I have a ton of date strings in the stupid US style dd/mm/yy format. i.e. 12/24/09 being 24th September 2009. I need to convert them to the UK style dd/mm/yy.

Solution 1

As a string in PHP is really just an array of characters, the simplest fix was to address the individual number characters by their positions within the sting, and rearrange them into the format I wanted:

$d = "12/24/09";
$d = $d[3].$d[4]."/".$d[0].$d[1]."/".$d[6].$d[7];
echo $d; // displays "24/12/19".

Solution 2

I posted my solution on twitter (@hutchings) and asked for comments and @londonhackspace organiser Jonty came back with the following elegant (and much cleverer) suggestion:

$d = "12/24/09";
$d = preg_replace('|(\d+)/(\d+)/(\d+)|', '$2/$1/$3', $d);
echo $d; // displays "24/12/19".

So provided you know that your original string is in US format, both these solutions can be used. In my testing I found solution 1 executed more quickly, but isn’t as pleasing to look at :) Cheers Jonty.

I’m doing some freelance Flash development, and it’s been a while. I have just created a dynamic text field that I wanted to fill via actionscript, then fade in via an alpha tween. This wasn’t working, even if I set _alpha = 0 on the movieclip containing the text field.

Solution

You can only set _alpha on a Dynamic Text field if the font has been embeded (with the embed button).

Works now! wohoo! Simple stuff that I’ve known in the past, but forgot.

We’re building a website in Business Catalyst and need to provide the client with a test site during the design, build and testing phases. This test site needs to be accessible on a sub-domain of the client’s main domain. At the same time we want to retain DNS control of the parent domain, and stick a small holding site there.

For example:
‘mydomain.com’ has a small holding site on it, and mail services etc work as usual for that domain.
‘test.mydomain.com’ needs to be delegated to the Business Catalyst nameservers.

Solution

Turns out this is easy (peasy) if you’re using ZoneEdit, but probably equally as simple with any domain registrar service that lets you make changes to a domain’s zone file.

1) Login and ‘View’ the domain you need to work on.

2) Click on the  ‘Nameservers’ links, Shown below:

3) Add the domain and subdomain in full in the ‘Domain Name’ field, and the new nameserver in the next field. The IP isn’t necessary. In the image below, you can see that one nameserver for the subdomain has already been added, and the second one is being entered. There ARE usually at least 2 nameservers for a zone.

That’s it, done. Now when a lookup is done on test.mydomain.com, the query is forwarded to the nameservers ns1 and ns2 at anotherserver.com, and any records they have for the subdomain are returned.

Please leave a comment if you have any questions, thoughts or corrections.

When trying to add a Plugin, Component or Module in Joomla’s Extension Manager, you might get the following error:

JFolder::create: Could not create directory
Warning! Failed to move file.

Shown here:

This is likely – but not definitely – to be after the site has been moved from location to another, a change of directory, or server.

Solution

When a Component, Plugin or Module is added, the Joomla system attempts to copy the installable zip to a temporary directory, called ‘tmp‘. From there, PHP extracts the files and installs them. The error above usually occurs for one or more of the following reasons (in order of likelihood):

The path to the ‘tmp’ directory is wrong in the Joomla configuration file

In the Joomla installation root, find the file called ‘configuration.php’. In this file there should be a line with that says something like:

var $tmp_path = ‘C:\\path\\to\\your\\cms\\tmp’;

A masked live example is shown here:

Check that this path is correct, and that the ‘tmp’ directory truly does sit in that location. In this example, the directory would need to be here: d:\clients\sites\[my client]\tmp.

The temporary exists, but is not ‘writable’

If the ‘tmp’ directory has the wrong permissions, the web service won’t be able to copy the installer files to it. To check/correct this you will need  access to the server physically, or via a remote admin method like RDP (terminal services), VNC or similar.

Find the ‘tmp’ directory in the web root, and view the permissions. The IIS Guest account, called ‘IUSR_[machinename]‘, needs to be given ‘modify’ privileges. Example shown below:

The temporary directory doesn’t exist

To check this, navigate to your web root (often wwwroot) and check that a directory called ‘tmp‘ exists. This directory should have been created when the Joomla was installed, but it’s conceivable that it might have been deleted… maybe? If it doesn’t exist, create it, and make sure its ‘writable’ (see previous step).

If none of this works, or you spot a mistake,  post a comment.

My Fabia’s temperature indicator light started flashing and beeping at me a few minutes after the engine was started, each time I used the car. The coolant level was fine, and the car seemed to get up to temperature quickly and stay there, never overheating. A quick search of the Briskoda forum revealed that this is a common fault, caused by faulty terminals and/or electrodes in the expansion tank vessel.

Solution

On the VRS models, and possibly others, the electrodes that measure coolant level cannot be replaced or cleaned, so a complete expansion tank replacement is needed. Thankfully these are cheap (about a tenner) and easy to fit. Here is a fitting guide, with photos where necessary:

1) Unhook the loom carrier from the two fixing holding the tank in place.

2) Now disconnect the terminal on the rear of the expansion tank that connects the coolant level sensor to the loom. There are clips on the top AND the bottom of this clip. Don’t force it, if it doesn’t come off easily it’s likely because the lower clip is not being squeezed firmly enough.

3) Remove the overflow pipe (or maybe it’s a return pipe) at the top rear of the tank. This is most easily done with parallel pliers or mole-grips, by squeezing the sprung hose clamp, then easing the pipe off. Make sure you don’t lose the hose clamp in the engine bay. I found it best to tuck the pipe backwards under the strut brace to keep it out of the way.

4) Unclip the vacuum pipes from the vacuum thingy (if you know what this ‘thingy’ is, please leave a comment below telling me, and I’ll put the right name in). The two sprung clips are easy to press by hand as shown in the photo. You might hear a little ‘hiss’ (i did) when you do this. Doesn’t seem to be a problem.

5) Remove the two  front nuts that hold the vacuum thingy frame in. The plastic loom support will probably be right in your way for this. If you’ve completely unhooked it (see step 1) you should be able to manhandle the wiring backwards for the right-hand nut, and pulled right forward for the left-hand nut. The nuts have captive washers which is nice, but be sure not to let them drop in the engine bay!

6) Remove the 3rd frame bolt right by the bulkhead. The angle can be a bit tricky and I found that an extension was needed with the socket set.

7) Now to get the frame out, you will need to pull the loom wiring and plastic support thing right out of the way forward. It hooks over the expansion tank socket quite nicely as you can see in the photo. Lift the frame gently off the two front fixings, then pull it towards the front of the car to get the frame off the rear fixing.

8) Lift the frame completely out of the way. I found that if you turn it 90 degrees it sits between the suspension turret and the rubber bonnet seal quite well.

9) Now remove the 2 fixings that hold the tank in. As shown in the photo below, the fixing is a bolt, a captive washer, and a screw all in one. A 10mm socket removes the fixing. Once both are removed, the tank will stay where it is until you lift it out.

10) Now the tank is ready to come out, clamp the bottom hose near as near to the tank as possible (see pic for step 11) with a pair of mole-grips.
Caution: if you clamp it too right you risk damaging the hose, especially with the mechanical advantage that mole-grips give. It’s soft hose, so only needs to be squeezed a bit.
Then siphon the tank into a bottle or something with some tube. I’m not sure how corrosive G12 coolant is, but um.. don’t drink it.. or get it on your paintwork.. or eyes.. or sensitive bits.

11) Now that the tank is empty (more or less) you can use some pliers (parallel or adjustable ones are best for this) to loosen the sprung hose clamp with one hand, while pulling the tank free with the other hand. I found that the hose came off easily once the sprung clamp was very loose. If the hose doesn’t want to come free, it might be best to use a second pair of mole-grips on the sprung clamp, thus leaving two hands free to wrestle the tank and hose apart.

12) If this is done carefully, there should be no spillage. The tiny amount of coolant left in the neck of the tank after it was siphoned should stay in the up-turned hose.

13) Now, fit the new expansion tank by reversing this process completely. Note: If G12 coolant is already in the system, G12 must be used when  the new tank is filled up. It’s best to use new coolant, and the OEM pink stuff is readily available for about £5-10 from any VAG dealer.

If you have any corrections, questions or thoughts, please leave a comment.

I need to send a mate a link to an item on eBay after breaking his strimmer. The nice people at eBay have reworked their URL structure recently to improve SEO, so a link to a single item now looks something like this:

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Medium-duty-bump-head-for-Kawasaki-brushcutter-strimmer_W0QQitemZ190302614007QQcmdZViewItemQQptZUK_Home_Garden_GardenPowerTools_CA?hash=item2c4eeb71f7&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=65:12|66:2|39:1|72:1686|293:1|294:50

..which is not exactly Twitter, Live Messenger or email friendly. Long URLs break often in email and instant messengers when they ‘wrap’ at the end of a line (like the above is doing).

Solution

Here’s the old style linking system that still works: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=190302614007

So you can use that structure for a link to any item. Just paste…

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=

…into your browser, email or anything followed by the item number, as above, and it’ll work.

If you can’t find the item number in the complicated URL, remember its on each item listing page here:

Bonus trick for Chrome or Firefox users:

Chrome and Firefox both allow custom searches to be added easily via bookmarks. These allow you to type a ‘keyword’ into the address bar, then a ’search phrase’, and automatically search a specific site for it. This useful functionality is perfect for getting a link to an eBay item. What you do is create a custom search with the keyword ‘el’ (for ‘eBay Link’, but use whatever you’ll remember, keep it short!) and point it to ‘http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=%s’. Note: the ‘%s’ is substituted for the search phrase – in this case an item number – when the search is done.

Chrome Instructions

Open the Chrome options:

Then follow this process:

1. Click the  ‘Manage’ button in the ‘Default Search’ area.
2. In the ‘Search Engines’ window, click ‘Add’.
3. Name the new custom search.
4. Give it an easy to remember keyword.
5. In URL enter: “http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=%s”.
6. ‘Ok’ the window, and ‘close’ out of the others.

Here’s the visual process:

Now to use your new custom eBay item linker, type “el [item number]” into the Chrome address bar, and hit ‘enter/return’. You’ll notice that as soon as you’ve typed “el” and a space and start to enter the item number, Chrome shows that you’re about to do a custom search:

great right? Yea I love it too.

FireFox instructions

In firefox it’s a very similar process:

1. Open the ‘Organise Bookmarks’ pane with Ctrl + Shift + B (on a dirty mac it’s Shift + Command + B).
2. Under ‘Unsorted Bookmarks’ add a new Bookmark and name it ‘eBay Item Link’ or whatever.
3. In Location enter “http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=%s”.
4. Add an easy to remember keyword like ‘el’.
5. Click ‘Add’ button then close out of the bookmarks pane.

Here’s a visual prompt for the process:

And here’s what it looks like when you use it:

There, If you know a better or quicker way, or have an issues, please leave a comment below.

I’m now using ZoneEdit to handle the zone record for new domains. It gives far more control over the zone, and is very quick with updates etc.  I needed to setup one particular domain so that all traffic to that it – and any subdomains – went to one IP address. A ‘catchall’ if you like.

For example: ‘myquickfix.co.uk’ and ‘www.myquickfix.co.uk’  have A records pointing to 82.109.178.44. If I needed the subdomain ‘pants.myquickfix.co.uk’ to point to that IP also, I could add a CNAME record, or another A record. But if I need lots of subdomains all pointing to the same IP, it’s far easier to add a wildcard A record.

Solution

Wildcard entries are represented by an asterisk (*) and will send all requests that aren’t covered by other entries, to the specified IP. Shown below are the relevant ZoneEdit screens where this can be setup:

An asterisk is entered for Name, and the destination in Numperic IP

Note: There are already entries for the domain, ‘www’ and ‘mail’. But we want to add the wildcard / catchall record in the fields above ‘Add New IP Address’. By the way, this is done in the ‘IP Addresses (A)’  screen.

After the wildcard entry is added, it appears in the list

The entry now appears in the list. If you wait for a few minutes and try to browse to a random subdomain of your domain, it should work. Woo!

A few notes:

If you’ve tried the subdomain in your browser before adding the wildcard, you might get a 404 error or just a blank page because the browser has cached the result from lastime. To get around this, clear your browsers cache, and flush your DNS cache. In Windows this is done by opening a command prompt and typing: “ipconfig /flushdns”.

If you try and click on the link that appears with the asterisk in ZoneEdit, it is very unlikely to work. The browser will try and URL encode the address turning ‘*.domain.co.uk’ into ‘%2A.domain.co.uk’ and you’ll get an Invalid Hostname error (400).

Any thoughts? please comment.

Every so often when I’m typing, usually when I’m coding because I use so many shortcuts, the at sign ‘@’ and double quotes (”) get swapped. Annoying!

Solution

When this happens it’s because I’ve accidentally pressed ‘Shift + Alt’. THis key combo causes Windows to switch my keyboard (input) language to US. The easiest way to stop this happening, is disable the ‘Shift+Alt’ shortcut:

1) From ‘Control Panel’, open the ‘Regional and Language Options’.

2) In ‘Regional and Language Options’ window, select the ‘Languages’ tab, and click the ‘Details’ button inside the ‘Text services and input languages’ section.

3) In the ‘Settings’ tab, click the ‘Key Settings’ button.

4) In the ‘Hot keys..’ section, highlight the action ‘Switch between input languages’ and then click the ‘Change Key Sequence’ button.

5) Un-tick BOTH tickboxes.

6) Now just ‘OK’ and ‘Apply’ your way back out of the open windows and IMPORTANT you need to reboot for the changes to make effect.

Know of a quicker way? please post a comment…

I’ve just had to convert a photoshop visual to a wordpress template. The designer wanted a bulleted list where the bullets themselves were very close to the list items, and were small dashes. Cross browser support for list item and bullet styling is ropey at best, and to make things perfect I’d have to resort to browser specific styles.

Solution

The solution I think I’ll be using for the rest of my ‘web’ career will be this. JUST FORGET THE BULLET ITEM, and use positioned background images instead.

In the stylesheet, add styles for both the ‘ul’ tag, and the ‘li’ tag like so (explanations inline):

ul {
margin-left:0px; /* Set the indenting back to far left. */
padding-left:0px; /* Set the indenting back to far left. */
}

ul li {
list-style-type:none; /* Switch the list bullet off altogether. */
background-image:url(dashbullet.gif); /* The replacement bullet image */
background-position:0px 4px; /* Place bullet 0px from left and 4px from top */
background-repeat:no-repeat; /* Stops bullet tiling, important */
padding-left:7px; /* separation from li txt and bullet */
}

Then just create the list as you usually would, with ‘ul’ and ‘li’ tags. Here’s what it looks like in use:

Example of image bullet in use

Here’s a bit more detail so you can get your head around the spacing. It’s incredibly simple, but still, nice to have a diagram or two sometimes.

Detail showing some dimensions and spacing

This style works perfectly (by my testing, but I’m not perfect) on:

• Internet Explorer 6, 7 & 8+
• Firefox 2.*+
• Opera 9+ (not tested 8, but bet it works!
• Google Chrome (all versions)
• Safari (Mac and PC versions)

A colleague was having trouble getting a DVD imported to Adobe Premier for some overlay edits etc and asked me to take a look.

Solution

VOB files are MPEG-2 files with a different coat on. Rename the .vob file to .mpg and it should work. This also works in Sony Vegas and probably other software. No idea how copy-protection on some disks might effect this?

That really WAS a quickfix and probably not worth posting. If you have any questions, thoughts or corrections please post a comment below.

While doing web development, I frequently need to insert lorem ipsum into a text field or textarea. To do this – bearing in mind that I don’t really like or use bookmarks, too messy – I tend to google “lorem ipsum”, hit lipsum.com, select/copy the block of text, and then return to my form field and paste it.

I wanted a quicker solution, and as I find myself using IE more and more to develop in now (thanks to the excellent ‘Developer Tools’ extension – never thought I’d say that!) my lorem ipsum fix would have to be in the form of an IE toolbar button or menu item.

Solution

It turns out that adding a simple javascript based text field filler option to a context menu is really easy, so that’s what I did. Here are the steps:

Firstly: Create the javascript to access the currently focused field, and insert the lorem ipsum text. Create a new html file in a location of your choice –  I used C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\Plugins – and copy the following code into it:

<script language="JavaScript">
var parentwin = external.menuArguments;
var doc = parentwin.document;
var rng = doc.selection.createRange();
rng.text = "Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipisicing elit, \
sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua. \
Ut enim ad minim veniam, quis nostrud exercitation ullamco laboris nisi \
ut aliquip ex ea commodo consequat. Duis aute irure dolor in reprehenderit \
in voluptate velit esse cillum dolore eu fugiat nulla pariatur. Excepteur \
sint occaecat cupidatat non proident, sunt in culpa qui officia deserunt \
mollit anim id est laborum.";
</script>

Save the file as loremipsum.htm.

Secondly: Create the registry entry for the menu item:

1. Open/run ‘regedit’ (Start > run… > “regedit” > ‘Ok’)
2. Use the tree to navigate to:
   HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\MenuExt
   using the tree view on the left of the Registry Editor.
3. Create a new key (Right click, “New” > “Key”) and call it “Lorem Ipsum” or anything you like.
4. Inside the new key, open the ‘default’ string value that’s already there (double click on it), and enter the path to the script you created just now. i.e. C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer\Plugins\loremipsum.htm
5. Now create a new DWORD value (Right click, “New” > “DWORD Value”) and rename it “Contexts”. Set the value to 0×04 (hex) or 4 (decimal). Here’s an explanation of the different values.

The new Key and values in RegEdit

That’s it! Now open IE, find a textarea or text field, right click, and you should see something like this:

Note the new highlighted option in the context menu

Parallel resistances can be are hard to understand because your dealing with a ratio not a sum. If you had two 10 ohm resistors connected in parallel, the total resistance accross the two would be 5ohms – this much is fairly easy to grasp because both resistors would share the current equally. But as soon as the values are different, each resistor handles a different share of the current.

Solution

To work out the total resistance accross 2 or more resistors connected in parallel you need this formula:

Rtotal = 1 / ( (1/R1) + (1/R2) + (1/Rn) )

Note: (1/Rn) is repeated for each additional resistor in parallel, so for 4 resistors the formula would be:

Rtotal = 1 / ( (1/R1) + (1/R2) + (1/R3) + (1/R4) )

Example: The other day I was asked if an engine temperature sender could be wired in parallel to a resistor to make a miss-matched temperature gauge read properly (short answer: NO). So lets substitute some real world values from this example problem to see how the above formula works:
R1 is the resistance of the sender at a given temp, R2 is the resistor to be used in parallel. So substitute 400ohms for R1 and (for arguments sake) 39ohms for R2:

1) Rtotal = 1 / ( (1/400) + (1/39) )
2) Rtotal = 1 / ( (0.0025) + (0.0256) )
3) Rtotal = 1 / 0.0281
4) Rtotal = 35.6 ohms

If you play about with some values you’ll soon notice two things:
- Rtotal will never be higher than the smallest Resistor used. i.e with setup above, no matter what resistance the sender reads, Rtotal will never be over 39ohms.
- Rtotal will always be at most half of the value of the highest resistor used. With above info, whatever you choose for R2, Rtotal will always be 200ohms or less.

This could get complicated if we go into WHY the person wanted to change the working range of the sender. This post if just intended to give a real world example of parallel resistance. Please question, correct or comment below if you want :)

A coleague wanted to change the default ‘browse’ path that the JCE ‘Image Manager’ and ‘File Browser’ plugins use. By default when you use the plugins, the contents of the ‘Stories’ directory will be displayed. It seems that even if you go into the plugin settings ( under ‘Components > JCE Administration > Plugins > [plugin name]‘ ), and set the ‘File Directory Path’ setting, it still doesn’t change the default path!

Solution

Navigate to Components > JCE Administration > Groups as shown below:

Choose Groups from the main menu...

Then select the group you want to edit. If you haven’t set up any groups, just click on the ‘Default’ group to edit it’s properties. Once the settings are on display, from the right-hand side, under the ‘Editor Parameters’ heading, expand the ‘Plugin Options’ item, and enter your desired path in ‘File Directory Path’:

Note: this must not be set to the Joomla root

Note: The path you enter must be at least one level above the Joomla! root. i.e [root]/myimages/.

Just now, I needed to move a website running Joomla 1.5 and VirtueMart 1.1.2 from the development server, to the live web space. After I had moved the data, and the files, and updated the path in Joomla’s ‘configuration.php’ file, it seemed to work ok, but all the links in the VirtueMart Admin area still pointed to my development server.

Solution

After doing a ‘find in files’ for my development server’s name, I found two more paths that need changing in VirtueMart’s own configuration file. This is the file:

/administrator/components/com_virtuemart/virtuemart.cfg.php

The following two paths need editing to point to the new server location (URL):

define( 'URL', 'http://my.devserver.com/joomla/' );
define( 'SECUREURL', 'https://secure.devserver.com/joomla/' );

A simple fix, but probably worth posting.

In Joomla 1.5, at present, there is no way to set the template applied to an article or category  based on the section that article is in. Templates can be set by menu item, but not by the overall section they reside in. This means that if multiple templates are being used, each time a new article is added, changes have to be made to the template setup too – very tedious. All I wanted was to be able to create an article or category, add it to a certain section, and know that it would be rendered/displayed using a particular template:

Solution

This took some searching and tweaking. I found a post in the Joomla developers forum about someone trying to do something similar, but their example code was broken. It was enough to get me started though.

What you need to do is: find and open application.php in the includes directory on the root of your Joomla 1.5 installation. Then find line 309 or thereabouts and look for this code:

309 // Allows for overriding the active template from the request
310 $template = JRequest::getCmd(’template’, $template);
311 $template = JFilterInput::clean($template, ‘cmd’); // need to filter the default value as well

Insert AFTER the comment on line 309, but BEFORE line 310, add this code:

// Templates by Section hack – Begin

$eItemView = JRequest::getVar(’view’);
$eItemId = JRequest::getVar(’id’);

$sectionId = NULL;

$eItemId = (strpos($eItemId,”:”))? substr($eItemId,0,strpos($eItemId,”:”)) : $eItemId;

switch ($eItemView) {
case “article”:
$edb =& JFactory::getDBO();
$eQuery = ‘SELECT sectionid FROM #__content WHERE id LIKE ‘.$eItemId.”;
$edb->setQuery($eQuery, 0, 1);
$sectionId = $edb->loadResult();
break;
case “category”:
$edb =& JFactory::getDBO();
$eQuery = ‘SELECT section FROM #__categories WHERE id LIKE ‘.$eItemId.”;
$edb->setQuery($eQuery, 0, 1);
$sectionId = $edb->loadResult();
break;
case “section”:
$sectionId = $eItemId;
break;
}

// Edit the section id below, you can find it in the sections admin area.
if ($sectionId == “1″) {
$template = “rhuk_milkyway_red”; // Use the full template name.
}
// Add more if clauses if there are other templates.

// Templates by Section hack – End

Hopefully you can see what this does. It looks for the section id to use in 3 ways, depending on whether joomla is currently displaying a section root page, a category root page, or an article. It then looks to see whether that section id has had a specific template specified for it by name.

This hack works well for me, I only need to add the different template data once in application.php for a given site. Ideally someone needs to make an admin mod for this, so that sections and categories can be assigned different templates in the backend. Maybe one day I’ll make one, but not unless there’s demand :)

Any questions, corrections or thoughts, please comment below (no need to create an account or anything!)

The other day I was trying to type two hypens (–) in a post, and when I saved/published the post, WordPress reformatted the hypens to display as an ‘en dash‘ (–).

More Info: After some searching about, and some helpful info provided in the WordPress Codex, I found out about a WP function called ‘wptexturize’ which is applied each time a post is rendered. The function – which can be found in ‘wp-includes/formatting.php’ – replaces quite a few things, like ™ to ™ etc.

Solution

You could stop this happening a number of ways i.e. editing the function to stop it doing the replace altogether, or install a plugin that does it (maybe this one, haven’t tried it!).
I decided to use WordPress’s remove_filter function to stop the reformatting taking place.

To do this, open the ‘functions.php’ file within your theme. If one does not exist, create it. In my installation the file was here:

/wp-content/themes/[my-theme-name]/functions.php

Add the following code to the bottom of the file, taking care not to end up with too many or too few <?php tags:

<?php
remove_filter(’the_content’, ‘wptexturize’);
remove_filter(’the_title’, ‘wptexturize’);
?>

Then save the file (or ‘update’ if you’re doing this via the theme editor in WP admin) and view your post. That should do it!

Yesterday I found out how to run Chrome in ‘Incognito Mode’ from a shortcut. However, now I have two identical ‘Chrome’ Icons in my Quicklaunch bar, and need a way to distinguish them.

Which ones the incognito link? New icon needed!

Problem

Solution

Make a modified Chrome icon! Here’s the one I made:

If you want THIS cheesy icon, click on the image to download it.

Using the Icon: Once you have another icon to use [or you have downloaded my one by clicking on the image above], here’s how to use it:

• Save the .ico file somewhere sensible. I put mine in the same directory as the chrome executable for tidiness. The paths to the XP and Vista install locations are listed below in the ‘Make your own icon’ section.
• Right click on your ‘incognito’ shortcut, select ‘Properties’, and click the ‘Shortcut’ tab. Then click the ‘Change Icon’ button shown below:

The Change Icon button is in the 'Shortcut' tab of 'Properties'

• In the ‘Change Icon’ window that pops up, browse to the .ico file you’ve saved.

Browse to the ico file, and click on your new icon

• Now just ‘Ok’, and ‘Ok’ again, and you should see your new icon showing on your shortcut.

Make your own icon: If you want to make your own version of the chrome icon, get yourself an icon editor which is capable of pulling icon data from exe/dll files. You’ll also want one that can handle transparency properly. I grabbed a 30 day trial copy of Axialis IconWorkshop. Once that (or another icon editor) is installed, you need to ‘open’ the icon from the chrome.exe file which resides here in XP:

C:\Documents and Settings\[your username here]\Local Settings\Application Data\Google\Chrome\Application\Chrome.exe

and here in Vista:

C:\Users\[your username here]\AppData\Local\Google\Chrome\Application\chrome.exe

The icon editor should simply ‘pull’ the icon info from within the .exe file when you try and open it. You will notice that the .exe file contains 6 different versions of the icon: 16×16, 32×32 and 48×48 pixels with 256 colours and one ‘flat’ transparent background colour. And then 3 more in the same 3 sizes with Alpha transparency (256 levels of opacity, per colour, giving you nice smooth transparency).

Using the icon editor, edit as many versions as you need. For example, if you use XP, and have both a desktop icon and a quicklaunch icon, you will need to edit the 16×16+alpha version (for your quicklaunch shortcut) and the 32×32+alpha version for the desktop shortcut.

I found the easiest way to add the sungalsses to my icon was to ‘export’ the 6 icons from IconWorkshop as a PSD file, open them in Photoshop, do the work there, save them, then ‘import’ back into IconWorkshop.

That’s about it. All you then need to do it save the collection as one .ico file, and follow the instructions above in the ‘Using the icon’ section to use it.

Good luck! Any questions, comments or corrections – just post a comment below.

I use Google Chrome’s Incognito window mode regularly to view multiple Google Analytics accounts at the same time on one PC. It’s very useful – it means I don’t have to keep signing in and out of my primary google account – but what annoyed me each time was having to open chrome, then open a new ‘incognito’ window from there, which leaves the old ‘normal’ window open in the background.

Solution

Since Chrome came out of beta, the ‘−−incognito’ command line switch has been available.

So, to get this switch working with a short cut, do the following:

• Copy the existing Chrome shortcut in your quicklaunch bar, desktop, or start menu.
• Rename the shortcut to something obvious, I called mine “Chrome Incognito”.
• Right click on the shortcut, and select ‘properties’.
• The Properties window opens, and you can select the ‘Shortcut’ tab as shown below:

Note the 'Target' path field

• In the ‘Target:’ field, add the switch ‘ −−incognito’ to the end of the target path, as shown below:

incognito 'Switch' added to target path

• Click ‘OK’ to save your changes.

There, all done, that shortcut will now open Chrome in incognito mode window. If you have other normal chrome windows open, they will not be effected by this window. For example, you can stay logged into a google account, a live account, or any other persistent cookie/session driven system. Incognito windows are also great for logging into online banking sites if you’re a bit paranoid.

Note: If you have a 0.* version you will need to upgrade to v1.* or higher.

You can’t subscribe to any Podcasts in iTunes music store because the the buttons are greyed out. An example is shown below:

Greyed subscribe button

Solution

This happens when the ‘Podcasts’ item is not enabled in the iTunes library. To enable it, follow these steps:

1. Open the iTunes Preferences. To do this, either press ‘Ctrl+,’ (that’s the control key, and the comma key at the same time); or Go to ‘Edit’ in the top menu, and then ‘Preferences’.
2. Select the ‘General’ tab, usually on the left most.
3. Tick the ‘Podcasts’ item in the ‘Show:’ options list (highlighted below):

Select the Podcasts checkbox

Once you say ‘Ok’ to the Preferences box, the ‘Podcasts’ item should appear in the top-left-hand side of the iTunes window. If you now view links to podcasts in the iTunes Store, they should be clickable.

If you have any corrections or alternative solutions to this problem, please leave a comment!

For a long time, MSN Messenger and Windows Live Messenger have been able to display what is currently being played on Windows Media Player. It gets displayed next to your ‘Display Name’. If you use iTunes, what you’re playing can also be displayed in the same way.

Solution

Firstly, open iTunes and go to the Preferences window. You can do this 2 ways:

1. Press ‘Ctrl+,’ (that’s the control key, and the comma key at the same time).
2. Go to ‘Edit’ in the top menu, and then ‘Preferences’.

…then click on the ‘Advanced’ tab, usually on the far right. Within the ‘Advanced’, tick the item that says “Use iTunes as the default player for audio files” (shown below):

Setting iTunes to be the default player for audio files.

Secondly, open the Live Messenger main window (the one that shows all your contacts), then:

1. Go to ‘Tools’ then ‘Options’ in the main menu.
2. Within the ‘Options’ window, select the ‘Personal’ tab on the left.
3. Tick the “Show song information from Windows Media Player as a personal message” check box, as shown below:

Setting the Show song info checkbox item

Now when you play something in iTunes, people will see what you’re playing. Examples of what they might see are shown below:

Song showing in the contact list

Song showing in the conversation window

There… now all you need to worry about is not playing any Abba or other music that could earn you ‘Social Outcast’ status!

I wanted to change the shortcuts on my Nokia E65, The ones that are shown on the ‘homepage’ – if I can call it that – at the top of the screen as icons.

Solution

I searched around and found that these links are actually called ‘Active Standby Apps’ (finding out the correct nomenclature is half the battle with these problems!), and they can be changed by using the following method:

The home screen showing six shortcut icons to apps.

Within the system menu, select the Tools icon.

Within Tools, select the Settings icon.

In Settings, select the Phone settings item.

In Phone Settings, select the Standby Mode item.

In the Standby settings, select the Active Standby Apps item

Set the applications you want shortcuts to here.

As far as I know, this method applies to all devices running Symbian S60 version 3, that have Active Standby App links turned on. I have tested it on the E65, N93 and N95. If you find it does or doesn’t work on any other phones, please leave a comment below.

Recently I bought an Apex single from iTunes. Excellent though the tracks are (They really rock, honestly, if you like D&B, have a listen!), they both have about 5 seconds of blank ‘emptiness’ at the beginning. This is quite annoying when cueing them for an impromptu mix, or when they are part of a playlist.

Solution

I found this by accident, while looking for a solution. If you right click on the track in iTunes, then select the ‘Options’ track, you should see an option labelled ‘Start Time’. This is the time that iTunes uses when it plays a track, so if you set it to 0:05 for example, when you play the track it’ll start 5 seconds in. Simple but effective! Genius!

See? It was right there all along!

While we’re on the subject of Drum & Bass, if you like your intelligent programmed beats and ambient sweeps, you have to check out the following tracks:

• Japanese Electronics – Commix
• Balaclava – Nu:Tone
• Piece Of Mind – Q-Project (looses it around 2:15, gets it back at 3:40!)
• Sagrada Familia – Fracture & Neptune [no site? no MySpace? cummon fellas!]

I’m using AcaJoom Plus as a newsletter component for Joomla, on behalf of a client. While testing the component I found that once the “Change your subscription” and “Unsubscribe” links were appended, it messed up my template and styling. The text is surrounded SPAN with a class called ’subscriptionlink_nws’ applied to it, but there is only so much you can do with styles in the newsletter itself.

Solution

The “Change your subscription” and “Unsubscribe” links can be found in the file ‘class.jmail.php’ which sits in: [site root]/administrator/components/com_acajoom/classes/.

Open this file and at around line 76 you should see:

$subscriptionstext = ‘<p>’. $subscriptionslink . ‘<br />’ . $unsubscribelink . ‘</p>’;

I found that simply removing the <p> tags made things instantly better, but you might want to add more custom html in there.

This works for the ‘News’, ‘Plus’ and presumably ‘Pro’ versions of AcaJoom.

Moving to IMAP from POP can be a pain, and my biggest ‘gripe’ with it is the way that items need to be’Deleted’ AND’Purged’ when you’re trying to get rid of them. When an email is highlighted and the delete icon, context menu item, or keyboard key is pressed, all that happens is the message is flagged for deletion, and appears struck-through. To get rid of it fully, you need to go to the ‘Edit’ menu, and select the ‘Purge Deleted Messages’ item.

Solution

Well this isn’t a fix really, managing IMAP email still sucks, but it should make life easier. It’s possible to add a ‘Purge Deleted Messages’ button to your toolbar, anywhere you like, but I’d suggest putting it next to your existing delete ‘X’ icon like this:

Outlook toolbar showing the new button

To do this:

• Open the ‘View’ menu item, select ‘Toolbars’, and then click ‘Customize…’.
• The ‘Customize’ window pops-up, and select the ‘Commands’ Tab.
• In the left-pane labeled ‘Categories:’, find and select the ‘Edit’ item.
• In the right-pane labelled ‘Commands:’, scroll down until you find ‘Purge Deleted Items’ (see below):

Purge item selected, ready to be added to toolbar

• Click-and-hold on the ‘Purge Deleted Messages’ item, and drag it to the toolbar, then let go.
  Note: A special mouse-cursor will show while you’re dragging, showing a cross (’X'). Once you are hovering over a place in the toolbar that the item can be added to, the cursor will change and show a plus sign (’+').
• Now, once you have deleted the emails you want to, you can purge them with one button.

This one crops up every-so-often, and a colleague just asked me again, so it’s probably worth posting. When an FLV is loaded into a Flash app, the FLV file is ‘played’ when the SWF or Projector is run. When this is done locally – i.e. you run an SWF from your hard drive, or file server – it’ll work fine. The problem comes when you upload it to your IIS web server. The server probably won’t recognise the ‘.flv’ filetype, so it’ll display nothing.

Solution

To make your IIS 6 web server aware of FLV files, do the following:
 

• Open ‘IIS Manager’.
• Right click on your site in ‘Web Sites’, and select ‘Properties’.
• Choose the ‘HTTP Headers’ tab.
• Click the ‘MIME Types…’  button on the bottom-right.
• Click ‘New…’ and then add ‘.flv’ and ‘video/x-flv’ as shown below:

Setting FLV Mime type in IIS site properties.

• ‘Ok’ your way out, and ‘Apply’ when needed.
• Your video should now play in a browser when embed in an SWF.

Earlier Today I wanted to notify Google about changes to an XML sitemap that I’d updated, and wondered if I could do it without having to log into Webmaster Tools. Call it lazyness, but I knew that the Wordpress Sitemap plug-in ’somehow’ alerted Google whenever it created a new sitemap for this blog, so I wanted to know how too!

Solution

Turns out it’s quite simple! Google, Live Search, Yahoo and ASK all allow you to ‘ping’ them about updates, via HTTP. Here are the details of each method:

Google ping URL:

http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/ping?sitemap=http://[path to sitemap file]

Notes: The Google docs on this subject suggest that the whole string is URL encoded before its sent. If the update request is successful, an HTTP 200 response code will be returned.

Live Search ping URL:

http://webmaster.live.com/ping.aspx?siteMap=http://[path to sitemap file]

Notes: The Live Search Webmaster Center Blog makes suggestions on how best to submit and maintain your sitemap. Like Google, MS also have a Webmaster Tools system.

Yahoo ping URL:

http://search.yahooapis.com/SiteExplorerService/V1/ping?sitemap=http://[path to sitemap file]

Notes: The Yahoo Developer Network page on the subject provides comprehensive details.

Ask ping URL:

http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http://[path to sitemap file]

Notes: Ask provide some details here, by now you know the score, as all four search providers follow the sitemap protocol laid out at www.sitemaps.org.

Any Questions or corrections? please use the comments below.

Here are a few expressions that came in handy. I intend to add to this list as time goes on.
Regexp shown in Green, my comments in Red.

CSV Editing:

Remove spaces and tab characters at the beginning of a line:
Find what: ^[ \t]+
Replace With: don't enter anything in the field
Remove spaces and tab characters at the end of a line:
Find what: [ \t]+$
Replace With: don't enter anything in the field
Add “Hello” to the beginning of every line:
Find what: \(^.*\)
Replace With: Hello \1
Add “Hello ” to the beginning and ” World” to the end of every line:
Find what: \(^.*\)
Replace With: Hello \1 World (watch the spaces)
Find empty fields (i.e. “, ,”) with spaces or tabs in, and replace with empty field (”,,”):
Find what: ,[ \t*],
Replace With: ,, (just that, nothing else, just 2 commas)
Remove blank lines in a text file, by searching for two linebreaks next to each other, and replacing with one:
Find what: \n\n
Replace With: \n

Replacement Expressions:

Extract email addresses only from the following text: “Joe Blogs (job.blogs@blogsworld.com)”
This expression searches for 2 tagged expressions, firstly any printable characters including spaces up to the first open bracket symbol, secondly anything between the brackets. It then replaces the whole line with the second match.
Find what: ^\([[:graph:] ]+\)(\([[:graph:] ]+\))
Replace With: \2

Notes:

• The expressions above need the ‘Regular Expression’ condition to be ticked in the Find or Replace dialogue boxes for them to work.
• Text pad needs to be set to use UNIX not POSIX style expressions. To set this, open ‘Configure > Preferences’ (Ctrl+Q,P), find the ‘Editor’ settings, and untick the ‘Use POSIX regular expression syntax’ box.

I recently replaced the water pump on my car, and found the existing paper gasket clinging solidly to the pump face on the head. I needed a very quick removal method, as it was getting dark and the car had to be driven 30 minutes later, so I searched around for something hard, flat, but not likely to damage the surface. I found an old Stanley knife blade and tried it, but it wasn’t very easy to hold while scraping the papery crap off.

Solution

In the end I found a blunt hacksaw blade, snipped it in half with some tin-snips – making sure the cut was flat and neat – and ground off the teeth on the chopped-off end. This gave me a very hard, flat tool with which to scrape the paper off.  The ‘half-blade’ could be held in both hands at a good angle to avoid scoring the gasket face. Soaking the gasket paper residue in some detergent helped the process along also. 5 mins of careful scraping around the 3 studs saw the job done. New gasket and pump fitted in another 5 mins, jobs-a-good’un!

If you need to center a div (or any another block element) over the rest of the content in a page, and you need it to be cross-browser and valid (CSS and XHTML)…

Solution

Try the following CSS in your stylesheet or page head:

#cdiv {
  position:absolute; /* important. */
  left:50%; /*important if you want it absolutely centred in window. */ 
  margin-left:-50px; /* importnant. must be half the width. */
  width:100px; /* set to your requirements, but remember left margin setting. */
  height:100px; /* not neccessary if the element needs to grow with content. */
  border:1px solid #ABF; /* not important. */
  background-color:#DDF; /* not important. */
  text-align:center; /*not important. */
}

… and now set the ID of the element you want centered to ‘cdiv’. If the item you want to centre is an image, remember to add display:block; to the style (this makes it act like a block level element).

This style works perfectly (by my testing, but I’m not perfect) on:

• Internet Explorer 6, 7 & 8+
• Firefox 2.*+
• Opera 8 & 9+
• Google Chrome (all versions)
• Safari (Mac and PC versions)
• Netscape 9 (is anyone still using this?)

Man, this had me tearing my hair out! I was trying to install JCE Editor update 1.1.9.2, for the Joomla Content Editor component/mambot. The mambot installed fine, but whenever I tried to use a Plugin that had a file browse area, I’d see “Restricted Access” in the file list pane. An example is shown here:

Plugin showing Restricted Access

Solution

The problem was lazyness. I hadn’t read the install info thoroughly enough. is says “Joomla! 1.0.13 requires this session fix.” I don’t know exactly what the patch does, but it’s about session’ish’ness, and works a treat!

By the way, If you have a Joomla CMS driven site, and still use the included TinyMCE content editor,  JCE is excellent as a replacement content editor for Joomla 1.0.* and 1.5.* versions. I can also recommend the free and ’subscription’ JCE plugins.

Anyone that runs AdSense knows that YOU MUST NEVER CLICK ON YOUR OWN ADS. Now there’s a very slim chance you might one day accidentally click on an ad, which – if they are in a bad mood – might cause Google to suspend your account, or even remove it.

Solution

This is where the ‘google_adtest’ variable comes in handy. If you add this PHP code to your AdSense block…

<?php
if ($_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]==”XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX”) {
echo “google_adtest=’on’;\n”;
}
?>

…just above the ‘google_ad_client’ variable, substituting ‘XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX’ for your home/workplace IP address, whenever you view pages with these ads on, they will be in test mode. If you click on them, they don’t register, and the advertiser doesn’t get charged. Blow is a full AdSense block example:

<script type=”text/javascript”><!–
<?php
if ($_SERVER["REMOTE_ADDR"]==”111.222.333.444″) {
  echo “google_adtest=’on’;\n”;
}
?>
google_ad_client = “pub-#############”;
google_ad_slot = “##########”;
google_ad_width = ###;
google_ad_height = ###; //–>
</script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js”>
</script>

If you have no idea what your IP address is, try: http://whatsmyip.org/

Please note: This method won’t work if you’re site doesn’t run PHP (obviously, but it could be done with ASP or any other scripting techs) and won’t work if you don’t have a fixed IP.

Stainless steel is a pig to cut with hand tools, especially if the cut has to be tidy. An angle grinder with a cutting disk will make pretty quick work of it, but it’s not accurate, and there’s a good chance you’ll chew up your work piece… or your fingers.

Solution

I tried lots of different sorts and brands of hacksaw blade, and then came across IRWIN “Cobalt HSS All Hard” blades. They are a standard 12″/300mm blade, and can be bought in 18 TPI or 24 TPI versions. I bought 10 of the 24TPI ones from Screwfix and I’m still using the first one. I’m sure other manufacturers make ‘Cobalt’ blades too.

Irwin Cobalt blades

By the way, using a drilling, cutting and tapping fluid really lengthens the life of your drills, blades and taps/dies. This can also be found on Screwfix, or elsewhere, and costs a few quid for an aerosol can. Well worth it!

1. Click on ‘Edit’ > ‘Preferences’ from the toolbar.
2. In the Preferences window, select the ‘Sharing’ tab.
3. In here, tick the ‘Look for shared libraries’ and ‘Share my library on my local network’ tickboxes. CLick ‘OK’.
4. Do this on as many other iTunes equipped PC / MAC machines as you want to share with.
5. Look in the left pane of iTunes and -if any libraries are on the network – you should see ‘Shared Libraries’ appear. Wohoo!

Of course this isn’t really a fix, and it’s not even hard to find, but I’ve been using iTunes in a networked environment for years and have never come across it, so I figure other might not have either.

Google search helper phrases: Sharing iTunes library over a windows network. Networked iTunes. Connect to library overy wired ethernet or wireless LAN.

Yesterday my father-in-law needed to hook his old HP Photosmart 1215 Inkjet to Windows Vista Home Edition. HP don’t provide a Vista driver for the 1215…

Solution

A quick search around the web found that the driver for the Photosmart 7200 works perfectly. He tried it and says it works exactly as it should.

To install the diver use the following steps:

1. Click the ‘Start’ Icon, and select ‘Control Panel’ in the start menu.
2. Once the Control Panel window opens, double-click the ‘Printers’ icon.
3. In the ‘Printers’ window, click the ‘Add a printer’ icon/link in the top menu bar.
4. In the ‘Add Printer’ dialog window, select ‘Local Printer’ and ‘Next’.
5. When asked to ‘Choose a Printer Port’, select ‘Use an existing port’ and click on the ‘USB001 (virtual printer port for USB)’ item in the list. Then click Next.
6. On the following page, select ‘HP’ or ‘Hewlett Packard’ in the left pane, and find ‘Photosmart 7200′ in the list on the right.
7. IMPORTANT: Plug in the Printer now, if it’s not already plugged in, and switch it on.
8. Click ‘next’ and then print a test page.

That should do it…

When you’re using several domains which all point to one website, it’s important to make sure that Google only sees on domain when it’s crawling your site for content. Otherwise you’ll likely end up with ’suplemental result’ listings in the SERPS. At worst they’ll dump the site thinking it’s duplicating content.

A Solution

So what you need is something to intelligently redirect traffic to your preferred domain, while preserving any path and querystring data also. To do this with PHP you can place the following code (in an include maybe?) into the head of each page on the site:

<?php
$primary = “www.whatever.com”;
if ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']!= $primary) {
  header(”HTTP/1.1 301 Moved Permanently”);
  header(”Location: http://$primary”
  .(($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']) ? $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'] : “?”
  .$_SERVER['QUERY_STRING']));
  exit;;
}
?>

This should redirect the page to the new domain, but preserve the path, query and any fragaments. Please be aware that not all servers send the complete set of $_SERVER Variables. Using the code above, if the HTTP_HOST variable isn’t present, no redirecting will be done. If the REQUEST_URI isn’t present, the QUERY_STRING will be tried. If this doesn’t exist the client will be redirected to the root of the specified domain.

A note about redirects: In this case, it’s really important that we send a 301 Moved Permanently response status code to the visiting client. If the visitor is a search bot, it ’should’ update any references to the other domain in its index.

If you have any questions, comments for corrections, please post below!