Nice One Qype

Qype 500 Error Page

Related posts:

1. Excel SYLK: File format is not valid error I came across this error earlier this week so thought...
2. PHP IMAP Error On CentOS Linux 4.2 If you’re compiling php 5 on CentOS Linux with the IMAP...
3. Adding Additional Software Repositories To Yum I’ve added this (slightly edited) post here as I’ve found...

http://spoon.net/browsers

Nuff said...

Actually while I'm on the topic (mainly of IE being an idiot)

http://code.google.com/p/ie7-js/

In addition, for up to date browser usage stats (and in theory the most correct stats):

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Related posts:

1. Google Chrome – Released But Not Polished? Google chrome is a new lightweight browser released by Google,...
2. 2 New Facebook Apps Begun Today I have started writing 2 new Facebook applications, Doomsday...
3. Simple Function To Force Download Of A File The following function will allow you to run a file...

If you're new to SimpleXML then the output and representation of complex XML data produced by the library can be daunting and sometimes confusing, but once you're used to it, SimpleXML is a massively useful tool for processing XML information.

When debugging other people's implementations of simpleXML however, one of the biggest issues I come across time and again is the apparent loss of CType data from the processed feed.

Luckily this is very easily remedied, but not well documented so here's how to deal with it.

PHP 5.1.0 introduced the options parameter to functions such as simplexml_load_string() which allows you to specify additional paramters to Libxml the underlying library PHP uses to interpret XML.

The default Libxml setting ignores any data in CType blocks, but you can override this behaviour by passing the LIBXML_NOCDATA option to the function.

In other words, in cases where you might usually do this to load some xml data and not find the CType fields in the resulting object:

$xml = simplexml_load_string($feed);

Doing this instead, will allow the CType fields to be added to the object and used in your scripts where you need to

$xml = simplexml_load_string($feed, NULL, LIBXML_NOCDATA);

Unfortunately the options parameter is the 3rd in the list, and 9 times out of 10 the second option (which is the name that's given to the class containing the parsed xml) doesn't need to be changed/overridden so I personally choose to pass NULL in as the second option, though you can enter whatever you like here.

It's as easy as that  - I hope you found this note useful

Related posts:

1. Searching for words that "sounds like…" This article is interesting: http://lamp.codeproject.com/KB/recipes/soundslike.aspx Combining methods to better search...
2. Bloody MySQL Bugs I’m looking to setup some replication between two servers and...
3. Funky ORM with PHPDoctrine I work on all sorts of little personal projects in...

They guys who produce TinyMCE suggest, when initialising the editor, that you set the content_css parameter to be the url to your site’s CSS, so that the content you type into the text area is styled in the same way as the rest of your site.

This is a great idea and works very well, but a lot of CSS layouts make use of various text positioning options which don’t really apply when translated to a wysiwyg editor, for example making the default alignment centred with no padding.

Thankfully you can get around all of this quite easily and add further custom styling to your editor’s textarea by adding the .mceContentBody style to the end of your site’s CSS file and specifying any further layout options in that.

For example the following css tells the editor in my app to always ensure the text alignment is left justified by default and give a 10 pixel padding to the textarea the editor’s being applied to so that the text that will be input by the user doesn’t squash up against any particular border of the text area itself:

.mceContentBody {
text-align: left;
padding: 10px;
}

Nice and simple really but not so easy to find quickly when searching on Google so I hope this helps someone else out there too!

Related posts:

1. Make Money With Wordpress And Matched.co.uk Everybody out there at the moment is trying to make...
2. Convert Multiple Spaces To a Single Space Sometimes you want to sanitise a block of text or...
3. Advanced Syntax-Hilighting Online Code Editors – A Wordpress IDE? When I write plugins for wordpress I like to do...

Apparently though I've only used 3,341.70 MB of my 20,000.00 MB webspace I have hit my file quota limit of 262,144 files.

And what notification did I get - none!

Just a load of head scratching as to why my FTP uplaods were failing...

Looks like I'm gonna have to delete some stuff...

Cheers 1and1...

Related posts:

1. Getting Wordpress To Ping Google Blog Search I noticed today that my blog wasn't included in Google...
2. Wordpress 2.3 has been released Wordpress 2.3 has been released and I can already see...
3. Bloody MySQL Bugs I’m looking to setup some replication between two servers and...

If you use an unsigned MySQL int to count seconds you can count up to roughly 136 years before the field is full

On another note I also got my Google Wave invite today, so if anyone wants to connect just add chrisjohndean@googlewave.com to your list!

Related posts:

1. Using Linux Saves Money And Helps Save The Planet Recently I bought a new cheap Toshiba laptop which came...
2. MySQL 5.1 partitioning and loosing all your databases (or not)! I can across a few other funky things in MySQL...
3. Google storage update: More space for your photos and email No google storage team, thank you... Hi, We wanted to...

No google storage team, thank you...

Hi,

We wanted to let you know about some exciting changes to your Google paid storage plan. While storage costs have dropped naturally in the past few years, we've also been working hard to improve our infrastructure to reduce your costs even further. On Tuesday, November 10th, we increased the size of each of our tiers to make storage even more affordable and accessible. For the same $20.00 per year, you’ll now get 80 GB, 8 times as much storage as before. Your current plan will be automatically upgraded and your new quota will automatically show up in your account in the next 24 hours.

We hope you’ll like the extra space, but if it’s more than you need you can always change your storage plan or renewal preferences for next year in your Google account settings: www.google.com/accounts/purchasestorage. Feel free to visit our Help Center for more information.

Thanks,
The Google storage team

Christ knows how I'm going to fill up 80 Gig with email and images, but I'm gonna give it a bloody good go!

Related posts:

1. Netbasic – No. 3 in the Tech Track 100! As anyone who actually reads this blog probably already...
2. Getting Wordpress To Ping Google Blog Search I noticed today that my blog wasn't included in Google...
3. Changing The Default Search Engine in Firefox Back To Google or To Something Else When you type keywords into your Firefox address bar and...

For the last 5-10 minutes I've been wondering why a check on a variable which should be valid has been returning false.

The check is ctype_digit, which returns true if all characters in a string are digits.

So if $var = 1;, you might expect it to return true, but it doesn't.

Why not? Well, as the PHP manual states, this function acts on strings not integers.

Therefore checking something that has been specifically set as an integer (as in the example above) or typecast to be an integer at some point (as is my case) ctype_digit will fail as the data it is checking is not a string in the first place!

So there you go. Although 99% of data handled in PHP is in string form at some point, and therefore a ctype_digit check is generally completely valid, in some special cases it might be worth combining a ctype_digit() check with a preceding is_string() check depending on your application.

Rant over...

Related posts:

1. Windows 7 64Bit – Impressions So Far… I’ve been using the released version of Windows 7 for...
2. Webservices and the Curse of Email It always amazes me how little secure and reliable communication...
3. Bloody MySQL Bugs I’m looking to setup some replication between two servers and...

Recently I saw a symbol on the side of the pepsi can that looked something like this and all it said with it was want to know more... visit us, with some url back to pepsi's website.

I thought that was all a bit odd, but unusually for me I disregarded it as some kind of new marketing game I wasn't interested in.

Today however I was starting to catch back up with months of missed Google reader posts, saw a similar thing on Matt Cutt's blog where he was talking about the chart types that the google charting API can produce and found out these things are called QR codes.

And apparently "QR codes can be read by any device that has the appropriate software installed. Such devices range from dedicated QR code readers to mobile phones."

When I received my Nokia E71 a year or so ago I noticed it had bar-code reader software pre-installed on it, but had no idea what that was really for, until now, it's for reading codes like this!

So why not try it yourself. If you have a phone with bar code reader software built in and want to give it a try, point it at the screen and find out what this says:

If you have an interest in having these codes produced please get in touch!

Related posts:

1. It’s all about the mobbler I love last.fm It's basically made my mp3 collection redundant...
2. Google Chrome – Released But Not Polished? Google chrome is a new lightweight browser released by Google,...
3. PHP5 Universal File Download Class After finding different hosting companies having wildly different policies when...

Olark is a very neat new service from as US company called Habla, Inc. that lets you integrate a live chat box on your website directly with one of a number of common Instant Messaging clients.

Very easy to setup and relatively cheap (free for the most basic service), it provides an excellent way of getting direct interaction with site visitors, which can be incredibly important for anyone attempting to engage customers immediately in a sales process.

To date, services that I know of like this require you to actually be logged in to the website or some other server somewhere for them to actually work. This is all well and good, but who wants to keep a live web page open just in case they get any direct enquiries whilst they’re doing other things? Certainly not me!

I’d rather just have my usual IM client popup with a new message/chat request alert as soon as someone wants to get in touch from the website, just as it would if a friend or a known client wanted to talk to me, and that’s exactly what this offers.

So far, though they support a number of IM solutions, they do not currently support MSN (well, Windows Live Messenger), which is my chat client of choice (probably along with 99% of everyone else) BUT after chatting to a member of their support team I am told it’s something being worked on and could even be in place by the end of the month (Oct – 2009)!

For now though I’m quite happy to switch to something like pidgin for a few weeks.

As you’ll see to the bottom right of the screen, I have integrated their service on this blog already, meaning that I can now chat directly to potential clients who visit my website and have questions or comments about the services I have to offer. Fantastic!

If it says I’m online, why not try it out for yourself and send me a message

Related posts:

1. Webservices and the Curse of Email It always amazes me how little secure and reliable communication...
2. Windows Live Writer Is Cool Recently when using my new laptop I noticed a small...
3. Convert Multiple Spaces To a Single Space Sometimes you want to sanitise a block of text or...

When you type keywords into your Firefox address bar and hit enter it usually goes off and searches a particular search engine for you. e.g. Google (as the default) but sometimes other applications you install override this behaviour and replace a Google search with their own search.

In my case I accidently chose to install the Ask toolbar along with another piece of software I actually wanted on my machine. Ok I thought, that was a mistake so I’ll just go and uninstall the Ask toolbar and everything will be fine, right? Wrong! Removing the Ask toolbar alone will not reset the default options in Firefox that were overwritten when the toolbar initially installed.

Thankfully though this is something that’s pretty easy to fix, even if it might look complicated. Here’s how you do it:

1. Type about:config into the firefox address bar (the place where you’d normally type a web address) to open up the firefox config options
2. In the filter box enter: keyword.URL
3. Double click the value column to change the the default url used for keyword searches
4. Enter the search url you actually want to use e.g: http://www.google.com/cse?cx=partner-pub-6458081723116676:1i1tbs-63yw&ie=ISO-8859-1&sa=Search&q=

It’s that easy!

Also you’ll probably find other search options have been overwritten. The others I found that needed changing back were anything in the browser.search group. i.e. if you filter the config options by browser.search as above, you’ll see various options that have the value Ask (in my case) All of these need to be changed back to say Google or Google.co.uk or whatever is appropriate.

Related posts:

1. Google Chrome – Released But Not Polished? Google chrome is a new lightweight browser released by Google,...
2. Holy Keyword Loaded Sub-domains Batman! After finding this in a random search on Google for...
3. Google Chrome’s Future Support for Extensions This is an interesting article from the Google operating system...

On every other version of windows I've used over the last 12 years or so, you've always been able to double click a .zip archive, open it up like a folder and drag and drop any files you like out of it to anywhere else on your hard drive. A very easy procedure, and I use it all the time.

I don't know if it's just me, but on the 64 bit version of Windows 7 this process seems to screw up somewhere and takes FOREVER to complete...

It's fine if you just extract the whole archive to another location but if you want to drag and drop selected contents it simply doesn't seem to like it... it just hangs there....

If anyone else has experienced this and knows how to solve it, please leave me a comment below

Related posts:

1. Windows 7 64Bit – Impressions So Far… I’ve been using the released version of Windows 7 for...
2. How to Mount a Linux LVM2 Partition in Windows I have a dual boot Windows Vista / Linux Laptop...
3. File-system mp3 Organisation – Is It Really That Hard? Like most people I know I have a lot of...

Of all the websites out there that I visit on a daily basis, I wonder which actively analyse my user agent and do something with it, or at least end up exposing it somewhere else on the web.

As a result I've decided to make the url of this post the value of my user agent string, and we'll see how many hits come into it over the next few months.

I'll update this post as time goes on with what I find out...

Related posts:

1. How to filter user submitted data easily in PHP? How to filter user submitted data easily in PHP? Posted...
2. Wordpress 2.3 has been released Wordpress 2.3 has been released and I can already see...
3. Wordpress 2.5 Released! Version 2.5 of wordpress has been released and we have a...

I’ve been using the released version of Windows 7 for about 4 days on and off now and have to say it seems to be a massive improvement over Vista.

In my opinion it’s what Vista should have been (the whole release of Vista vs. XP being akin to the release of Windows ME vs. windows 98 i.e. a bit of a joke, with the real improvements come in the next version again – in that case XP in this case 7).

Anyway, things to note so far are:

• Battery life seems to be improved – Win 7 seems to require a lot less juice to run well
• Stacked taskbar icons make the management of multiple applications easier
• Icon themes are nicer than Vista
• Network management is much improved over Vista for those who change networks a lot
• Start up screen is fairly funky
• User Account Control and other Security options are less intrusive
• Windows Media Centre is included in the Pro Version (Vista Business excluded it…)
• So far ALL of the applications that I used to run on XP and Vista seem to run without issue, even small 3rdparty standalone tools (programs that don't require an installer to run)

That’s a fairly short list so far but just for those improvements (minimal though some of them may seem) I’d say it’s worth it.

I’d recommend upgrading for anyone who’s currently using Vista, especially on a laptop and for those of you still running Windows XP, though in your case you might also need a hardware upgrade too.

Related posts:

1. Using Linux Saves Money And Helps Save The Planet Recently I bought a new cheap Toshiba laptop which came...
2. Installing Flash Media Server 2 On Linux (CentOS 4.4) Recently I was asked by a client to look at...
3. Windows 7 doesn’t seem to like zip files On every other version of windows I've used over the...

My gumtree ads (mygumtreeads.com) is a new project of mine, filling in what I see as one of the major gaps in Gumtree's current service. The gap that I and I'm sure many other people have experienced is the inability to setup a user page containing all of your ads for easy reference, a bit like an eBay store.

The real issue with Gumtree is that each ad is regarded as unique and has no obvious relationship to other ads on the site, even if they've been posted by the same person. So, once you post an ad it can get lost forever in their system and though they send you emails telling you what your ad id is, etc. it's very easy to lose track of the ads that you've setup, especially if you have a lot of items to sell, swap or give away.

The service itself is a mash up between wordpress, twitter and gumtree itself, and though released to a wider audience, is still in beta testing, meaning that from time to time there will be issues with system while I iron out bugs and more importantly I'm very open to suggestions on new features and functionality.

Technically, the site is built on wordpress and uses my own rapid plugin development code framework, to extend the base functionality (which I hope to release sometime soon). It uses twitter as a way of collating a list of ads that you post and then processes these entries to form a catalgouge/store like interface.

Anyway I hope if you are also a regular Gumtree user you'll try out the site and see if it works for you.

If not, let me know why and I'll do something about it!

No related posts.

No related posts.

Not much for me to say here that isn’t covered in the following tutorial: http://www.howtoforge.com/mysql_master_master_replication

Aside from the comments I made there, which I hope they include, if not I’ll update this post with those comments in due course

Related posts:

1. All of A Twitter Recently I've been playing about with Twitter and so have...
2. User Agent Of all the websites out there that I visit on...
3. Getting Wordpress To Ping Google Blog Search I noticed today that my blog wasn't included in Google...

I’m looking to setup some replication between two servers and server B has none of the databases server A has, so obviously I have to populate B with A’s data.

Easy you might think, simply start the slave and issue some like:

mysql> load data from master;

But actually, in my case, this fails because of the following bug when loading master data and the fact that views exist on server A

As it says here http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=20596

[30 Aug 2006 20:36] Trudy Pelzer

Since the current implementation of LOAD DATA FROM MASTER and LOAD TABLE FROM MASTER is very limited, these statements are deprecated in versions 4.1, 5.0 and 5.1 of MySQL. We will introduce a more advanced technique (online backup) in a future (>5.1) version, that will have the added advantage of working with more storage engines.

Due to the deprecated status of the statements, this bug will not be fixed. For 5.1 and earlier, the recommended alternative solution to using LOAD DATA|TABLE FROM MASTER is mysqldump on the master piped (or output copied) to the mysql client on the slave. This also has the advantage of working for all storage engines.

A deprecation warning will be added for these statements in 4.1, 5.0 and 5.1 shortly.

Now there’s a number of ways around this e.g. exporting the views table, dropping them, doing load data from master then re-importing them or just copying the mysql data dir’s from A to B, or using mysql dump as suggested above, but this shouldn’t be necessary!

This is a bug that’s been known about by MySQL for almost 3 years, should be a fairly simple thing to fix really and hasn’t been. I don’t remember seeing any  deprecation warning in the latest version of MySQL and have wasted more time as a result.

Hopefully now SUN seem to be taking a proper hold of MySQL some of these more minor but pain in the ass issues will start to be fixed!!!

Related posts:

1. MySQL 5.1 multiple tmpdirs and incorrect key file for table errors Well I found out a few new things today... Firstly...
2. MySQL 5.1 partitioning and loosing all your databases (or not)! I can across a few other funky things in MySQL...
3. Google storage update: More space for your photos and email No google storage team, thank you... Hi, We wanted to...

So, I needed to upgrade MySQL on our development boxes today and I was met by a little surprise from the RPM program…

Basically it won’t do an upgrade as the vendor has changed from being MySQL AB to Sun Microsystems, and as a result I have to do a complete uninstall and re-install manually…

Ho hum, I know it’s a small issue and for the best, but it’s still a pain in the ass when something silly such as  vendor name change wastes time in what would otherwise be a quick and simple upgrade.

So anyway as I’m going through it the following might be useful to you if you have to do the same any time soon.

First download all the current MySQL packages you need:

$hell> mkdir mysql-5.1.34

$hell> cd mysql-5.1.34

$hell> wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-server-community-5.1.34-0.rhel4.i386.rpm/from/http://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/ftp.mysql.com/

$hell> wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-client-community-5.1.34-0.rhel4.i386.rpm/from/http://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/ftp.mysql.com/

$hell> wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-shared-community-5.1.34-0.rhel4.i386.rpm/from/http://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/ftp.mysql.com/

$hell> wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-shared-compat-5.1.34-0.rhel4.i386.rpm/from/http://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/ftp.mysql.com/

$hell> wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-devel-community-5.1.34-0.rhel4.i386.rpm/from/http://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/ftp.mysql.com/

$hell> wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-test-community-5.1.34-0.rhel4.i386.rpm/from/http://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/ftp.mysql.com/

$hell> wget http://dev.mysql.com/get/Downloads/MySQL-5.1/MySQL-community-debuginfo-5.1.34-0.rhel4.i386.rpm/from/http://mirrors.ukfast.co.uk/sites/ftp.mysql.com/

Then  stop all running MySQL Process:

$hell> /etc/init.d/myst stop

Then find all the MySQL packages you need to remove by running:

$hell> rpm -qa | grep -i '^mysql-'

Then uninstall each e.g.:

$hell> rpm -e MySQL-client-community-5.1.29-0.rhel4

Then re-install all the new ones you just downloaded e.g.:

$hell> rpm -i MySQL-shared-community-5.1.34-0.rhel4.i386.rpm

Then run the MySQL upgrade program to do the final checks and upgrade the MySQL system database if necessary:

$hell> /usr/bin/mysql_upgrade -uroot -p

And that’s it, all should work nicely again

Remember though, you shouldn’t upgrade between major versions that aren’t in sequence. i.e. Don’t upgrade from MySQL from 4.0 to 5.1 as the additions to the software made in 4.1, 5.0, etc. can be lost by skipping these intermediate upgrades.

Related posts:

1. Installing Flash Media Server 2 On Linux (CentOS 4.4) Recently I was asked by a client to look at...
2. Setting Up Ubuntu PHP 5.2, MySQL 5.1 and Apache 2 on a PS3 Recently I wanted a new development box/streaming media server for...
3. Adding Additional Software Repositories To Yum I’ve added this (slightly edited) post here as I’ve found...

I subscribe to the Security Focus web application security mailing list and as a result I get all kinds of mail through on various topics from across the field.

Recently (last 6-9 months or so) a few have caught my eye that I thought would be useful to forward to friends and colleagues also in the business, and similarly I thought I’d summarise those items here too:

Anti-fraud Image Solutions from Gunter Ollmann

Checklist for testing web apps from Paul Johnston

OWASP TESTING GUIDE v3 from OWASP

The Extended HTML Form attack revisited from Sandro Gauci

Related posts:

1. Some useful news from the WASC The Web Application Security Consortium (WASC) is pleased to announce...
2. QR Codes Are Great! Recently I saw a symbol on the side of the...
3. Installing Red5 Open Source Flash Media Server On CentOS 4.2 After having no end of issues with the proprietary flash...

So, not thinking about it, I tried to remotely SSH into Ubuntu on my PS3 today only to get a connection refused message. Turns out SSH isn’t installed by default on this distro (or poss with the settings I chose) so I had to use good old apt to install it:

$hell> sudo apt-get install ssh

It all installed fine, no config options required, and I can now connect from anywhere on the network - Woo

Related posts:

1. Setting Up Ubuntu PHP 5.2, MySQL 5.1 and Apache 2 on a PS3 Recently I wanted a new development box/streaming media server for...
2. Changing The Default Search Engine in Firefox Back To Google or To Something Else When you type keywords into your Firefox address bar and...
3. ATI Radion 9600 TV Output On Centos 5.0 (And Probably CentOS 4.4) In a previous post about how to install Flash Media...

Recently I wanted a new development box/streaming media server for use around the house and for work.

After looking at the prices of all the main small form factor PC's or NAS boxes that would let me do this I could see that I was easily looking at £200-£250 minimum for the kind of setup I wanted to put together.

At the same time, I happened to notice that Sony actually support the use of Ubuntu as an alternative OS on the playstation 3 (or possibly Ubuntu Support the PS3 as an installation platform - whichever, it doesn't matter, the point is that some one does and it works!).

Now, an 80Gb PS3 is about £290 at the time of writing and has oodles of inbuilt support as a streaming media client, media storage and playback and a blue-ray player, as well as giving me the option to install a fully functional version of linux that will allow me to do whatever the hell I liked (RAM permitting).
So last weekend I bought one and, aside from playing games, I have just finished setting up Ubuntu 9.04 on it and I'm actually blogging this via firefox on the PS3 - woohoo

So what did I have to do to get this working?

Well the first thing to remember, if you've had a PS3 for a while and want to keep all your game saves, downloads, etc. is to back them up! There's an easy tool to do this in the system settings menu and I found having an external  USB HDD rather than a memory stick to hand was quite useful for this. Also you might want to sync your trophy collection with the Playstation Network Servers if you're interested in keeping that kinda stuff.

Once you've done your backups, you'll need to set aside a partition for the new OS to use.

To do this, oddly enough you have to use the format disk utility from system menu, as this where the partition management is also done. Basically you select the option and you'll get the choice of either giving the Guest OS 10 GB, and the PS3 the rest of the space, or the PS3 10GB and the Guest OS the rest of the space.

I chose to give the guest OS 10Gb and keep the PS3 holding the bulk of the space as I can see myself downloading a fair few games from the playstation network over the next couple of years. Also though this 10GB default setting isn't massive,  for my needs, as a system partition it's fine since I intend to run a 1TB data tank off the back of the PS3 to hold any other media.

Anyway, what seems to happen when you do this is that the PS3 re-formats the part of the disk allocated for all non-essential user data i.e. downloads and game saves and frees up a 10Gb chunk for the new OS.

At this point I'm pretty sure you get a prompt to insert the installation media for the new OS (if you don't just click through the options relating to guest OS's and it will pop up somewhere), so you then need to get (in my case as I'm using Ubuntu) the Ubuntu installation image for powerPC and PS3 and burn it to a CD. You can get Jaunty (9.04) here

Once you have the CD in hand, simply insert it into the PS3 and the install process will start as normal with any linux distro, allowing you to partition your allocated space and setup any basic system options - note however that the install may take quite a while due to the processing speed and allocated RAM of the PS3 - that said once installed Ubuntu seems to run pretty smoothly.

To get the linux side working you need to chose the default OS to use from the system settings menu i.e. PS3 or 'Guest OS' choosing the latter will fire up Ubuntu as normal on any standard PC. The PS3 will then always boot into Ubuntu unless you type 'game' at the boot prompt, which will reset the default OS to being the PS3's own OS.

Once Ubuntu has loaded all you need to do to install Apache, PHP and MySQL, is open up a terminal and type the following (Note: I'd install MySQL first as components of Apache and PHP seem to need the libs anyway):

$shell> sudo apt-get install mysql-server-5.1

$shell> sudo apt-get install apache2

$shell> sudo apt-get install php5

Note: for some reason the MySQL setup also requires you to setup postfix, I'm not sure why but I did this anyway as it prompted me to and having postfix active on this box is no bad thing really.

The last thing to do was to boot back into the PS3 and restore the backup up game files and resync the trophies and all is done...

So that's it. I now have a fancy pants gaming system, blue ray player, media server (when I setup twonky media) and a development box all for under £300

In all, if you've installed linux before and are not afraid to click around the system settings of your PS3 the whole process is pretty straightforwards and self explanatory. That said, before I actually went the whole hog I did do a little bit of research and found the following sites which was quite handy to start with. The comments on some of the articles aren't great, and some are dated now, as doing what I've outlined above has seemed to work fine for me:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/PlayStation_3

http://psubuntu.com/wiki/UbuntuVersions?show_comments=1#comments

Related posts:

1. Installing Flash Media Server 2 On Linux (CentOS 4.4) Recently I was asked by a client to look at...
2. Using Linux Saves Money And Helps Save The Planet Recently I bought a new cheap Toshiba laptop which came...
3. MySQL 5.1 partitioning and loosing all your databases (or not)! I can across a few other funky things in MySQL...

I can across a few other funky things in MySQL 5.1 today that I thought it might be worth telling you about in case you ever come across them too.

This time I was partitioning a number of large tables in and initially started to get the same weird errors as I did before when stupid queries were running away with themselves due to lack of temp space.

When you partition a table, MySQL seems to build a partitioned copy of it on the file system before swapping to that table for general use – which seems like a fair way to go, but if you don’t have enough temp space for the new table to be built in you get issues similar to those I discussed here, and you can get round them in the same way.

In my case, when doing this kind of maintenance I now add an ‘overflow’ path to the tmpdir variable which is basically a dir on part of the local filesystem with a large chunk of free space on it, but that isn’t on the same partition as the MySQL tables themselves.

This allows these operations to spill over when they need to without causing a lot of hassle – be warned though, it’s not generally a good idea to use a fileshare on a NAS for this procedure! I don’t know how well it’d work with a SAN as I don’t have one to play with, but doing it on a NAS will be REALLY slow in most cases and may cause other issues as a result.

But anyway that’s not the main thing I wanted to talk about.

What I wanted to talk about here is all your databases suddenly apparently vanishing altogether from MySQL after you’ve implemented some a partitioning scheme. I guess the same would apply if you suddenly added a load of new databases/database tables to your MySQL setup too.

At the same time as vanishing databases I’ve also seen errors where MySQL reports that it cannot open the directory on the file system that a particular database resides in, and other similar filesystem related error messages.

What causes this to happen? Well it appears to be the a combination of the max number of connections, the max files mysql  can open and the table cache, which dictates the number of files MySQL can have open at any one time.

Basically what seems to happen is that when table cache gets full, MySQL essentially dies not being able to open any more database files, and therefore cannot access any more information either. BUT because the main operation on the server is not interrupted it seems that the MySQL process doesn’t die - it just continues to run but without access to any information, as if none of it ever existed!

This tends to happen after partitioning has been done because a partitioning scheme can result in a large number of new database data files being produced – after all, that’s all it’s doing, breaking one massive single myISAM file down into more manageable chunks.

Also another reason it tends to happen after partitioning is because partitioning came in in MySQL 5.1 and in MySQL 5.1 the name of the table cache server variable (at least) changed from table_cache to table_open_cache. So, if your my.cnf or my.ini still references table_cache and your running 5.1.3 upwards you’ll not actually be setting this value any more and as a result the server will revert to its default value – namely 64 – a tiny amount.

I have seen recommendations that you should set this value to around to 2048 for a lot of systems (which seems a bit arbitrary really), but the way to determine what kind of numbers you should be using here comes from analysing the results of the opened_files server status variable traded off against the max connections, and whatever the table cache is currently set to - see the resources links below for more info on this – you can access this status variable and a few other useful related parameters by running: 

SHOW STATUS LIKE '%open%';

Issues can also ensue when the number of files opened by the server exceeds/hits the limit of the total number of files the operating system allows any one user to open, and if this actually appears to be the case you need to check the docs for your OS in order to up this limit.

To get an idea of the maximum number of tables mysql might look to open at any one time you can count the number of files in the mysql data dir  - this dir might also contain other junk like bin logs, error logs, etc. but for a rough upper limit this will do it:

ls -1R | wc -l

If your data dir is polluted with logs then you can filter this kind of a count through grep and add up the results:

ls -1R | grep *.MYI | wc -l

ls -1R | grep *.MYD | wc -l

To find out the number of files mysql has open currently you can also do this:

$shell> lsof | grep mysql | wc –l

You can find out the number of max open files your OS supports by running this:

$shell> cat /proc/sys/fs/file-max

Some resources on these issues:

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/table-cache.html

http://forums.mysql.com/read.php?35,168304,168304

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/server-options.html#option_mysqld_open-files-limit

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/server-system-variables.html#sysvar_table_open_cache

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/not-enough-file-handles.html

http://confluence.atlassian.com/display/DOC/Fix+%27Too+many+open+files%27+error+on+Linux+by+increasing+filehandles

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/linux-general-1/number-of-files-in-directory-274630/

http://www.techiesabode.com/article/read_article_w.php?article_id=2

Related posts:

1. MySQL 5.1 multiple tmpdirs and incorrect key file for table errors Well I found out a few new things today... Firstly...
2. MySQL 5.1.34 Upgrades on CentOS 4 – ho hum So, I needed to upgrade MySQL on our development boxes...
3. Bloody MySQL Bugs I’m looking to setup some replication between two servers and...

Well I found out a few new things today...

Firstly if you see an error similar to this:

Incorrect key file for table '/tmp/#sql_913_4.MYI'; try to repair it

It's likely you've got a dodgy query that is creating a temp table so big it's maxing out all your available temp filesystem space.

Secondly if you try to get round this by throwing disk space at the issue then you'll come unstuck.

Queries that create a self-join cartesian product, and contain ORDER BY clauses, cause the server to materialize the entire result set into a temporary table before applying any limits. If you try to get round this by giving the server a larger tmp dir to expand into, then you'll probably watch your disk fill up very quickly, as these can chew up literally tens of gigs of space or worse.

(by the way for reference, i'm paraphrasing Mark Matthews comment at the end of this: http://bugs.mysql.com/bug.php?id=10075 and using experience from my own issue, similar results my be found with other queries that don't manage the data they're pulling back well)

Thirdly if you're trying to use mysql 5.1's new multiple tmpdir's option in the my.cnf file to provide that extra disk space you need to do it like this:

tmpdir = /tmp:/tmp2:/tmp3

Not like this:

tmpdir = /tmp/:/tmp2/:/tmp3/

As for some reason the mysql server doesn't like the trailing slash on the dir name and ignores the lot if you do it the latter way.

So there you go - I learned something new today, and hopefully, so have you!

Related posts:

1. MySQL 5.1 partitioning and loosing all your databases (or not)! I can across a few other funky things in MySQL...
2. Bloody MySQL Bugs I’m looking to setup some replication between two servers and...
3. MySQL 5.1.34 Upgrades on CentOS 4 – ho hum So, I needed to upgrade MySQL on our development boxes...

This is an interesting article from the Google operating system blog about plugin support in the Google Chrome Browser:

http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/12/on-google-chromes-future-support-for.html

With this approach however I have to ask myself, will Chrome ever exceed the abilities of Firefox?

It'd be nice if it did, but it seems like Chrome will always be in a lagging position, unless Google can really add something noticeably ground breaking...

Related posts:

1. Google Chrome – Released But Not Polished? Google chrome is a new lightweight browser released by Google,...
2. Changing The Default Search Engine in Firefox Back To Google or To Something Else When you type keywords into your Firefox address bar and...
3. Google storage update: More space for your photos and email No google storage team, thank you... Hi, We wanted to...

I love last.fm

It's basically made my mp3 collection redundant over the last few months (no mean feat, believe me) but until today I hadn't junked it completely because I didn't have a way of listening to last.fm on the move.

Yesterday I however I received my shiny new Nokia E71 on a slightly different contract from 3 which gives me full power to use the internet as I like (well subject to their fair usage policy anyway).

At the same time I noticed the new INQ phone from 3 also supported last.fm and went hunting for a last.fm mobile app, and that's when I found mobbler a free, open source version of the last.fm scrobbler for Symbian based mobile phones i.e. those made by Nokia

I'm glad to say it works really well and as a result I'm going to archive the mp3's and free up a good 100 gig of disk space - woo for social radio!

Related posts:

1. QR Codes Are Great! Recently I saw a symbol on the side of the...
2. Where Did All The Disk Space Go?? When I converted my laptop to a dual boot system,...
3. Installing tor from source on CentOS 5 As usal with CentOS I can up against a few ...

At home I have Linksys WRT54GL router which I've had for 4/5 years now.

It's always been a dependable box with all the basic functionality I've needed onboard, but recently (mainly as a result of networking discussions at work) I've thought about doing more things which require more control over my internet connection.

When talking to a friend about this recently, he suggested I try Tomato out, as it's designed to work on boxes like mine and offers a lot of extra functionality over the standard supplied firmware.

So today I bit the bullet and gave it a whirl, and I couldn't be happier.

I now have a neat little accessible linux based router with all the extra useful features you'd expect - VPN, bandwith monitoring, signal monitoring, decent routing, cron jobs, custom scripting, etc.

Given that my router cost £35 when I bought it and other models that offer this level of extra functionality can cost a LOT more - I'm happy to say the least

Related posts:

1. Funky ORM with PHPDoctrine I work on all sorts of little personal projects in...
2. Starting App’s For Facebook Yesterday for a bit of fun I decided I'd try...
3. How to Mount a Linux LVM2 Partition in Windows I have a dual boot Windows Vista / Linux Laptop...

As anyone who actually reads this blog probably already knows, I work for an internet marketing company called Netbasic as projects manager and web developer.

We entered the Tech Track 100 this year and as you can see from their website we're No. 3, which makes us the 3rd fastest growing private technology company in the UK!

Not bad at all for just 7 people!

Since then we've doubled in size, grabbed some extra office space and completely revamped one of our bigger brands, accepted.co.uk - a mammoth task but something necessary to keep us on top of the game!

So what's next?

Well there'll be a number of exciting developments coming over the next couple of years (which I'm not going to talk about here), but keep your eyes peeled, cus credit crunch or not we're here to stay!

Related posts:

1. Where Did All The Disk Space Go?? When I converted my laptop to a dual boot system,...
2. MySQL 5.1 multiple tmpdirs and incorrect key file for table errors Well I found out a few new things today... Firstly...
3. Webservices and the Curse of Email It always amazes me how little secure and reliable communication...

Just found this which is quite cool: http://highslide.com/

Wordpress version here: http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/highslide4wp/

Related posts:

1. Meld Wordpress And Facebook Together With Wordbook Now this is a pretty neat plugin: Wordbook allows you...
2. Advanced Syntax-Hilighting Online Code Editors – A Wordpress IDE? When I write plugins for wordpress I like to do...
3. All of A Twitter Recently I've been playing about with Twitter and so have...

Google chrome is a new lightweight browser released by Google, which is meant to be faster, safer, etc. and optimised for web apps such as Google provides (and I use).

I judge a browser by it's speed when I'm using it on the train (into and out of work), via my mobile broadband and what I can actually do with it in terms of functionality, and unfortunately I'm not impressed.

I don't like bloated software, but I don't like software that's so minimal I can't really use it.

So, though seemingly very fast on a standard internet connection, google chrome has been very slow on my mobile broadband, noticeably slower than firefox but not as slow as internet explorer. Gmail is comparativly slow as are other google apps such as igoogle.

Features wise it's not much better -  so far, it's so minimalistic it's almost unusable. Don't get me wrong, it has a few nice things in it but it's missing all the things I need and use every day.

So what's the answer?

Well I may be able to spped up the browser by turning off the usage statistics reporting (though this is on in firefox without issue), so I'll give that a try soon.

And if google produce a plugin API for chrome and developers actually code for it that'd be great. But saying that, what would be better (for me at least) is an interface that allows you to use native chrome plugins if they exist but, also import firefox plugins where possible.

As it stands, unfortunately, I'm quite underwhelmed with the usefulness of chrome and kinda wish it'd been released with a bit more usefulness than it currently has, at the very least it could have google toolbar options built in...

Lets hope they build on it quickly or else it'll just become another niche product for die hard googlephiles.

Related posts:

1. Google Chrome’s Future Support for Extensions This is an interesting article from the Google operating system...
2. Changing The Default Search Engine in Firefox Back To Google or To Something Else When you type keywords into your Firefox address bar and...
3. QR Codes Are Great! Recently I saw a symbol on the side of the...