tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-41067022825315684532024-10-07T07:59:09.806+01:00Specialising in the development of PHP, MySQL, SQL Server, IIS and Windows Server environments within the education sector. Specifically, most of my development work revolves around a highly customised and integrated version of Moodle.ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.comBlogger40125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-56403489682636490022012-05-02T16:00:00.002+01:002012-05-02T16:00:14.942+01:00

After taking a bit of a break from blogging, I decided that it was time that I should do something again. Anyway, last month I took a stab at upgrading PHP to version 5.4, which contained some nice little features and performance improvements. Almost everything went fine, apart from one little thing which made me roll back to version 5.3.x, which was that no matter what I did, no matter how hard

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-57747414575733803702012-02-16T11:43:00.005+00:002012-02-16T11:48:13.535+00:00

Let me just start by saying that this has been really annoying me for some time now and obviously taking the server offline to fix this is difficult at the best of times.  Fortunately, this week I've had the time to take a look at this and see if I can sort the issue. From looking at all of the various 'solutions' out there, it doesn't actually seem that any of them are correct.  Don't

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-18503586778748593652012-01-10T09:32:00.006+00:002012-01-10T09:48:58.562+00:00

Remember the days where you had multiple devices that could sync from one location on Windows?  Well, when Windows 7 launched I assumed that something like this would exist as a built in feature.  I was wrong. Instead, Microsoft seems to have gotten into the habit of releasing smaller applications as addons for Windows as part of the PowerToys range; one of these is Microsoft SyncToy.&

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-82515066924388370702011-12-21T11:30:00.000+00:002011-12-21T11:30:15.073+00:00

Because this time of year is so quiet, I thought that I would do a small point release upgrade of my standard Moodle 1.9.10 install to the current latest version of 1.9.15 as of today. There are a few reasons that I wanted to get this done and out of the way before January.  Some of my reasons were: General bug fixing; Performance upgrades; Module enhancements; Preparation for Moodle 2.x

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-90107479291302815742011-12-19T11:52:00.000+00:002011-12-19T11:52:53.731+00:00

Microsoft has today announced that from January 2012, Internet Explorer updates will automatically be downloaded and installed in the background whilst retaining all of your custom settings like addons and search providers. The new feature will work for those who have automatic updates enabled on their machine and this means for anybody using Windows XP you will be jumped up to version 8, whilst

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-51992118364364259042011-12-15T10:15:00.001+00:002011-12-15T10:16:11.968+00:00

Currently on our network is a server that's running SQL Server Enterprise 2008 running on our Hyper-V cluster.  On the cluster, dynamic memory is enabled.  Now, normally this isn't a problem, but when configured incorrectly SQL Server Enterprise will eat up as much data as it needs and so you suddenly have a server (low usage) that is eating up 14gb of memory. The solution is to go to

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-44064006845121570542011-12-14T11:50:00.002+00:002011-12-14T11:51:49.649+00:00

Today sees Chrome 16 released as part of the Google rapid release cycle.  With it comes the ability to sync your life, for example when you upgrade to version 16 your home machine with Chrome and your work machine with Chrome will share everything like your extensions, settings, history, bookmarks and other things between each other. Obviously, in able to do this you will need to pair your

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-16412916512938528252011-12-14T10:28:00.000+00:002011-12-14T10:28:23.364+00:00

Last week saw the release of Moodle 2.2, which actually wasn't a long time since we saw the release of version 2.1, and again wasn't long before we saw the release of the rather buggy version 2.0.  Me?  I'm still sat here on version 1.9.10 because of this rapid release cycle. See, the problem is, during the year it is very difficult to suddenly make changes that users aren't

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-68580298684608800832011-12-09T14:06:00.002+00:002011-12-09T14:21:20.024+00:00

For those of you that have read my blog, you will know that I'm a little OCD about website performance - and so should you be.  If your website becomes the source of frustration for an end user, more often than not you will lose your viewer and since the choice on the web is now so vast, you may not ever get them back. For every mistake that is made in your code, your browser has to

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-82245502493553216052011-12-05T16:25:00.001+00:002011-12-05T16:25:52.530+00:00

Recently I've been doing a lot of work to optimise my work so that pages load more quickly and server load is reduced.  When I was looking through to my database calls, typically I've always used the mysql_fetch_assoc function because it always returned less data than the mysql_fetch array which actually returns two arrays - one which has a numeric index and the other which&

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-79567430596760195932011-12-02T09:25:00.000+00:002011-12-02T09:25:46.199+00:00

In yet another bout of good news for Mozilla, Chrome has displaced Firefox as the second most popular browser according to research boffins at StatCounter.  Microsoft's Internet Explorer still holds the top spot by quite a large amount, but what is most surprising is the time that it has taken Chrome to establish itself in the number two slot. Chrome has been around now for quite some

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-77625025371297806202011-11-29T09:22:00.001+00:002011-11-29T09:37:10.639+00:00

Over at the Firefox Nightly builds site, Mozilla have released Firefox for Android with 'experimental support' for Flash.  After Adobe publicly killed off mobile Flash earlier this month, this turned up as quite a surprise.  I've installed it on my Android phone and I must say, it's actually quite good.  It's not quick, and it sometimes judders a little as Flash on a mobile 

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-76018509152216170302011-11-29T09:08:00.001+00:002011-11-29T09:22:51.249+00:00

Earlier this month PHP 5.4 RC1 was released to the general public.  No big deal you might be thinking, but actually I noticed a small change in the latest release that could potentially be of massive help. The note specifies 'Added class member access on instantiation (e.g. (new Foo)->bar())' which could be very handy if you only need quick access to a function from within a class. 

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-86779340363221447442011-11-16T15:46:00.000+00:002011-11-16T15:46:59.772+00:00

Now that Adobe has publicly killed off Flash for mobile devices, what are the wider implications for the rest of the development community?  Well, hopefully it will be a brighter future thanks to the emphasis on HTML5 that the company seems to be placing all of its eggs. It's certainly been a long time coming, and to be perfectly honest I'm not surprised at all.  There are many reasons

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-26235111329734745932011-11-16T15:23:00.001+00:002011-11-16T15:25:48.219+00:00

Ok, so now that you've read my previous post about setting PEAR up on Windows, it's time to start installing some packages that will help you on your way. An absolute must for any sort of database connection is the DB package.  You could argue that the built in database connectivity from the PHP modules is good enough, and you would be right.  There is a certain degree of flexibility

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-88311759526113830872011-11-16T14:55:00.001+00:002011-11-16T14:55:47.060+00:00

This really is just a short quick guide on how to install PEAR manually on a Windows box.  There are currently multiple ways of setting PEAR up, and I'm going to show you my preferred way, only because it's easy to fault find in case anything goes wrong. For those who don't know what PEAR is, PEAR is essentially a customisable framework of many components that you can choose to have on your

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-80036051409121485802011-10-29T13:37:00.000+01:002011-10-29T13:37:31.610+01:00

Last week saw the release of Opera 12 Alpha with full hardware acceleration for WebGL graphics. Opera 12 Alpha can be downloaded from their site over here. The main benefits being touted include: Faster graphics with hardware acceleration New HTML5 engine Faster browsing with reduced memory usage New themes New address field WebGL support for games 3D content All in all it's looking good for

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-6196285531279192882011-10-29T13:06:00.000+01:002011-10-29T13:06:26.943+01:00

In a rather delayed post, Firefox 7 has now been released, wooo!  The release comes just six weeks  (yes you read that correctly) after Firefox 6 arrived.  The two major selling points of this release are speed (as ever!) and the memory demand has been reduced by half, which is quite impressive. Over the past few releases, I have noticed that Firefox has become a bit of a pig for

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-3922659997770660552011-10-29T12:53:00.000+01:002011-10-29T12:53:19.249+01:00

Future versions of Mozilla Firefox will shortly be delivering updates to your computer without you even knowing about it, saving users the bother of downloading and installing updates.  Good idea?  Maybe. Right now, both Firefox and Chrome are seeing frequent updates and if reports are to be believed, Microsoft will be joining that party soon with the development releases of Internet

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-13179330549838592872011-08-23T10:35:00.003+01:002011-08-23T19:23:49.640+01:00

Another of my favourite performance tools for reducing every millisecond from loading times is Google Page Speed.  Although it's a little fiddly to install (fiddly in the sense that it takes more than 30 seconds), it's still a brilliant extension to have for Chrome. If you already have Chrome, take a look over at the Page Speed site for what it brings to the table.  The install notes

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-56263788814055239502011-08-23T09:20:00.002+01:002011-08-23T09:25:51.024+01:00

For those of you who have read some of my previous posts, you will know that I'm a big fan of the YSlow extension that until now has only been available for Firefox. For those of you who don't know what YSlow is, it's basically a small tool that analyses every part of page performance.  Each aspect of your site is graded and improvements are suggested.  If you get a chance, have a read

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-35860341837240088702011-08-22T16:18:00.001+01:002011-08-22T16:19:07.276+01:00

EFF have released HTTPS Everywhere version 1.0 for Firefox as the project has recently come out of the beta testing stage. The question is, why should you use it and what does it give you? Well, in a nutshell it enables you to browse the web securely, even when you don't realise that you aren't browsing an HTTPS enabled website.  The problem with a lot of what you do is that a lot of your

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-7037362111513536492011-08-22T16:07:00.000+01:002011-08-22T16:07:02.257+01:00

I've just come across this great article from AddedBytes which is quite frankly, brilliant! It's a bit tongue in cheek but very funny if you read through the article. Taken from the article: When Rasmus Lerdorf first put PHP together, he - quite sensibly, despite his heritage - chose not to write it in Greenlandic or Danish. Good job too - that would have been rather unpleasant to work with. He

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-44170723082196899892011-08-17T10:26:00.002+01:002011-08-17T10:28:07.324+01:00

In not so new news this week, Google has released Chrome 14 to the beta testing channel which brings with it Google's Native Client technology.  The download is available on their beta downloads pages. So what does all this mean?  Well in short, quite a lot.  To read more about it, head over to Google's Native Client SDK pages which explains everything in much more detail. 

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4106702282531568453.post-28767532566445378882011-08-17T10:00:00.001+01:002011-08-17T10:03:51.617+01:00

An update to the already brand new Firefox 5 is now available to download.  The update comes just two months after Firefox 5 was released. Recently since Firefox 4, Mozilla appear to be on a quick release cycle which other browsers such as Google Chrome seem to be following.  The download is now available on the Mozilla site, and has now been pushed to the automatic update feature

ChrisStankushttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04102967467557608737noreply@blogger.com0