NEVEREVERBLOG

Laptop overheating and suddenly shutting down?

2015-01-20T11:28:00.003-08:00

The rock is cooking.

My Acer Aspire 5930 laptop started overheating and shutting down again so I checked the temperature and found that one of my cores was missing while the temperature of the remaining core went negative. That can't be good. Time to clean the heat sink and change the thermal compound. This will help the laptop to keep the temperature down.

1) Unplug everything. Turn the laptop over and remove the screws.

2) Remove the back cover.

3) Remove two screws that are holding the fan in place and disconnect it's power cable.

4) Remove the fan.

5) Notice the dust on the heat sink.

6) Carefully unscrew the remaining heat sink screws. Don't try to remove them.

7) Gently lift and remove the heat sink. It might be stuck because of the old thermal grease.

8) Remove the old thermal grease from the heat sink. I used a knife.

9) Don't clean the thermal grease from the circuitry, you might damage the small SMD components. Just add more grease! I bought my thermal grease on ebay.

10) Put the heat sink back and screw it in place, then put the fan back in, screw it in place and connect its power cable.

11) Put the back cover back and screw it in place

Congratulations! You're done. Fire it up and enjoy. Here are the before and after temperature readings:

WordPress redirect loop

2014-11-25T10:27:00.000-08:00

If your blog is working fine when you include the "www" in the url, but you get a "This webpage has a riderect loop" message when you omit the "www" here's a quick and dirty solution for your problem.

Navigate to your blogs root directory, open wp-content/themes then go to your current themes folder, open the fuctions.php file and add this line remove_filter('template_redirect', 'redirect_canonical'); at the very end, right between } and ?>.

It should look something like this:


}
  remove_filter('template_redirect', 'redirect_canonical');
?>

And you're done!

Yii2 kartik GridView toolbar not showing up?

2014-11-18T05:28:00.000-08:00

Took me some time, but I finally found out why.

If you're having problems with the toolbar in kartik\grid\GridView you probably haven't set the before property for the panel. Try this code see if it helps. Don't forget to replace the columns with your own.

<?= GridView::widget([
    'dataProvider'=> $dataProvider,
    'filterModel' => $searchModel,
    'columns' => [
        'id',
        'email:email',
    ],
    'toolbar' => [
        ['content'=>
            Html::a('Add', ['create'], ['data-pjax' => 'false', 'class' => 'btn btn-success']) .
            Html::a('<i class="glyphicon glyphicon-repeat"></i>', ['index'], ['data-pjax' => false, 'class' => 'btn btn-default', 'title'=>'Reset Grid'])
        ],
        '{export}',
        '{toggleData}'
    ],
    'panel' => [
        'heading' => '<b>My View</b>',
        'before' => 'Before content', //IMPORTANT
    ],
]);?>

Set up a custom email address for free

2014-11-15T01:57:00.001-08:00

If you have a website with a custom domain you can start sending and receiving email using a custom address like you@yourdomain.com.

Set up an account with mailgun, configure your DNS records and you're ready to send mail using your favorite App through SMTP or using Curl, Ruby, Python, PHP, Java or C# through their API. Check mailgun documentation to find out more.
Configuring DNS records for the first time may be tricky. You can't just copy everything mailgun provides you with as is and paste it into your DNS record config page. Due to a lack of experience I had to make some adjustments before my domain got verified.

If you're using namecheap here's how your settings in All Host Records should look like(note the use of the @ simbol):

Simple Console Application in D

2013-10-11T11:24:00.001-07:00

D is looking like the next big thing. Let's write a simple console application to become familiar with it.

Our program will ask the user for their name, and then greet the user. To work with input and output we will first import two libraries

import std.stdio, std.cstream;

Now for the main loop that will contain all our code.

void main(string[] args)
{

}

string[] args will contain any parameters passed from the command line. We won't need it for our program.

We will need a variable to store the name of the user so let's declare it.

char[] userName;

char[] is a character array or in other words a string. Notice that we have to put the brackets after the type and not after the variable name like in many other languages.

Now we'll output a message. Kind of looks like Pascal.

writeln("What is your name?");

This is the important part. We will take whatever the user enters and store it in our variable userName after the user presses Enter.

userName = din.readLine;

Finally we will greet the user and wait until the Enter key is pressed.

writeln("Hello " , userName);

din.getc();

Our final program:

import std.stdio, std.cstream;

void main(string[] args)
{
	char[] userName;
	
	writeln("What is your name?");
	userName = din.readLine;
	writeln("Hello " , userName);
	// Lets the user press <Return> before program stops
	din.getc();
}

Installing Ubuntu on the pcDuino

2013-09-30T10:28:00.000-07:00

There are several methods of installing Ubuntu on the pcDuino. All of them are simple... or are they?

There are only two steps: 1) Install the Linux kernel 2) Install Ubuntu.
The first part may seem tricky, but if you've done it once it's quite easy. The second part is a piece of cake. You can use the official instructions or the ones provided by SparkFun. If you have an SD card you can install the Linux kernel with PhoenixCard. If you don't have an SD card install the kernel with LiveSuit.

Once you've installed the Linux kernel each time you boot up the pcDuino it will go into update mode. If you haven't inserted your SD card of Flash drive with the unpacked Ubuntu files do it now and you should get this message(see image below):

If you've done everything as instructed and it still doesn't want to install Ubuntu you might have encountered the same problem I have - wrong file system. My Flash drive had NTFS and Linux couldn't see the files on the Flash drive because of it. Once I formated the Flash drive to FAT32 everything went smoothly.

If you have any questions leave them as a comment.

Image resize filter for xupload in Yii framework

2012-02-05T06:45:00.000-08:00

I was recently testing a wonderful AJAX upload widget xupload for Yii framework and decided that I want to resize the picture after it was uploaded. I found another extension Image that did the trick perfectly, but one question remained: where should I put image resize code, so that I wouldn't have to change the xupload code?

That's when I decided I should learn how to make filters for Yii! I made a file PostUploadFilter.php and put in protected/filters.


<?php
Yii::import('application.extensions.image.Image');
class PostUploadFilter extends CFilter{
protected function preFilter($filterChain)
{
   return true; // we have nothing to do here
}

protected function postFilter($filterChain)
{

// first we need the name of our file
   $model = new XUploadForm;
   $model->file = CUploadedFile::getInstance($model, 'file');
   $model->name = $model->file->getName();

// let's find the full path to our file
   $path=realpath(Yii::app()->getBasePath()."/../images/uploads/1");
   $path=$path.'\\';  
// load the image, resize if it's wider than 1000px, save!
   $image = new Image($path.$model->name);
   if($image->width>1000)
       $image->resize(1000,NULL);
   $image->save($path.$model->name);  

}
}?>

Then I added the filter to my controller.


public function filters()
{
  return array(
      array('application.filters.PostUploadFilter + upload'),
    );
    }

We want the filter to work only when the "upload" action takes place, hence the "+ upload".

YouTube Subscriptions fix bookmarklet

2009-10-27T01:42:00.000-07:00

UPDATE: Apparently the problem is no longer relevant.
Some time ago YouTube changed the links on http://www.youtube.com/my_subscriptions so that they would open in the same window even if you click it with the third button/wheel. As much as I tolerate other YouTube changes since Google acquired it, this is beyond me. Thus here is my modified version of the AdBlock+ bookmarklet that reverts the links to the way they were.

Drag and drop one of these links to your bookmark toolbar:

YTSF 0.2 - Chrome version (tested in Chrome 3.0.195.38)
YTSF 0.2 - Firefox version (tested in Firefox 3.5.3)

The code:


javascript:(
function(){
 function R(w){
   try{
     var d=w.document,i,T,N,r=1,s;
       T=d.getElementsByTagName("a");
       for(i=T.length-1;(i+1)&&(N=T[i]);--i)
           if(N.className=="title" || N.className=="video-thumb-120 no-quicklist"){
 N.href=N.onclick.toString().slice(42,62);
 N.onclick='';
 }
       }
     catch(E){r=0}
     return r
   }
 R(self);
}
)()

The original AdBlock+ code can be found here or here.

Make your own Photoshop patterns

2009-03-21T12:36:00.000-07:00

You can find patterns on many websites.
Designers often use them spice up their layouts.
In this tutorial I will show you how to make your own patterns for your websites in Photoshop.

Create a new transparent document in photoshop, the width and height varies from pattern to pattern. I specified the sizes for patterns below next to their names.

Next zoom in to the max("Alt" + "Scroll Wheel" or "Ctrl" + "=") and select the pencil tool).

All that's left is to reproduce the pixels of your desired pattern.

Once you're done, go to Edit->Define Pattern...
Name your pattern and it's done.

To test the new pattern you can use the "Paint Bucket Tool"

Don't forget to select "Pattern" instead of "Foreground" in the tool options.

Or right click on a layer, click "Blending Options".

Then go to "Pattern Overlay" and select the pattern you want to try out.

Pictures to the left are the patterns zoomed in, while pictures to the right are the previews of the way the pattern actually look.

Diagonal lines A (3x3 pixels)

Diagonal lines B (3x3 pixels)

Thick diagonal lines (9x9 pixels)

Vertical lines (2x1 pixels)

Horizontal lines "Scanlines" (1x2 pixels)

Holes (10x10 pixels)
These look nice on a colorfull background with the "soft light" blending mode.

Cells (10x10 pixels)

Carbon Fiber (4x4 pixels)

TIP: Try experimenting by using different blending modes and styles on your pattern to make them look even better.

Simple PHP website tutorial

2009-03-19T00:13:00.000-07:00

If you ever tried making a simple website with only a handful of pages, you probably noticed that once you need to edit some menu element, you have to edit all of your pages, which can be very irritating.
The simplest way to solve this problem without resorting to coding is using frames. I encourage you not to do that. You can see for your self why.
Instead you can apply one of the following PHP techniques.

1) The content include method
In this method you put the unique content of your pages in different files like "news.html", "about.html" etc. While the HTML that is the same for all the pages, like the menu, stays in index.php.

To make this work you need to put the code that will load the contents of your pages into index.php. In PHP the include() function is just what we need to do the job. Alternatively you can use require(), it won't make a big difference.
Next, through our hyper links, we need to tell that function which file it should load into our main page. We need a variable for that, in this example I will call our variable "page" for the sake of simplicity. Which means that our links would look something like this:

<a href="index.php">Home</a><br />
<a href="index.php?page=page1">Page1</a><br />
<a href="index.php?page=page2">Page2</a><br />
<a href="index.php?page=page3">Page3</a><br />

Now we can work with the include() function.
As you probably noticed form our links above, the first link called "Home" doesn't assign any parameters to the "page" variable. To make include() work and protect our website form the Cross-site scripting vulnerability at the same time we will use a switch().

switch($_GET['page']) {
    case "page1": include('page1_content.html'); break;
    case "page2": include('page2_content.html'); break;
    case "page3": include('page3_content.html'); break;
    default: include('home.html');
}

Since I chose to call the variable "page" the switch looks this way: "switch($_GET['page']) {" and the next four lines decide which file should be loaded depending on the value of the variable. So the line case "page1": include('page1_content.html'); break; means: if the variable was set to 'page1' then load page 'page1_content.html'.
But the last line: default: include('home.html'); means: if the variable "page" is set to anything else then home.html will be loaded.

One more thing: we have to make sure that the variable $_GET['page'] is set, else PHP will output an error. Therefore we will add this line before the switch():

if(!isset($_GET['page'])) $_GET['page']="";

This line will define the variable $_GET['page']

in case it hasnt already been defined.
(Thanks to Arthur for reminding me)

Now if we put it all together we will get something similar to this:


<html>
<head>
<title>My Website</title>
</head>
<body>

<a href="index.php">Home</a><br />
<a href="index.php?page=page1">Page1</a><br />
<a href="index.php?page=page1">Page2</a><br />
<a href="index.php?page=page1">Page3</a><br />
...


<?php

if(!isset($_GET['page'])) $_GET['page']="";
switch($_GET['page']) {
    case "page1": include('page1_content.html'); break;
    case "page2": include('page2_content.html'); break;
    case "page3": include('page3_content.html'); break;
    default: include('home.html');
}
?>

</body>
</html>

One of the disadvantages of this method is that all of your pages will have the same title, unless you're willing to write a little bit more code.

2) The menu include method
In this method you have your menu in a separate file like 'menu.html', which you include on all of your html pages like "index.php", "about.php" etc. using this code:

<?php
include('menu.html');
?>

So our typical page would look like this:


<html>
<head>
<title>My Website</title>
</head>
<body>

<?php
include('menu.html');
?>

<h1> Hello and welcome to my website</h1>
The content of the page goes here.

</body>
</html>

This way you can easily have different titles on different pages and easily change your menu on all the pages by editing one file.

In case you have something on the bottom of the page like "All rights reserved" or "This website is a registered trademark..." which is the same on all the pages you can put it in separate file like "footer.html" and include it with the code:

<?php
include('footer.html');
?>

include, require, include_once, require_once

2009-03-17T10:48:00.000-07:00

When it comes to dividing and ruling your code, PHP has a confusing amount of standard functions to do the job. Take include() for example. It works fine so why make the other copycats?
To figure that one out there's no better place to go to than the PHP.net. Once there search for the next big thing after include() - require(). And there you have it, the difference between include() and require() is the way the two handle their inability to load the specified file. Upon failing include() would only output a warning, whereas require() would result in a fatal error.

Therefore, if it is crucial to execute a certain script - require() it, on the other hand if you can do without that script if PHP will fail to load it - include() it.

That being said we can move on to incude_once() and require_once() functions. The sole purpose of adding _once to require and include is to make sure they won't accidently repeat themselves. And in case the PHP interpreter will run in, let's say, require_once('myfile.php') two, three or more times it will simply ignore them, executing the script myfile.php only once. This can be very usefull when your code becomes too big and complex and you don't want PHP to go through the same scripts several times.

There's also the performance issue. When running _once() functions PHP has to check whether the file has already been included or not, but that only becomes an issue when you have hundreds of those. So if you're interested you can find some controversial benchmark results by Googling something like php include require benchmark or include vs require vs include_once vs require once