Developer Comments:
This extension is an enhancement for the basic tab controls provided in Firefox 1.0. It replaces the existing user interface with a new, more visible user interface, and also includes UI for other hidden features that are part of the browser, as well as features provided explicitly by the extension.

Tabbrowser Prefs is not currently available for Firefox 3 on Windows or Linux, which left me feeling frustrated. I would love to have felt annoyed, but can you really be annoyed when the info to build your very own plugin is out there?

I decided I had to do something. I had to have my tab bar on the bottom of the window at least. So, I went off and researched it.

After about 5 minutes I found out that the main interface to Firefox is controlled entirely by CSS. This is perfect. I located the CSS style sheet, googl’d some more and found the CSS variables needed to modify the interface settings. So now I am going to share it with everyone of you.

Open up nautilus and show hidden files. then navigate to:

1. /home/.mozilla/firefox/your.profile/chrome

By default userChrome.css fie does not exist, so you need to create it before you can start adding your preferences. There’s actually an example file that exists by default, called userChrome-example.css. You can just rename that file by removing the -example part. Then open this file in leaf/mouse pad or any other text editor and add the following code and save it.

1. /* Display the tabbar at the bottom */
   #content > tabbox { -moz-box-direction: reverse; }

Open up My Computer or File Explorer and show hidden files. then navigate to:

1. C:\Documents andSettings\[UserName]\ApplicationData\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\your.proifile\chrome

By default userChrome.css fie does not exist, so you need to create it before you can start adding your preferences. There’s actually an example file that exists by default, called userChrome-example.css. You can just rename that file by removing the -example part. Then open this file in notepad or any other text editor and add the following code and save it.

1. /* Display the tabbar at the bottom */
   #content > tabbox { -moz-box-direction: reverse; }

For example, I wanted to install a new pixel ruler (link courtesy of Borntwisted) called KRuler. If I was to install this directly from my web browser I would need to write the link in my HTML like so:

1. <a href=”apt:kruler”>Click here to install Kruler</a>

This would then give me the following link:

1. Click here to install Kruler

If you click the link (providing you are using Ubuntu as your Operating System) you will get the follwoing:

Once you click ok, and type in your admin password you will get the download screen as it downloads the package ready for installation

And then the obligatory install screen will be shown:

This is a perfect tool for bloggers, how to’ers and manual writers writing for Ubuntu installs etc. I know I will be using it in all my future blogs and how to’s in the future.

Go ahead, give it a shot

NOTE: This How To: is for Ubuntu Linux (all versions) but should work on any version of Linux that supports the ext3 filesystem and reiserfs filesystem. This How To: is offered as is and I cannot take responsibility for any problems you suffer as a result of modifying yoru core system files.

ext3 Filesystem

The ext3 or third extended filesystem is a journalled file system that is commonly used by the Linux operating system. It is the default file system for many popular Linux distributions

Features of ext3 File System

The ext3 file system is essentially an enhanced version of the ext2 file system. These improvements provide the following advantages

Availability

After an unexpected power failure or system crash, each mounted ext2 file system on the machine must be checked for consistency by the e2fsck program. This is a time-consuming process that can delay system boot time significantly, especially with large volumes containing a large number of files. During this time, any data on the volumes is unreachable.

The journaling provided by the ext3 file system means that this sort of file system check is no longer necessary after an unclean system shutdown. The only time a consistency check occurs using ext3 is in certain rare hardware failure cases, such as hard drive failures. The time to recover an ext3 file system after an unclean system shutdown does not depend on the size of the file system or the number of files; rather, it depends on the size of the journal used to maintain consistency. The default journal size takes about a second to recover, depending on the speed of the hardware.

Data Integrity

The ext3 file system provides stronger data integrity in the event that an unclean system shutdown occurs. The ext3 file system allows you to choose the type and level of protection that your data receives. By default, Most Linux Distributions configures ext3 volumes to keep a high level of data consistency with regard to the state of the file system.

Speed

Despite writing some data more than once, ext3 has a higher throughput in most cases than ext2 because ext3’s journaling optimizes hard drive head motion. You can choose from three journaling modes to optimize speed, but doing so means trade offs in regards to data integrity.

Easy Transition

It is easy to change from ext2 to ext3 and gain the benefits of a robust journaling file system without reformatting.

ReiserFS

ReiserFS is a general-purpose, journaled computer file system designed and implemented by a team at Namesys led by Hans Reiser.ReiserFS is currently supported on Linux and may be included in other operating systems in the future. Introduced in version 2.4.1 of the Linux kernel, it was the first journaling file system to be included in the standard kernel.

ReiserFS Features

ReiserFS has fast journaling, which means that you don’t spend your life waiting for fsck every time your laptop battery dies, or the UPS for your mission critical server gets its batteries disconnected accidentally by the UPS company’s service crew, or your kernel was not as ready for prime time as you hoped, or the silly thing decides you mounted it too many times today.

ReiserFS is based on fast balanced trees. Balanced trees are more robust in their performance, and are a more sophisticated algorithmic foundation for a file system. When we started our project, there was a consensus in the industry that balanced trees were too slow for file system usage patterns. We proved that if you just do them right they are better–take a look at the benchmarks. We have fewer worst case performance scenarios than other file systems and generally better overall performance. If you put 100,000 files in one directory, we think its fine; many other file systems try to tell you that you are wrong to want to do it.

ReiserFS is more space efficient. If you write 100 byte files, we pack many of them into one block. Other file systems put each of them into their own block. We don’t have fixed space allocation for inodes. That saves 6% of your disk.

Ext3 & ReiserFS has three kinds of journaling methods

1) Journal Data Writeback
2) Journal Data Ordered
3) Journal Data

By default the the 2nd method is used.To speed things up we will make it use method 1. The price to pay is that it may allow old data to appear in files after a crash and journal recovery.

How to make ext3 or reiserfs use journal data writeback

First you need to take a back up of the fstab file using the following command

1. sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab.orig

Edit the /etc/fstab file using the following command

1. sudo gedit /etc/fstab

Add the thing marked in bold to your fstab root mount line.

1. /dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro,atime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid,nouser,data=writeback 0 1

Save that file and exit

You need to take a Grubmenu file backup using the following command

1. sudo cp /boot/grub/menu.lst /boot/grub/menu.lst.orig

Now you need to edit the grub menu list file using the following command

1. sudo vi /boot/grub/menu.lst

look for the following two lines

1. # defoptions=quiet splash
2. # altoptions=(recovery mode) single

change to

1. # defoptions=quiet splash rootflags=data=writeback
2. # altoptions=(recovery mode) single rootflags=data=writeback

Save that file and exit

Now you need to update the grub using the following command

1. sudo update-grub

the added flags will automatically be added to the kernel line and stay there in case of kernel update

Changes to Ext3 FileSystem Only

Note:- tune2fs only works for ext3. Reiserfs can’t change the journal method

Before rebooting change the filesystem manually to writeback using the following command

1. sudo tune2fs -o journal_data_writeback /dev/hda1

Check that it is running or not using the following command

1. sudo tune2fs -l /dev/hda1

Remove update of access time for files

Having the modified time change you can understand but having the system updating the access time every time a file is accessed is not to my liking. According to the manual the only thing that might happen if you turn this off is that when compiling certain things the make might need that info.

To change this do the following

1. sudo vi /etc/fstab

add the following marked in bold

1. /dev/hda1 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro,noatime,auto,rw,dev,exec,suid,nouser,data=writeback 0 1

Now reboot and enjoy a much faster system

This is the most secure method I could come up with, simply put, if your main machine is not logged on as you, then the shares cannot be accessed without the username and password. When you are logged on these details will be called from a file that is owned by the root user.

This tutorial will assume you have samba already installed on your media/web server. Without it, this will not work.

1. sudo gedit /etc/samba/smb.conf

I am using GEDIT here to make it easier for you to amend the file. I much prefer PICO, or you may wish to use VI, if your balls are bigger than King Kongs.

Make the following changes:

1. workgroup = “WORKGROUP”

Note: The name of the workgroup (in quotes) must be the same on your windows and/or your Ubuntu box. If you do not know the name or your workgroup, look under “My Network Places” on your windows box, select “Microsoft Windows Network” and you will see a list of your workgroups.
Default workgroup on windows XP, home edition is MSHOME (not WORKGROUP).

underneath it, add

1. netbios name = name_of_your_server (no spaces)

For example

1. netbios name = my_new_smb_server

Make sure the “security” option is set to “user” before moving on.

Scroll down to the bottom of the file and add the following lines:

1. [Name_of_folder]
2. path = /path/to/file
3. browseable = yes
4. writable = yes
5. read only = no
6. guest ok = no
7. create mask = 0644
8. directory mask = 0755
9. force user = root
10. force group = root

Do not forget to change the name of the folder and the path to the folder. The name you give this folder will appear in the network folder on your Ubuntu box. ie. Music or Vids etc. and the PATH will be something like this path = /home/user/Music. You will get the jist of it.

Save the changes and close the file.

Restart the samba daemon

1. sudo /etc/init.d/samba restart

Open a terminal session and type the following commands one by one, allowing each of them to finish before executing the next one.

1. sudo apt-get install samba
2. sudo apt-get install smbfs

Now that you have the core files installed we need to do some configuration.

All folders that you wish to have mounted go into a root level folder called /media. This is much nicer than previous and other version of linux where it was called /mnt. now most will know this means MOUNT but some may not. Anyway, lets get on with it.

Lets make that new directory. If you decided to call your share name “Music” in the part above, you would do this:

1. sudo mkdir /media/Music

Obviously, you name it how you want it. for example, I have many shares such as /media/Vids, /media/Music, /media/WWW etc etc.

Now type the following command

1. gksudo gedit /root/.smbcredentials

This will create a hidden file called .smbcredentials in your root folder. We will store your username and password in this file for ease of access later on

Insert the following lines into the file: (substituting “yourusername” and “yourpassword” for your ubuntu machine login details)

1. username=yourusername
2. password=yourpassword

Save and exit the file and issue these commands one by one:

1. sudo chmod 700 /root/.smbcredentials
2. sudo cp /etc/fstab /etc/fstab_backup
3. gksudo gedit /etc/fstab

Now you should be presented with another file. In here we will make the mods that mount those folders on boot up so you don’t have to touch them again. Put the following line at the bottom of the file, making the changes to the location of your server machine. for example, mine is at 192.168.1.125 so I would do this

1. //path_to_server/folder_name /media/folder_name smbfs credentials=/root/.smbcredentials,dmask=777,fmask=777 0 0

Once you have added all your mount points and changed the names to correspnd with your details., save and exit the file.

Now issue this final command:

1. sudo mount -a

Your new mount points will appear as drive locations on your Desktop and in the Places menu

You have real time access to run your applications as fast as if you are in the office. It does not matter if you’re using a dialup modem, DSL, ISDN, or T1 to access citrix remotely. Connection speeds become even less of an issue with high speed broadband connections pretty much the norm around the world now.

Citrix was built for virtualisation in mind, and obvioulsy owing to the fact that Microsoft is pretty much everywhere these days the main applications are easy to install on a windows machine, I am not going to cover that in the slightest.

To install Citrix ICA presentation client on your Ubuntu PC then follow the steps below.

Open a Terminal session

The three links below are using the new AptURL command which is installed by default on Ubuntu Gutsy and allows people like myself and any other tutorial writer to make it easier for you to install the packages you need. Just click the link and it will install the package for you. If this does not work, type the following command into the terminal window.

1. sudo apt-get install apturl

Now that is out of the way, continue on.

1. Click here to install libxaw6
2. Click here to install libmotif3
3. Click here to install alien (used to convert RPM to DEB packages)

You will now need to download the RPM file from Citrix. NOTE: It is version 10.6 (at time of writing) and is the second download icon (again, at time of writing). As the file names will change with new releases you will need to modify the tutorial to reflect this. You can however just grab the file from me.

Grab the file from here. I believe it is version 10.0 which is slightly out of date but works solidly so I recommend using it.

1. http://www.citrix.com/site/SS/downloads/details.asp?dID=2755&downloadID=3323#top

Save the file to your desktop (this tutorial assumes you save it to your desktop, if not please change commands accordingly)

In your terminal window you now need to change to the directory where you saved the file, then we will begin converting and installing.

1. cd Desktop

Now that you are on the desktop we now need to convert the file into a .Deb package that Ubuntu can handle.

1. sudo alien ICAClient-10.0-2.i386.rpm

Once the file is converted we now need to install it.

1. sudo dpkg -i icaclient_10.0-3_i386.deb

Now need to make this work through Firefox web-browser. We will create some symbolic links for Firefox so that it knows how to open the Citrix application file when you attempt to login.

1. sudo ln -s /usr/lib/ICAClient/npica.so /usr/lib/mozilla/plugins/npica.so
2. sudo ln -s /usr/lib/ICAClient/npica.so /usr/lib/mozilla-firefox/plugins/npica.so

Restart Firefox

Navigate to your Citrix server and login. Click on the application you want to launch. If it asks you to save/open with you will need to choose “open with” and navigate to the following folder:

1. /usr/lib/ICAClient

and choose to open with the following application.

1. wfica

You should now be good to go.

Edit

I am aware that some people get Font errors with the Citrix Client, it is safe to ignore but if you wish to fix them you can drop me a line in the comments and I will write up the fix.

In most Apache servers the mod_rewrite module is not activated by default. If you wish to have your URL’s changed on the fly and rewritten into nice, human readable format then you will need to enable this module. Follow the steps below to enable mod_rewrite.

Open a Terminal window and type:

1. sudo a2enmod

You will be presented with the following, but you can safely ignore what is in front of you and just follow the next steps.

1. Which module would you like to enable?
2. Your choices are: actions alias asis auth_basic auth_digest authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbd authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authnz_ldap authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache cern_meta cgid cgi charset_lite dav_fs dav dav_lock dbd deflate dir disk_cache dump_io env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers ident imagemap include info ldap log_forensic mem_cache mime mime_magic mod_python negotiation php5 proxy_ajp proxy_balancer proxy_connect proxy_ftp proxy_http proxy rewrite setenvif speling ssl status suexec unique_id userdir usertrack version vhost_alias
3. Module name?

Enter the module name “rewrite” and press enter. Now you need to open the default file with sudo rights and change the “AllowOverride” option from “None” to “All” in the first 2 Blocks.

1. sudo pico /etc/apache2/sites-enabled/000-default

Below is what it should look like when you are finished.

1. <VirtualHost *>
2. ServerAdmin root@xpheas.com
3. DocumentRoot /var/www
6. <Directory />
7. Options FollowSymLinks
8. AllowOverride All
9. </Directory>
12. <Directory /var/www>
13. Options Indexes FollowSymLinks MultiViews
14. AllowOverride All
15. Order allow,deny
16. allow from all
17. </Directory>

Restart the webserver.

1. sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 force-reload

Now the module is enabled, all that is left is to rewrite your .htaccess for URL changing.

Now that you have mod_rewrite enabled you are going to want to use it. In my next tutorial I will show you how to rewrite your .htaccess file to change ugly URLS into nice URLS. An exmaple of each is below so you can understand what I mean.

Ugly URL

1. http://example.com/blog/?p=17

Nice URL, which of course is more search engine friendly and will provide much better SEO.

1. http://example.com/blog/index.php/2007/09/17/dont-tase-me-bro/

The new design has taken a few months to complete due to work and social commitments, but I have finally got something to show for the 7 versions I have binned and many hours tearing my hair out.

Also in the new version we welcome back the forum, which was closed due to spurious attacks, fingers crossed it stays this time.

Security has been tightened on the server also, my Hosting company have done a lot of hard work bringing all bugs to a close and getting their servers up to top notch standards. Well done to them. I highly recommend using them for all your hosting needs.

Internet Explorers will notice that this site does not work in thier browser, also they wont be able to see this post. This design took a lot of time to create and IE just decided it would destroy all my hard work by being a crap browser and instead of sticking to standards, it has its own.

Making this site work in IE is extremely low on my priority list. I have no intention of hacking my own code so that IE will display it correctly. All of the png graphics would have to be redesigned as gif files so they show in IE, but I would lose quality and I will not do that.

During the course of this design I put together some new code using AJAX - Learning this has been simple enough in parts and I intend to keep it up and add a few more interactive elements to the website over time.

I am currently off work for a weeks holiday and helping a friend out by looking after his shop for him so he can take his wife and kids abroad. Generally I would like my holidays to myself but I owed my friend a favour so I agreed to do it. To be frank, I really don’t think he trusts anyone enough to run the shop except me. This cannot happen every year though.

The shop sells mobile phone accessories and second hand/new phones, unlocking, dealing with repairs and spares as well. Before I started doing what I am doing now I used to be the technician that repaired the phones and looked after the IT side of things. Unlocking software is unique and requires a lot of attention to keep them all running, seeing as my friend is no Bill Gates and likes to download and install anything and everything, it gets harder each time I visit to fix the problems he has. So far this week I have rebuilt 2 pc’s and one laptop.

I am looking forward to going back to work. A week off is nice, and even though I have spent it in the shop I cannot wait to get back to my desk and do some work. Maybe next time I will actually go away somewhere, who knows.

While I have been at the shop, during the quiet moments I have been building an AJAX/PHP/MySql powered inventory/stock management system for the shop. This can be fully customised for anyones needs and I will rewrite it once it is complete to offer it as a downloadable install. More on this later…

I have some tutes/articles for you all to look forward to.

• AJAX tabbed content
• AJAX tabbed content with php and/or mysql

Perceptive Pixel, Inc. was founded by Jeff Han in 2006
as a spinoff of the NYU Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences
to develop and market the most advanced multi-touch system in the world.

The uses for this are endless. Boardrooms, hospitals, military, home cinema. I could go on, but I shall leave it to your imagination.

For more info and to watch the video, please take a visit to Perceptive Pixel where Jeff Han and Phil Davidson will demonstrate how a multi-touch computer screen will change the way we work (and play).

Suffice to say I will not be showing the actual image, but you may read the wikapedia reference here. It is not one of the best pics in the world, and I urge people to view at there own discretion, and definitely not in the office. (I accept no responsibility if you are stupid enough to do that)

Here is a clip of the beeb showing the parody picture and here is the BBCs official stance on the matter.

Life begins to stir behind reception as an unhelpful, snappy troll like figure starts barking her orders to prove she is the lord over the reception desk domain. Ok, so some of the muppets who have turned up late demanding to be seen without a green ticket are asking for trouble, and the troll freely and happily dispenses with ways in which they can fornicate off. They do deserve it.

As I type, one of the muppets who thinks she’s above the rest tries for another shot at demanding to be seen in a vain attempt to catch the troll off guard. The troll looks like she had her weetabix this morning and immediately cuts her down where she stands. This women should be in politics.

So I’m approaching 90 mins now and the troll is happy with her coffee and 5.95 an hour. A few have tried to slip in under the net but the troll’s just too damn quick for them.

The health service is a joke in this country. I’m about to get tarred with a brush for not having my own dentist, but like an average of 4m people I cannot get into an NHS practice and cannot afford a private one. The last filling cost me 40 quid on the NHS, private treatment would cost at least double that. I pay my stamp and tax and then have to pay for a supposedly free health service.

Anyway, I’m rambling. I’m going to be seen soon, but don’t get excited just yet, they only want my name and to ask me the obligatory ‘do you have a dentist’ question. Can you imagine if I owned a gun? Calamity would ensue, peace would rain down from the heavens. I’m bored now, more later

So… 2 hours go by, and I am holding up pretty well considering the pain I am in and the dull drudgery that surrounds me. The only magazines I can find and oversized dental mags, or bloody “womens own”. Games on my mobile can only sustain for so long.

At last I get to go see a pre-dental dentist. She sits me in the chair, asks me 40 or 50 questions about my health and my familys health. Then after about 15 minutes in the chair, she finally asks me to open wide so she can have a look. I have no idea what this achieved, as she ummed and arrrred then handed me a form. Said form was for an X-Ray and had to be dropped off in the little X-Ray tray on another desk, 50 yards down another corridor. God damn it.

45 minutes more and I am in for the X-Ray. It’s over quick enough, the dood taking the X-Ray manages to hurt my tooth quite nicely, I refrained from stabbing him with my phone.

With the X-Ray done I am sent back to the waiting room. So far we have clocked up 4 hours waiting and messing around. I know what’s going to happen, they know it too, but the formalities have to be followed.

Not long this time, about 30 minutes give or take a lifetime and I am in to have the X-Ray assessed. “we are going to have to take the 2 out I’m afraid” she coos at me, trying to curry my favour, make me feel all relaxed and special. Tart. Surprise surprise, my response was thus “I could have told you that 4 hours ago” She smiled a faint disgusted smile and sent me back to the waiting room while a real dentist becomes available to do the dirty work. I would pity her if I did not admire her lack of care. A real unfeeling bitch, I like it.

Another hour later and we are rocking, I have been called and told to follow, to which I dutifully do as I am told. I follow the girl through the corridors, the screams get louder so I know I am headed in the right direction. Round the last corner and straight into another bloody waiting room. I am told to sit down and that the wait could be some time as they are busy. Damn

The pain killers I took this morning are starting to wear off by this point. So I am getting agitated and restless and my thoughts digress into how to solve the NHS problems we have. I almost had the solution too when I get called in to see the dentist. The guy takes a look at my X-Rays and then asks me which teeth are being pulled. Sigh.

First things first, lets get my mouth numb. He manages to hurt the hell out of me, missing my gum twice and stabbing me in the bad tooth, then the inside of my cheek becomes the needles playground. It’s all fun and games today.

While we wait for the novacaine to take effect he tells me he is from overseas and that when he came here he could not get a job as a dentist. So while he waited for a position on the bottom rung of the ladder he delivered pizzas and Chinese meals all over the area. I regret to inform my readers that at this point I wanted to a) punch him, b) run, and c) place an order for food.

Onto the extraction… Needless to say, the novacaine failed to work, my protestations of “give me 2 needles full please” seem to go unheard. He gripped my tooth and my gum with those wonderful pliers they use and yanked. .OH. .MY. .GOOD. GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! The pain was unbearable, and I have to admit that I went white as a sheet and that was what stopped him. But alas, he was kidding, gripped the tooth again and yanked it out. I nearly launched him off the floor when his hands were out of my mouth. The thought of any puckered cavity and the dental drill did flash through my mind, but I admit I was in no fit state to be torturing anyone today.

So I am out of the door, minus 2 teeth, 6 hours and a wad of gauze in one hand and a clenched fist for the other. Now I have to look forward to the bleeding and the wearing off of the novacaine. Awesome.

Needless to say I will not bore you with the details of my home life but you can all rest assured that I am back. I am now settled in Cardiff City with a nice new job.

Work is good, home life is good. I finally found some peace and quiet, even in a student area.

I am almost unpacked (even though it has been 3 weeks now) and I am finally starting to find my way around. I have been working during the day and most evenings as well. So now I am ready to start posting to this blog type thing again.

Expect some changes around here, I have learnt some new design tricks and tips, and have written a new menu script for the blog that will actually tell you what section you are in by highlighting it. A new design has obviously been written. (I do them often I hear you cry) but a blog is basically a showcase of work so it has to be done.

I will finally be adding the gallery soon so I can showcase my work in my portfolio and of course I have written a few new scripts in the interim time I spent at my mums (chilling if anyone asks) and will make them available for download soon enough.

I have started to learn TCP/IP Networking and Infrastructure, so there will be some stuff on that soon too.

I expect the new theme and scripts to go live over the next two weeks once I am satisfied with the look of it. I am almost there. But not quite.

He wrote a short piece of HTML that would pull an image off his website, if the server failed to respond the ALT tage would display OFFLINE.

I like to code things in php so I decided to take this a step further and not actually use any images, thus saving on bandwidth on my server everytime the page loads.

The full code is at the bottom of this post but I am going to break it down and try to explain how each section works.

First of all we need to connect to the server and check to see if a file exists. This file can be anything you like, I chose to use an image called online.gif.

I declared a variable call $url which holds the data needed to connect to the server. @fopen is the php command to connect to the server and open the chosen file. The reason the @ symbol is used is to supress the error that will be returned when the file cannot be found.

Using "r" tells the command we want to open the file in read only mode.

Now we use a simple ifelse statment to output the correct part of the formula.
The first part of the formula as below asks if the condition is true (if file exists) and will output the command below it.

Before the command is outputted we have to close the connection to the file for security purposes. fclose closes the connection to the server which is defined again by our variable $url.

Now we can output the following command if the file is found on the server. Basically this is the TRUE part of the conditional statement. We now ECHO a line of code to the browser which will be converted into HTML and displayed as what you will see. Do not worry about the div's and classes, that is just CSS styling for the page I have this code on.

The following code is the FALSE part of the staement, which is outputted if the above connection cannot find the file. It has similar styling to the above command but this time you will notice that the div class is set to "offline". This is so a different colour is displayed.

That's all there is to it. The code is simple and works well. If you use this code you may notice that when the file is removed by yourself the script doe snot update, this is simply because of the server it is on. Sometimes servers take a few minutes to update.

The code as a whole is listed below and I have also added the CSS that I have used. Modify to your needs.

I have ammended the tutorial to my needs and probably the needs of most and I have pointed out where it went wrong for me and how I solved it. It was not difficult to solve, but you will be required to be the ROOT user which is dangerous and destructive. Use at your own risk, I take NO responsibility for you damaging your system.

You will of course need to download the correct drivers for this, the Z600 driver. I have the correct link for the file as Lexmarks website is not the easiest to navigate around and find what you need.

The Z600 driver has been confirmed to work with the following printers:

Lexmark 5700 (black & white only)
Lexmark X1100
Lexmark X1110
Lexmark X1130
Lexmark X1140
Lexmark X1150
Lexmark X1180
Lexmark X1185
Lexmark Z513
Lexmark Z515
Lexmark Z715
Lexmark Z55
Lexmark Z615
Lexmark Z705
Lexmark Z605
Lexmark Z600
Lexmark Z25
Dell A920
Z65 (z65 driver)
Lexmark Z33 (z35 driver)
Lexmark Z33 (z35 driver)

First of all you need to download the correct driver to a folder of it's own to save confusion.

Open a terminal window and type the following

sudo mkdir lexmark

This will create a folder called "lexmark" in your home directory.

Ok, again in your terminal window, type the following commands one after another, waiting for each command to execute first before starting the next one.

cd lexmark

wget http://www.downloaddelivery.com/srfilecache/CJLZ600LE-CUPS-1.0-1.TAR.gz

tar -xvzf CJLZ600LE-CUPS-1.0-1.TAR.gz

tail -n +143 z600cups-1.0-1.gz.sh > install.tar.gz

tar -xvzf install.tar.gz

sudo apt-get install alien

alien -t z600cups-1.0-1.i386.rpm

alien -t z600llpddk-2.0-1.i386.rpm

sudo tar xvzf z600llpddk-2.0.tgz -C /

sudo tar xvzf z600cups-1.0.tgz -C /

sudo ldconfig

cd /usr/share/cups/model

sudo gunzip Lexmark-Z600-lxz600cj-cups.ppd.gz

The driver is now installed. Restart the cups daemon:

sudo /etc/rc2.d/S19cupsys restart

Check to make sure the printer back-end works:

cd /usr/lib/cups/backend

./z600

The output of the above command should be similar to this:

direct z600:/dev/usb/lp0 "Lexmark Lexmark Z600 Series" "Lexmark Printer"

If you get no output, mount the usb filesystem. To do this type the following:

sudo gedit /etc/fstab

and add the following code to the end of the file

#USB Lexmark Printer
usbfs /proc/bus/usb usbfs devgid=14,devmode=0660 0 0

Save the file and close. Then just type the following in the terminal:

sudo mount usbfs

That should fix it.

Now simply set up your printer. Go to:

• System
• Administration
• Printing

Make sure you select the z600 driver, and you're done. Print out a test page to make sure it all works.

I hope this has helped you.

Quoted from Apache Friends. Home of the Xampp project.

It took me some time to find the information I need to get Xampp to start when the computer boots up. Apache Friends has a small How To to get the process going everytime, but it failed to work for me. So Borntwisted and myself had a natter about it and decided to add the Xampp start command into the startup programs and voila, it works a treat.

If the Apache Friends info does not work for you, and you are using Ubuntu Dapper then follow these simple instructions.

• System
• Preferences
• Sessions
• Startup Programs (tab)
• Add

Enter the following command:

sudo /opt/lampp/lampp start

When your computer reboots you should now have Xampp start as a process.

Please do try it if you have the manual install and hopefully it will work for you.

Open a new terminal window and type the following command:

sudo aptitude install alsa-oss

Once completed, enter the following command:

sudo gedit /etc/firefox/firefoxrc

Find and replace:

FIREFOX_DSP="none"

With:

FIREFOX_DSP="aoss"

Close and restart Firefox. In some cases a full reboot is required.

unfortunatly I had no sound, although video quality was fantastic. So after some searching around I found a few fixes, this one worked for me.

Open your terminal window and edit this file in your favourite text editor ("gedit" for me) You will also need to substitute the RealPlayer version with the version you have.

1. sudo gedit /usr/lib/realplay-10.0.8/realplay

Find the line near the bottom of the file that says: (line 73 for me)

1. $REALPLAYBIN"$@"

Replace that line with the following:

1. aoss $REALPLAYBIN"$@"

EDIT

As Michael Olberg kindly pointed out (thank you) you may need to double check that you have the aoss package installed.

To check that it is installed, or to install it, just type the following into a terminal window.

1. sudo apt-get install alsa-oss
2. or you can just click this link (provoding you are viewing from an ubuntu machine)

gedit ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/openas-root

Now add this code to the file

#!/bin/sh
### openas-root:
### written by alexp
### nautilus script for opening the selected files as superuser (uid=0),
### utilizing the appropriate applications.

for uri in $NAUTILUS_SCRIPT_SELECTED_URIS; do
gksudo "gnome-open $uri" &
done

### end of file.

Save and close this file.

Now enter this command into the terminal window:

chmod +x ~/.gnome2/nautilus-scripts/openas-root

Your all done. Right click any file or folder and under scripts you will find - openas-root

Enjoy.

90 odd percent of people out there use Internet Explorer, not through choice, they just do not know that a safer, more secure alternative exists. Which by the way is Firefox

So I followed the instructions I found on the web to install IE version 5.0, 5.5 and 6.0 so that I may test my designs. I decided to put those instructions here for Ubuntu Dapper users to follow.

Check /etc/apt/sources.list - make sure you have access to the universe packages by uncommenting the following lines:

deb http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe
deb-src http://us.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu dapper universe

If you have just uncommented the lines, don’t forget to apply the changes:

sudo apt-get update

Step 1 Install wine:

sudo apt-get install wine

Step 2 Install cabextract:

sudo apt-get install cabextract

Step 3 Install IEs4Linux:

wget http://www.tatanka.com.br/ies4linux/downloads/ies4linux-2.0beta7.tar.gz

tar -xzvf ies4linux-2.0beta7.tar.gz

cd ies4linux-2.0beta7

./ies4linux

That's it. Follow the instructions and allow them to install. Once installed you will have 3 new shortcuts on your desktop.

hope you found this info useful.

Now, as you IE uses can see, there are some glaring mistakes. I am fixing them. Expect the ammendment to be made sometime over the weekend.

Apologies for any inconvenience caused.

EDIT: I did not get chance over the weekend to sort out the IE problems, I was busy getting rid of windows and putting Ubuntu Dapper on my system. (Thats Linux for those who don't know.)

Also added some Eye Candy too. Scroll down to number ten and watch the video.

I am all set-up and running, so I am working on the IE problem right now.

The computer I got hold of was an ex-office computer. Its a Dell desktop PC which came with 128mb ram (shocked I know) 2mb graphics card and 20gig hard drive and I think a 500mhz processor, but I could be wrong, and havn't bothered checking. Good thing though, it's all black.

So, what to use, windows XP which for all its crapness, the server stuff although bloated is simple to set up and run. COnsidering the files are all .exe I could have had it up and running in no time.

I wanted to use Linux, but what flavour? There are many Linux distros out there that are specifically designed for setting up a server, but i'm not that skilled with linux and besides, I wanted something that looked good aswell as did its job.

I settled for Ubunut in the end. The install was simple, took around 20 minutes for everything I needed, and that includes the format time. Once I was in, all I had to do was download Xampp for Linux and follow the instructions.

This was the most simple server I have set up. Be warned, Xampp is not really intended for use as a public server, I simply use it for local development of PHP and webdesigns.

Having said that, I highly recommend you trying it if you want to learn PHP but cannot afford a webhost to use it on.

Setting up the FTP server was the hardest task. By default Ubunut puts the htdocs folder under the root users account. The root users acocunt is also disabled by default on Ubuntu to prevent you from breaking your system. This lead to me being unable to delete or add files to the server via FTP. In the end, I got fed up of trying and shared the directory using Samba with rights for my main user account to add/edit and delete files. It's now much quicker and easier to use.

I will try and sort the FTP in future and put some info up about it aswell as setting up the server and installing all you need.

For now, i'm content to have a simple webserver to test with, and a media server to stream my movies and music around my home.

The space theme is not the greatest I could have done, I wanted to create a spiraling galaxy, but was unable to get the look I desired. I'm still working on that.

The Glass Ball, took me just over an hour to make. i did follow a tutorial but now I understand the principle and, with the benefit of hindsight I know I could have created it without the tutorial. Had I known that was the way to do it. I know for next time.

Click each image for a larger version.

For some reason I am unable to fathom, my motherboard, 2 hard drives, 1 out of 4 PCI cards, all RAM sticks, and the floppy drive all died. How can only 1 of 4 PCI cards die? anmd more importantly, how can 2 of 6 hard drives fail and the others are untouched?

It was time to order new parts. So, my boss in his infinate kindness, orders me the parts I need to get me back up and running.

After a couple of weeks of screwed up deliveries and missing items on the order, I finally got the parts and set about putting them together.

After switching back on and repairing windows (which took some hours to do) I figured out which hard drives I had lost. My design drive, and my personal drive. Stupidly, I backed up neither of them.

Now I have the task of trying to ressurect these drives. I have a few options. I could take them to a data retrieval company, but I refuse to pay those prices. So I am left with the DIY options.

• Put the drive head into another (working) hard drive
• Buy the EXACT same model drive and swap the logic board over, incase the circuit board is damaged

I will post the results here later next week when I should have hoefully retrieved my data from these drives.

It looks real nice, just watch the video. This is definately an application i would use. I would have it shown on my second monitor so that I still had my main desktop functionality.

So far as I can tell, this will just be a toy unless some modifications are made. To start with, how do I tell what is inside those PDF documents without actually opening them? At least with the standard UI we use today you can see the name of the file giving you a clue to its contents. Adding meta data to the mouse hover or put the file name actually on the file.

Some other useful functions would be to add the ability to add a post-it note to the file and write what you like on it, just like you can on a real desk, with real pieces of paper and files.

I am already thinking of the future. Imagine that the top layer of your desk was this little product... with touch screen activation. You could always have a stand-alone monitor to isolate certain files for you to work on.

Could this innovative design be the future of computing? Keep and eye here and when there is more news I will post it here. Hopefully I will get a chance to beta test this application, and if I do, you can expect a full review.

Now sit back and watch the vid.

So far they have refused all attempts to recover the phone.

The people who found the phone have come up with a few different stories as to how they got the phone and have refused to return the phone, even when the authour of the website offered to buy it from them.

This is a perfect example of the immoral world we live in. I do hope that these people get what they deserve, and the military guy in this little scenario should be court marshelled and dismissed immediately.

I wont go into any more detail as I really recommend that you read the whole story.

My full support goes out to the authour of this website, Evan, and I wish him all the best in getting this resolved. Good Luck to you.

How NOT to steal a SideKick II

The possibiltes of using a dermal display are endless. For example, you can use it for displaying your vital medical information such as blood type, heart rate, medical conditions, what medication if any you are on. You can also use it as an embedded MP3 player, a mini computer (PDA) or even a satelite naigation system.

I am also pretty sure that it will have military applications aswell, such as recieving intel and up to date maps of the enemy terrain.

Where will our technological advancment end?

Unsuspecting people are havign there photo taken when purchasing Gillette razor blades from British super-markets.

For full details read here

There are a few options on avoiding this. Firstly, stop buying Gillette products at the super-market, secondly, you can fight back.

You can use a small magnet to interfere with the RFID tag which will stop it working, or you can get your very own RFID tag from RSA that will stop it taking a photo. Personally, I would rather see them off the shelves as this is an invasion of privacy for those who are actually buying them and not stealing them.

There are better ways to prevent theft, and it does not involve taking my god damn picture just because I need new blades.

Who in there right mind allowed this to be put into production?

• Nintendo Steals Show at E3
• 'Botmaster' gets 57 months in prison Always nice to see them behind bars.

For larger sites this can become troublsome. Who wants 50 links running down the side of the page just for the content. It can also be very confusing to site visitors.

I decided I needed a simple script to display the sub menu only when the parent page was clicked, - a working example of this is on the right hand side of this page - so I wrote a little script to do this, and in the spirit of open source, here is the turorial so that you can make it yourself.

A quick search through google and the nVidia forums and I fond the answer. The nVidia drivers are to blame, and the fix is simple, but temporary.

This does fix it so long as you don't change the gamma settings back to Video Overlay or Desktop.

• Right-click on the desktop and select Properties.
• From the Display Properties select Settings.
• Click Advanced.
• Click on the GeForce tab (this will be your video card model... example.. GeForce 6800 Ultra)
• Click on Color Correction
• There should be a drop down menu top left with Desktop,
  Video Overlay, and All. Select All from the dropdown box
  this should set everything to driver default and click Apply.
  And your video overlay gamma should be fixed.

Please note: This is the only temporary fix that will work with everything and, depending on your system, you might find yourself adjusting it everytime you restart your computer.

I had a look around for WordPress plugins and other info, but could not find anything that actually worked.

So I wrote my own little switch statment to sort it all out.

This involves modifying the comments.php file in your theme folder.

Find:

And add this code above that line: Make sure you put the correct email addresses in.

Now find:

Add the following on the line below:

That's it for the comments.php file.
Now open your style sheet, usually called style.css and add the following rules to the end of your style sheet, modify to yoru own needs.