Zip Zap Zorum - Stuff (RSS Feed)

Zip Zap Zorum Is Moving

rvause — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:44:00 +0000

I need to move Zip Zap Zorum, as the domain name and title of the page seems to create a lot of questions. All the information and files contained here will be moved over to www.rickvause.com, a more fitting domain/title for my stuff.

Tagged: zipzapzorum

Getting a development webserver set up at home with Xubuntu

rvause — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:15:00 +0000

I had an old DELL 4300 lying around at home and thought it was about time I put it to some use by setting it up as a LAMP server to work on little PHP projects from home. Since it is quite a low spec machine I decided to go with Xubuntu on this one. The latest release is 9.10, but I use Ubuntu 9.04 on my laptop so thought I would go for the same version of Xubuntu for this one since I had the CD lying around within yards of the server-to-be anyway. I am not knocking Ubuntu 9.10, I upgraded my workstation at work to be running this version and it is great, although I haven't quite figured out the quirky behaviour surrounding the new UbuntuOne service, but that is another story.

First thing you will want to do is go to Xubuntu.org and get a release of Xubuntu. The following should work regardless of whether you decide on 9.10 or 9.04.

Get your old machine out and wire it up to the network, a monitor and a keyboard. Follow the installation steps for Xubuntu and once it is started for the first time you can log in. Here you will probably find that there are updates to get for the distro so just follow the prompts until the system stops quizzing you.

A little churnering and a couple of restarts later you will be ready to get started installing the server software.

Hit Alt+F2, enter 'xterm' and hit 'Run'. A terminal window will open. From here enter:

sudo apt-get install ssh

This will prompt you for your password and then install an SSH server on your machine. Brilliant! Make sure your server-to-be is set up with a static ip so you know how to find it easily. You can read a good guide here.

From here you can remove the keyboard and monitor from you server-to-be, hide it somewhere out of your better half's sight and go to your laptop or whatever you normally work on. I went to my laptop of course.

Connect to your server-to-be via SSH

ssh username@host

Now from here you can start installing other server software, starting with Apache, MySQL, PHP:

sudo tasksel install lamp-server

You will be prompted for your password then a blue screen will appear and begin downloading and installing. At some point you will be prompted to choose a new password for the root mysql user, don't forget this one.

That is it really. You are pretty much ready to go from here. Going to the servers IP address in your web browser should present you with a page saying 'It Works!' in large type.

Your document root is under /var/www . All you will find there is a file called index.html with the contents described above.

One other thing you may want that is not included in the default installation here is mod_rewrite. To activate this enter:

sudo a2enmod rewrite

then restart Apache

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

I use phpMyAdmin to work with MySQL databases. This tool has endless value and if you haven't already thought of it, I reccommend installing it:

sudo apt-get install phpmyadmin

During installation you will be prompted for the MySQL root users password as well as being asked to set up a new password for phpmyadmin.

Next you will need to include the configuration for phpmyadmin to be used with Apache. Open /etc/apache2/apache2.conf in vi

sudo vi /etc/apache2/apache2.conf

Add the following line to the end of the file:

Include /etc/phpmyadmin/apache.conf

Save :w and quit :q. Now restart Apache once more:

sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

Browsing to yourserversip/phpmyadmin, you should be presented with the log in screen for phpMyAdmin.

You are up and running. Install you favourite version control system and you are away. Enjoy.

Remember, this is by no means a secure installation of a webserver and is only intended for use at home on your personal projects.

Tagged: linux, apache, php, mysql, ubuntu, xubuntu, lamp, server

Sage Line 50 ODBC Schema

rvause — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:18:00 +0000

I have been working on a client management system that is closely integrated with a Sage Line 50 database. As the project has developed I have found myself wanting and needing more and more information regarding the structure of the Sage Line 50 database as well as the relations between the tables within it.

After much time spent searching on Google and also contacting the authors of Sage Line 50 (who only suggested paying for use of their SDK) I found there is next to nothing out there on the web in the way of information on the Sage Line 50 database schema.

So I have produced this spreadsheet to describe the Sage Line 50 ODBC Schema for my reference and understanding.

Currently there is one table per sheet describe with the first sheet listing ALL tables in the database. This is a work in progress and I will be adding more to it as I discover and understand more about the relationships between the individual tables. ie Which tables are join tables, what fields are used to relate to other tables etc.

If you are interested dowload it here: Sage-Line-50-ODBC-Schema.ods

If anybody happens to revise this spreadsheet with more information I would appreciate it if you could email me the revised spreadsheet then I can post it again here. If not, I'll just post my next revision when I have more information.

Tagged: sage, line50, spreadsheet, database, odbc

Google Search including Tweets

rvause — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 21:06:00 +0100

I've seen a lot of discussion on the web surrounding this post on Google's blog.

I do not doubt one bit that it will be beneficial to web users to index Tweets in and include results in searches but wouldn't there be a lot of noise?

Often when I use twitter and try to search for a topic of interest I find there are bunch of marketeers jump on board by including popular phrases in their tweets that are completely irrelevant. When I was stuck in traffic on the way to Glastonbury festival earlier this year I thought I might be able to find some insigh into what was going on by searching for other festival goers tweers but because of the noise that a popular topic brings, it provided little information as to what was going on with the traffic situation and entry into the festival.

To contradict what I just said about the noise on Google searches, however, will this product make for better searching of tweets? I near enough always find relevant results in my searches on Google search and maybe this is exactly what users of twitter need. A way to get a more relevant set of tweets for a search.

Another good article can be found here.

Tagged: twitter, google, web

Look Out for Google Wave Invite Scams

rvause — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 23:25:00 +0100

There is a lot of hype on the web surrounding Google Wave invitations at the moment. If you are hunting for an invitation to Google's exciting new service please keep it in mind that the web allows anonymity and certain web publishers may use web hype to exploit users.

Please read here and here about Google Wave invitation scams. You may be better off until Google open Google Wave up for sign up.

Tagged: google, wave, internet, web, hype

Developing Flash for Free

rvause — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 21:15:00 +0100

Developing in Flash was something that has been bound to hit me for a few years now and I have avoided it and ignored it for a long time now. The main reason's being that I have never been able to get my head round animation and the use of a timeline and Flash, to me, is another proprietry plugin for your web browser that we could probably all do without the hassle of having to install.

But I am not developing Flash apps for the web so it is ok.

Adobe's new CS3 and CS4 packages comes a big price tag and a 30-day trial is just not long enough for me to learn everything I need to learn and do everything I need to do. Investment in the latest version of the Adobe's authoring suite was always going to be out of the question as I never plan to adopt Flash as my choice for web development. So I started considering other options aside from piracy.

Eventually after reading much, I understood that Actionscript 3, the language behind Flash movies and FLA and SWF files can be compiled into SWF applications ready for release using Adobe's free, open source Flex SDK.

So with that in my hands I started to 'Google' terms like 'Actionscript 3 source editor' and came upon a real gem.

FlashDevelop is a free, open source editor for Actionscript 3 amongst many other possibilities including a new language called haXe.

I found FlashDevelop really easy to set up and use, it's auto-completion is BRILLIANT and indispensable for an Actionscript 3 beginner, helping me get through these beginning stages of Flash development with great ease.

All you need to get started is the Flex SDK, a stand alone Flash Player Debugger and FlashDevelop.

Unlike the Adobe's Flash authoring suite you write everything in Actionscript 3, no interaction from and the mouse and no timeline. I am sure this free, open source method of development has it's draw backs, the timeline and physical WYSIWYG stage are there for a reason, but for the purpose of creating simple Actionscript 3 applications quickly and on a low budget, FlashDevelop is brilliant.

Tagged: development, flash, as3, actionscript, flex

Loading content from another domain using jQuery's load function

rvause — Fri, 18 Sep 2009 17:14:00 +0100

I was never aware before that you can not load content from external domains using jQuery's load function. I wanted to be able to load in a HTML stock ticker I had created into any website that I needed to display it on but could not.

Here is the solution I came up with:

I created a file "loadticker.php" and inside it put:

echo file_get_contents("http://www.myscript.com/path/to/file.php");

I put this file on the domain of every website I wanted to load the content to and set each page where I wanted to display the content to load the local file, "loadticker.php".

Last.fm Recent Tracks Block for Pixie

rvause — Tue, 18 Aug 2009 17:45:00 +0100

Zip Zap Zorum is Pixie Powered and the world knows about Last.fm.

I have been 'scrobbling' for years and wanted to add a recent tracks listing to my blog here. You see it on the right there?

If you want to add this block to your Pixie Powered site you can download the block here: block_lastfm.zip

It supports a number of options for your recently played list:

Number of tracks to display (1-10)
Artist - Track or Track - Artist display.
Caching of data to save querying RSS feed and building text constantly for busy websites.
Formatting of dates and times using PHP's date function.

Enjoy.

Tagged: php, pixie, rss, lastfm

Preloading images without Javascript, using CSS instead

rvause — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 13:06:00 +0100

If I can find a way of using CSS for something I would normally do with Javascript, I will always go with CSS. It also usually works out easier and cleaner in CSS.

When displaying my 2 stage CSS buttons on a page I was working on, the second stage took a few moments too long to load, so I decided I wanted to preload those images using CSS.

Here is my solution...

The CSS:

img.preload { display: none; width: 1px; height: 1px; }

The HTML:

Just add the class preload to each image and you should be laughing.

Tagged: design, CSS, javascript

SQLite Class for PHP

rvause — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:26:00 +0100

When I started working on projects in PHP/MySQL I found my self writing the same bits of code over and over again to connect, update, debug what was going on with my database.

About a year ago now I came across this class by Micah Carrick, shared.

I started using it and since then have never looked back, it is simple, but extremely useful. Felt as if it was made for me.

So yesterday when I started on a project that will involve usage to SQLite, I instantly started to miss the MySQL class I had been using all this time.

So I decided it would be worth investing a little time in modifying Micah Carrick's class to support SQLite databases. That way I can work the same way I have been for a while now with MySQL in SQLite.

Brilliant. An SQLite class for PHP just like Micah Carrick's MySQL class for PHP.

Click here to Download it Zipped up. I am satisfied it is complete, but just in case, look out for updates here.

Tagged: php, mysql, sqlite