Blog Archive
May, 2008
New Site Layout and Code
The stodgy old layout was really starting to get boring so I've gone for a whole new look and feel for my site. Hopefully its nicer to look at and easier to navigate. The biggest changes functionally are that visitors can now leave comments and se...Read More | Tags: Website, Blog, CakePHP
March, 2008
Better iPhone/iPod Touch Automount
This is an update to my article about auto-mounting the iPod Touch. I'd recommend updating your method to the one provided here, if you're an Ubuntu Gutsy user like me. Same method as described here, except the rules are now: SUBSYSTEM=="usb", AT...Read More | Tags: iPod Touch, iPhone, Linux
Hotplug Your iPod Touch With udev Rules
An updated version of these rules are available here. They have been modified to work with the ipod-convenience package provided for Ubuntuy 7.10 (Gutsy) users. I've been fiddling around with syncing my iPod Touch in Linux over the past couple o...Read More | Tags: iPod Touch, iPhone, Linux, Ubuntu
Google Watches You Shower
I was a little disturbed to see ads for recipes appearing next to emails to my girlfriend while replying to one of her emails through G-Mail. The reason it disturbed me was that we had not discussed food or recipes at all in the email and the only...Read More | Tags: Google, Privacy, Rant
Passwordless SSH On Your iPhone or iPod Touch
Since I've been spending more time in Linux, I've found it necessary to be able to sync my iPod Touch within Linux. Amarok has some fantastic configurability for devices you want to sync with, but since iPod Touch support is not complete at the mo...Read More | Tags: iPod Touch, iPhone, Linux, SSH
PHP and Plesk "Access Denied" Error With Exec()
I've finally come to the end of days of torture trying to get my PHP executable to work on a Plesk-based VPS. Every call to exec would produce "Access Dendied" errors to be dumped, while the permissions seemed perfectly ok (effective permissions s...Read More | Tags: PHP, Plesk, Errors
iTunes Files Mysteriously Disappearing
Over the past month or so, I've been extremenly frustrated to find around 200 songs in my carefully assembled MP3 library go missing from iTunes. This happened after I tried to rebuild my library from scratch trying to fix a problem my iPod seems ...Read More | Tags: iTunes, Apple, Bugs
PHP system() calls result in CGI Error on IIS
Writing a custom executable for a client earlier this month, I encountered an issue with calling it from within a PHP script on IIS running PHP 5.2. Every time the page was accessed, we would get an error page saying something along the lines of "...Read More | Tags: IIS, Windows Server, WIMP, PHP, Errors, Bugs, Hacks
February, 2008
Accessing Calendar Programatically
The Calendar in Microsoft Outlook can be accessed through the Microsoft.Office.Interop.Outlook assembly, available for download here. The code to provide access to the MAPIFolder object representing the calendar is shown below, along with a demons...Read More | Tags: .NET, Calendar, Office Interop
January, 2008
Command Line Mutex
Windows batch commands, by default, don't provide any easy way to fork a task (tasks can be forked using the "start" command) only if the task is not already started. This little batch script can be used to launch an executable only when an image ...Read More | Tags: Windows, Batch Scripting
December, 2007
Downtime
Sorry for the downtime to anyone who noticed it, I was moving house.November, 2007
Version 0.4
I've just released 0.4 of the BitTorrent library with a few minor improvements. Silo kindly pointed out to me that the "modified-by" field (used in most isoHunt torrents and possibly elsewhere) was being neglected, so its now part of the Torrent c...Read More | Tags: BitTorrent Library
Blinded by the Lights
Microsoft is really redefining "Cross browser, cross platform" with their new web platform Silverlight. I think the new definition is "works in all versions of Internet Explorer and Windows". Yawn. I'm not even sure if it thinks its installed ...Read More | Tags: Microsoft, Silverlight, Internet Explorer, Browser Bugs, Safari
Network-Related Timeouts
Something that constantly baffles me about Windows XP's networking is the ridiculously long timeouts before an attempt to connect is considered as having failed. Why, in this modern age of relatively high-speed networks, are Microsoft still assumi...Read More | Tags: Windows, Rant
Anytime TV - A Case Example of How Not to Do It
Any Australian internet users would, I'm sure, have recently been exposed to a bunch of ads talking about iiNet users having unmetred downloads on Anytime TV. I was excited to hear about this both because I'm an iiNet customer and because I think ...Use Google Maps More Easily
Something I've just noticed is that its really easy to zoom in and out on Google maps by double-left clicking the location you want to zoom in on or double right clicking the location to zoom out on. It makes it a lot easier to use, especially on ...Backup Solution
I've been shocked at how cheap hard drives have become recently and with the cost so low, how could I resist the urge to expand on my my almost full 250GB drive with a new 500GB sata solution for just 0 AUD. Something that I don't do enough of is ...A Big Thank You...
Thank you Sony / BMG for protecting hard working artists from their fans. Had you not laden all of your recent releases with ridiculous piracy counter-measures, who knows how many legitimate music buyers would have been able to simply do whatever ...Read More | Tags: Music, Piracy, DRM, Rant
The Perils of Convenient Field Names
Autocomplete and remembered passwords have now become a staple of every major browser, but this convenience comes at the cost of security. I'm sure we can all see the obvious security issue of saving all our secret passwords so that we don't have ...Drives Mysteriously Disappear in Vista
I recently witnessed a strange occurrence where, without any particular reason, my housemates Vista machine suddenly lost all of its CD and DVD drives and seemed unable to find them. He hadn't made any recent hardware or software changes that coul...Read More | Tags: Windows Vista, Tip
A New Kind of Certification
We're taking a bit of a time-leap here, but I just came across a posting by Jeff Atwood (a hero of mine) from earlier this year in which he discusses the "Works on My Machine" certification program. I found it quite an amusing read a...October, 2007
Purge XP's File Protection Cache
To delete the DLL cache used by Windows file protection, the following command can be used (start > run): sfc /purgecache This is useful for effectively disabling file protection (Windows will try to use the XP Install CD if it is in the driv...Read More | Tags: Windows XP
Safari for Windows
While I'm not a fan of the "It's like giving a glass of ice water to somebody in hell!" attitude that His Steveness has toward Apple's development of Windows versions of its apps, I was looking forward to trying Safari for Windows because of its f...Read More | Tags: Apple, Windows, Safari, Rant
On Disposing of Computers Properly
I love cleanup days in Sydney, because they're a great opportunity for hoarders like me and my housemates to accumulate massive amounts of junk. There's something really exciting about finding some old piece of hardware in amongst the cassette tap...Read More | Tags: Security, Tip, Junk Computer
Update Scripts to Run on Boot
For my own future reference: update-rc.d defaults Name is the name of the script of executable in /etc/init.d/. Executing this command ensures the script will run on startup at every runlevel.Read More | Tags: Note to Self, Linux
Music Tagging Applications and You
I recently purchased an iPod touch, because I was quite impressed with its software features, screen size, physical size and pretty much everything else about it. One of my favourite features of it is that it can display high-resolution pictures o...Read More | Tags: Idea, iPod Touch, Music, Tagging, Software
September, 2007
Editing Registry Files on Other Partitions
Recently, I had a need to make changes to the System entry in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE, which is not allowed by Windows for the currently running copy. Fortunately for me I have two copies of XP for testing purposes, so in order to make the change I sim...Read More | Tags: Windows XP, Tip, Registry, Multiboot
August, 2007
Embarking on a New Project
I'm about to embark on a project which may or may not work, but hopefully will at least provide me with some interesting insight. I'm going to attempt to construct a touch sensitive surface through a series of electronic pickups to detect vibratio...Future BitTorrent Protocol To Be Closed
From perousing Slashdot today it would seem that BitTorrent Inc have decided to make all future releases of the BitTorrent client and protocol closed source. While a number of the clients are already closed source, I suppose this will create diffi...Read More | Tags: BitTorrent Library, Community, Open Source Software
Extending PHP Execution Time
An interesting misconception I have always had about PHP was that once a request began, the script would continue executing regardless of what happened at the client end. As it turns out, this is not so and in fact the PHP script is stopped immedi...July, 2007
BitTorrent Library 0.3 Released
I've been in correspondence with a user of my BitTorrent library, who has pointed out a number of issues that existed in the previous versions of the tracker library. I've worked to try and remedy those issues, as well as improving the general str...Read More | Tags: BitTorrent Library
LightLoad Version 1 Released
I have just finished version one of my new Windows-based load testing application using the Microsoft .NET 2.0 Framework. I developed the tool out of a need to quickly and easily conduct a test of the overall execution time of a script when placed...PECL Module Installation in Ubuntu
When trying to install the PDFLib PECL library I repeatedly received the error "phpize: command not found", in spite of the fact that the PECL command seemed to be working. There was no mention of what was required in the PHP manual entries on PEC...BitTorrent Tracker Library Update
I received an email today about the error handling in my BitTorrent Tracker Library, and I realised that it could fail more gracefully than it currently was. The issue lies in providing corrupted or completely invalid .torrent files to the bencode...Read More | Tags: BitTorrent Library
June, 2007
iPhone: A Revoluton... In Marketing
I've never been a big fan of Apple's superior attitude and general belief that they are somehow the greatest thing ever to happen to the computer industry. I am however, perfectly happy to point out and use the many good innovations Apple has brou...Read More | Tags: iPhone, iPod Touch, Apple
IIS7, FrontPage 2002 and Windows Server 2008
I was excited to find out that Microsoft were running an open beta test for Windows Server 2008 (aka Longhorn), their latest and greatest in server technology. I've since downloaded and installed my evaluation copy and plonked it on an old Windows...Read More | Tags: IIS, Windows Server 2008, Server Administration, Tip, Frontpage 2002
Permissions in .NET
While writing an application to automatically install and configure an ASP.NET application I had developed for a client, I came across an issue I had rarely needed to consider in .NET: how to set file permissions? Usually I'm responsible for confi...Read More | Tags: .NET, Windows
Delicious RAM
Lenin, my web server, was in dire need of a RAM upgrade, so I got him one, just because I care. I don't know if it will make much of a difference to the web services but I've been using it as a central BitTorrent download machine for the house and...Read More | Tags: Server, Website
May, 2007
Batch File Renamer
I've spent some time looking around to find a batch file renamer which meets my needs, without much luck. Basically, I wanted something which would be activated by an item in the context menu for folders (right click) and would just allow basic re...Read More | Tags: Batch File Renamer, Software, Source
Output Caching
PHP has become one of the most prolific scripting languages on the internet due to its simple requirements, simple syntax and general ease of use for beginners. It's power is also that it can scale from just a simple website like mine, right up to...April, 2007
Are you losing customers?
I have been organising to move over the past couple of days and one of my bigger considerations has been how to physically relocate everything. Since I and my new housemates need to move some large things we have decided that renting a van is the ...Read More | Tags: Website Design
Moving House
I'm moving house this weekend so I suppose that my server will be down for the ensuing week or so since I haven't had the internet connection set up at the new place.Green Machine
Recently, Global Warming (aka "climate change") has become a "hot" issue in the news, with calls for governments world-wide to work out strategies to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. However, combatting global warming will require not only a legal...Read More | Tags: Windows, Linux, Energy Efficiency
CSV Files as Databases
I came across an interesting technique to access CSV files using SQL syntax today. Reading from and writing to CSV files has always been something I've tried to avoid in my code, because (while it is a simple format) there are numerous ways to for...Read More | Tags: .NET, Note to Self, Database
February, 2007
MySpace Map
I've been fiddling around with various ideas for a community-based project I'm helping out with when I decided an interesting way to test the ideas we were developing would be to try and develop an app to perform an analysis on MySpace, one of the...Read More | Tags: Software, Idea
Sleep
As a programmer, I often find myself wishing that I had more time to devote myself to working on my various projects, but a rather annoying habit seems to be bothering me: the need to sleep. I'm not going to kid myself; I need to sleep. The benefi...Read More | Tags: Idea, Personal, Experiment, Sleep
Setting Up a Test Server
Today I was trying to set up an additional development server for testing of ASP.NET sites and MS-SQL databases, as our original server had become overloaded and was performing poorly for testing purposes. In setting up the server, I encountered s...Read More | Tags: Server Administration, Windows XP, ASP.NET, .NET, IIS
January, 2007
Perfect CSS Columns!
I've been trying to use pure css-based layouts for the past couple of months, with varying degrees of success. It seems to me that it is appropriate that everyone creating websites in this day and age should really be trying their best to follow s...Second Monitor
I've just added a second monitor to my home set-up, based on the experience I've had with the same configuration at work. I highly recommend a two or three monitor setup, particularly over choosing a larger single display. With two monitors you ha...Read More | Tags: Desktop, Personal
December, 2006
Creative Zen Vision M
Recently my fantastically high quality (read: cheap) mp3 player became completely borked, which forced me to face the tough decision of what I would buy to replace it. Having used a cheap alternative to the popular brands, I found it unsatisfac...Read More | Tags: Gadget, Review
Scheduled Tasks
Scheduling is a fantastic way to structure the operation of Windows and keep everything running smoothly. You can automate practically anything using the built in Windows task-scheduler, which is something I think people tend to forget. Schedul...Read More | Tags: Windows, Tip
Microsoft Releases IE6 Test Environment
Microsoft has apparently recently released Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 for free, which has given the IE team the opportunity to release this fantastic testing environment: A virtual PC image of Windows XP SP 2.0 and IE6, to allow developers to test ...Read More | Tags: Microsoft, Web Development, Internet Explorer
Efficiency and MS-SQL
SQL is one of those things I one day found myself using out of necessity, but in the time I've been using it I've found that it's really grown on me. In my time working with it I've learned a bunch of nifty tricks, but something I had to recently ...Read More | Tags: Database, MS-SQL, Microsoft, Tip
Security and PHP
Security is something that is often discussed in the world of web servers and web development; opening up a computer to the public is inherently a dangerous step to take. But for many of us, it's one of those things where you do what you think wor...Read More | Tags: Security, PHP, LAMP, SQL Injection, Hacks
Error Logging in ASP.NET
As I've spent more and more time developing websites in ASP.NET, I've read a lot of different opinions on a variety of concerns, but one thing I rarely really considered was the best way to handle errors in ASP.NET applications. Default error page...November, 2006
Error Logging in ASP.NET
As I've spent more and more time developing websites in ASP.NET, I've read a lot of different opinions on a variety of concerns, but one thing I rarely really considered was the best way to handle errors in ASP.NET applications. Default error page...IE6 bug
I had to fix a bug in a site I had written recently, which led to a rather unusual discovery about IE6. It would seem that when posting a file to the server through a standard file upload form, IE6 provides the entitre path to the file as the "fil...Read More | Tags: Internet Explorer, Bug
Not a bad idea
Over that past few years of using Windows as my primary operating system, I've developed methods of doing everything and organising my life. I like everything to be structured: no icons except the recycle bin on the desktop, everything in my start...Read More | Tags: Windows, Tip
