Obsidian Project Blog

EMAM

2009-07-18T07:00:00.001+01:00

PHP 5.1.20 for EMAMP has been released and can be downloaded via the normal EMAMP web installation, or you can download it from sourceforge https://sourceforge.net/projects/emamp/files/

JQuery floating table header

2009-07-08T13:50:00.002+01:00

I've created a page for a client that lists a number of products in a table, since the table can sometimes be quite large the header falls off the top of the screen, so I've had a play with some JQuery and CSS and come up with a solution.

As the user scrolls down the page and hovers over a tag the header appears under the if the user hovers for more than a second, this is so it doesn't appear while scrolling.

CSS


#product-admin-floating-header
{
    display:none;
}

JQuery


$("tr").hover(
    function()
    {//in
        if($(this).attr("id")!="product-admin-floating-header" && $("#product-admin-floating-header").length==0 && $(this).attr("id")!="product-admin-table-header")
        {
        //$(this).animate({opacity: 1.0},500,"swing",
        //        function()
        //        {
                    $(this).after(""+$("#product-admin-table-header").html()+"");
                    $("#product-admin-floating-header").animate({opacity: 1},1000,"swing", function()
                                            {
                    $("#product-admin-floating-header").fadeIn("slow");
                                            });
        //        }
        //        );
        }
    },
    function()
    {//out
        if($(this).attr("id")!="product-admin-floating-header")
        {
        $("#product-admin-floating-header").remove();
        }
    }
    );

:hover pseudo class and spans

2009-07-08T11:48:00.002+01:00

I was just working on a page that when hovering over an element it would change the background colour, the element in question was a span tag. The CSS I was using was

editable-element:hover
{
background-color:#EEEEEE;
border:1px solid black;
cursor:pointer;
}

which works fine and dandy in Safari 4...I noticed it did diddly squat in Firefox 3.5, the solution change it to

span.editable-element:hover
{
background-color:#EEEEEE;
border:1px solid black;
cursor:pointer;
}
It seems FF needs the element type when using :hover and alike.

JQuery offline manual

2009-07-05T08:15:00.002+01:00

Recently I was working on a script using JQuery while offline and wanted to reference the ajax apis...damn! I didn't have the offline manual.

So next time I was online I did a quick google and found the following.

http://charupload.wordpress.com/2007/12/07/jquery-documentation-chm/

But ahhh macs can't read chm files natively which is where http://chmox.sourceforge.net/ comes in perfect! I can now view the JQuery manual offline.

On another note, the new sourceforge layout looks way better and is so much easier to navigate.

Komodo Edit Portable 5.1.3a Released

2009-06-14T15:55:00.001+01:00

Komodo Edit Portable 5.1.3a builds on the 5.1.3 release adding profile corruption checking. If your computer crashes while running Komodo Edit Portable the next time you run Komodo Edit Portable you will be notified of the corruption and instructed on how to fix it, this will prevent you losing your settings. You may download it at http://www.komodoeditportable.com

Strange Mac Book Pro Phenomonom

2009-06-07T12:48:00.001+01:00

Something very strange happened last night while I was using my Mac Book Pro (MBP).

I was watching a film on front row, once it ended I heard a background noise as if the film was still playing. I close all my apps down but it was still there. I concentrated on the sound and realized it sounded like 2 or 3 distinct radio/tv broadcasts, some in English, some in other languages, I removed all network cables and other connections to make sure it was nothing coming down the Internet, I moved to another part of the house and it went away, I move back and it came back.

I can only conclude that because the MBP is made out of aluminum some how it was acting as an aerial for radio/tv broadcasts and piping the sound through my headphones.

I emailed apple about this lets see if they respond!

EMAMP Installation Guide Released

2009-06-03T23:25:00.000+01:00

EMAMP now has an installation guide, you can view it at http://www.obsidianproject.co.uk/emamp/help here you have a step by step guide on how to download, install and configure EMAMP the guide includes screen shots.

mod_rewrite and directories

2009-05-31T13:29:00.002+01:00

I wanted to redirect a file in a webspace of /directory/index.html to /directory/index.php so mod_rewrite for apache comes to mind!

I've never actually rewritten a directory path before so I thought it would be

RewriteRule ^/directory/index\.html$ /directory/index.php

After trying it nothing happened.... :( oddly enough you just need to chop the first / off so the rule would be

RewriteRule ^directory/index\.html$ directory/index.php

Odd.

Vista Windows winsxs folder

2009-04-26T03:05:00.002+01:00

Recently while preparing my desktop for a full OS backup I noticed the folder c:\windows\winsxs was 14.6GB (note I'm on vista64 bit this will become relevant later).

After some research I found this folder keeps copies of old .dll files for programs. Since I'm on x64 this means 32 bit and 64 bit dlls...that's a lot!

Now a way to shrink this is to run a file called VSP1CLN.exe (assuming you have vista service pack 1 installed). This removes the ability to uninstall Vista Service Pack 1 and cleans up some old files, it removed 2.6GB of files..not bad. Warning running this file will disable your ability to remove vista service pack one the only way to remove it will be to reinstall windows make sure you know what you're doin!

PHP Compiling Oddness

2009-04-08T11:50:00.004+01:00

I've just been compiling Easy Mac Apache MySQL and PHP and when compiling the php for the system package came across a very very odd error, when running php on a mac without xcode and not compiling with bz2 it would bring up an error unable to find libltdl.3.dylib which is a libtool dynamic library, now what's really odd is when I compile --with-bz2 the problem goes away, why I have no idea!

PHP Flush

2009-04-03T10:53:00.002+01:00

I was writing a script that needed to show download progress so flushing content to the users browser was required...oddly enough flush() alone didn't work. I found this is a solution


ob_end_flush();
echo "Downloading...";
/* download code goes here */
sleep(3) //simulate a download
flush();
echo "Download complete";

Why does this work? Dunno but for some reason ob_end_flush(); before a flush made it work.

Offline php manual

2009-03-18T01:08:00.002Z

When away from home sometimes I want to access the php manual but don't have any net or at least not a decent connection, so here is how to download a mirror of the php site to your mac.

Assuming you're running an apache web server set up to handle php requests use the following shell script.

#!/bin/bash
rsync -avzC --timeout=600 --delete --delete-after --include='manual/en/' --include='manual/en/**' --exclude='manual/**' --exclude='distributions/**' --exclude='extra/**' rsync.php.net::phpweb PATHTODOWNLOADTO

change PATHTODOWNLOADTO to where you want the manual to go. (Note don't run this more than say once a day or you may get ipbanned by php.net)

Oh god not again...

2009-03-13T05:35:00.000Z

ok so I'm at Manchester airport and there's two rabbis on the plane....why is it everywhere I go rabbis follow. So....odd.
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device

core file debugging

2009-03-10T00:13:00.004Z

Recently I recompiled apache/php with more features for future "just in case I need it" use.

One of these was suphp and eaccelerator. Now eaccelerator only works with dso or fcgi configurations of apache...bummer I'm using dso and suphp so suphp is crashing eaccelerator and creating core dumps all over the sodding place..carp...

Solutions, well firstly remove eaccelerator from suphp php.ini

Secondly core dumps shouldn't really be created all over the place so to disable them I found this post it works perfectly! Now no more core dumps!

Now to find any core dumps left use the following command

find / -regex -path /proc -prune '.*core\.[0-9]*'

the -path /proc -prune excludes the /proc folder

(this is assuming your core dumps append the pid of the file to them if not use find / -name core)

To see what made the core type file [pathtofile]

To debug it type gdb [path to executable found from above command] [path to core file]

SVN & SASL

2009-03-09T22:13:00.003Z

I forgot when making all my svn posts about how to add the sasl authentication.

In the svnserve.conf file enable sasl and set a realm say...'realm' (how original)

Then run the command saslpasswd2 - c -u realm username

Replacing realm with the realm and username with the username

Vista Auto Login

2009-03-09T16:18:00.001Z

On windows XP I used the power toys to enable auto login for my pc, now I am on vista I'd like to do the same, thanks to how to geek I now know how!

svn centos

2009-03-09T06:04:00.002Z

Centos is based on red hat which doesn't update the version numbers of software it distributes via yum since svn requires apr 0.9.7+ and centos 4 comes with apr 0.9.4 upgrades are needed!

First download apr and apr util and subversion from the respective sites.

Extract the files.

Enter the apr directory type ./configure --prefix=[DIR TO INSTALL TO]
type make
type make install

now enter the apr-util dir and type ./configure --prefix=[DIR TO INSTALL TO] --with-apr=[PATH TO APR-CONFIG YOU JUST INSTALLED]
type make
type make install

now enter the subversion directory and type

./configure --prefix=[DIR TO INSTALL TO] --disable-mod-activation --with-sasl=/usr/lib/sasl2/ --with-zlib=/usr/local/include --with-apr=[PATH TO WHERE YOU INSTALLED APR] --with-apr-util=[PATH TO WHERE YOU INSTALLED APRUTIL]

PHP mysql / mysqli / pdo

2009-02-28T20:59:00.002Z

With more and more hosting companies adopting mysql 5.0 and php 5.2 instead of the old php 4 and mysql 4.1 I thought I'd go and benchmark some mysql/mysqli/pdo and here are my results.

The table used has approximatly one million records.

This is the results from running a SELECT * on the table 100 times.

mysql average 2.1038151192665

mysqli average 2.1223193383217

pdo average 2.1316439843178

You can see they're all pretty even but mysql wins followed by mysqli followed by pdo

Note these don't use prepared or multi query for mysqli / pdo they use plain query

Now onto insterts, adding 100k inserts one at a time has the following results

mysql average 0.00016879864931107

mysqli average 0.00013578898429871

pdo average 0.00015307459592819

On inserts mysqli wins with pdo coming second and mysql lagging behind.

Lastly updates

A simple update query which looked something like this UPDATE `t1` SET `f1`=`f1`+1 LIMIT 1 run 100k times

mysql average 0.00015682008266449

mysqli average 0.0001266986322403

pdo average 0.00013525368928909

Very similar to when running inserts mysql > pdo > mysql

The verdict with 2 points for coming first 1 point for coming 2nd and 0 points for coming 3rd we have

mysql 2
mysqli 5
pdo 2

So looks like mysqli is the fastest.

Linux/Unix Show only hidden (dot) files

2009-02-21T21:13:00.002Z

Not sure if I've posted this before but to show just hidden (file starting with a .) on linux/unix type

ls .??*

Repair scratched glasses

2009-02-17T13:32:00.002Z

Have you ever scratched your glasses and now every time you wear them all you see is the scratch? Well I have.
Recently I read on Lifehacker a way to repair them.

Assuming you have polycarbonate glasses (new ones will be) and have a UV/Anti glare coating (probably will if you had any extras) you can use Amrour Etch Glass Etching Cream to remove the coating on the glasses which is actually what is scratched.

Since armour etch is american you can't get it in the UK or elsewhere but you can buy it off ebay like I did for around $10 which as of writing is around £7.50.

Considering a new pair of glasses could easily be £100 or £30-£50 for just new lenses it's a steal!

Debugging Javascript in Internet Explorer

2009-02-17T00:36:00.002Z

As anyone who has ever tried to debug javascript in IE will know..you can't really it has a piddly little error saying "Error on line XX" but doesn't tell you what file..handy.

Anyway after a quick google I remembered the microsoft script debugger!

Download it here

Once downloaded install it then in IE go to tools > options, click the advanced tab, then uncheck "Disable script debugging (Internet Explorer)" and "Disable script debugging (other)".

Then restart IE and when something gets messed up it will alert you and ask you if you want to debug, tell it you do and it'll show you the problem line.

Vista users will have to allow the add-on so you may need admin rights.

PHP HashBang

2009-02-14T17:22:00.002Z

I've just been writing a php script and want to use a different php.ini file for the php-cli now the problem is typing

#/usr/bin/php-cli -c /pathtoinifile/php.ini doesn't work because the standard linux shell only parses one argument.

Simple solution, take the space out after the -c

#/usr/bin/php-cli -c /pathtoinifile/php.ini

That will work.

Genius!

2009-02-11T12:44:00.002Z

I've been having a problem on and off with suPHP and cpanel, the problem was it brings up an internal server error and suphp_log says "Directory / not owned by {username}" where {username} is the user executing the script.

I'd not managed to solve it so asked my friend Simon his google skills seem better than mine he managed to find http://www.mail-archive.com/suphp@lists.marsching.biz/msg00619.html and low and behold my / and various other folders weren't owned by root! They were owned by a deleted user (602), it turns out when I installed zmanda then uninstalled it somewhere along the line the ownership got changed to the zmanda user which was then deleted.

So after running
find / -user 602 -exec chgrp root {} \;
find / -user 602 -exec chown root {} \;

All works!

The Truth is out there!

2009-01-31T14:48:00.001Z

The truth is out there! Google may harm your computer! They say so themselves...
Ok seriously I'm just joking but the image is real, google just screwed up and now is showing all sites as "This site may harm your computer"...how long will it last? XD

Thunderbird niggle

2009-01-28T01:18:00.000Z

Just a little niggle I have with thunderbird, by default it sets the cursor under the previous message when replying to an email.

To make it go to the top do the following.

Click "tools" then "account settings" choose your account, click "composition and addressing" then where it says "automatically quote the original message when replying" there is a drop down box, set it to "start my reply above the quote" and press "ok" then the cursor will start at the top :)
Sent from my BlackBerry® wireless device