"America's government is bringing America down, and the only thing that can change that is a return to the basics"
Finally, I have a candidate in this election that I can get excited about. This guy seems like our best bet for the 2008 election.
Month: June 2007
Crashes On Windows After PCAnywhere Is Installed
I thought I'd take a note of this just in case it comes in handy to anyone else out there.
A couple of weeks ago I installed PCAnywhere 10 on my laptop and when it asked me to reboot, I declined. The next day, after rebooting my computer, I noticed my resolutions were all messed up. It kept trying to show me aspect ratios that didn't match the LCD screen I have. It would also set my resolution to 800x600, or something similarly weak. Whenever I'd try changing it, the computer would crash, saying something like invalid page fault "Page fault in nonpaged area" with "STOP: 0x00000050". The DLL always listed as being implicated was "awvid5.dll". Upon some Google searching, I realized that PCAnywhere had messed my computer's video drivers up. I proceeded to uninstall PCAnywhere, and after rebooting, got my stable operation back.
Cleaning up A**hole Spam in PHPNuke
When setting up PHPNuke, you really have to remember to turn on captcha checking for registrations first thing in config.php (gfx_chk). If you don't, you'll get pummeled with comment spam in a matter of hours.
If, like me, you messed up and forgot to, you'll have to delete those bogus accounts, and delete the comments. Deleting the comments can be tedious. So instead, run a command from a unix shell to generate some html content that will make your life easier...
mysql -u dbusername -pdbpassword dbname -e 'SELECT tid,sid FROM nuke_comments;' | grep -v tid | awk '{print "<a href=\"http://yourdomain.com/admin.php?op=RemoveComment&tid=" $1 "&sid=" $2 "&ok=1\">http://yourdomain.com/admin.php?op=RemoveComment&tid=" $1 "&sid=" $2 "&ok=1</a>"}'
This will output a bunch of HTML that you can insert into a page. Click on each of those links to delete a comment. Much quicker than searching for them all.
Now, I suppose someone could write a PHP module for Nuke that would automate this. I'm just too lazy to ;-)
Setting up Tiny MCE 2.1.1 with Advanced Editor on PHP-Nuke 7.9
I just got Tiny MCE updated on MuchTall and I just thought I'd pass the update instructions on
1) Download and unpack Tiny MCE from http://tinymce.moxiecode.com/download.php
2) Move the folder /includes/tiny_mce to /includes/tiny_mce.orig
3) Copy the new tinymce/jscripts/tiny_mce folder to /includes/tiny_mce
4) Download this javascript.php.patch patch into /includes/
5) Run "patch -p0 < javascript.php.patch" from within /includes/
6) Open your PHPNuke editor page
That's it! Now you have a rich text editor with advanced editing features right within PHPNuke!
Windows is Bad for Bind Zone Files
A buddy of mine was recently setting up bind on his linux box and had an issue. His zone files wouldn't load without spewing out errors:
Jun 8 10:33:05 server named: hisdomain.com:18: unknown RR type 'host1'
Jun 8 10:33:05 server named: hisdomain.com:19: unknown RR type 'host2'
Jun 8 10:33:05 server named: hisdomain.com:20: unknown RR type 'host3'
Jun 8 10:33:05 server named: hisdomain.com:23: unknown RR type 'host4.hisdomain.com.'
Jun 8 10:33:05 server named: dns_master_load: hisdomain.com:24: isc_lex_gettoken() failed: unexpected end of input
Jun 8 10:33:05 server named: dns_master_load: hisdomain.com:24: unexpected end of input
Jun 8 10:33:05 server named: hisdomain.com: file does not end with newline
Jun 8 10:33:05 server named: zone hisdomain.com/IN: loading from master file hisdomain.com failed: unknown class/type
Jun 8 10:33:05 server named: _default/hisdomain.com/in: unknown class/type
Fun stuff. After messing around with his domain files for about an hour, I realized something. There were all these excessive spaces after each line. So I opened vi and proceeded to remove them all, as well as replacing spaces in the doc where a tab should be. Lo and behold, it loaded fine.
It appears the the root of the problem were those "spaces" at the end of the line. I figure they were probably DOS carriage returns created my some lame windows text editor. Once removed, the file loads fine.
The New Tower Of Babel
After reading the conclusion on this article, I get to wondering if we're spending inordinate amounts of time and money trying to reach an explanation of the universe. It's almost as if we're trying to climb the the heights of God. I'm not saying we shouldn't try to understand nature and the science of things, but I have to wonder when we reach that point where some think they can explain away God.
All in all, I believe that we will never fully understand the universe. There will always be some particle, some blob of energy who's function or even existence will never be fully explained. We will inevitably reach a point where there is no physical way of proving its function or existence, and then what are you left with: something you have to believe, merely on faith.
And at that point what separates Religion from Science? Nothing really.
The Server Blew Up
The past month and a half has been filled with many great days, and a few bad days. One of the bad days was 4/12. My server decided that it's hard drive absolutely had to die a week before my wedding and two-three week honeymoon. I managed to get a bunch of files recovered from the server, but not everything.. I had to re-install the servver and get some people's sites up and limping. Fun stuff.
So after getting my life back on track, catching up with some projects at work, and getting some things straightened up at home, I finally got my own site working. It's not all here, but all the stories and comments should be. I have to see what database tables got lost and re-create them to make sure that the site is at least functional.
I have to say thanks to my new wife, Kaylan, for being patient with me as I geeked out and fixed stuff.
Wedding and Honeymoon pictures coming soon!
- Mr. MuchTall
