Andre Molnar 2.0 - Geeky

Zend Core Fast CGI Crashes

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 15:27:24 -0700

If you run into your newly installed zend core on windows crashing all over the place... it may have something to do with you forms.

Make no mistake the bug is with zend core - but it can be fixed by fixing your forms. Add
method="post" enctype="multipart/form-data">

to forms that have a post meathod.

This is particularly useful for phpMyAdmin.

andre

see: Zend forum topic where we find the bright guys that figured this out.

CHX oscms2007

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 23:22:53 -0700

New HD DRM cracked

Thu, 28 Dec 2006 13:04:39 -0800

In this article we hear that a new DRM scheme has been cracked.

"Otto" who makes a comment on the article says it best.

There is no amount of protection they can ever add that will make this sort of thing impossible to do. They simply cannot prevent copying, and it's easy to explain why.

All DRM measures, work on the notion that "copying" and "viewing" are different things. They want to allow people to view the content, but not to copy it. This is clearly ludicrous. It's as if somebody gave you a book and said that you were not allowed to take a pencil and write your own copy of the book elsewhere. They can say it, but it's wholly unenforceable.

In order to display any content, your computer must read it. If it can read it, then it can write a copy somewhere. Period. This undeniable fact of reality makes all DRM pointless.

In this particular case, the author did not even do anything particularly special.

PokerStars hand history parser

Sun, 29 Oct 2006 01:12:22 -0800

For some fun, I decided to write a pokerstars hand history parser.

The purpose of the parser is to look at a hand history file and extract meaningful information for each hand it contains. The information is collected in a structured way... i.e. one big honking $hands array.

I collect the table name, game type, pokerstars hand number, tournament number and blind level (if a tournament), player names, seat locations and chip counts, and all action each player takes throughout the hand. Essentially all useful information found in the hand history file for any given hand.

I knew deep down that this would require regex work - but I first started parsing with some string functions. And before I could even fully parse the first line of a hand history file I knew this approach would be far too slow.

So, I was forced to re-instroduce myself to regular expressions. I've used them before, but not too often for tasks requiring complex multi-line processing. For the most part the regex work went well. But, every so often I would bump up against a stupid problem where the pattern I was using 'should have' worked but wasn't returning the results I expected. Such is life in the world of regex debugging.

Comment Spammers are Stupid

Wed, 05 Jul 2006 18:59:44 -0700

Its been about 1 year since I launched andremolnar 2.0. Obviously with this sort of site I wanted to have comments enabled and not force people to register or pass some human validation test (captcha) just so they can have their say (not that anybody actually bothers to comment on here). But, you don't also want to be swamped with comment spam.

At the time there weren't any comment spam-bots that posted to drupal based sites, but there were still comment spam sweat shops doing the work manually. So, as a precaution I installed the spam module. Every once and a while I would get notified of some spammer trying to clog my site, but no action was needed. Spam messages were quarantined.

Well, in the past few weeks it turns out that the spam bots have finally been programmed to tackle drupals comment forms. This is good news and bad news. The good news is that Drupal has enough traction in the world that someone has taken the time to write a bot to post comments to Drupal sites. The bad news of course is that someone has taken the time to write a bot to post comments to Drupal sites.

How to set up SSH keys: Frustration with "Server refused our key"

Thu, 29 Jun 2006 22:34:00 -0700

So you're trying to set up ssh keys on your windows box with putty and you keep getting "Server refused our key". Read on, I've got your solution... but first lets take a look at what you've done so far.

Chances are you have done some/none/all of the following:

opened up puttygen.exe
generated a key after wiggling your mouse
entered a strong passphrase
saved the public key to something like
```
pubkey
```
saved the private key to something like
```
privatekey.ppk
```
moved your public key up to the server
(maybe even) converted the format of the key from putty to openssh with something like
```
ssh-keygen -if pubkey > pubkey_openssh_format
```
changed some permissions like
```
chmod 700 .ssh
```
added your pubkey to the authorized_keys file with something like
```
cat pubkey >> .ssh/authorized_keys
```
changed some more permissions like
```
chmod 600 authorized_keys
```

Mars

Mon, 13 Mar 2006 05:50:03 -0800

Everyone has seen Google Maps of the earth, but recently theive added Google Maps of Mars.

They only cover a tiny section of the red planet - and only a limited range of magnification - but its still pretty cool.

I imagine the plan is to map the entire martian surface. I can't wait to do a virtual flyby past the face on mars.

andre

Cheap hardware, case mods and SageTV

Sat, 04 Mar 2006 23:23:21 -0800

So, for quite some time now I've been wanting to build myself a PVR, or personal video recorder. For an even longer time, i've wanted to build myself a cheap PC with a fully custom case.

Well, over the past month I have managed to do both. Why not kill two birds with one stone.

I picked up a mobo, processor, memory bundle from tigerdirect for $99. Add a 300Gb hard drive for $99. Add a power supply and cpu fan for another @$60 and I have myself a sub $300 computer with 5 times the horsepower of my last desktop (a PIII 600).

But, I still needed a case. Off to Homesense I went in search of a box of some sort that I could mod and turn into a decorative home for my machine. After browsing for a while and looking at several wooden boxes and other home decor items that could possibly work, I settled on a mesh wire file storage device. Price $17.

So, after one weekend of ripping appart some ancient hardware for parts (something to mounth the mobo on with standoffs - power switches - LEDs etc.), measuring, snipping, and fitting, I had my custom computer case housing my PC.

Open-xchange kicking my ass

Sun, 19 Feb 2006 01:03:36 -0800

Okay,

So I'm trying to install open-xchange. I'm more or less a freeBSD newb, but I can follow instructions and type commands. So, I figured this couldn't be too hard.

Well - the install has gone pretty smooth, but I am having a hell of a time with some pre-flight configuration.

Most of the problems deal with OpenLDAP. Every time I went to configure things, I was getting a whole whack of errors tossed back in my face. Well it turns out I should RTFM. I was attempting to use a newer version of OpenLDAP with Open-xchange - and trust me - when the instructions say use 2.3.4 - you better goddamn well use that version or you'll spin your wheels for hours.

So - after I figured that out I got a little further - but not much. Now I keep getting a fucking invalid DN message everytime I try to add a user to the directory. I swear everything is configured correctly - but its just not working.

Andyway - i've wasted many an hour working on this. I hope its all worth it in the end.

Tim Berners-Lee has a blog

Fri, 16 Dec 2005 11:29:07 -0800

The father of the WWW has a new web log and he's running Drupal.

andre

Animation

Sun, 30 Oct 2005 18:33:08 -0800

Way back - some time ago - I was a student at Barton Secondary. During my time there I took several arts courses including Animation with Steven Gal.

While taking that course Brian Froud (the actor - See block on the left) and I created an animated short. We wrote, directed and starred (well our voices starred) in roughly 30 seconds of silliness.

We had filmed this masterpiece - but sometime between then and now the tape was lost forever.

However, recently Brian unearthed the original drawings, and this past Friday he dropped them off at my place. Today I had the chance to scan each and every one those drawings and stitch them together with Windows Movie Maker.

You can check it out by clicking on the image above.

I haven't re-recorded the audio portion of the film and I haven't created titles or added any other affects - but you get the picture.

Welcome to the wireless world

Sun, 11 Sep 2005 21:20:18 -0700

Man - has it really been forever since I've posted anything? Yup. It has.

Its been a somewhat busy summer of work and play and its kept me away from my blog.

So what's new?

I now have a laptop. A pretty sweet machine too. Intel mobile device with a gig of ram - a kickass 15.4 widescreen display at 1600x1000 - every immaginable device connection and of course wireless connectivity...

Which of course inspired me to finally put the wireless router i purchased for "free" (after rebate) into use. So I finally have a wireless network at home - Saa-weet!

What have I been working on?

I've been developing a Druapl theme for a client.
I've been training others in the use of Drupal.
I've been working on a couple of programming jobs.
I've been building a poker site.
I've been building a simple google maps application to show the locations of all Toronto shootings of the summer.

What have I been playing with?

My laptop of course.
My work projects... its great that I consider work to be play.

Its that time again

Tue, 02 Aug 2005 18:47:30 -0700

Yup, its that time again.

No - not my period. (men don't actually get those).

Its the time of the month when I bitch about how stupid internet explorer is and how hopeless it is to design anything using stylesheets if IE is just not going to follow the rules.

Let me rephrase that. Its never hopeless to design using stylesheets - but it is hopeless to expect IE to render them correctly - especially not in 'strict' mode.

Thats all.

But... apparently there is an IE7beta coming out this summer. They had better hurry up. Its already august. Still, one of the microsoft bloggers has said "standards compliance is not as important as backwards compatibility." In other words - we'd rather try and render poorly authored websites so they look nearly fine - rather than render perfectly authored websites the way they should be.

So - here it is my monthy fuck you IE.

FUCK YOU IE

andre

Intel to buy Apple?

Sat, 11 Jun 2005 21:22:27 -0700

I Cringely says that Intel is about to buy Apple.

Hmmmm... that'd be interesting. The idea is that if the two merge than Intel would own the Mac OS... and could get OEMs to build machines with that OS pre-installed and then have apple develop more processor intensive apps that would drive future processor sales. And what's Apples motivation? Steve Jobs wouldn't mind kicking Bill Gates' ass.

Interesting theory. But, who cares? The desktop is dead non? Didn't I even say that somewhere? Well yeah, I did say the desktop is dead... or at least that developing software for the desktop wasn't were it was at. But, I will admit that some things are better left to desktop apps. There is always going to be a need for a solid desktop operating system to run some labour intensive apps like video, audio, and graphics editing. And the desktop is a pretty good place for storing things you don't want to share with the world.

Revenge of the Sith

Sat, 21 May 2005 21:04:35 -0700

My fourth geeky post in the last two weeks. I'm a nerd.

Okay. I did get out to see revenge of the sith - and the movie is fine except for one scene. George Lucas has got to re-shoot it... its almost comical.

Frankenstein with Jazz hands. That's all I will say. If you've seen the movie you know what I am talking about.

But, besides that a fine film. Particularly good if you watch episode II right before hand...

andre