tech stuff

PHP makes life a lot easier for quick or dirty maintenance scripts, cron jobs or web applications but how does it do for older, not so straight forward problems dealing with bits and bytes? I was surprised how easy it was to manipulate bits in a byte with php. Here is an function that made my life a fair amount easier when having to check for a specific bit in a byte.

This function checks whether a certain bit is set or not given a byte and an index. It returns true if the chosen bit is set. It casts the $value argument to a integer just in case. The index $n goes from left to right so the most significant bit is bit one and the least significant is bit eight. This function will only work for integers between 0 and 255 because that was all I needed at the time. It would be trivial to write either a function to separate bytes in an integer or to increase the amount of bits that this function checks. I originally had a different function here but the Internet quickly told me that there was an easier way to do this.

<?php

function check_bit($value,$n=8)
{
    $value = (int)$value;
    if($value & (1<<(8-$n))) { return true; }
    else { return false; }
}

//Check Bit Usage Example
$test_byte1 = "4";

if( check_bit($test_byte1,2))
  echo "Bit 2 is set in ".decbin($test_byte1);
else
  echo "Bit 2 is not set in ".decbin($test_byte1);

?>

Here are the php bitwise operator definitions from the php documentation. Look like C much?

I used JSON for the first time today and it’s really nothing special. I’ve heard about it a few times but never really given it much thought and theres no reason I should have. Here is the list of all you really need to know about this syntax for passing around name value pairs and arrays to javascript.

1. JSON is an acronym for ‘Javascript Object Notation’.
2. JSON is fast. Mostly because it is recognized natively by Javascript so there’s no processing overhead.
3. JSON is an ordered list of name value pairs.
4. JSON is so much easier to read and write than XML due to it’s simplicity.
5. Apperently (Untested by me) data is formatted as JSON then Ajax can travel across domains.
6. Almost every language used in web development either already has a JSON library or set of functions. If one doesn’t, then creating functions is a trivial task.
7. ‘var jsonObject = { ‘cody : ‘taylor’ };’ is referenced by ‘jsonObject.cody’ which gives us ‘taylor’.
8. ‘var jsonObect = {’javascript’ : {’json’ : ‘not xml’ };’ is referenced by ‘jsonObject.javascript.json’ which gives us ‘not xml’.
9. You can also reference the JSON object as if it was an associative array like ‘jsonObject['cody']‘ or ‘jsonObject.javascript['json']‘ which gives the same values as previously.
10. If you don’t want to use key/value pairs you can define a normal data array. ‘jsonObject = {’arrayOfData’: {’numbers’ : ['1', '2', '3']}};’ We use indexes for this dataset. Don’t use indexes for the collections defined in the ‘{ }’. ‘jsonObject.arrayOfData.numbers[1]‘ will give us ‘2′.
11. You can put functions in the dataset to pass around executable code.

So now you know basically all there is to know about JSON.

Django is a high level python web framework that I’ve been hearing a lot about lately. I decided to try it out this weekend.
It took a little reading to get up and running so I documented the steps I took so others can get up and running a little more quickly.

sudo apt-get install django
django-admin –version

Create the appropriate directories and start the django project.

For no real reason I decided to put my new projects in /var/django.
sudo mkdir /var/django
sudo chmod 755 /var/django
cd /var/django
django-admin startproject mysite
cd mysite
mkdir apache

It seems that mod-wsgi is the best way to serve up python web apps due to mod_python being a little outdated. Note that django does come with a built in webserver that is really easy to get going. So if you’re just planning on evaluating the framework and not actually do any production aplications then that would be the way to go. mod_wsgi is an Apache module which can be used to host Python applications.

Install the module:
sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-wsgi

Now for the configuration. It took me a few tries to get this right.
For now I just put my django site on port 8080 so I can play around without it being public to anyone else.

In the /var/django/mysite/apache directory I created a file called django.wsgi and put this in it:

import os, sys
apache_configuration= os.path.dirname(__file__)
project = os.path.dirname(apache_configuration)
sys.path.append(’/var/django’)
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = ‘mysite.settings’
import django.core.handlers.wsgi
application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()

Make sure that the sys.path.append line contains the directory above the project directory. This one took me awhile to figure out.
I was getting this error until I got it right.

[Sat May 30 15:33:24 2009] [error] [client 127.0.0.1]     raise ImportError, “Could not import settings ‘%s’ (Is it on sys.path? Does it have syntax errors?): %s” % (self.SETTINGS_MODULE, e)
[Sat May 30 15:33:24 2009] [error] [client 127.0.0.1] ImportError: Could not import settings ‘mysite.settings’ (Is it on sys.path? Does it have syntax errors?): No module named mysite.settings

Next I added a new virtual host in my sites-enabled folder like this:

<VirtualHost *:808http://localhost:8080/0>
ServerAdmin root@mysite.com
ServerName mysite.com
ServerAlias mysite.com
<Directory /var/django/mysite/apache>
Allow from all
</Directory>

WSGIDaemonProcess www-data
WSGIProcessGroup www-data
WSGIScriptAlias / /var/django/mysite/apache/django.wsgi
</VirtualHost>

After restarting apache :
sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

I got an “It Worked” page when I point my browser to http://localhost:8080/

Of course this doesn’t allow you to use a database in your applications yet but it’s a start.

Firstly check out the effect example. Hover over the list in the middle to see the effect. This is called the fisheye effect in dojo and it’s one of my favorites because it’s the easiest to implement. It’s ridiculously easy to implement. I’m going to assume that you know what a basic html page looks like, so in a quick three parts here’s the code:

First the Javascript:

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”includes/dojo/dojo/dojo.js” djConfig=”parseOnLoad: true”></script>

<script type=”text/javascript”>

dojo.require(”dojox.widget.FisheyeLite”);
dojo.addOnLoad(function(){
//make the list items into fisheye items
dojo.query(”li.fish”, dojo.byId(”fishyList”)).forEach(function(n){
new dojox.widget.FisheyeLite({ },n);
});
});
</script>

Next the CSS:

<style type=”text/css”>
@import “includes/dojo/dojo/resources/dojo.css”;
@import “css/dojo_lists.css”;
#fishyList ul {
width:600px;
list-style-type:none;
}
.fisheyeTarget {
font-weight:bold;
font-size:19px;
}
</style>

None of the CSS really matters as far as functionality goes. It does go a long way into making it look a lot slicker.

Now the HTML:

<ul id=”fishyList”>
<li class=”fish”><span class=”fisheyeTarget”>Cody Taylor’s<br><br></span></li>
<li class=”fish”><span class=”fisheyeTarget”>Dojo Javascript <br><br></span></li>
<li class=”fish”><span class=”fisheyeTarget”>Slick FishEye Effect<br><br></span></li>
</ul>

Of course you’ll have to download and put the dojo framework on your webserver and alter the include statements but other than that it’s that simple. You may want to look at the dojo documentation for the dojo.query and forEach functions.

I’ve recently been playing with anonymous (lambda) functions in javascript and I was thinking that it would be great if I could do the same thing in php, which is what I spend most of my time with. Turns out that you can. It’s not as clean and pretty as with javascript but it’s still a lambda function and functional programmers are better…aren’t they?

First the spec :
string create_function ( string $args , string $code )

So here’s a little example of something completely useless that can be done using anonymous functions in PHP :

$first_arg = 100;
$some_function = create_function(’$first_arg’,'return $first_arg/5;’);

function process($arg,$func)
{
    while($func($arg)>5)
    {
        $arg–;
    }
    return $arg;
}

echo process($first_arg,$some_function);

So we get 25 echoed to the screen. A bunch of better examples can be found at the php website. If you’re willing to read…

Nothing really special but It’s still cool that can pass functions into another PHP function just like a regular variable.

Functions are objects. This makes recursion short and sweet in javascript using anonymous functions.
In your html, php, or asp file try this out.

<input type=’button’ id=’myButton’ value=”5″>

<script type=’text/javascript’>
var myButton = document.getElementById(”myButton”);
var i=myButton.value;

myButton.onclick = function() {
if(i==0)
{
alert(”DONE”);
myButton.value = i;
return i;
}
alert(i);
return arguments.callee(–i);
};

</script>

I attached the anonymous function onto the onclick event for the button that was created right above the javascript. When that button is clicked the anonymous function will call itself and decrement ‘i’ until it is zero. When ‘i’ becomes zero the value of the button is set to 0 and the function returns. Nice and simple.

The only possible confusing thing here is the arguments.callee line. Remember I said that functions are objects? The arguments.callee actually calls itself. We need this because we don’t have a handle for the anonymous function. The arguments object is a local variable that all functions have. It can be used like an array to access the values passed to the function. It also holds ‘callee’, ‘caller’, and ‘length’. Since the callee is the function itself then caller is obviously the function that called it and length is the number of arguments passed to the function.

I found a couple new windows hotkeys that I don’t think I’ve ever used before.  Decided to put up a poll to see what most people use on a day to day basis. All the useful windows hotkeys with explanations are right under the poll.

 Loading ...

CTRL and A             Select All
CTRL and C             Copy
CTRL and F             Find
CTRL and G             Go To
CTRL and N             New
CTRL and O             Open
CTRL and P             Print
CTRL and S             Save
CTRL and V             Paste
CTRL and X             Cut
CTRL and Z             Undo
CTRL and F4             Close
CTRL+ESC             Start menu

ALT+ENTER             View Properties
ALT+F4                 Close Item
ALT+SPACEBAR             Open Shortcut Menu
ALT+TAB             Switch Programs
ALT+ESC             Cycle Through Programs

F1 key                 Help
F2 key                 Rename in Windows Explorer
F3 key                 Search (Same as CTRL and F)
F4 key                 Display Address Bar
F5 key              Update/Refresh
F10 key             Activate Menu Bar

Windows Key             Display or hide the Start menu
Windows Key+BREAK         Display the System Properties dialog box
Windows Key+D             Display the desktop
Windows Key+M             Minimize all of the windows
Windows Key+SHIFT+M         Restore the minimized windows
Windows Key+E             Open My Computer
Windows Key+F             Search for a file or a folder
Windows Key+CTRL+F         Search for computers
Windows Key+F1             Display Windows Help
Windows Key+ L             Lock the keyboard
Windows Key+R              Open the Run dialog box
Windows Key+U             Open Utility Manager

TAB                 Move forward through the options
SHIFT+TAB             Move backward through the options
CTRL+TAB             Move forward through the tabs
CTRL+SHIFT+TAB             Move backward through the tabs

If I missed any then let me know

Do you ever download those files that are comprised of multiple zip files that always seem to extract individual rar files to their own folders. This would normally require the user to cut and paste all these rar files back into the original folder and then unrar them. This is very tedious, especially when there is lots of these files and folders. I’ve written this little shell script to automate this task for myself and figured that I would share. This script is extremely simple but it has worked great for every double archive that I have tried it on. As always any improvements and comments are welcome.

Call this script from the command line when your current working directory is the folder with all the zip files in it. To get your current working directory use the command ‘pwd’.

unzip -o \*.zip
for f in *.rar;do unrar -o- e “$f”;done
rm *.rar
rm *.zip

You may be asking why I was forced to escape the ‘*’ in the first line. If I didn’t do this then I got a lot of “caution: filename not matched:” errors on the unzip line. Not sure why and if anyone can shed some light on that it would be great. As for the option to the commands, read the man pages. And the for loop is pretty self explanatory.

Enjoy those giant image sets.

Technorati Profile

Here are a few more little known tricks that can be used to get better results from the google search engine. Save some bandwidth and tell your friends.

Operators
You can add all sorts of arguments to your google search query. The most useful that I’ve found so far is filetype. This allows you to specify the type of file that you want to search for.
If I type :
“iphone” filetype:pdf
into the google search engine then I only get pdf files in my search results, most of which are useful instructional manuals on the iphone.

There are many other arguments that can be useful:

intitle:”tech stuff”
inurl:”codytaylor”
intext:”iphone”
inanchor:”tech stuff”
site:codytaylor.org
link:www.codytaylor.org
cache:codytaylor.org
daterange:2452389-2452389
related:codytaylor.org
info:codytaylor.org
phonebook:”someone”

Stop Words

Google automatically removes certain words from searches. These are called stop words and consist of words like ‘I’, ‘a’, ‘the’, and ‘of’. To force google to use these words then add a ‘+’ to the begining of the word. So searching for a statement with ‘+the’ in it would force the query to look for the ‘the’. If you don’t care wheter these words are included in the search then why even enter them?

Order and repetition matter.

Searching
“codytaylor” scp
emphasizes the “codytaylor” and produces different results than searching
scp “codytaylor”
The keywords to the left are always given higher precedence in the query.

Searching
“codytaylor” scp
produces different results than searching
“codytaylor” scp scp

So if you’re looking for a page that is saturated with a specific keyword then you’ll have much more luck if you type it in more than once.