Mark's Tech Stuff

Run iPhone simulator from command line (Xcode 6)

2015-09-01T02:29:00.006-07:00

From the command line (terminal):

open "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Applications/iOS Simulator.app"

Or in newer versions:

open "/Applications/Xcode.app/Contents/Developer/Applications/Simulator.app"

Free and Fast Way to Accurately Convert PDFs to Excel Files

2013-09-25T05:57:00.000-07:00

Anyone working with tabular data on a regular basis knows that Microsoft Excel is the preferred program for manipulating this type of material for most people. The Excel spreadsheet is an industry standard when it comes to presenting numbers or statistics and working with them. And while Excel is the most popular program for using this type of material, you might not always receive this data from others in the Excel format.

It’s not uncommon for people to convert tabular data to PDF before sending it to others. PDF is not only easily compressed into a small file size and, therefore, easy to send and transfer, but it is also a universal file format that appears identically on every platform. But with all of these advantages of the PDF, it has one fairly big disadvantage – it’s hard to edit.

So if this does occur to you on a regular basis and you need to convert your PDFs into Excel, thankfully, there are ways to do so effectively and cost free.

PDFtoExcel.org is one tool that enables users to quickly turn their PDFs into Excel files, without losing any of the formatting and structure of the PDF document.

For a free tool, it’s incredibly accurate with its conversions, and it’s also very easy to use.

To use the tool, click Browse to find the PDF file on your computer that you want to have converted.

Now simply enter your email and click Send – that’s it!

In a matter of minutes, your converted Excel file will be ready. An email with a link to your downloadable Excel file will be sent to the address that you specified.

The accuracy of the service is what really sets it apart from many other free services. When converting from PDF to Excel, it’s important to get accurate conversions so that the formatting of the cells and rows is preserved. This saves you a lot of time that you could potentially have to waste on editing the converted file further before being able to use it.

The tool is not only incredibly accurate in its conversions, but it’s also very secure and safe to use. Your email address and files will be deleted from the server permanently 24 hours after the conversion has been completed.

For anyone looking for a free and fast way to accurately convert PDFs to Excel files, PDFtoExcel.org is definitely one of the best online tools available for this purpose.

This guest post was written by the nice folks at PDFtoExcel.org. Do check out their tool and let me know if it worked for you in the comments below.

Can't embed Youtube video iframe in Magento

2013-06-29T00:55:00.001-07:00

What you need to do is select the checkbox that reads 'Use old embed code.' This will give you some code that uses the 'object' tag and 'should' work:

This is working on Magento ver. 1.6.1.0.

new field not being detected cakephp

2013-06-09T19:15:00.001-07:00

1. Find the file:

/app/Config/core.php

2. Make sure the following configuration is set:

Configure::write('debug', 2);

The new database field will only be detected if the debug level is set to 2.

PHP Fatal error: Call to undefined function imagecreatetruecolor() in /var/www/lib/Varien/Image/Adapter/Gd2.php

2013-06-03T23:07:00.002-07:00

It's likely the gd library is not installed/enabled.

Remedy this (in Ubuntu) by installing php5-gd using apt-get, like so:

apt-get install php5-gd

Then restart apache.

sudo apachectl restart

Magic Mouse Slow Mac

2013-03-17T06:00:00.002-07:00

If, like me, you're someone who likes to have your mouse on maniac speed settings, but doesn't like the slow speed that MacOS gives you even with the fastest setting.

1. Do it by the command line via terminal (which involves restarting your machine each time you set it). Using something like this:

defaults write -g com.apple.mouse.scaling 5.0

or

2. Download this nice little tool, which changes the setting instantly:

http://blog.boastr.net/

Failed to download pear/XML_svg2image within preferred state "stable"

2013-03-14T06:25:00.002-07:00

When running this: pear install XML_svg2image

Getting the error:
Failed to download pear/XML_svg2image within preferred state "stable", latest release is version 0.2.0, stability "beta", use "channel://pear.php.net/XML_svg2image-0.2.0" to install
install failed

Solution, run this:
pear install XML_svg2image-0.2.0

Pagedown on Mac

2013-03-06T21:12:00.002-08:00

'fn' button and the up/down arrows.

Safari. How to send message from popover to global

2013-01-29T21:50:00.002-08:00

In essence you don't need to because you still have access to the safari.extension object in your popover.

So instead of sending a message 'foo' you can simply make a function inside your global page called 'foo()' and call it like so from your popover:

safari.extension.globalPage.contentWindow.foo();

Read this thread:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/12663743/how-do-i-pass-a-message-from-a-safari-extension-popover-to-the-global-page

Using Sendmail for Sending Mails from Gmail via PHP on an Ubuntu Server

2013-01-18T09:20:00.000-08:00

About the most simple and straightforward tutorial I've seen that will get you up and running in about 10 minutes: http://blog.seeit.org/2010/08/php-mail-with-ubuntu-desktop-and-gmail/

Nano find and replace

2013-01-09T09:11:00.000-08:00

Nano is a great little tool for doing quick stuff on linux. (vi is too!).

To do a find and replace using nano use "Ctrl + \"

9 Books on UX Design for the Budding UX Designer

2012-12-11T16:43:00.001-08:00

Essentially my UX skills suck and I need to start reading some books on UX design. According to the internets these are where I should get started.

1. A Project Guide to UX Design
Russ Unger
(NLB Singapore | Amazon)

2. The Elements of User Experience
Jesse James Garrett
(NLB Singapore | Amazon)

3. Don't Make Me Think (Seems Highly Recommended)
Steve Krug
(NLB Singapore | Amazon)

4. Content Strategy for the Web
Kristina Halverson
(NLB Singapore | Amazon)

5. Information Architecture for the Web
Peter Morville / Louis Rosenfeld
(NLB Singapore | Amazon)

6. Designing Web Usability
Jakob Nielsen
(NLB Singapore | Amazon)

7. Modular Web Design
Nathan Curtis
(NLB Singapore | Amazon)

8. The Inmates are Running the Asylum: Why High Tech Products Drive Us Crazy and How to Restore the Sanity
Alan Cooper
(NLB Singapore | Amazon)

9. Observing the User Experience
Mike Kuniavsky
(NLB Singapore | Amazon)

If you know any others, or have any comments on the above, I'd love to know.

Linux recursively find and replace in files from command line using sed

2012-12-11T06:25:00.004-08:00

find ./ -type f -exec sed -i 's/original_string/string_to_replace/' {} \;

As found on this page: http://www.jonasblog.com/search-and-replace-in-all-files-within-a-directory-recursively

Magento getShippingRatesCollection Methods

2012-11-26T03:11:00.002-08:00

Magento: Show all shipping options for the item in your cart.

Because sometimes you might need to do this:

$quote = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/cart')->getQuote();
$rates = $quote->getShippingAddress()->getShippingRatesCollection();

foreach ($rates as $rate)
{
echo "
Shipping Method: " . $rate->getMethod();
echo "
Shipping Method Title: " . $rate->getMethodTitle();
echo "
Shipping Method Description: " . $rate-> getMethodDescription();
echo "
Shipping Price: " . $rate->getPrice();
echo "
Carrier: " . $rate-> getCarrier();
echo "
Carrier Title: " . $rate-> getCarrierTitle();
}

Tomcat WEB-INF on Ubuntu

2012-11-26T02:21:00.004-08:00

Is here on my machine:

/var/lib/tomcat6/webapps/ROOT/WEB-INF

Dynamic Canonical Links in PHP and RackSpace Cloud Issue with Google indexing "static.cloud-ips.com"

2012-11-25T18:54:00.003-08:00

Using RackSpace cloud as a server is pretty sweet. One thing you need to look out for is Google indexing your server space from the "static.cloud-ips.com" reference rather than your domain name.

RackSpace suggest setting the canonical URL link, as do Google:
http://googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.sg/2009/02/specify-your-canonical.html

When you've already made a site with thousands of links this might be a bit of a problem. Never mind, here's a dynamic way of setting the canonical link in PHP:

Get Country Name from Magento Checkout/Billing Details

2012-11-25T08:48:00.002-08:00

Like so: $checkout = Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getQuote(); $billing_addr = $checkout->getBillingAddress(); $country_name = Mage::getModel('directory/country')->load($billing_addr->getCountryId())->getName(); echo $country_name;

Help Needed On Decision to Upgrade to a Mac Book Pro

2012-11-20T05:00:00.002-08:00

I have an old MacBook from the 2007 era. At the risk of being labelled as a fan boy, I really really like it. I've pimped it out with a 7200rpm drive which I dug very very hard to find in Sim Lim Square, Singapore, and 4 gig of RAM which is about as pimped as it will allow me to. Don't ask me if I'm a Mac or a PC because my straight answer is that I'm more of a Commodore 64/ZX Spectrum and Atari ST520 guy. With its age, it does get me funny looks from the schoolkids doing their homework on much newer machines in the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf where I spend my days coding and crafting up silly tech ideas.

In a few years time it will be awesome enough to be ironic but, like Georges St Pierre of the MMA, it has seen better days and is causing me problems in the departments of 1) MS Word crashing ever 10 minutes and 2) needing a fan/heatsink thing to sit underneath it. It does do me well, and it can run XCode as well as a bunch of other apps pretty smoothly (so long as the heat sink & fan are used underneath it).

Here's a picture of the beast in action with my 1Tb, Sonic the Hedgehog drive.

So here's what I'm thinking, I'm thinking that the new MacBooks are gonna be wayyyyy better than my current old beast which is almost six years old. That's ancient for Singapore standards.
On that note, I went to the lovely Apple website and found a shiny new entry level MBP for SGD$1688. I don't need the retina display since I use my laptop mainly plugged into an external LCD monitor. So it should be good enough for me.

Then I looked at the specs. Compared to my six year old MacBook there doesn't seem to be much of a difference. Worst still, the hard drive in the newer Mac is a 5400RPM one. Do 7200RPM drives not exist anymore? Here's how they compare:

So my question is: Should I bother upgrading to an entry level MBP and then pimp it out? Or is it not going to be worth the effort and just stick to plodding along with my trusty old MacBook and save up S$5000 for the monster of a 12 core desktop Mac? Apart from aesthetics, what will the benefits be if I change my current MacBook to a new MBP? How much better is the bus speed, hardware, etc in the new MBP? Is it gonna change my life and make me 10 times more productive?

Or should I just spend my money on coffee and more cooling apparatus for my workhorse?

javascript replace space

2012-11-16T18:59:00.000-08:00

str = str.replace(" ", "-"); or, better: str = str.replace(/\s/g, "-");

Restart Apache on Mac

2012-11-14T09:29:00.001-08:00

If I had a dollar for every time I forgot how to do this.

I'd have a lot of dollars.

How to restart Apache on a Mac:

sudo /usr/sbin/apachectl restart

Find network prefix length for Android Galaxy Note

2012-11-02T19:59:00.001-07:00

If you know the subnet mask, it can be translated by these values:

255.255.255.255 = 32

255.255.255.0 = 24

255.255.128.0 = 17

255.255.0.0 = 16

255.0.0.0 = 8

More about subnet masks and prefix lengths here: http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac123/ac147/archived_issues/ipj_9-1/ip_addresses.html

Hey, the BlackBerry 10 Might Not Suck

2012-10-17T18:48:00.000-07:00

Ok, so RIM have released a demo for the BlackBerry 10 and it looks like it won't be as big a 'fail' as all your hipster friends might try to convince you. Yes BlackBerry is associated with crudgy businessmen. Yes you're still probably thinking they have keyboards (and keyboards are apparently uncool now), or worse - clunky attempts at touch screens, and yes RIM is Canadian. Does this stop it from being able to launch a smartphone that can push it back into the bleeding edge of innovation once again? Perhaps. Does it stop the BlackBerry's chances of being a smartphone leader again? Not at all. RIM is here to stay and will keep fighting to, at least, stay with the competition for now. Maybe there's an opportunity for RIM to dominate the business apps market and cater for hyperlocalized killer apps in various regions around the world. From watching the video, here's a couple of thoughts that passed through my mind.

Trying Too Hard For Social?

From the demo posted on TechCrunch, it looks like the phone is heavily geared towards integrating all your social feeds and just about everything into one shared inbox. Nice idea but it seems that they are trying just a bit too hard with this to keep up with the social media wave. Where has your innovation gone BlackBerry?

Interface Looks Good

With its fluid transitions and seemingly well engineered (note: engineered not 'designed') interface it looks like accessing all the features on the device will be convenient. Let's hope that it doesn't get slower over time like its ancestors did.

Ok, so it doesn't have a keyboard.

Ok so this might be the deal-breaker for me. The BlackBerry 10 has an on-screen keyboard. I'm not a fan of these at all, as you've probably gathered from reading this couple of blog posts where I've been yarping on about it. They've tried to put in some features such as predictive phrases which seems interesting. If they manage to make the on-screen keyboard 80% as good as a physical keyboard then they're onto a winner for me.

Ahhh. A webkit enabled browser

RIM have finally gotten the idea that a webkit enabled browser is the way to go. No more memory leak riddled BlackBerry internet browser. Awesome.

Don't let me forget the scumbag BlackBerry Though

Ok so my BlackBerry Bold 9700 was a great phone for the keyboard and the battery life. It also gave me the easiest email management system I've ever used. Although I'm not going to forget all the 'UGH' moments I had with it. Such as: having to use a firmware flash to delete the sample pictures (I just wanted them gone), difficulty in getting the phone to work with multiple languages, lack of apps, the crappy 'below standard' 256mb memory card it came with, constant crashing, difficult set-up to get my wifi working, STUPID MOBILE PROVIDER BIS PLAN, and the end-of-life 'pretending to be out of memory' all the time issue. Ok rant over.

BlackBerry are not dead yet and don't seem to be dying. The BlackBerry 10 puts me in mixed emotions. It is good to see that they are still trying, but I'm not 100% sure if they are trying in the right direction. If the battery life lasts as long as the Bold 9700 I had, then I'm gonna be halfway sold.

Magento setDefaultShippingAddress

2012-10-16T08:43:00.001-07:00

Use "setIsDefaultShipping(true)" instead.

FancyBox. Uncaught TypeError: Object [object Object] has no method 'prop'

2012-10-13T05:29:00.001-07:00

Try using a newer version of jQuery. 1.5 Does not work. 1.72 Works for me.

Download failed.: Failed writing body (415 != 13032)

2012-10-12T22:48:00.001-07:00

You need to free up some space on your server or web hosting service.