Here’s a quick tip to make cleaner looking URLs in CodeIgniter PHP framework. By default, if you have an application, the path of the application usually ends after index.php. Using Apache RewriteEngine, you can make cleaner looking URLs. You can have something similar to mysite.com/cigniter/MyApplication instead of mysite.com/cigniter/index.php/MyApplication

Here’s a few useful tools I have found for removing spyware, adware, popups from Windows computers. I recently had to help a client with a really bad case of popups and trojan horse software. McAfee and Symantec are good for catching viruses, but not so strong at cleaning up spyware and adware. Symantec Endpoint was good at detecting the threats, but not really good at cleaning them up.

So, what free programs are good right now for cleaning up spyware and adware?

1) Malwarebytes 1.4 – This is the best free anti spyware/adware program out there. I give it a 9 out of …

WordPress 2.8.2 has been released. This affects both WordPress and WordPress MU. I recommend upgrading your current version since it contains a security fix.

WordPress 2.8.2 fixes an XSS vulnerability. Comment author URLs were not fully sanitized when displayed in the admin. This could be exploited to redirect you away from the admin to another site.

For more details, visit:
http://wordpress.org/development/2009/07/wordpress-2-8-2/

You can automatically upgrade WordPress within your control panel, or manually upgrade via:
http://wordpress.org/download/

WordPress MU download:
http://mu.wordpress.org/download/

One consideration in buying a new SLR camera is make sure your photo editing software supports RAW natively. If not, then you will need to go through an intermediate program that converts the RAW photo format into a more universal format such as DNG. Photoshop CS3 seems to be getting outdated nowdays with the Photoshop CS4 release. This means less Photoshop CS3 updates from Adobe for supporting new cameras. Here is a list of Canon and Nikon cameras that are currently supported with Photoshop CS3. Notice the Canon EOS 500D T1i, Canon Powershot SX1 IS , and Nikon D5000 are …

If your site experiences the infamous “Mysql : Too many connections” error, you will need to tune your MySQL server to handle the load of a heavily used website.

There are some configuration variables that you can adjust to make your site handle more connections.
The wait_timeout default in MySQL is 28840 seconds (8 hours), which can seriously limit the number of open connections you have on your page. I adjusted mine to 60 seconds. This frees up the thread after idle timeout, which allows for more connections to connect. The 8 hour timeframe is fine if you only have a few connections to the server. For popular websites, its best to make this value as low as possible. Set this variable to the maximum time your page typically runs. For instance, if you have a page that needs to retrieve some data processed from another server (60-80 seconds) and you only use one mysql_connect, you may lose the mysql connection for processing the remaining parts of the page if your wait_timeout is too low. If the processing takes much longer, a workaround is to use multiple mysql_connects to prevent an idle connection from disconnecting.

I’ve been noticing some malicious Twitter users are using the API to add them to your timeline without you following them. For instance, I noticed a user that I wasn’t following in my Twitter timeline. At first, I tried to “Block” them, but that had no effect. The solution? You have to follow them first! Right after, unfollow them. I’m guessing there is some kind of bit that needs to be cleared by following/unfollowing.

• Do you have fitnessalways on your twitter? Ever tried to simply block the user? It doesn’t work. You’ll notice that this user is automatically added to your …
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I recently implemented a way to limit access by IP range on specific blogs on WordPress MU. As you know, WordPress MU uses Apache Rewrite engine to rewrite URLs. For instance, you have a blog on WordPress MU called “intranet”. Apache Rewrite takes the “intranet” string in the URL and automatically rewrites it as a value in the PHP script. A side effect to Apache Rewrite is that “Directory” .htaccess parameters don’t work. So, if you wanted only your company IPs to access an internal blog, you will need to use Apache Rewrite parameters instead. For the solution, read on…

Recently, there was a Mailman upgrade that seems to break Mailman if you don’t have a list called “mailman” on your server. Symptoms of this error include:

/var/log/mailman/error
mailmanctl(2801): PID unreadable in: /var/run/mailman/mailman.pid
mailmanctl(2801): [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/var/run/mailman/mailman.pid'
mailmanctl(2801): Is qrunner even running?


If you try to restart mailman
/etc/rc2.d/S20mailman restart
and get the same error, then you need to check whether you have a “mailman” list on your server.

To install mailman list, follow this resource:
http://www.askdavetaylor.com/why_is_mailman_complaining_site_list_is_missing_mailman.html

After installing the mailman list, you can try restarting the mailman qrunner service to see if it works.
/etc/rc2.d/S20mailman start

I’ve been starting work on getting JASIG CAS (Central Authentication Server) to work with all my applications. One of the requirements for JASIG is that it needs to run on Apache Tomcat. Following the instructions on http://www.debianadmin.com/how-to-setup-apache-tomcat-55-on-debian-etch.html I was able to get the basics running on the Tomcat 5.5 server. However, I did encounter issues when trying to add in a *.WAR application to the server. I copied the files in the correct place /var/lib/tomcat5.5/webapps but for some reason the files weren’t getting deployed. I figured out the simple fix for getting these applications to work in the webapps folder:

Here’s what I currently use to determine how long it takes to generate a page in PHP. Its only 8 lines of code.