Ubuntu VS Windows According To Dell UK

Sunday, April 18th, 2010

I was doing a bit of research today to see how the relationship between Canocial (Ubuntu) and Dell is.  It’s great that Dell sells Ubuntu based computers but what’s not so great is what trash they are publishing on their web site.  Here is a quick excerpt: 

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Use Perl Audio Converter (pacpl) To Convert Audio Files On Ubuntu Linux

Sunday, March 14th, 2010

Download and install the Debian package (works for Ubuntu) for the Perl Audio Converter – http://pacpl.sourceforge.net/downloads.html

Then use dpkg -i command to install the package.

From the Perl Audio Converter website:

“Perl Audio Converter is a tool for converting multiple audio types from one format to another. It supports AAC, AC3, AIFF, APE, AU, AVR, BONK, CAF, CDR, FAP, FLA, FLAC, IRCAM, LA, LPAC, M4A, MAT, MAT4, MAT5, MMF, MP2, MP3, MP4, MPC, MPP, NIST, OFR, OFS, OGG, PAC, PAF, PVF, RA, RAM, RAW, SD2, SF, SHN, SMP, SND, SPX, TTA, VOC, W64, WAV, WMA, and WV. It can also convert audio from the following video formats: RM, RV, ASF, DivX, MPG, MKV, MPEG, AVI, MOV, OGM, QT, VCD, SVCD, M4V, NSV, NUV, PSP, SMK, VOB, FLV, and WMV. A CD ripping function with CDDB support, batch conversion, tag preservation for most supported formats, independent tag reading/writing, and extensions for Amarok, Dolphin, and Konqueror are also provided. “

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Drupal: HTTP request status fails / Drupal Status Page Reports Errors

Tuesday, February 23rd, 2010

HTTP request status Fails

Your system or network configuration does not allow Drupal to access web pages, resulting in reduced functionality. This could be due to your webserver configuration or PHP settings, and should be resolved in order to download information about available updates, fetch aggregator feeds, sign in via OpenID, or use other network-dependent services.

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WYSIWYG: The version of TinyMCE could not be detected

Sunday, February 21st, 2010

There is a bug currently in the WYSIWYG module for Drupal affecting TinyMCE which seems to be in the queue for patching into the stable release.
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PHP – Load Plain Text CSV Data Into MySQL / Convert CSV To MySQL

Tuesday, January 26th, 2010

For a while now, possibly like many other developers, I’ve been coding in PHP using CSV related functions such as fgetcsv() and explode(). This usually works out fine until you want to read data from a CSV file and the store the data inside a MySQL database. Using mysql_query inside a loop is not fun for your servers processor!

As usual, the best way to do things when it comes to PHP & MySQL is to wherever possible get MySQL to do most of the work. Here is an example PHP script for effectively converting a CSV format database into a MySQL table. It presumes you already have a working connection and have selected a database.

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Google Chrome For Linux (Ubuntu + KDE / Kubuntu)

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

Warning: Do not install Chrome as root as suggested below… installing as root was only a quick hack when installing as a regular user failed! Please read – http://community.livejournal.com/evan_tech/271230.html?view=1741182

This post is almost a month late! I’ve not been that up to date with news from Google lately but by chance saw an advert on YouTube – who kindly detected I’m using Linux and advised me to download Google Chrome for Linux! What? It’s finally ready? More checks lead me to this page – the Google blog announcement on Chrome for Linux – http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/12/google-chrome-for-holidays-mac-linux.html
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Use PHP To Backup All MySQL Databases On A Server

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Here is a useful PHP script I worte for doing web based MySQL backups.  You could integrate this code into some kind of admin web app.  As it is, keep in mind security – don’t put this code up publicly on your server unless you want to share all of your MySQL data!
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Use Sysvconfig As A GUI For Managing Linux Start Up Services From The Command Line

Saturday, December 5th, 2009

As the title of this post suggests, Sysvconfig is a useful program for managing start up services (on boot) on Linux.   Sysvconfig is useful for configuring init scripts -ie: the scripts that start services at boot (or not) where you can enable or disable services that autostart and more.

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Guide To Choosing An Open Source E-Learning System (LMS / LCMS)

Thursday, October 22nd, 2009

In this guide I’ll intoduce you to some of the many open source LMS (Learning Management System) and LCMS (Learning Content Management System) projects that you might be interested in deploying.   Which system you choose could depend on several  factors including but not limited to…
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Install CURL To Work With PHP On Windows Server 2003 (IIS6)

Friday, October 2nd, 2009

cURL is a command line tool for transferring files with URL syntax, supporting FTP, FTPS, HTTP, HTTPS, SCP, SFTP, TFTP, TELNET, DICT, LDAP, LDAPS and FILE. curl supports SSL certificates, HTTP POST, HTTP PUT, FTP uploading, HTTP form based upload, proxies, cookies, user+password authentication (Basic, Digest, NTLM, Negotiate, kerberos…), file transfer resume, proxy tunneling and a busload of other useful tricks.

Follow these steps to download and install cURL to work with PHP on IIS6 (Windows Server 2003)…
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