Blog of Clive

Installing Debian Linux on Dell Inspiron 1501

Clive Walkden — Fri, 09 Dec 2011 15:15:53 +0000

Recently I’ve been setting up Debian Linux on a Dell Inspiron 1501 that I’ve had lying around refusing to load windows. While the install and setup procedure has been quite easy, I have found that the wireless device doesn’t want to work. This is a bit of a problem as I don’t want to be tied to 1 room in my house. After lots of Googling and cursing at failed attempts I have found a solution that works.

Open /etc/apt/sources.list
Click Third-Party Software tab
Add deb http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian squeeze main contrib non-free
Click Close

Open Root Terminal
type

aptitude update

wait for the system to get the new package information

type

aptitude install wireless-tools

Wait for those to download and install

type

aptitude install firmware-b43-installer

Again wait for these to download and install.

type

reboot

and the machine will restart your wireless light will turn on before you get to your login screen. Upon logging in you will be able to connect your Dell Inspiron 1501 to a wireless network and surf wirelessly till you hearts content

I hope this helps if you have a Dell Inspiron 1501 or any other laptop with Broadcom wireless device based on the b43 driver.

Emailology – The Science of Looking Good in the Inbox

Clive Walkden — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 19:42:38 +0000

Emailology – The Science of Looking Good in the Inbox.

While catching up on some rss feeds today this little gem popped into my window. It contains a boilerplate for HTML emails in loads of email programs. The compressed mode which is 109 lines of code.

The site also contains faq about common email clients for individual styling or tips. You can also view a standards guide to see which tag and attributes are supported to get the most out of your campaign.

This site is definitely one that will be in my links list. I can see this coming in very handy when I’m doing my next client mailer.

PHP Filename Friendly Function

Clive Walkden — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:52:48 +0000

This function outputs a string that is filename friendly. It removes all non-characters and punctuation from the input and converts to lowercase. I find this useful for seo friendly cms pages. This function is still being tweaked so any improvements would be most appreciated.

function checkCharacters($title) {
        $final_text = ”;
        $title = strtolower(trim(stripslashes($title)));
        for ($i=0;$i<strlen($title);$i++) {
                $letter = substr($title,$i,1); 
                $ascii = ord($letter); 
                if (($ascii>=97 && $ascii<=122) || ($ascii>=48 && $ascii<=57)) $final_text .= $letter; 
                else $final_text .= "-"; 
        }
 
        return $final_text;
}

CSS center content within a div

Clive Walkden — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 20:51:46 +0000

Here’s an old bit of code that I found to position something centrally inside an element.

#idOfTheDiv {
   width: 400px; /* here you put the width that you need */
   height: 200px; /* here you put the height that you need */
   position:absolute;
   left:50%;
   top:50%;
   margin-left:-200px; /* this number always to be the width divided two in negative */
   margin-top:-100px; /* this number always to be the height divided two in negative */
}

Google+ support added to posts

Clive Walkden — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 21:56:33 +0000

Now that Google+ buttons have been out for ages, I’ve finally got them added to my posts.

That’s all for this post, just thought I’d make people aware!

PHP Function to find the last key of a multidimensional array

Clive Walkden — Wed, 20 Jul 2011 20:31:35 +0000

This function is great for retrieving the last key of a multidimensional array. I use this function on a site that stores cake options such as size, shape, ribbon colour, icing colour and text fields for use in a shopping basket. Not all cakes have all the options so i need to know where the end of the array is, hence this function.

Hope this helps people, if there is a better way of doing it, please feel free to discuss in the comments.

array_push($_SESSION["cake"]["items"], array(
    "product" => $_POST["id"], 
    "size" => $_POST["cake-size"], 
    "message" => $_POST["cake-message"], 
    "style" => $_POST["shape"], 
    "flavour" => $cakeflavour[0], 
    "qty" => 1));
 
$arkey = array_pop(array_keys($_SESSION["cake"]["items"]));

PHP Colour lightness function

Clive Walkden — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 18:02:11 +0000

Following on from my other 2 useful functions I thought I would show you another one which I have found useful for determining if a colour background needs a white or black text colour over the top.

I found this function a while back so can’t take the credit for writing it myself, I have no idea to give the credit to but whoever you are thank you.

function get_brightness($hex) {
        // returns brightness value from 0 to 255
 
        // strip off any leading #
        $hex = str_replace(‘#’, ”, $hex);
 
        $c_r = hexdec(substr($hex, 0, 2));
        $c_g = hexdec(substr($hex, 2, 2));
        $c_b = hexdec(substr($hex, 4, 2));
 
        return (($c_r * 299) + ($c_g * 587) + ($c_b * 114)) / 1000;
}

The function takes your hex colour input and returns a value between 0 and 255. 0 is the darkest and 255 is lightest. I find a value around 80-90 is a good place to change the text colour from white to black, but this figure is worth experimenting with.

I hope this function helps you as much as it has me.

PHP Function IP if behind a proxy

Clive Walkden — Thu, 30 Jun 2011 05:26:54 +0000

Following from my last post, here is the method to get your IP address if you are behind a proxy.

function getRealIPAddr() {
    if (!empty($_SERVER[‘HTTP_CLIENT_IP’]))   //check ip from share internet
    {
        $ip=$_SERVER[‘HTTP_CLIENT_IP’];
    }
    elseif (!empty($_SERVER[‘HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR’]))   //to check ip is pass from proxy
    {
        $ip=$_SERVER[‘HTTP_X_FORWARDED_FOR’];
    }
    else
    {
        $ip=$_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’];
    }
    return $ip;
}

As this method gets more accurate results it is better to use this than the previous function.

PHP Function to return your IP address

Clive Walkden — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 20:20:58 +0000

Here’s a quick little function which can be used to return your IP address

function getRemoteIPAddress() {
        $ip = $_SERVER[‘REMOTE_ADDR’];
        return $ip;
}

The result can be very handy when combined with an if statement to code parts of a site you don’t want the end user to see. Just remember you need to know your IP address before you can create the statement below.

$ip = getRemoteIPAddress();
 
if($ip == "insert your IP here") {
        //run the code only you want to see here
}

Getting a missing window back on-screen

Clive Walkden — Sun, 21 Nov 2010 12:40:58 +0000

I had an interesting experience the other day where an application window appeared off screen and therefore hindered my progress on a website build. I put this down to the fact that I run two monitors on my work machine and since moving them, I must have put them the opposite way around. This had me a little confused for a while, and as always the case, this website is running a couple of days behind schedule already.

After thinking the software had crashed when I requested this particular window, I decided to just try hitting the escape key to see if the window had opened and was not appearing on the main or secondary monitor. Bingo, application responding again to mouse clicks! When this has happened in the past the window offscreen has been the main application window so right clicking in the taskbar and selecting move has generally got me working again. Not this time as it was a window within the program.

The workaround that I found was this.

Use Alt+Space, then M, then Arrow key, and then move your mouse. The window snaps to your cursor and everything is all good again. Time for me to crack on with the web project!

Hope this helps people with similar problems.