Recently I needed to automate copying a MySQL database to a backup server. We keep a copy of our site and DB on this box in the event that our main systems go down, or there’s a problem with our internet connection. It’s kind of like a poor man’s colocation setup. I actually prefer the setup over true colocation for the vast majority of small and medium-sized business, because it’s far simpler and requires far less overhead and continuous support.
Deep down, I think everyone is inspired by the concept of world unity, but we usually leave it to air-headed beauty queens and Hollywood celebri-tards to talk about it. After all, if your not a world power or a big corporation, what power do you have to actually do anything? Here’s one creative answer… This is apparently one of those Internet sensations and I’m simply late to the game. Oh well.
It seems to be some rite of passage for tech-focused blogs that they create a list of their favorite Firefox extensions. Who am I to break custom? If you’re not a web-developer, you can ignore the ones described as such, and consider the rest highly recommended. I have yet to find someone with as many extensions as me. You have been warned. Finally, you’ll find a screenshot demonstrating all these extensions in action at the bottom.
I am a huge fan of AVG Anti-Virus Free Edition. It provides the same level of virus protection as the pay-for packages—don’t be fooled, the differences are bells and whistles—and because it’s trimmed down it eats up less resources. I always install it as part of a comprehensive approach using several free Windows security tools. However, how many times have you seen this at the bottom of an e-mail?
No virus found in this incoming message.
A coworker turned me onto the webcomic xkcd earlier this summer. If you are reading this (there’s a philosophy joke here somewhere…), then you’ll probably appreciate the humor of this guy. Need more proof? Aside from syndicating the comic directly in his RSS feed (I’ve never seen that before), he also (a) does not have a “www” subdomain, and (b) runs his own IRC channel (#xkcd on irc.foonetic.net). An IRC channel for a web comic must rank up there somewhere on the uber-nerd scale.
Whenever I get into a discussion about web usability or UI, I always use the same analogy to describe how to succeed in making happy users. At this point, it’s stood up to a fair amount of scrutiny in conversation, but I’ve never put it onto paper. I firmly believe that all good ideas should be written down, so consider this the next time you’re building a user-heavy web application… The Science Channel has a series called “How It’s Made.
When writing SQL statements, sometimes I want to filter the result set based on a value that must be computed out of the stored data. Here’s an example: [code=“sql”]SELECT widgetID, count( widgetID ) AS totalWidgets
FROM table_widget_sales
WHERE totalWidgets > 1
GROUP BY widgetID
ORDER BY totalWidgets DESC[/code] I want to see which widgets have been sold more than once, and how many times each of those remaining widgets have sold.
Over at ClassicWines, we recently experienced a login issue, where data was not being saved to the session after submitting valid credentials. Enter your username, password, and you would end up back at the home page as if nothing happened. I was banging my head against my desk (literally) looking for the cause.
Cut to the happy ending: PHP introduced a new “feature” that deconstructs objects BEFORE writing and closing the session.
Okay, so it took me WAY longer than a week to get this up, I apologize. However, as promised, here is the second half of Peter Coles’ walkthrough of Eclipse. This portion focuses on the actual installation and configuration of Eclipse. If you don’t know what Eclipse is, or want to see why Peter loves it, check out the part 1 post. Everyone else, enjoy!
**Step 1** We’ll start by scooting over to http://download.
When I went to the Zen Cart Conference in Toronto in April, I had the great pleasure of meeting Peter Coles, owner and operator of Kuroi, a web design firm based in the UK. Peter is definitely one of the best developers I’ve seen bubble up from the Zen Cart community (along with team member Chris Brown). For the meeting, Peter put together a fantastic tutorial on Eclipse, the premier integrated development environment (IDE).
