If you install the amanda-client package on Debian, some things need to be configured before you can actually use the service. By default, the server will not be able to connect to the client. The common error is: “selfcheck request failed: timeout waiting for ACK”. Read the post for the solution.

I noticed with the latest version of WordPress, an older template may not display the sidebar correctly. If you look at the source code, you notice a lot of HTML code is missing in the sidebar div. The easiest fix I found was to update the “sidebar.php” file in the template. A lot of themes should have the !function_exists(‘dynamic_sidebar’) in the sidebar.php file. Read the full entry for instructions.

I’ve been noticing that a lot of documentation in CakePHP seems to be spread out onto many different sites. In my opinion, the CakePHP manual isn’t comprehensive enough for learning.

Here’s a list of useful CakePHP resources I’ve used recently:

CakeForge – Great resource for Open Source CakePHP applications. This site has many more applications than the CakePHP Bakery.
http://cakeforge.org/

Bakery – How to use different CSS files in CakePHP
http://bakery.cakephp.org/articles/view/some-ideas-to-organize-your-css-files-and-autoload-them-in-cakephp

Giga Promoters – CakePHP tutorials and scripts:
http://www.gigapromoters.com/blog/category/cakephp/

I’ll be updating this list as I find more resources.

Here’s the quickest way to sort data in MySQL after retrieving the last 10 entries with the LIMIT and ORDER BY DESC commands. If you simply do a ORDER BY DESC LIMIT 10, this will return the last 10 results in reverse order (newest first). Adding an inline SELECT command will sort the results after retrieving the last 10 items. (oldest first)

SQL Command

$sql = "SELECT * FROM (SELECT * FROM [TABLE] WHERE ORDER BY modified_date DESC LIMIT 10) AS tbl ORDER BY tbl.modified_date"

This will retrieve the last 10 rows while sorting by date chronologically. I used this SQL command for …

My review on the “I am T-Pain” app is in the latest issue of iProng magazine. Check it out at:
http://www.iprong.com/ipodiphoneitunes/app-review-i-am-t-pain/. I really enjoyed the app with its auto-tune feature. Here’s a really good video of how it works, with musicians testing it out for the first time.

Here’s the fix for the common error with ScpOnly when using the Jail SFTP option. The error message for WinSCP clients is “WinSCP: this is end-of-file:0 failed with invalid output” when trying to connect to a SFTP server. View the post to see the fix for WinSCP.

VMWARE Server 2.02 has been released October 27, 2009. It includes a few important security updates for VMWARE Server. If you are running a Linux server with VMWARE server 2.01, I strongly suggest to upgrade due to the “Directory Traversal Vulnerability” — which may allow for remote retrieval of any file from the host system.

Ever wanted an easy way to learn how to play the guitar with music from your favorite bands? The iPhone app Jammit: Classic Rock Vol. 1 will help you learn songs with an intuitive way of teaching on the iPhone. The app features CD quality original recordings of three songs: Alice Cooper’s “I’m Eighteen”, Foreigner’s “Dirty White Boy”, and Deep Purple’s “Smoke on the Water”.

One of the key features is the ability to control the volume levels of the guitar on one track and the rest of the instruments (vocals/drums/bass) on another track. For instance, you can turn off the …

TinyMCE is a great WYSIWYG editor, but sometimes there are cases where it removes HTML tags when you go into the “HTML Source” mode and switch back to the editor. This is very frustrating to end-users.

By default, TinyMCE will remove a lot of HTML tags including empty ones (such has having a DIV spacer), select options, certain styles, etc. To get around this, you will need to change the option “extended_valid_elements”, which is before the setup : function(ed) line. Note: This will allow your users to add in any kind of HTML tags they want. Replace the “extended_valid_elements” line with:…..

I’m currently at Blogworld 2009, learning about the latest trends about new media and blogging.  I am taking a break from the usual system administration and web programming posts. The highlight of the first day of the conference was the keynote by Chris Brogan. He had a lot of interesting points with what to do with your blog — how to set it up, branding, extending the platform, and the importance of trust.  Social media is evolving. Chris brought up the point that long form articles (old school newspaper articles) are on the way out. The reason why Twitter …