button from Gmail but are stuck using Outlook for work - you’ll love this.

http://timmorrow.org/archive-feature-on-outlook-for-mac

One note: He leaves out the important detail that you need to use the Apple Script Editor to edit and save his script, not just any text editor. Otherwise, its flawless, and will improve your productivity by 250%, studies show.

If you need to quickly spin up a web server to just serve static files from your file system, here are two ways to do it:

Ruby

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ruby -rwebrick -e'WEBrick::HTTPServer.new(:Port => 3000, :DocumentRoot => Dir.pwd).start'

Python

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python -m SimpleHTTPServer

As a long time git user, I expected it to be easy to do a full text search in SVN for a specific string in all commits. Apparently, it is not! However…fret not git users! Since we’re all so much more used to using Git, you might as well use the git-svn gateway for the project.

Get # of commits between 2 commits (a.k.a between to SHA’s):

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git log [first]..[second] --pretty=oneline | wc -l

[first] and [second] can be SHA’s, branches or tags.

(via gitTip Twitter account)

Firebug Lite works really well on an iPad. If you want a quick way to inspect any web page, here is how you install the Firebug Lite bookmarklet on mobile Safari on an iPad. (Or for that matter, any other mobile device)

This is quite an old topic, but I’ve never posted about it and do agree strongly with it.

W3Schools.com is not great. It has outdated information. It does not allow the community to submit corrections. It is not affiliated with the W3C but the name makes it seems like it does, and it has not dis-affiliated itself even after repeated requests from the W3C to do so. It provides outdated, misleading or just plain wrong information to new developers.

“This site’s security certificate is not trusted”!

Apparently Chrome did away with the “Proceed Anyway” button, and now it just gives you the option for “Back to Safety”. It took a bit of googling but I discovered that if you type the letters for the word “proceed”, then it will let you view the site anyway.

As far as I can tell, there is no other way - no advanced preferences or anything similar.

HTML 5 crossword puzzle, CSS transitions to go with your Twitter Bootstrap, Faster Heroku Deploys, Execs at Panasonic jailed for 1 year, Nate Silver leaves the NY Times and 2200 sq foot home in Detroit for $1.

update: Thanks Joel Moss for linking to this. If you’re here, also be sure to check out, Firebug Lite on an iPad

Interested in contributing to an open source project but don’t know where to start?

I’ve recently taken over maintaining the Firebug Lite open source project, after it has been abandoned & dormant for 2 years. I have a great fondness for this little bookmarklet that wont stop giving, it has saved me countless times over the years.

I believe it still has some great potential and uses, especially for mobile devices; and of course its always a life saver for older browsers.

If you are interested in pitching in, you could help with Firebug Lit’es web page, the build process, the issues list or the codebase itself.