This version has a major overhaul of the database backend that has significantly speeded things up as well as made it more portable for future developments.

Go give it a try…its free!

“C:\Program Files\SWsoft\Plesk\admin\bin\plesksrvclient.exe” –get

If Plesk is installed elsewhere then change the path.

A dialogue box will appear with the Plesk admin password.

Linux
1) Access your server through SSH.
2) Run the following:

cat /etc/psa/.psa.shadow

Again you must have root privileges.

Requirements
The following applications need to be installed on the server you are running your webserver.
- ImageMagick
- GhostScript

The Code
To create the images of the PDF we call the external ImageMagick application from the command line. In PHP this is done like so:

So to run ImageMagick from the command line we do:

The paramters we then use to call ImageMagick depend on what we want to do, and consulting the ImageMagick help pages are the best way to learn exactly what is happening.

Below are some common examples:

Create GIF Thumbnail of First PDF Page

Create JPEG Thumbnails of ALL Pages Within PDF

Create Large PNG 1024px Image of First PDF Page

Create Large PNG 1024px Images of ALL Pages Within PDF

As you can see the code is very simple as we are just calling an external command line application to do the hard work – the only thing we have to do is provide the parameters to tell ImageMagick what to do.

This was a follow-up to How-to: Create PDF preview images in PHP

Byōyomi is a beautifully simple timer application that allows you to run multiple timers at once and then notifies you with a sexy zooming, star wars-esk, notification window.

As usual with James’ apps, they get the job done and then get out of your way and so don’t annoy you or take up valuable screen real estate.

If your running OS X 10.5 and are in need of a timer then give it a go. Its currently only version 1.0 and far for feature complete, but this just means that its dead simple and easy to use – love it.

Along with Byōyomi I also had the chance to update his website and add a real home page for Sugoisoft showing off his products and there beautiful icon image works of art.

Photos of Firenze after the jump:

You can view the whole set here or even a geo-coded mapped version here.

The shows concept is simple, “What if you had the chance to travel every major road in the USA?”, and follows the life of the host Tom as he drives his truck back and forth across America.

My family used to do the same thing for 3 weeks a year each summer and I can remember travelling down some of the same roads and the endless varieties of different landscapes. This is an excellent look at what I like the most about America and I’m sure that others will find it interesting.

Enjoy!

It’s been on going for over a year and as far as I’m aware is still on-going…although the prank to beat the last one is going to have to be something very elaborate.

Audio Prank

Streeter’s Big Date

Amir’s Audition

Streeter Bombs

Amir’s Big Break (With Human Giant)

The Yankee Prankee

Won’t really go into cooking the steak in too much detail as everybody has their own method, and if not there are hundred out there including my spicy steak recipe that I showed you with Ostrich a few months ago.

Depending on how fast you are at preparation this whole recipe will take around 45-60 mins from the first cut to serving.

Chunky Chips

These will be crunchy, golden brown chunky chips/fries. Very quick and easy to make and go with a lot of other dishes.

Ingredients
1) Couple waxy white or red potatoes.
2) Salt
3) Course black pepper
4) Dried chilli flakes
5) Olive oil

Method
1) Lightly wash the potatoes.

2) Cut into nice thick wedges. Make sure that they are all roughly the same size, so they all cook evenly.

3) Season with salt, pepper and some chilli flakes.
4) Lightly coat in olive oil.
5) Get your hands in there and make sure each wedge is covered in oil and the seasoning.

6) Bang them in the oven (220C ish) for around 30-40 mins or until golden brown.

Sweet Onions

Ingredients
1) Onion
2) Olive oil
3) Salt/pepper

Method
1) Peal the onion and cut into half rings about 0.5cm in width.
2) Cook in a pan with a bit of olive oil.

3) Season, lower the heat as far as possible. Put the lid on and allow to sweat and slowly cook for around 30-60 mins. Make sure you stir them ever few mins to prevent burning. You want to cook the onions slowly without them burning to get the sweetness out and to make them silky soft.

Steak

For this recipe I’m just going to use some sirloin beef steak, cover it in a little black pepper, salt and olive oil and griddle until medium/rare.

Tip
When seasoning the steak, season one side and the plate or board in front of the steak. Then once your done, simply lift the steak forward onto the seasoning. Saves you time and ensures that both sides of the meat have the same amount of seasoning.

Putting it all together

Since the onions will require the longest cooking time begin to prepare them first. Once they have started to sweat down, cut the chunky chips and get them in the oven.

At this point you don’t need to do much for 30 mins, so you can leisurely season and prepare the steak. Once the chips begin to golden you will then want to begin heating your griddle pan for the steak.

Doing everything in this order will ensure it’s all ready at the same time and nothing is cold or burnt.

Enjoy!

Since imitation is the greatest form of flattery, here is one of my favourite apple parodies:

It’s a simple application that allows you to quickly view and download photos from your facebook account. It has an amazing iPhoto-esk style interface that makes it a breeze to use, and more importantly enjoyable to use.

If your on a Mac and use facebook, then you HAVE to try this application out.

Hopefully there will be a similar version of this for flickr and zooomr soon.

A selection of the best after the jump:

You can view the whole set here or even a geo-coded mapped version here.

You could select it, enter a URL, but then when hitting return it would just lose focus and do nothing.

The 10.4.11 update released yesterday updated the default Safari installation to 3.0.4 and so caused a problem this morning when I couldn’t use the browser correctly.

After some considerable searching I found out that the problem is caused by the Safari extension Sogudi. To fix the address bar issue all you need to do is un-install or de-activated Sogudi.

If you can’t function properly without Sogudi then you can install the new beta version that is compatible with Safari 3.