DanielKassner.com

A few new photos

Jul 26, 2010 Photography Leave a comment

Here are a few new photos from some trips so far this summer:

Pagoda in Patterson Park Baltimore, MD

Capitol Building, Washington DC

Gettysburg, PA

Uninstall Sophos Anti-Virus get Internal Error 2738

Jul 21, 2010 Technology, Work Leave a comment

Recently I was attempting to uninstall Sophos Anti-Virus from my computer to change which server I get the anti-virus updates from as we are switching which server anti-virus server is run on. I decided that I would uninstall the old version and re-install as this would be the easiest way for me to change settings that were all grayed out not allowing me to change. I was able to un-install everything except for the Sophos AutoUpdate service as it would error out with an Internal Error 2738. Doing a quick 10 minute Google search found that I should attempt to register the vbscript.dll file. To do this follow the instructions below. Please note I am running Windows 7 32 bit.

• Click the Start button/pearl
• In the Search programs and files box just above Start button do a search for Command. This will bring up the Command Prompt in the search. Right click this and Run as Administrator.
• This should open a command prompt window with the default file path of c:\Windows\system32. Type the following in the command prompt then hit enter:
  

  regsvr32 vbscript.dll

• If success you will see a message that says: “DllRegisterServer in vbscript.dll succeeded.”

Now that we have done that you can minimize the command prompt and attempt to uninstall the Sophos AutoUpdate client that we could not previously. If you are still getting the error above you will need to continue process below to delete a registry key. I would highly suggest backing up the registry before doing any changes to the registry in case something goes wrong which it shouldn’t.

• Bring back up your Administrator Command Prompt
• Paste the following into the command prompt and then press enter:
  

  reg delete “HKCU\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{B54F3741-5B07-11CF-A4B0-00AA004A55E8}” /f

• Once you have deleted the registry key run the regsvr32 vbscript.dll command that we did above

Now that we have deleted the registry key and re-registered the vbscript.dll file we should now have success in un-installing Sophos. If you are still having problems with this I highly recommend contacting Sophos support.

Feature request for Notepad++ Function List plugin

Jun 30, 2010 PHP Coding, Technology, Web Development 1 Comment

As the number of visitors continues to increase to my Notepad++ Function List for PHP development post I have frequently been asked if this plugin can do a certain task. This task would be to add multiple rules to one main category. So for instance you have a file that has multiple classes located in it and each class has its own set of variables and functions. The Function List plugin allows us to parse these out and find them. However, in its current state we can only link one parsing rule to another.

Example:
Current State:
-Classes
–Training model extends Model
—Functions
—-__construct
—-EventListing
-Class Variables
–$Month
–$Day
–$Year

What we would like:
-Classes
–Training model extends Model
—Class Variables
—-$Month
—-$Day
—-$Year
—Functions
—-__construct
—-EventListing

I have sent an email to the creator of the plugin(Jens Lorenz) about asking the possibility of changing the plugin and that correspondence is listed below:

Sent from Me on March 17, 2010 7:57 AM

I have used the Function List plugin for Notepad++ for some time now and really enjoy it. My question to you is if it would be possible to add multiple subgroups under one group? For instance I am a PHP developer; I have parsing rules for Classes, Class Variables and Functions. I would love to be able to put Class Variables along with the Functions rules under the classes tree. So instead of having:
-Classes
–printer extends resources
—Functions
—-__construct
—-sqlInsert
-Class Variables
–$security
–$db

I would have:
-Classes
–printer extends resources
—Class Variables
—-$security
—-$db
—Functions
—-__construct
—-sqlInsert

I have put up a blog posting of what my current FunctionListRules.xml section looks like at: http://www.danielkassner.com/2010/01/22/using-notepads-function-list-plugin-for-php-development

If you have any ideas that would be great. Thanks!

Sent by Jens Lorenz on March 18, 2010 at 3:27 AM

Hello Daniel,

currently it isn’t possible. Only one level of subgrouping is possible at the moment.

Best Regards
Jens

Sent by me on March 18, 2010 at 7:41 AM

Do you think that this desired functionality will or could be added to a future release? I am sure that it will take some time to accomplish but it would be nice.

Thank you for the quick response.

I did not get a response back from that last email. I wish that I knew more about C++ to modify and send the changes I would make to him for everyone else to enjoy. I am sure he is a busy man just like me which is why I probably did not get a response back.

If you would like to see this feature potentially get added please contact him via email and or post comment here on this posting. You can find his email by opening Notepad++, selecting the Plugins > Function List > Help menu item.

Disable web browser tab previews in Windows 7

Jun 24, 2010 Technology, Work Leave a comment

Recently I upgraded my work machine from Windows Vista to Windows 7. While learning the new features of 7 I found that Aero likes to show tab previews of each tab I have open in Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera. I am the kind of guy that keeps multiple tabs open almost all day long looking up items, coding, … the list could go on so I found this “feature” a pain. As you can see in the below image that I have multiple websites open but you cannot tell if it is multiple windows or multiple tabs.

Now with the picture below you can easily see I have only one window open but four tabs.

To disable tab previews in Firefox you need to do the following:

• Open the about:config page in a new tab or window
• Filter for: browser.taskbar.previews.enable
• By default this is set to true so double click on the true to swap the value to false
• Your done!

Now for Internet Explorer you have to open the the Internet Options. You will do this by opening Internet Explorer and in the toolbar look for the Tools icon which looks like a gear and then select Internet Options at the very bottom.

Once in the Internet Options click on the Settings button in the Tabs section.

Once in the Tabbed Browsing Settings un-check the option that says: Show previews for individual tabs in the taskbar*, then click OK on all the open windows and close out of Internet Explorer.

Now for Opera we have to open the opera:config page in a new tab or window.

Scroll down to a section titled User Prefs and expand this section.

Scroll down towards the bottom of the User Prefs section and un-check the check box: “Use Windows 7 Taskbar Thumbnails”

Once you have unchecked this box scroll down to the bottom of the User Prefs section and click the save button. You will eventually be presented with the following dialog box once complete.

That is how you disable tab previews in Windows 7 for popular browsers.

Get user operating system with PHP

Jun 11, 2010 PHP Coding Leave a comment

Ever wanted to find out what operating system your visitors are using? The following function will allow you to get the user operating system so you can use in a statistics application or show certain content on your website. This will allow server side decisions on what stylesheets to show or any other operating system specific content to be shown/hide.

<?php
function getOS($userAgent) {
  // Create list of operating systems with operating system name as array key 
	$oses = array (
		'iPhone' => '(iPhone)',
		'Windows 3.11' => 'Win16',
		'Windows 95' => '(Windows 95)|(Win95)|(Windows_95)', // Use regular expressions as value to identify operating system
		'Windows 98' => '(Windows 98)|(Win98)',
		'Windows 2000' => '(Windows NT 5.0)|(Windows 2000)',
		'Windows XP' => '(Windows NT 5.1)|(Windows XP)',
		'Windows 2003' => '(Windows NT 5.2)',
		'Windows Vista' => '(Windows NT 6.0)|(Windows Vista)',
		'Windows 7' => '(Windows NT 6.1)|(Windows 7)',
		'Windows NT 4.0' => '(Windows NT 4.0)|(WinNT4.0)|(WinNT)|(Windows NT)',
		'Windows ME' => 'Windows ME',
		'Open BSD'=>'OpenBSD',
		'Sun OS'=>'SunOS',
		'Linux'=>'(Linux)|(X11)',
		'Safari' => '(Safari)',
		'Macintosh'=>'(Mac_PowerPC)|(Macintosh)',
		'QNX'=>'QNX',
		'BeOS'=>'BeOS',
		'OS/2'=>'OS/2',
		'Search Bot'=>'(nuhk)|(Googlebot)|(Yammybot)|(Openbot)|(Slurp/cat)|(msnbot)|(ia_archiver)'
	);

	foreach($oses as $os=>$pattern){ // Loop through $oses array
    // Use regular expressions to check operating system type
		if(eregi($pattern, $userAgent)) { // Check if a value in $oses array matches current user agent.
			return $os; // Operating system was matched so return $oses key
		}
	}
	return 'Unknown'; // Cannot find operating system so return Unknown
}
?>

An example of how this would be used:

<?php
echo getOS($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT']);
?>

This script can be used with the Get Browser Type, which also has the same structure as this script.

Change outgoing BlackBerry PIN message sender email address

Jun 9, 2010 Cell Phones, Technology, Work 2 Comments

At the organization I work for we have a BlackBerry server setup with around 30 users. Works great for those employees that don’t get computer access but still need access to get emails to stay up to date on daily schedules and patient care. However when there is a problem that affects email on the devices it is best to notify those staff there is an issue or that the issue has been resolved. This is where using PIN messaging comes in very handy. This last time I had a device in my hand and I noticed that the email address on the PIN message was from admin@yourcompanydomain.com instead of something related to our organization. Below I will show you how to change this so that your outgoing PIN messages have an email address that actually correlates with your own business.

* I am doing these processes on BlackBerry Server 5 and not 4. The process for 4 will be different as it is not a browser based management.

• Open your BlackBerry Administration Service page and log in.
• Navigate to the Devices > Wireless activations > Device activation settings
  
• You will notice at the top of this page there is a Email initialization message section with the Sender address by default as: admin@yourcompanydomain.com. Select the Edit activation settings button to change this
• Change the Sender address field to an actual email of your company and then select Save all
  

Once you have changed this all of your outgoing PIN messages will have the new email address as the sender name.

Prevent direct file access

Jun 4, 2010 PHP Coding Leave a comment

Do you have PHP files that you do not want visitors to directly run but would still like to use them in your code? Here is a little trick picked up from the code in the phpBB forum code.

Create a file named config.php or some other file that you are going to include before any other code. In this file put the following:

<?php
define('INMYSCRIPT', 1);
?>

This code creates a defined variable INMYSCRIPT which can be named as anything that you want. Then on every other page in your script that you do not want to be ran on their own put the following: (This filename is code.php)

<?php
if(!defined('INMYSCRIPT')){
echo 'You cannot access this file directly.';
die;
}

// Whatever other code you wish goes below here
echo 'This file is safe to be ran';
?>

Now, instead of the file outputting any data to the browser that could be harmful, the only content output is: “You cannot access this file directly”. You could very easily create a re-direct script to transfer them to a specific page or you could modify the text to any other HTML or other content you wanted.

Open up your web browser and try accessing code.php. You should get that error message that we created. Now if you create one last file that we will name as test.php, place the following:

<?php
require('config.php');
require('code.php');
?>

Now if you try accessing the test.php file from your web server you will be shown: “This file is safe to be ran”.

Calculate a percentage

Jun 4, 2010 PHP Coding Leave a comment

Below is a quick function that simplifies the process of calculating a percentage in PHP.

<?php
function percent($Amount = 0, $Total = 0, $Decimal = 0) {
	// Make sure our numbers are actually numbers
	$Amount = (INT) $Amount;
	$Total = (INT) $Total;
	$Decimal = (INT) $Decimal;
	// Cannot divide by zero so check if Total = 0
	if ($Total === 0) {
		return 0;
	}
	$p = $Amount / $Total;
	// Multiply by 100 to move decimal point to correct location
	$p *= 100;
	// Return the percentage with specified decimal places
	return number_format($p, $Decimal);
}
?>

Then to use this code you can do:

<?php
// prints out 10% on the screen
echo percent(10, 100),'%';
?>

Trip up the Blue Star Highway in Michigan

Jun 2, 2010 Photography, Transportation Leave a comment

Back on May 22 I took a nice trip up the Blue Star Highway in Michigan. The section I was riding was from Hagar Shore Rd (Exit 7 on US 31/196) north of Benton Harbor to Glenn Michigan. I just had to stop and take a few shots with the Canon 7D I was carrying in my backpack. As you can tell from the photos it was kind of foggy and it was a bit chilly but a great escape for a ride.

Add suffix to a number

Jun 1, 2010 PHP Coding, Technology Leave a comment

Have you ever had to dynamically add the suffix to a number? (ie. st, nd, rd, th)

<?php
function number_suffix($i) {
    switch( floor($i/10) % 10 ) {
        default:
	    switch( $i % 10 ) {
                case 1: return 'st';
                case 2: return 'nd';
                case 3: return 'rd';  
            }
        case 1:
    }
    return 'th';
}
?>

Then to use the code you would do like:

<?php
$number = 10;
// This will display 10th
echo $number,number_suffix($number);
?>