!!DISCLAIMER!! This process could potentially brick your phone if done improperly. Follow these steps at your own risk.

I have created many keyboard shortcuts on my iPhone 4S after learning about the new feature for iOS 5. They make filling out forms and logging into sites so much easier when you can type eml instead of your full email address. You can check out how to setup keyboard shortcuts in iOS at lifehacker or by seaching google for iOS keyboard shortcuts. Many good resources are out there. However the problem that I found myself with was also using my iPad for signing in and other tasks that required filling in forms. I googled around and could not find any methods of copying shortcuts from my iPhone to my iPad other than to restore the iPad from the iPhones backup. Less than an ideal solution. So I have come up with a way that depends on both devices being jailbroken. Since iOS 5.0.1 has recently been jailbroken I downloaded and applied Absinthe on my 4S and redsn0w on my original iPad. I installed openssh on both devices and copied my Keyboard info from one device to the other (remember to change the root and mobile user passwords if you install openssh!)

Here are the full steps I took for getting all my shortcuts assuming both devices are jailbroken:

• Make an iTunes backup of each device in case something goes wrong!
• Install openssh on both iOS devices using Cydia (check out the “OpenSSH Access How-To” on the ront page of the Cydia app)
• ssh in to each device and change the password of root and mobile
• ssh copy to the device that has all your keyboard shortcuts and copy the contents of /User/Library/Keyboard to your PC or Mac (ie ssh mobile@192.168.0.5:/User/Library/Keyboard ~/Desktop/keyboardshortcuts/)
• ssh the contents of the /User/Library/Keyboard directory from your Mac or PC to the device you want the keyboard shortcuts copied to (ie ssh ~/Desktop/keyboardshortcuts/* mobile@192.168.0.6:/User/Library/Keyboard/) the dynamic-text.dat is optional
• Reboot the device you just copied the Keyboard contents to.
• Enjoy your awesome keyboard shortcuts!

If you know ssh well you could technically copy from one device to another directly, but I liked the idea of having a backup of all my shortcuts on my Mac.

This is the way I came up with. I would love for Apple to support this feature with iCloud or some other method of keeping them in sync. For now this will do even though it involves jailbreaking. Anyone else have an idea of how to do this differently?

Nerd info:
- I checked the contents of dynamic-text.dat and it doesn’t need to be copied
- The contents of UserDictionary.sqlite is what creates UserDictionaryWordKeyPairs.plist as just copying over UserDictionaryWordKeyPairs.plist does not do the job. I checked with sqlite command line the UserDictionary.sqlite file and it looks to only contain the keyboard shortcut data. Thus I feel this is a safe hack and shouldn’t mess up anything.
- I used mobile user above since the original files were owned by mobile and copied via root could mess up permissions.

I’ve been working on adding PECL Uploadprogress support to the drupal viddler module to give the user a better indication of how long the upload process will take. In this process I ran into a few gotchas that I thought I would pass along.

• Make sure to have the UPLOAD_IDENTIFIER hidden element before your file input element. Otherwise it won’t be able to find your uploaded file to monitor.
• Use the example code provided to make sure your uploadprogress extension in php is actually working. Since moving to Snow Leopard which is an 64bit OS the module would load, but not work properly. I had to download the latest version for php and put it in the php extensions folder.
• If you do anything else after the upload that holds up the form from posting (ie http post to another server) expect the timing for the upload progress to only show the upload to the server’s local disk not the remote call.

I’m sure there were other things I ran into, but these were the major ones. Good luck and happy coding!

I just finished reading, “His Needs, Her Needs: Building an Affair-Proof Marriage” and I must say I’m impressed. While Carla and I are by no means anywhere close to an affair the book does go over how neglecting key needs in a marriage can deduct from ones “Love Bank” and ultimately end up in an unhealthy marriage (or affair).

After introducing the basic idea of the “Love Bank” and going over the 10 basic needs everyone has the book then alternates chapters between a need for him and a need for her. It was fun to read the chapters speaking to the wife (the guys needs) and thinking in my head “yeah that’s the ticket” then only go over how I have some work to do when going over the wife’s needs.

I’d highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to strengthen their marriage. No matter where you fall on the scale from 1-10 you can learn something from this book. When the author has put in so much time and research in marriage counseling you can tell he knows a thing or two about the needs of a healthy marriage.

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, but I’d figure I would start up again for no other reason that I feel like it. So for my first one back I’m going to talk about flowers LOL. Not the typical man topic, but I do photography on the side and thought the flowers at this particular wedding where interesting enough to post a quick blog.

I follow Benfield Photography in google reader and he shot this beautiful shot of the bride and brides maid’s flowers. I had to take a closer look and yes they are felt and buttons! So off the wall and interesting I had to send them to my wife who likes to scrapbook and mess around with different types of paper and crafts.

Apparently the flowers where done by Meghan of Princess Lasertron and there are other examples of the felt and button work on her site. Very interesting indeed. I might have had to talk my wife into them if we were getting married. I’m sure I would have gotten shot down though.

Well thanks for checking in to my annual blog post Hopefully I’ll have some more interesting things to say before the year ends.

UPDATE 2010-09-03: I updated a couple links to reflect newer downloads. Because 1and1 shared hosting is on an older debian (etch) system I had to tweak the steps for using lenny based packages. ENJOY!

There are some cases where you might need a powerful pdf toolkit to use with php. 1and1 does not come with any built in pdf processors or pdf libraries built into php. Here is the process I used to integrate phptk into my 1and1 shared hosting account.

Requirements: 1and1 shared plan that has ssh support

- Download pdftk deb file for debian lenny:

wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/p/pdftk/pdftk_1.41-3_i386.deb

- Extract the pdftk deb file:

ar xv pdftk_1.41-3_i386.deb

- Extract the data.tar.gz file:

tar xvzf data.tar.gz

- Download libgcj deb file for debian lenny:

wget http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian/pool/main/g/gcj-4.2/libgcj8-1_4.2.4-4_i386.deb

- Extract the libgcj deb file:

ar xv libgcj7-0_4.1.1-20_i386.deb

- Extract the data.tar.gz file:

tar xvzf data.tar.gz

- Download libstdc++ deb file for debian lenny (backport file http://packages.debian.org/lenny-backports/i386/libstdc++6/download):

wget http://mirror.linux.org.au/backports.org/pool/main/g/gcc-4.3/libstdc++6_4.3.4-6~bpo50+1_i386.deb

- Extract the libstdc++6 deb file:

ar xv libstdc++6_4.3.4-6~bpo50+1_i386.deb

- Extract the data.tar.gz file:

tar xvzf data.tar.gz

- Create a script to link libgcj and libstdc++6 for pdftk (use nano or vi):

#!/bin/bash

LD_LIBRARY_PATH="usr/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH" usr/bin/pdftk $*

- Chmod the pdftk script so it can run:

chmod 755 pdftk

Now you can run pdftk from your main directory and process files from php or cronjobs.

If you run into any problems try running the pdftk command with some test files. If you have any problems please leave a comment. Thanks!

I use 1and1 for my personal and business websites as well as for our clients. We’ve had a client recently that was not receiving emails from one of their colleagues and of course the other company’s IT person said it was our problem. Having been an email administrator for many years I always like to look into the bounced back messages, smtp connection info, email headers, and more to track down a problem. This particular issue was perplexing because there where not many posts on the net about it. When someone was trying to send an email to a domain hosted at 1and1 it sent this error after the RCPT TO line:

421 invalid sender domain, possibly misconfigured

I tested at http://www.wormly.com/test_smtp_server (which is a great site btw) to get test the error.

So I sent an email to 1and1 support to see if they could help. This was the very speedy response:

The circumstances you have just described is caused by a RFC-non-compliant configuration of the despatcher-domain. The MX-Server
of the domain has no registered A-record, but merely a CNAME-record this is why the e-mail is rejected by our e-mail servers.

You can find some general information about this topic here:

http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2181.html

To provide the e-mail delivery as fast as possible again, we kindly advise you to inscribe the target domain of the CNAME-record as MX-record. For further information, please contact the provider of the despatcher-domain.

Looks like the 1and1 is blocking any non RFC compliant domains. In the rfc spec above it says:

10.3. MX and NS records

The domain name used as the value of a NS resource record, or part of
the value of a MX resource record must not be an alias.
…

Additional section processing does not include CNAME records, let alone the address records that may be associated with the canonical name derived from the alias.

So if you are a DNS admin or setup DNS for clients make sure to have the MX record for your domains be A records (they directly resolve to an ip) not CNAME records. So far I have had to email a couple of hosting companies related to this issue. I applaud 1and1 for locking down their email servers even more to thwart spam, but it would have been nice to have had a link or faq on their site explaining what was going on. Thus the reason for this lengthy blog post.

Some other posts on the web about this issues:

• http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=9892913
• http://forums.devshed.com/dns-36/dns-cname-a-records-issues-628838.html

Useful links to test out DNS and MX records:

• http://www.wormly.com/test_smtp_server
• http://www.mxtoolbox.com/
• http://www.checkdns.net/quickcheckdomainf.aspx

Drupal 6.x is the platform we use to build great websites. There are modules FileField and ImageField 3.0 that allow the ability to update a progress meter when uploading a file. This requires installing a PECL extension to PHP called uploadprogress. Here is the process I used to get it working on a 1and1.com hosting package. You will need a hosting package with ssh support currently the Business and Developer packages do.

• Download PECL uploadaccess to your 1&1 account
• Extract the package
  tar xvzf uploadprogress-1.0.0.tgz
• Go into the directory
  cd uploadprogress-1.0.0
• Run phpize5
  phpize5
• Change php-config to php-config5 in configure script
  sed -i 's/=php-config/=php-config5/g' configure
• Run Configure
  ./configure
• Change include directives in Makefile
  sed -i 's#-I/usr/local/include/php#-I/usr/include/php5#g' Makefile
• Run make and make test
  make
make test
• Make new extensions folder for new extension to go in
  mkdir ~/extensions
• Copy uploadprogress extension to new folder
  cp .libs/uploadprogress.so ~/extensions/
• Create new php.ini under your main folder (or under a single subfolder for just that application) to add new extension_dir then add this code to the file
  extension_dir=/kunden/homepages/6/d87663654/htdocs/extensions/
extension=uploadprogress.so

That should be it. You should now be able to see the “Upload progress Enabled (PECL uploadprogress)” on the admin/reports/status page in Drupal.

Links that helped me with the above info:

• http://freestylesystems.co.uk/blog/installng-pecl-uploadprogress-extension-drupal-filefield-module
• http://www.outofcontrol.ca/2008/12/16/install-custom-pear-packages-on-1and1/
• http://faq.1and1.com/scripting_languages_supported/php/14.html

My wife started reading The Shack not to long ago and wanted me to read it as well so she could talk about what she was reading. My typical reading/listening is mostly filled with podcasts, self help, business and technical books. Novels work there way in my reading list but not often and not ones that are less than a year old from an unknown author. I was skeptical at best and had only heard short explanations of its contents from my father in-law and brother in-law that made the book seem less interesting. Everyone who talked about it had mentioned its controversial view of God and shock of their core belief system so when my wife asked me to read it I was reluctant. But knowing my wife she would not allow me to just put off such as request so I told her I would read it if it was on audible.com. It was. I have an audible.com account which had a couple credits queued up, so I downloaded the book to my iPhone that night. The next day I began listing to The Shack on the way to a clients two and a half hours away. I was hooked. The story was moving and captured my attention so much that I was disappointed at every interruption as I was driving in the car. The ride home was no different and I spent most of the evening at home with one or two earbuds in my ears. The book has some suspense so that evening when a transformer popped and made a bright light outside our bedroom window I was startled (you can read more about that on my wife’s blog). The day after I finished listening and all I can say is “Wow”. If this book doesn’t move you in a way to become a better person I don’t know what will. I won’t spoil the book for those who didn’t read it, but the main characters connection to God was so real it made me want to be familiar with God in that way. I can’t say it challenged my view of God, Jesus and the Holy Spirit as much as others, but it made me want to be a better person and to connect with God in a deep and new way. If you strive for those things you should get a copy today. You won’t be disappointed.

For more info on The Shack you can go to http://theshackbook.com/. If you want to find more info on purchasing check out amazon.com‘s reviews and more.

So this morning I hit 300k miles in my 1993 Honda Accord SE! I’ve owned my car since 1999 and I got it with 78k miles on it. So I’ve driven it an average of 22,200 miles a year. At my current miles per gallon of 25 at the current gas prices I would have spent over $1580 a year or $15,800 over the last 10 years. I could have bought a new car I had my Flip Video MinoHD (that Carla got me for my birthday. Thanks beautiful!) with me so I captured the moment of going from 299,999 to 300,000. A momentous occasion I’m sure.

Like I mentioned in the video I’ve had a great time driving my little Honda. Maybe I’ll get another 100k our of it!

Yes it is dusty I haven’t cleaned in awhile.