How to deploy a Hugo site to DigitalOcean automatically with Wercker

• December 24, 2016

Getting Things Tech recently switched from WordPress to Hugo, the latter of which is a static website generator. Further, we moved our hosting over to DigitalOcean, which makes things very speedy. As we like to do, it’s time to look under the hood and show you how to deploy a Hugo site like this one to DigitalOcean painlessly, with Wercker.

GTT has a new look, new Hugo backend, and new host with Digital Ocean

• December 22, 2016

Return visitors to Getting Things Tech might notice a change to our look, but it’s much more than a facelift. In the past few weeks, Getting Things Tech has also moved away from WordPress and onto a new web host, which has made things work much more quickly around here.

Hemingway App for desktops review: Promising, but probably not worth your money

• January 4, 2015

A quick note: I used the Mac version for this review. I don’t have any particular reason to believe that the Mac and Windows versions are different, but you can take the appropriate grain of salt if needed.

Above is a capture of Hemingway App at work. We will get into more detail as we go, but you will immediately notice that it highlights sentences and words that require attention. Likewise, the app will give you a word count and an overall readability score. Generally speaking, per the advice of Hemingway App, lower scores are better.

A Zotero workflow with ZotFile

• November 21, 2014

I’ve talked before about why you should use Zotero, but for many people, it takes some guidance to get it really working for you. This is especially true if you’d like to use a Zotero workflow that involves managing your documents and research more generally. Here’s our primer on using Zotero to organize your documents in addition to using its citation and bibliography-building capabilities. The Zotero add-on called ZotFile will help out, too.

How to opt out of ad tracking online: A complete guide

• July 24, 2014

We often talk about privacy here at Getting Things Tech and one of the things we are talking about when we say privacy is the massive data collection that goes on as a means to sell more effective advertising. There are pros and cons to this and we generally consent because we are assured that it lets things stay free.

However, when we know the extent to which the NSA and other intelligence organizations are gaining access to any stores of data, it might just make sense to disallow anyone from gathering personal information online, even if it is “just” to target you with ads.

How Bitcoin works: An introduction to cryptocurrency

• July 20, 2014

Bitcoin is currently at the stage in its development where you won’t find people who have never heard of it, but very few know much about it. In fact, it is one of several digital currencies that are based on complex cryptographic methods. We’ll glaze over those methods for simplicity’s sake so you can figure out how Bitcoin works.

Another thing to note is that there are now several “copycat” or otherwise similar digital currencies to Bitcoin, collectively known as cryptocurrencies. These are known as such because they use cryptography to make an all-digital currency viable in terms of its security. While each has its differences, this introduction will teach you enough that you’ll be well on your way to understanding how other cryptocurrencies work as well.

Contentverse Review: Bring your document management into the 21st century the easy way

• July 11, 2014

If you work in an office of any kind, you know finding a way to get ahold of the documents you need makes up a significant portion of the time and effort spent on the job. Paper-based files need to be printed, mailed, scanned, and printed again. You may try using digital folders, shuffling documents around from flash drive to flash drive, or over email. Maybe you have your stuff stored online. No matter what you’re using, nothing seems to quite cut it. You need a specialized program to cover all of your workplace’s growing demands.

How to fix jagged font rendering in Google Chrome

• July 6, 2014

Google Chrome has had an aggravating bug for quite a while now in which certain fonts, including some Google fonts, do not work correctly. That is, the text will have a jagged font that isn’t actually how it should look. There is, in fact, a quick fix for this.

How to use Google News SEO by Yoast

• July 3, 2014

For those who are lucky enough to get their site accepted into Google News, there are still hurdles ahead before the hordes of page views roll in. One of the biggest of those obstacles is, as always, getting SEO right. Google News SEO by Yoast can make this much easier, but you first have to know how to use it.

Speed up your Windows PC by disabling Background Intelligent Transfer Service (BITS)

• June 29, 2014

Does your Windows PC (XP or higher) ever suddenly slow down to a standstill, despite the fact that you weren’t doing anything different than before? Well, this can be due to a variety of causes.

One of them is the Background Intelligent Transfer Service (aka BITS). This process will start using a great deal of your disk usage and CPU, seemingly out of nowhere. Let’s look at how to diagnose your problem, disable that process, and get your PC speed back.