miPHP :: Blog

NEOhio Event 5

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 15:31:54 GMT

Today was the fifth event this season for NEOhio SCCA region. With rain and possible thunderstorms forecasted for the day, I was expecting a slippery day on wet street tires. To my surprise, there was wide open blue skies with a scattering of clouds on the way to the event, and I was happy with my decision to bring the racing "slicks" along. I turned out to be a hot and humid, but dry, day. In the midst of my first run, however, things turned amiss. My car has a slight issue with wet roads, and thanks to rain all day yesterday, things seem to have gotten upset. I was about half the way through the run when suddenly my fuel cutoff started engaging at 3,500rpm, much earlier than the typical 7,200rpm, leaving me no choice but to cripple my car the rest of the way through the course. Knowing the problem was nothing but an electrical mishap with a sensor somewhere under the hood, I chose to ignore the car's heed of warning and cleared the ECU between each run. This technique only bought me the full RPM for about 1/2 - 3/4 the course, however. My fastest time was around 39.5 seconds, still faster than an S2000 and Integra at the event, so I wasn't overly upset about my situation. The course was fairly simple and didn't pose much of a threat throughout the day. I hit my peak pretty early and couldn't quite get any faster, perhaps mostly because of the rev limit, at least that's the story I'll stick to.

Be sure to check out the pictures in the gallery, and my three run videos from the day.

Videos

Run 1 (caution: some foul language once I discovered the issue)

Run 2

Run 3

NEOhio Event 4

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 17:06:41 GMT

Today was the fourth NEOhio autocross of the 2008 season. With a surprisingly small number of entries (22), it turned out to be a pretty quick day. We got six runs in the morning and got fun runs afterward to help cover the costs of renting the parking lot since the entry fees didn't quite add up. I got in nine runs total and consistently held times between 39.500 and 40.500 seconds. My first event this year I took it easy on the new car, so this time I decided to push things a little more. As a result, I very easily hit more cones than anyone else at the event (maybe 7-8 in my first 6 runs). Since there weren't many people to help work fun runs, I decided to slow down and drive smoothly to save the workers a bit of running to fix cones I might hit. This decision ended up reminding me of the oft saying from veteran autocrossers, "if you want to go faster, slow down". After taking my time and giving myself a chance to line the car up properly to carry more speed through the course, I didn't hit a single cone in my last three runs and got my fastest time of the day at around 39.500 seconds (the official results won't be posted for a while).

Today I also got the opportunity to grab a lot of media to share online. I built a camera mount for my car that secured my digital camera to the headrest of my passenger seat. Overall the setup cost only a few bucks and works fairly well. A friend of mine, Steve Vondruska, who I hadn't seen since high school came out to the event with his very nice Nikon D40 DSLR camera and snapped shots of the event (including the one above). Check out the photo gallery for all of my driving shots throughout the day. I also posted both videos online, so be sure to check out my first and second run videos!

Map SSHFS Linux share as network drive in Windows

Sat, 02 Aug 2008 17:27:58 GMT

I've found a lot of use from running OpenSSH on my Linux desktop at home, then mounting my desktop's partitions onto my laptop via SSHFS. Every now and then, I end up somewhere on a Windows computer and wishing I were able to somehow mount my desktop's remote shares. I stumbled upon a somewhat clunky, yet functional, solution that I couldn't find online so I thought I'd document it here. All that's needed is to mount the remote share on a Linux system (ie: my laptop), then set that mounted partition as a Samba share. You can now access the remote directory from Windows by having the local Linux machine act as a "proxie". Again, not the prettiest solution, but it gets the job done. I hope this comes in handy for someone else.

MySQL int(M) Field Type

Sun, 20 Jul 2008 21:08:17 GMT

I was working on a database recently and needed to check the value range of an int field. For the longest time, I've been under the assumption (shame on me for not looking) when declaring a field such as int(11), that the number 11 specified the bit/byte-size of the field in some way. It turns out, however, that int(11) has the same value range as int(2). The "M" integer value in the field definition is only used for the display length. For my typical web development stuff, this value rarely (read: never) even comes into play. The display length is typically used to left-pad numbers in your database when displaying them (to keep everything aligned properly, for example). So if you're looking to slim down your database size a smidge, or maybe restrict the available values of a number value, making the M value smaller isn't going to do you any good. This is a perfect time to employ the TINYINT, SMALLINT, or MEDIUMINT field types. Now's a good time to consult the manual...

Akismet PEAR Package

Mon, 07 Apr 2008 08:55:19 GMT

Thanks to Michael Gauthier from silverorange, the Akismet class has been converted to PHP5 and significantly tweaked. Michael submitted his changes to PEAR, and it is now an available package in the repository. Please check it out if you're looking for a good PHP5 class with the much less restrictive MIT license!

CSS and Javascript Compression

Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:20:10 GMT

Introduction

I've been using Javascript more and more ever since I discovered the wonderful jQuery framework. Though jQuery comes in a much smaller file size than Prototype, it's still quite a bit to ask of your dial-up users to download before the rest of your Javascript even loads. I also noticed a CSS file of mine was up to 8kB in size. I decided it was time to figure out a way to compress things down a bit. This is where my CSS and Javascript compression script comes in. Along with a little mod_rewrite magic, all the CSS/JS files on my client's website are automagically compressed and gzipped before sent to the site's visitors. File caching is included to reduce the processing time overhead from compression. A few options are also available for development to make life easier. It's hard to debug CSS when everything has been compacted into a single line, so adding &debug to the end of the path will revert back to the CSS file's original state so that you can browse through it (especially handy if you use the web developer toolbar). Using the compression script, my CSS file went from 8kB to 2kB, and jQuery from 95kB to 15kB!

Usage

Simply configure the constants at the beginning of the PHP file to suite your server appropriately. Now change the paths in your HTML to any CSS or Javascript file you'd like to compress (ie: from "/inc/style.css" to "c.php?f=inc/style.css").

Using mod_rewrite

You can use mod_rewrite to compress everything automatically:

 <IfModule mod_rewrite.c>


    RewriteEngine On


    RewriteRule ^(.*)\.(js|css)(.*)?$ inc/c.php?f=$1.$2$3


</IfModule>

Now going to "/inc/style.css" will automatically compact the CSS file and it will be Gzip compressed before being sent to your browser (provided your browser supports Gzip compression). Using this technique, you shouldn't have to change anything else on your site and everything will be compressed automatically.

Download

Added Mar 11, 2008

PHP Javascript Packer (modify "require" line in c.php if needed)

c.zip or

c.tar.gz

The Bane of Interpreted Languages

Fri, 22 Feb 2008 09:06:59 GMT

I can't help but think of all the chair fights I'm missing out on... blasted PHP!

Bazaar, version control made easy

Thu, 31 Jan 2008 08:03:38 GMT

I've attempted in the past to use a version control system to manage my projects big and small; from the single Akismet class file, to much larger client projects with thousands of lines of code. CVS and SVN however, were just too much for me. The learning curve was too high to make it worth the effort and I ended up giving up and sticking to my old ways. But one day I stumbled upon another version control system, Bazaar. This system is different in that it is able to tailor to the small single-man projects that I typically work on, but is also designed to scale to much larger multi-developer projects as well. Within a few minutes of installing it on my web host, I had a running code repository that I could submit revisions to and keep track of my work. I can now revert any or all files to previous revisions of a project if needed. I also have a useful journal/log of my progress in a project from each time I commit a revision. It's quick, simple, and gets the job done for developers like me. I highly recommend Bazaar if you're looking for a simple, yet powerful revision system.

Skipjack API Class

Thu, 24 Jan 2008 09:56:58 GMT

A friend of mine, Steven Vondruska, wrote a Skipjack class that he kindly let me use for a project of my own. He wrote the class a while back and we've both since become better programmers, so I decided to update the code a bit before using it.

Overview

This Skipjack class will allow you to easily connect to the Skipjack API, submit credit card information, and determine if the transaction has been approved or not by Skipjack.

Download

Added Jan 24, 2008

skipjack.zip

skipjack.tar.gz

Usage

require_once 'skipjack.php';


sj = new Skipjack(); 


$sj->setDeveloper(true); // use the development server address, remove this line to use the live server





$sj->addFields(array(


        'OrderNumber' => '5', 


        'ItemNumber' => 'i5', 


        'ItemDescription' => 'Test Item',


        'ItemCost' => '5.50',


        'Quantity' => '1',


        'Taxable' => '0',


        'AccountNumber' => '4445999922225', 


        'Month' => '12',


        'Year' => '2010',


        'TransactionAmount' => '200.00'


    ));





if($sj->process() && $sj->isApproved()) { 


    echo "Transaction approved!";


} else {


    echo "Transaction declined!\n";


    echo $sj->getErrors();


}

Please review the file itself for other useful methods written in the class.

How I got Linux back on my desktop

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:11:04 GMT

Roughly a year ago, Linux was no longer the primary OS running on my desktop. My daily computing has moved to my laptop, which has happily run Ubuntu for about a year now. However, after hearing news of improvements in the HP Linux print driver, it seemed I might be able to get Linux back on my desktop and still have the printer shared to the other Windows laptops around the house. Here's my checklist of features I needed that I've had setup in Windows for quite some time. Without all of the things listed, there'd be no hope of Linux staying on the desktop.

FTP access

Remote VNC access

Network shares

Print server

Torrent web UI

DNLA / UPnP media server

Folding@home

FTP / VNC / Samba

Now, being Linux, some of these things are available right off the line. Thanks to the Synaptic Package Manager and a couple quick google queries, it wasn't long before FTP, VNC, Samba, and SSH daemons were up and running.

The Printer

Next up was the big hurdle of sharing the HP PSC 1210xi printer. I simply couldn't get this working last March with Edgy Eft. But with a quick search on google, I found a solution to my problem that was so simple it was almost silly. The printer always shared fine from Ubuntu, but Windows just couldn't connect to it because of the truly cumbersome drivers provided from HP. It turns out that you can connect to the printer from Windows by using any generic HP driver. Once the printer is installed, go to the advanced printer properties and select the proper "PSC 1200 series" driver that Windows now magically recognizes. After that, networked printing worked like a charm!

Torrent Web UI

Not long ago, an easily installed web UI to a bit torrent client wasn't too likely. Fortunately, my favorite Linux bit torrent client Deluge added a web UI plugin. Activate the included plugin after installing the .deb from their site and you're ready to go.

DNLA / UPnP

I had serious doubts an open source solution for streaming audio/pictures/videos to my Playstation 3 from my desktop existed. However, Fuppes turned out to be the perfect solution. The Fuppes wiki includes instructions for installing everything in Ubuntu, making everything a cinch. If you plan to stream to the PS3, make sure to check the wiki for specifics on how to handle certain AVI transcoding.

Folding@home

I've taken an interest in contributing to the Folding@home project. I've had the F@h client running on my desktop in Windows, so I wanted to continue in Linux. The Ubuntu wiki has a great tutorial and I personally used the finstall option which worked perfectly.

After only a couple days of setup, my desktop now handles everything I need thanks to free and open source software.