nobleblog

MyBB Forum IP Log Plugin

2009-12-17T11:42:00.000-08:00

I just released an update to MrD.'s iplog plugin for MyBB 1.4.x. Its actually a complete rewrite. The big difference between the old one and this one is that the admin side now has searching and pagination capabilities.

I will do my best to keep it maintained. If not someone else should take over it. Just contact me if you would like any features or bug fixes.

Download the plugin: http://mods.mybboard.net/view/user-ip-log

jQuery form input helper text function

2009-06-18T13:25:00.000-07:00

We started using jQuery at work a few months ago and we began to analyze the JavaScript we were writing. We found that we were using some code over and over and one was a few lines that handled adding some helper text to an input on page load and removing it when a user clicks the input to type some text. It also handles when a form is submitted removing the helper text before it is sent to the server for processing (no server side checks for the helper text).

Here is the code for a universal function in handling form input helper text. The last value will default to 'default'. This was a class name we chose to allow us to lighten the color of the helper text only.


/**
* Handles add/removing helper text for form input fields
*
* @param selector   Jquery selector value of element to add helper to
* @param helperText Text to be placed in the input if input has no value
* @param css        Css class to be added when helper text is set
*/
function form_helper_text( selector, helperText, css ) {
   $(document).ready(function(){
       // set css default value if none provided
       css = typeof( css ) != 'undefined' ? css : 'default';
      
       // select form element and if helper text is submitted replace with ''
       var form = $( selector ).parents( 'form:first' );
       $( form ).submit(function(){
           if( $( selector ).val() == helperText ) {
               $( selector ).val( '' );
           }
       });

       // set action when field is not selected (add helper text)
       $( selector ).blur(function(){
           if( $(this).val() == '' ) {
               $(this).addClass( css );
               $(this).val( helperText );
           }
       });

       // set action when field is selected (remove helper text)
       $( selector ).focus(function(){
           if( $(this).val() == helperText ) {
               $(this).val( '' );
               $(this).removeClass( css );
           }
       });

       // trigger blue action to add helper text
       $( selector ).trigger( 'blur' );
   });
}

Mac Dashboard Stock Widget DST bug

2008-11-11T20:25:00.000-08:00

So I discovered this year that there is a minor bug that when your are on standard time the daily stock chart is +1 hour running Mac OS 10.5.5. Now its not a big deal but its just annoying but I decided to fix it until DST begins where I will have to get in and undo what I did until I figure out a real fix instead of a work around.

Workaround
Edit: /Library/Widgets/Stocks.wdgt/Stocks.js
Goto Line: 1932 "var utcOffset = 13;"
Change to: "var utcOffset = 14;"

If I knew javascript better I might have had a solution but till then this will work out just fine.

SphinxSearch Experience

2008-10-29T20:18:00.000-07:00

At work I have been investigating alternative search engines to manage our class schedule needs. Currently our credit schedule is 8 years old in design and requires file query caching to keep it running properly. We are wanting to get more information out of the database to make it easier for students to find classes they want to take that fits in their schedule. One options is to have filtering options like on many ecommerce sites.

So I heard about SphinxSearch and how fast it indexes and produces query results. So this is great. Well it hasn't been as great of an experience trying to get it integrated into our non-credit system.

Problems:
1) Documentation is lacking. More detailed examples of many of the advanced features would be helpful.
2) PHP API is extremely slow.
3) It only deals with numbers (makes more work on me)

But after learning the system figuring out its quirks. Working around some bugs (might be solaris or sparc related) I am beginning to be more confident. I have also just started investigating the Sphinx PECL extention to see about speed improvements for parsing of the server response. During an initial test (FreeBSD Dual Dual Core Xeon 2.8Ghz 2GB Ram Server) a response using the PHP API cost 0.1 sec whereas the PECL version only cost 0.003 sec. Now these numbers are different than I was receiving on our solaris server but non the less its a huge improvement. I need to refine my testing to verify my results and I will post more details about them when I am more comfortable with what I have.

NewEgg Egg Saver Shipping SUCKS!!!

2008-09-27T15:22:00.000-07:00

So I have ordered several parts from newegg over the past 4 years and I have only had a couple problems.

1) Ordered computer parts with my parents credit card (graduation gift) and shipped to my house. This caused several problems and took me 3 days to resolve by getting my address as a shipping address and then threatening to cancel the order because they wanted to start a problem because of a phone number.

2) Egg Saver Shipping (3-7 business days).... OH MY GOD WHAT A LOW CLASS SHIPPING METHOD THIS IS. Yeah I know I could have paid $10 for UPS 3 day shipping but I figured it doesn't have to go far my stuff usually ships out of the NJ warehouse. So it was picked up on 9/11 in the evening and made it to IL 2 days later (note this is going to southern MI). Ok I can buy that its cheapo shipping. So on 9/15 it finally makes it to MI but changes carriers (USPS). Well it sits in Allen Park for 7 DAYS! and leaves Detroit on the 8th day. Ok so how did it get from Allen Park to Detroit? Who knows because USPS has the worst tracking system ever.

So after waiting two weeks from shipping date I emailed newegg customer support and they surprisingly said the shipment must have gotten lost in transit and that they would either refund me my money or send me out a new product. So trying to give the postal system the benefit of the doubt I decided to wait to respond for another day to see if it arrived that night or the next (friday). But still no RAM.

But oh wait... after I ask for a replacement (good thing on a weekend) the package finally shows up almost 2.5 weeks after shipment. The package was a little bit abused but at least RAM from Kingston is packaged very well. The best part about the package was the "Time Sensitive Material" text on the USPS sticker. I guess "time sensitive" is a relative term and USPS figures eh... anytime in the next month would be great.

Mac OSX Bluetooth Keyboard & Mouse Bug

2008-09-26T22:47:00.000-07:00

So I have had a iMac for a week now and have come across a bug that was happening at random (actually it wasn't). So when I put my computer to screen saver mode (it just powers down the screen after a bit) I would turn the mouse off (keyboard i just let go to sleep). So a few hours later I would come back turn the mouse on and try to login. Well sometimes the mouse would work and other times just the keyboard would work. I was about to take the keyboard to the apple store and demand my $30 back and the regular keyboard. Fortunately I ended up finding a repeatable pattern to cause one input to not respond and a repeatable solution.

My Setup:
1) Silver 20" iMac Core2 Duo 2.66Ghz
2) Apple slim silver bluetooth keyboard
3) Logitech Bluetooth notebook travel mouse

Problem:
1) iMac is in sleepish mode
2) both keyboard and mac off
3) wake up computer using mouse first then try to use keyboard
Doing this will cause the mouse to not respond yet the keyboard will

Solution:
1) Wake up computer fully with keyboard
2) Turn the mouse on and wait for it to respond
Both of these should take less than 5 seconds each to happen (usually faster).

If you find yourself in a situation where one input is not responding (even if the computer says its connected to it) simply turn off both inputs and turn the keyboard on first make sure the computer is responding to it (Command + Tab is a great test) then turn the mouse on.

Pronouncable Password Generator

2008-09-25T01:12:00.000-07:00

I have to periodically make passwords for others that I want to be secure but memorable so I found this CLI app called GPW. So I have created a Mac App to interface with it and to hopefully in the future provide more options for possible passwords configurations.

Download the GPW app

Speed Switcher

2008-09-24T22:19:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago we needed to test different connection speeds at work. So I created a simple Mac app that uses firewall rules to limit the speed allowed on ports 80 & 443.

Download the Speed Switcher app

Mac OSX + VMware Fusion 2 + TeamFortress 2 = Sweet!

2008-09-17T21:03:00.000-07:00

So I just purchased a Core2 Duo 20" iMac with the 256MB ATI Radeon HD 2600 Pro video card and I am very impressed with the speed of the game. Now don't get me wrong it wasn't the best but I am still tweaking some setting to get it to become smoother.

I setup VMware so that I dedicated 1GB RAM to the VM and set it to use 1 Core. Next time I am going to try setting it to 2 cores and see if I get a speed increase. The other thing is my 4GB Ram kit hasn't showed up so hopefully I will get that and dedicate 2GB to the VM.

[updated] Synergy Control Script

2007-10-31T07:28:00.000-07:00

Well since Mac OSX Leopard created an issue with synergys running in the background I have updated my script which was just for creating the reverse ssh link and starting synergyc on the remote system. Now since at least synergys runs in the foreground I decided to run it in a screen.

So the updated script will start synergys then create the reverse ssh tunnel and finally start the remote synergyc.

Added other nerdy features like status and display output formatting.

So get the script if it interests you.

[PHP] masking a credit card number

2007-10-05T13:48:00.000-07:00

So if you have ever had to create a shopping cart and on the receipt page you want to display the last 4 digits of the credit card number and just x out the rest well you would prolly create a bit of code like on the php.net comments such as:

function mask ( $str, $start = 0, $length = null ) {
   $mask = preg_replace ( "/\S/", "*", $str );
   if ( is_null ( $length )) {
       $mask = substr ( $mask, $start );
       $str = substr_replace ( $str, $mask, $start );
   } else {
       $mask = substr ( $mask, $start, $length );
       $str = substr_replace ( $str, $mask, $start, $length );
   }
   return $str;
}

But of course I don't like that solutions so here is my version:

$maskedCcn = substr_replace(
   preg_replace( '/\S/', 'X',
       preg_replace( '/[^0-9]*/', null, $cardNumber );
   ),
   substr( $maskedCcn, -4 ),
   strlen( $maskedCcn ) - 4,
   4
);

The Fender Lip Roller

2007-09-12T19:12:00.001-07:00

Monday I finally got around to ordering my Fender Lip Roller and to my surprise it showed up today. Already have plans to fix blake's and my fenders so we stop chewing up our tires. He actually replaced his but alas I don't have that luxury to have another spare set of summer tires.

SynergyKM updated Bash Script and config

2007-09-04T07:32:00.000-07:00

Well here is version 2 of the Synergy Startup script I am using. Just set the LOCAL_COMPUTER and REMOTE_COMPUTER variables with your computer hostnames and execute with start|stop. Also here is the Synergy server config I am using. Replace LOCAL_COMPUTER_ALIASES and REMOTE_COMPUTER_ALIASES tokens with your information. Also with the aliases its best to put in anything it could be known by including IP. By not doing this if you have to restart the client you may not regain access to it unless you do a reboot. Its a bug I ran into.

Synergy Config:

section: screens
server:
 switchCorners = all
 switchCornerSize = 25
client:
end
section: aliases
server:
 LOCAL_COMPUTER_ALIASES (IP & HOSTNAME)
client:
 REMOTE_COMPUTER_ALIASES (IP & HOSTNAME)
end
section: links
server:
 left = client
client:
 right = server
end

Bash Start/Stop Link Script:

#!/bin/bash
LOCAL_COMPUTER=
REMOTE_COMPUTER=

if [ "$LOCAL_COMPUTER" == "" -o "$REMOTE_COMPUTER" == "" ]; then
echo "Script has not been configured"
exit 0
fi;

PID=`ps -ax | grep "ssh -fnNT -R 24800:$LOCAL_COMPUTER:24800 $REMOTE_COMPUTER" | grep -v 'grep' | awk '{print $1}'`

case "$1" in
start)
   echo "Starting Synergy Link"
   if [ "$PID" == "" ]; then
       ssh -fnNT -R 24800:$LOCAL_COMPUTER:24800 $REMOTE_COMPUTER
       ssh $REMOTE_COMPUTER "net start \"Synergy Client\""
       echo "Synergy Link Opened"
   else
       echo "Synergy Link already opened"
       exit 0
   fi;
;;

stop)
   echo "Stopping Synergy Link"
   if [ "$PID" != "" ]; then
       ssh $REMOTE_COMPUTER "net stop \"Synergy Client\""
       kill $PID
       echo "Synergy Link Closed"
   else
       echo "Synergy Link already closed"
       exit 0
   fi;
;;

restart)
   ./$0 stop
   ./$0 start
;;

*)
   echo "Usage (start|stop)"
;;
esac

SynergyKM Experience

2007-08-31T14:20:00.000-07:00

So I have yet to find a good article on how to properly setup SynergyKM and it took me a while to figure out a solution for what I need. I should make some more posts about how to do each step (hopefully with screenshots) or maybe a better overall howto.

What I have:
1) WindowsXP PC w/ 17" monitor
2) 20" iMac with secondary 20" monitor
3) 1 - 5 port switch

What I need:
1) Secure Keyboard Mouse connection from the Mac to the PC (devices on the Mac)
2) To still allow others to remote into PC (rare but necessary)

How I set it up:
1) Install Cygwin w/ssh on the Windows Machine
2) Install Synergy on both Machines
- install the client service then go into the service management console and set the "Synergy Client" service to "Manual" startup mode
3) Setup the Mac as the server
4) Setup the PC as the client
5) Create RSA/DSA ssh keys
6) Use below script to create a reverse tunnel from the mac so that PC's localhost:24800 will seamlessly route though the ssh connection created from the mac.

Script: (will update to have a start / stop mechanism *tunnel only*)
#!/bin/sh
ssh -fnNT -R 24800:SYNERGY_SERVER_IP:24800 REMOTE_CLIENT_IP
ssh REMOTE_CLIENT_IP "net start \"Synergy Client\""

Software Used:
Synergy2
Cygwin

Tutorials: (will add more when I get back to work ... granted I remember)
Cygwin-ssh Howto
Tech Repulic - Reverse SSH Tunnel

Its been a while

2007-08-28T21:26:00.000-07:00

Yeah so its been a while since I have given a life status update. So here it is...

On the day I came home from Seattle I got a fucking annoying eye infection. This was horrible as I could barley see in which I figured out was due to a light sensitivity reaction. So I got that fixed and a sick day to find out that my boss is on vacation for a week. So I got 3 weeks without having to see my boss.

So basically I have just been working. I do very little programming myself and alot of directing / helping my co-workers. I did however make a good successful push towards a finished uPay auto-checkout library. This is exciting because I make all the page requests for the user so they don't have to be tortured with the horrible interface and retarded steps it requires.

At home well I have been working on the DoD Game Tournament site. I just migrated it over to MyBB from phpBB and have been tweaking it to meet our needs (still not done). Right now I have moved onto updating the registration code to allow for a Donate to Choose a Division instead of the full forced random.

Oh an I went golfing this past weekend with my friend Blake, Adam, and Jamie (Blakes new roommate). Blake insisted on paying (as this was for a formula sae fund raiser) but man did we have some fun while playing a horrible game. Just image 3 crazy encouragable people with 1 not so encouragable person (adam), two golf carts on an early morning with a nice layer of moisture. Oh yes... thats right it was cart shenanigans time. I think we did almost anything we could think of besides doing a doughnut on the green and driving the cart into the pond (so tempting). We had cart races, bumper carts, rock climbing, dune driving, 180's, two wheel driving (the cart almost tipped) and some forest driving.

Oh yea... after 3 weeks I finally got my replacement power supply. However the nice thing about the wait is I was given an upgraded PSU from a 650 watt to an 850 watt and it was Brand Spanking new (which almost never happens with a return). It even had the plastic wrapping on it. So after getting it into my computer I boot it up to find out my keyboard doesn't work ... seriously WTH my computer hates me. However its a good thing I had a backup.

So yea... thats about it.

Trip to Downtown Seattle

2007-07-30T17:56:00.000-07:00

So today Geoff had to work (jerk :) ) and thus I slept in till 1030 and then slowly decided to go into the downtown area around Pike Place Market. So I ventured to the bus where I missed it by a minute (saw it pass as I was walking to the bus stop) so I was in no hurry and chilled for 30min until the next one arrived. I arrived downtown about a block from the market and decided to see if there was anything I wanted to eat when I spotted fresh made doughnuts ... oh I love me some doughnuts. They were small ones so I bought a half-dozen and ate them while I watched the Pikes Place Fish Co do their thing. Nothing too exciting though.

I was hoping that someone would be selling some ball caps around in seattle but no such luck. I couldn't find a store in the area I walked and checked one out that I found from google. Oh well hopefully my head doesn't burn too bad.

While I was at the Pacific Place Mall I saw another one of these crazy pig sculptures and this one had wings so I decided to take a pic as no one was in my way. I am not sure if they all mean something but if they do this one could be "when pigs fly". So after that I cruised through the mall and saw the AMC Theatre and decided to entertain myself by seeing "Sunshine" this movie was alright. I think it could have been much better. It reminded me of other movies that I had seen about going to mars and other space types. Nothing too creative except the ship they were on.

It's a party in Freemont

2007-07-29T13:45:00.000-07:00

Well last night was a blast. We went to the High Dive and watched this Ska-ish band play called the "Smoking Bills". It was a hoot as they had a few chicks come in wearing only their lingerie and danced for us a couple songs (sorry I didn't take my camera with me, I really need to learn to do that).

This morning has thus far been pretty laid back. Just got some brunch then off to the dog park where Rio was a crazy pup.

So yea... right now we are chilling before Geoff's kick ball game (we will see if I go... I am still a bit tired even after an energy drink).

Aloha Seattle

2007-07-28T22:19:00.000-07:00

So Friday I was able to fly to Seattle on my round trip ticket to detroit to portland and the return trip had a layover in seattle... so of course its like derp lets go visit my buddy Geoff. Well I purchased a one way on Frontier airlines (a less shitty airline than NWA) on Wednesday.

Friday night Geoff and I had a chill night. We went to see "Election" on a Free Movie on the Lawn event. It was a good movie. Today we went into Freemont and got some breakfast then took the boat out sailing (winds were ok). After that we went to the beach and met up with some of Geoff's climbing buddies and did some slack lining, ate some grub and dicked around. Then then next event was a first for me as we went to see the Rat City Rollergirls (Roller Derby). This was great to see as there were two fights in which punching was involved and some good there was also some good slamming. Hey what guy doesn't want to see girls in a skimpy outfits beating the crap out of other girls in skimpy outfits.

And finally we do what we always do and that is going to the bar. At least this time I know where geoff lives from where we are off too and I won't have to drive around for 2 hours (thanks Geoff).

Sorry no pictures this round... speaking of I should prolly start taking some.

OSCON - The final frontier

2007-07-27T07:55:00.001-07:00

So today is the last day of OSCON. We are slated to go see the keynotes and goto a session on Subversion Wost Practices. There is also one called Hack Your Manager which seems interesting and possibly useful.

The keynotes this morning are on Open Source systems.

Second Life (a game that has exploded into a communications meeting network)
Wikia (a new wikipedia that is striving to be the sum of all human knowledge)
The state of PHP, Perl & Ruby (comparison to people)
How to make use of old hardware

Subversion Worst Practices:
This was a good session. It made me rethink a couple thinks on how to handle the svn setup at work. We need to discuss / test some things a little more but I think we can come up with a usable VCS for us to use at work.

Ruby on Mac OSX:
I never got into ruby... well I never attempted ... I think it turned me off when all the crap started with Ruby on Rails. So overall this session I am definatly not going to get anything out of. This guy is not a very good speaker, another one that reads from his slides.

Finally we went to the last keynote. This keynote talks about Open Hardware design that goes under the similar concept of OSS. Its kinda interesting and could give the major manufacturers a run for their money. It could also do the same thing for hardware design that OSS has done for software.

Anyway this was a good conference. There were many good speakers (and bad ones). I think they could do a better job of screening their speakers to bring in high quality ones. If they did that they the conference could be so much better and I think attract tons more people.

Red Lion Hotel

2007-07-26T22:09:00.000-07:00

So the hotel is definitely a hit or miss hotel. But in this case its a miss when it comes to their organizational and clean staff skills.

The Bad:

Our rooms were not ready when we got here
After we left and came back our rooms were still not ready and we had to change our booked accommodations because they are unable to meet their end of the deal.
They told 2 of 4 of us that we could have a late checkout but the other two (Sarah and myself) told us not a chance without even looking at our reservations.
The cafe for breakfast is slow at acknowledging your existence.
Some of the cleaning staff couldn't make a bed if their life depended on it.
After you checkout they won't accommodate your trip to the light rail except with the shuttle to the airport (WTH?)*

The Good:

They are pretty quick at taking us to and from the TriMet Max Light Rail.
The rooms seem to be clean all the time.
You get a free newspaper (USA Today) every morning to your door
They are holding our bags for free*

* added the morning of checkout

So yea... the internet gave the hotel a 3.9/5.0 and I would give them a 2.9/5.0. It might be kinda harsh but when you have a reservation you should be able to figure it out and get someone to clean the rooms you need. And if you can't do that then don't let someone place a registration for that type of room.

So now if James and Rex are unable to keep their late registration that means we are going to most likely have to take our shit with us downtown which is going to be annoying as hell.

OSCON - in a nutshell

2007-07-26T19:51:00.000-07:00

So today we saw some good sessions. The one about VIM for PHP Programmers was great. There was a ton of information in the slides (which I think I got). So much stuff that he was rolling through the things faster than I could remember them. So I am going to dig through the slides and find the ones I like. He had ways to check the file through the PHP interpreter and another to have code completion and those were just the tip of what he showed.

We also went to a Cache session which was more of the guy just talking about his cache system called APC. Overall it was all right .. I am sure his slides could come in handy when we start looking at using it or another opcache.

Then I went to a source control session and the room was packed. People crammed into about every possible space in this room. The speaker was from New Zealand and was defiantly the class clown in school. I didn't really get out of it what I wanted. My understanding of distributed version control systems is not really any better which is unfortunate. But oh well not every presentation can be perfect.

After that I went to see Chris Shiflett again with his Security 2.0 session. This was pretty much a recap of his Essential PHP Security Tutorial session. I was hoping that he was going to go more in depth into XSS and CSRF but alas he didn't stand up to my expectations that he set forth in the tutorial when he mentioned it.

Then I completed my day by going to Prototype and Object.prototype JavaScript session. This one was interesting I have a better understanding of the prototype JS attribute and how some of the JS features I have seen works.

When I get back next week I want to gather everyones slides and take some time and go through the sessions that I was unable to goto.

Extending my Trip

2007-07-25T23:50:00.001-07:00

So after some working of several options I have figured out a way to stay in Seattle for a few days. Since NWA won't do anything except delaying the flight with the same departure and arrival points I decided to take the flight to Seattle and then just not get on the connecting flight. I then purchased another ticket for a Wednesday morning departure back for $300. Its a little pricey but its still less than the cost to come back out another time and there will be plenty to do while I am in Seattle.

Hopefully when I go back to work on the 2nd I won't be greeted with people annoying the crap out of me about stuff they don't or want to understand.

So yea... I guess some of the things planned for Seattle are:

Roller Derby (I have always wanted to see one of these)
Block Party ( Capital Hill I think )
Lawn Movie
Some weird boat thing where the dog is getting dressed up as Mr. T.

I am sure there are more things that will go on but thats all I know thus far.

OSCON - Dinner

2007-07-25T23:45:00.000-07:00

So tonight James, Sarah and myself went to a restaurant in downtown Portland called "Mama Mia Trattoria". This if you can't tell is an Italian restaurant. I had chicken fettuccine Alfredo and it was pretty good. After that we decided to goto China Town and see the Chinese garden park. After getting there we were presented with a disappointing "Private Party" sign. However we were able to take some pictures of the inside (which I will put on the flickr tomorrow and post them here).

OSCON - Day in a nutshell

2007-07-25T23:29:00.000-07:00

So today I went to a few sessions on PHP and AJAX. Found some new useful tools and got alot out of the ajax sessions. Learned some good practices to create ajax systems that at least should appear to the user as fast and responsive. Also Yahoo! released a new plugin for firefox called YSlow. This tool will make profiling ajax apps much easier. In addition to this we wrapped up the day with the worst speaker ever. First he couldn't operate KeyNote (I can understand having some issues with it but not as much as this guy). Also he read directly from his slides and was not prepared at all. When people asked him questions he was unable to answer them in a clear manor. He may very well be smart in the subject but he does not know how to give a presentation on it.

So in addition to this we went to the exhibit hall where we obtained some more swag. We got a bunch of stickers and got ourselves entered into some drawings. Oh and most importantly I got several O'Reilly pins for the different OS langauges. There was a sign that said "What kind of animal are you?" with a able of pins. Of course all the perl ones were gone (poor rex).

I have more pictures and swag coming ... I am just too lazy to take pictures and upload them tonight. So just keep an eye on my flickr for all the latest and greatest photos.

OSCON - Breakfast

2007-07-25T23:07:00.000-07:00

So today Rex, Sarah and myself went to the craziest doughnut shop ever. These people will try about any combination you can think of and seem to always have a variety of choices that are out of the norm.

Here I ate a Captain Crunch Doughnut. It was packed full of sugar (almost an overloading amount). The cereal was a little stale but it was an interesting combination.

And here is sarah with her voodoo doughnut that is being stabbed with a pretzel. Also rex found a doughnut that was named after him. "Diablo Rex" it was cool looking but you would have to ask him how it tastes.