How to fix your unreadable screen after upgrading Ubuntu

I recently upgraded my two Ubuntu computers from 11.10 to 12.04.  Everything worked fine on my Toshiba netbook, but on my old Dell Dimension E520 the upgrade caused a problem that took me a while to fix. The machine booted up just fine and presented me with the standard login screen, but immediately upon logging in my screen became a flickering unreadable jumble.  It looked like an old TV with the horizontal hold...

How to access an external network drive using Ubuntu

[Editor’s Note: Please be aware that this post is *several* years out of date, and I no longer use Ubuntu so I have not attempted to update it. At least one commenter has suggested that it “contains instructions that could damage your system.” I decided to leave the post up in the hopes that it still contains information that some will find useful, but please don’t use this as your only...

How to turn off WordPress smart quotes

Smart quotes (aka curly quotes) are what most word processor programs insert into your document when you type the quote marks key.  They’re pretty to look at, but they cause problems if you use them in a text document that contains code intended to be read by a computer.  That’s normally not a problem since text editors don’t create smart quotes when you type the quote key, but if you happen to...

How to align your custom header with your navbar

If you use the Thesis theme for your WordPress blog, you might have created your own custom header image for your site (kind of like mine, above).  If so, you may have noticed that your header image doesn’t seem to align correctly with your navbar.  To get your header image and your navbar aligned, you’ll need to add a few lines of code to your Thesis custom.css file.  It’s a simple fix, and...

Removing the whitespace at the top of your Thesis blog

If you use the Thesis theme for your WordPress blog, you might have created your own custom header image for your site (kind of like mine, above).  If so, you may have noticed that there’s a little bit of whitespace between the top of your browser window and the top of your header image (kind of like mine, above).  If you want to get rid of that whitespace, you’ll need to add a few lines of code to your...