Articles - Joel Lipman .Com

Free Translator API using Google

: Joel Lipman; Google; 08 January 2013; Hits: 8435

What?
So this is a quick article to get your Google Translation services working with your website.

Why?
At time of print, Google now charge for every 2,000,000 characters (2 million) every month.

Microsoft's Bing has added itself to the fray pretending to offer free services but in the small print, you will find they too charge the same price.

How?

: Joel Lipman; Personal Home Page; 03 January 2013; Hits: 12926

What?
Just a quick note on how to format a given filesize and to reduce the display output to a small string, eg:

copy raw

196 bytes          : displays as => "196 bytes"
   12945 bytes        : displays as => "12 Kb"
   1478515 bytes      : displays as => "1 Mb"
   8798745455 bytes   : displays as => "8 Gb"

196 bytes : displays as => "196 bytes"
12945 bytes : displays as => "12 Kb"
1478515 bytes : displays as => "1 Mb"
8798745455 bytes : displays as => "8 Gb"

Category: Personal Home Page :: Article: 468

: Joel Lipman; Team Foundation Server; 03 January 2013; Hits: 5412

Why?
So I get back from annual leave and I can't check-out / check-in any files in a Visual Studio 2010 project. All my colleagues can.

What?
Rather silly I know and the solution is one of those obvious ones for those that know how but for those who can't remember, then it can take a while.

How?

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 19 December 2012; Hits: 21407

What?
More for others than for myself, but this article is for those who do not have development/test environments of their Joomla website.

I have been doing this for years and still come across clients who have the one version of their website. They experiment on their customer-facing website and in most cases, they are paying for a hosting package which would allow them to have several copies of their website.

: Joel Lipman; MySQL; 13 December 2012; Hits: 7164

What?
In view of the fact that this error pops up in so many systems I take over, I have often gone down the wrong path following the red herring as it were when in fact the answer to this is very common.

Why?
Bespoke systems are the usual suspects. Developers will have told the system what to do when newline, carriage returns and tab characters are entered in the data. Those who are security-conscious will also make their system escape apostrophes (') and double-quotes ("). But who can honestly build a system that thinks of everything from day one?

How?

: Joel Lipman; Transact-SQL; 07 December 2012; Hits: 7460

What?
Along with my DataJumble function and DataTumble procedure which also help scramble database tables sent to suppliers/developers, this is a function which simply finds random characters and inserts these.

I would recommend using the DataTumble script over this one as this leaves data very difficult to work with:

copy raw

Before:
           StudentID   StudentName          DateOfBirth
           ----------- -------------------- -------------
           1           John Smith           1990-03-21
           2           Fred Bloggs          1988-11-02
           3           Another User         1985-07-11
           4           Yet Another User     1977-06-25

       After:
           StudentID   StudentName          DateOfBirth
           ----------- -------------------- -------------
           1           PDUHjRWJcb           1926-01-02
           2           WRmNqQKxvuV          1969-03-14
           3           nBCkAVDrvdhe         1968-05-05
           4           RJDsFMaeNcLrcMWw     1964-08-08

Before:
StudentID StudentName DateOfBirth
----------- -------------------- -------------
1 John Smith 1990-03-21
2 Fred Bloggs 1988-11-02
3 Another User 1985-07-11
4 Yet Another User 1977-06-25
After:
StudentID StudentName DateOfBirth
----------- -------------------- -------------
1 PDUHjRWJcb 1926-01-02
2 WRmNqQKxvuV 1969-03-14
3 nBCkAVDrvdhe 1968-05-05
4 RJDsFMaeNcLrcMWw 1964-08-08

How?

Category: Transact-SQL :: Article: 460

: Joel Lipman; Transact-SQL; 07 December 2012; Hits: 5448

What?
This is a stored procedure I've nabbed from some consultants from my day job. It shuffles the records and matching data values:

Before:

copy raw

ID        Name         DateOfBirth
--------- ------------ -----------
1         John Smith   1988-06-24
2         Fred Bloggs  1972-11-17
3         Another User 1964-02-18

ID Name DateOfBirth
--------- ------------ -----------
1 John Smith 1988-06-24
2 Fred Bloggs 1972-11-17
3 Another User 1964-02-18

After:

copy raw

ID        Name         DateOfBirth
--------- ------------ -----------
1         Fred Bloggs  1964-02-18
2         Another User 1988-06-24
3         John Smith   1972-11-17

ID Name DateOfBirth
--------- ------------ -----------
1 Fred Bloggs 1964-02-18
2 Another User 1988-06-24
3 John Smith 1972-11-17

Looks pretty good, doesn't it? The advantages of this is that you can send this data to your developers and the data types will be correct and maybe they'll resolve issues faster than if they were given scrambled data (see my articles on DataJumble and DataScramble).

How?

Category: Transact-SQL :: Article: 459

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 04 December 2012; Hits: 5316

What?
Quick article here as googling/binging for how to refer to Joomla articles after versions 1.5.x wasn't obvious. This article is to demonstrate how to write the webaddress for a Joomla article even when you have Search-engine-friendly website addresses enabled.

How?
Basically you have to include &view=article as opposed to Joomla v1.5.x when the option and id parameters would suffice:

copy raw

- SEF URL
http://www.joellipman.com/support/documentation/449-module-joes-word-cloud-jwc.html

- Direct Link (irrespective of SEF)
http://www.joellipman.com/?option=com_content&view=article&id=449

- SEF URL
http://www.joellipman.com/support/documentation/449-module-joes-word-cloud-jwc.html
- Direct Link (irrespective of SEF)
http://www.joellipman.com/?option=com_content&view=article&id=449

Category: Joomla :: Article: 458

Battery Constantly Drained on iPhone

: Joel Lipman; Apple; 27 November 2012; Hits: 4875

Event 1

A friend reported her phone was constantly being drained, wasn't lasting the day on a full charge and knew how to close apps running in the background (double-click "home" button and hold down app until red minus buttons appear, tap red button)...

I wouldn't usually take notice but I think this is a brilliant example where trying to fix the problem is the very cause of the problem in the first place:

The empty arrow next to the battery indicator tells you that location services is enabled but it is attached to a reminder that needs to constantly monitor your whereabouts in order to "remind you".

The reminder here was to charge the phone but it was the reminder which would drain a full charge in less than a day.

Generate Academic Calendar using MySQL

: Joel Lipman; MySQL; 27 November 2012; Hits: 6549

What?
We have a specific timetabling system for academic institutions and all our staff/students follow academic week numbers as opposed to calendar week numbers.

Why?
The aim of this article is to quickly generate a calendar for a full academic year for referencing by staff/students.

How?

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 22 November 2012; Hits: 26053

What?
If you get something like the following error:

Warning: call_user_func() [function.call-user-func]: First argument is expected to be a valid callback in /home/.../templates/rt_affinity/rt_sectionrows.php on line 311

How?

Copy & backup the file /public_html/.../templates/rt_affinity/rt_sectionrows.php
Find the following piece of code around line 311:
copyrawstyler
```
foreach($this->horizontalCookie[$row] as $block) {
	$block = str_replace('-', '', $block);
	$this->module_row1 .= call_user_func($block, $this, $mClasses);
}
```
1. foreach($this->horizontalCookie[$row] as $block) {
2. $block = str_replace('-', '', $block);
3. $this->module_row1 .= call_user_func($block, $this, $mClasses);
4. }
And change it to:
copyrawstyler
```
foreach($this->horizontalCookie[$row] as $block) {
	if(!empty($block)) {
		$block = str_replace('-', '', $block);
		$this->module_row1 .= call_user_func($block, $this, $mClasses);
	}
}
```
1. foreach($this->horizontalCookie[$row] as $block) {
2. if(!empty($block)) {
3. $block = str_replace('-', '', $block);
4. $this->module_row1 .= call_user_func($block, $this, $mClasses);
5. }
6. }

Category: Joomla :: Article: 451

About 5 seconds worth of fun

: Joel Lipman; SharePoint; 21 November 2012; Hits: 6090

What?
Really not work related but if you know your sharepoint site:

Custom Error
http://<My_SharePoint_Site>/_layouts/MySite.aspx?Error=You%20are%20a%20jerk%20and%20SharePoint%20does%20not%20share%20with%20jerks.

Installer?

Credit where Credit is Due:

RSS Feed

Related Articles

Joes Revolver Map

Joes Word Cloud

Accreditation

Donate & Support