Validate .ics Calendar For Google Calendars

Somebody recently tried to share a calendar they have in Microsoft Outlook with me by using a webcal .ics link. Adding the calendar to Google calendars is quite easy (see the screenshot below - make sure you swap webcal:// for http://), but Google is very picky about making sure the construct of the calendar is valid - unlike Outlook!

So if you need to find out why Google calendars won't load it, use this great ics validator tool.

Adding the calendar:

Run Single Instance of .NET Compact Framework Application

A .NET compact framework application I work on, in some cases, seemed to have multiple instances of itself running at a time. Although the framework handles multiple instances from being loaded, it can't handle it if the call to load is in very quick succession of each other.

I hunted around a came across this useful (and novely narrated) video article on MSDN.

The only addition I would make to this, is that VB.NET does allow the use of the Using statement in more recent versions of the framework.

Process Different File Types with PHP in Plesk

So after having got PHP to process different files types in IIS7, the Plesk version of the site and using the .htaccess was giving me some grief. I came across this article on the parallels forum and got it work  by using a slightly modified version of the working example given.

AddHandler php-script .js


I needed PHP to process JavaScript files.

Plesk - Checking the Mail Log

Do you need to check the mail logs on a Plesk server? Then here's an article on how to: http://www.hosting.com/support/plesk/check-the-mail-log-on-plesk-server

You can get access to it here:
/usr/local/psa/var/log/maillog

How to Validate a UK Postcode using JavaScript

Here's a great link for the RegEx that is needed to validate a UK postcode using JavaScript.

In case the link doesn't work, here it is:

var regPostcode = /^([a-zA-Z]){1}([0-9][0-9]|[0-9]|[a-zA-Z][0-9][a-zA-Z]|[a-zA-Z][0-9][0-9]|[a-zA-Z][0-9]){1}([ ])([0-9][a-zA-z][a-zA-z]){1}$/;

The accepted formats are:
A9 9AA
A99 9AA
AA9 9AA 
AA99 9AA 
AA9A 9AA

Installing libmcrypt / mcrypt Module on Plesk

Had a major ball ache today getting the mcrypt module working on a plesk hosted VPS. This article was a god send!!

http://www.kelvinwong.ca/2009/12/06/install-libmcrypt-and-php-mcrypt-on-centos-5-3-without-losing-too-much-hair/

A lot less hair was lost :)

The crux of it is the that from the shell do the following:

> yum install libmcrypt-devel

If 32 bit do:

> yum install php-mcrypt

If 64 bit do:

> yum install php-mcrypt.x86_64

Using vi and Commands

A useful resource for using the vi editor and it's commands :)

http://www.cs.colostate.edu/helpdocs/vi.html

Process Different File Types with PHP in IIS7

A slight follow on from an earlier post I made about custom error pages in IIS7, I needed to get IIS to process JavaScript files in PHP. This is really useful if you need to do some pre-processing before the JS hits the browser. In order to get this to work I added the following to the Web.config file in the root of the site:

Note that I am using PHP in FastCGI mode.

Also, make sure you set scriptProcessor to the path of your php-cgi.exe. The other thing I had to do, as Chrome was reporting a Resource interpreted as Script but transferred with MIME type text/html warning when the JavaScript file was loaded, was to add header("Content-type: text/javascript; charset: UTF-8"); to the js file.

One thing you can do to speed things up is specify a specific file in the path parameter of the Web.config. For example to only process my_js_file.js use path="my_js_file.js". And of course, you can add Web.config files in sub-folders so only certain files types are processed with PHP in those folders.

Windows 7 Telnet is not Recognised

This is so annoying! You go to use telnet on Windows 7, via the command prompt, and you get 'telnet' is not recognized as an internal or external command. There are loads of articles on how to enable telnet on Windows 7 (here's one of many!).

But after having enabled it in programs and features, I was still getting the not recognised error. I checked that I had the telnet.exe file in the C:\Windows\System32 and I did. So I double clicked it and sure enough it pops up and works.

The only other difference is that I need to remember to use the o command to open a connection:

Telnet> o my_domain

Configure IIS7 for Custom Error Pages

I've recently (and finally!) moved to Windows 7 and with it IIS 7. I got PHP installed (using FastCGI) all fine, but was having major issues getting my custom 404 handlers to work with PHP. I found loads of articles all over the web that directed me in the right direction. But no one single article worked for me so this is what worked for me...

All the following settings can be done via the IIS Manager (Control Panel > Administrative Tools), but for me, I created the following Web.config file and put that in the root of the site that I wanted the 404 handler to be working on.

Note the use of errorMode="Custom" and existingResponse="Replace". Hope this works out for you :)

Test an IMAP Connection (Telnet)

Following on from post about how to test a POP3 connection using telnet, I thought I'd add a quick one about testing an IMAP connection. It's pretty much the same, but you use the 143 port number instead:

> telnet mail.mydomain.com 143
> login my_user_name my_password

Happy days :)


Update:
Recently I started getting an error when using the login command. Turns out I needed to do the following:


> 10 login my_user_name my_password


All subsequent commands needed to use 20, 30, etc. This is a good resource for more commands.

How To MD5 in SQL Server / MSSQL

If you need to MD5 a string in MSSQL then use the HASHBYTES function. You can also use other formats too, such as SHA and SHA1. It's as simple as:

PRINT HASHBYTES('MD5', 'MY_STRING')


If you want to return back a string rather than the varbinary HASHBYTES does return, then try the following:


PRINT SUBSTRING(master.dbo.fn_varbintohexstr( HASHBYTES ('MD5', ' MY_STRING ')), 3, 32)

.NET Round Date to Nearest Hour

A quick little snippet here for those needing to round a DateTime in VB.NET or C# to the nearest hour

VB.NET

Public Shared Function RoundedHour(ByVal dt As DateTime) As DateTime
 Return DateTime.Parse( _
   String.Format("{0:yyyy-MM-dd HH:00:00}", _
     IIf(dt.Minute > 30, dt.AddHours(1), dt) _
 )
End Function

C#

public static DateTime RoundedHour(ByVal dt As DateTime) {
 Return DateTime.Parse(
   String.Format("{0:yyyy-MM-dd HH:00:00}",
     (dt.Minute > 30 ? dt.AddHours(1) : dt)
 )
}

It's pretty straight forward. If the minutes of the time are over 30 then add an hour. If not, keep using the given date. Format the date to have the minutes and seconds set to 0 and parse it back as a date.

How To Remember Password in Mercurial TortoiseHg

I've just started using BitBucket as a remote repository for code sharing and how sweet it is too :) I decided to use Mercurial as the repository type and using TortoiseHg with it. A frustration I was having with it, was each time I did a commit or update I was getting prompted to enter my password - grrr!

I tried adding an [auth] entry to to the ini file, but that didn't work. I then came across this little 3 click gem:

Credit to: http://www.diigo.com/item/image/1fjyk/wry0?size=o

And now it works a treat!

How To Dial a Phone Number From a Webpage on an iPhone or Android Device

I always find it a ball ache when I am on a mobile device, see a telephone number on a webpage but it's not clickable to automatically dial the number for me. So if you need to do this on your websites, set up the anchor element as such:

<a href="tel:01234 567 8910">01234 567 8910</a>

Jobs dones! Nice and simple :)

How To Call PHP From a Cron in Plesk

Like a lot of people I needed to run a PHP script from a cron (crontab) via the Plesk server admin tool. Simply putting the path to the file (from root) does not run it. The way to do this is by calling the php processor with some parameters. So do the following:

php -q /var/www/vhosts/mywebsite.com/httpdocs/cron/my-file.php

Obviously use the path that relates to your file.

This seems to work for a lot of people, but as my script had includes in it I was getting failure to open stream errors when it was called. So to get round this, I changed the directory prior to the call. So it now looks like this:

cd /var/www/vhosts/ mywebsite.com /httpdocs/cron; php -q  my-file .php

Hey presto, it all works a treat now!

You may need to set permissions on the script to be executed. By default, the task will email the output of the script to you (click the Settings option on the Scheduled Tasks page to change the address - see image below). This can be turned off by adding 2>&1 to the end of the command. making the it look like this:

cd /var/www/vhosts/ mywebsite.com /httpdocs/cron; php -q  my-file .php /dev/null 2>&1

Credit to http://daipratt.co.uk/crontab-plesk-php/ and http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3140675/php-cron-job-including-file-not-working for helping to work this mess out ;)

PHP: Last Modified Date of Folder / Directory

It turns out it's really easy to get the the last modified date of a folder/directory using PHP. You use the filemtime() function. It returns a timestamp for us so we would do something like:

$lastModifed = filemtime($dir);
print "Last modified on ".date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $lastModifed );

Reduce Used Space on Android

I have an android HTC Desire and am constantly running out of space on it - boo! A funky trick I recently came across, via a friend, was to un-install the Google Maps app. Then go back to the market and install it again. It seems that the Maps app keeps a copy of itself on the device each time an update occurs. I can't be sure about this, but I had a whole load of space free up after the re-install.

Obviously in the first instance, make sure your have used the "Clear Data" feature on all appropriate apps. Some apps store loads of data that you may not really want.

Another funky little app I came across was Phone Space Saver. A simple little app that tells you which apps you can move to the SD card - and free :)

How to Play MP4 Files on Your Xbox 360

I recently purchased a GoPro HD2 and what a fine piece of equipment it is too! The GoPro records the video in MP4 format and by default the Xbox 360 won't play this format (even though it claims it does).

Anyway...
After numerous fails to convert the files to AVI (a format that is supported), it turns out all you need to do is change the file extension from MP4 to AVI. Hey presto, it shows up on the Xbox now!

File Transfers with Android - FTPDroid

After coming back from a great snowboarding holiday in Les Deux Alpes, I had loads of photos and videos that I needed to move from my Android tablet to my home PC.

I present to you FTPDroid.

It's a cracking little app that turns your android device into an FTP server. You connect your FTP client to it and off you go. It works a treat when you have large numbers of files to transfer and you don't have time to sit there while they move across your network.