How to fix a sticky door lock

It’s amazingly simple to fix a sticky door handle, where the key is difficult to turn in the lock.

You will need (as pictured):

1. A piece of paper (A4 in this example)
2. scalpel / sharp knife
3. graphite pencil (solid artist style graphite is preferable)
4. straw (with a bend if possible)

Directions:

1. Scratch a small pile of graphite onto the paper using the scalpel
2. Bend the straw at the kink, and push the files into the short end, using the bend to ensure they don’t drop out the other end
3. Place the end of the straw with the filings directly onto the door keyhole and gently blow them into the keyhole
4. Grab the key and insert it in and out of the lock several times, turning the lock mechanism a few times

That’s it! Try opening the lock – it should now be much easier to turn. If the improvement is less than desired simply repeat the process.

Best Comeback Line

Got this one in an email chain this morning:

Read his reply to the lady who interviewed him concerning guns and children. Regardless of how you feel about gun laws you gotta love this! This is one of the best comeback lines of all time.

It is a portion of an ABC radio interview between a female broadcaster and General Cosgrove who was about to sponsor a Boy Scout Troop visiting his military Headquarters.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER:

So, General Cosgrove, what things are you going to teach these young boys when they visit your base?

GENERAL COSGROVE:

We’re going to teach them climbing, canoeing, archery and shooting.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER:

Shooting! That’s a bit irresponsible, isn’t it?

GENERAL COSGROVE:

I don’t see why, they’ll be properly supervised on the rifle range.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER:

Don’t you admit that this is a terribly dangerous activity to be teaching children?

GENERAL COSGROVE:

I don’t see how. We will be teaching them proper rifle discipline before they even touch a firearm.

FEMALE INTERVIEWER:

But you’re equipping them to become violent killers.

GENERAL COSGROVE:

Well, Ma’am, you’re equipped to be a prostitute, but you’re not one, are you?
The radiocast went silent for 46 seconds and when it returned, the interview was over.

Moving backups between servers using WHM and cPanel

It is surprisingly easy to move an account (website) from one cPanel based server to another.

1. First, open cPanel on the old server, and go to the backups tab.
2. Next, select Generate/Download a Full Backup
3. Select Remote FTP server from the dropdown menu. At this point, enter the FTP details of any account on the new server. Any standard account will do, however do not create an account for the site that is to be moved on the new server beforehand, as you will only have to delete it again to restore the backup.
4. For the port option, usually 21 is the correct value.
5. Leave the Remote Dir value blank unless you have specifically created a folder for the backup (its easy to find anyway).
6. Once you press the Generate Backup button, cPanel will begin to create an archive of the entire site contents, including mail, mysql, logs, web files. Depending on the size of the site this might take a few minutes. (But god damn servers can transfer between each other quickly!).
7. Once the email notification arrives that the backup has been transferred, login to the new server as root. If you don’t have root privileges you might wish to contact your hosting company and hopefully they can take over from here.
8. The backup file will usually be located in /home/username/backup-mm.dd.yyyy_xx-xx-xx_oldusername.tar.gz
9. From the command line, navigate to the backup location, and enter something along the lines of
   mv backup-12.18.2008_11-08-09_oldusername.tar.gz /home
10. In WHM on the new server, select Restore a Full Backup/cpmove file. At this point it should detect the archive located in /home/. If not you must have put the archive in the wrong place.  Enter the old username and press Restore – thats it!

How much better is that than moving an account database by database, db user by db user, mail account by mail account!

5 Questions Web Developers Need To Ask Themselves

It’s all very well for developers to create visionary frameworks and applications that only they understand – that is the freedom that makes web development great – until someone on the outside tries to work with it!

As far as i’m concerned, at the very least, the view/template of a web application needs to be changeable even to a web designer who has zero to minimal experience working with dynamic websites. Why – when we can create “beautiful” applications with minimal code repetition – because you are breaking the brilliance of code seperation. Its no different to seperating style and content. Lets face – usually, designers are good at design, and programmers are good at programming. Therefore the two skills need to co-exist, happily.

5 Questions to ask yourself:

1. How long would it take a pure web designer (HTML + CSS only) to change any element on any page?

2. How long would it take an average programmer to make some basic functionality changes, such as adding a new database table and running some pre-existing sanitation functions?

3. I’m looking at the website index. If I download index.php (or whatever) how many breadcrumbs do I have to follow to change, for example, the sidebar?

4. Is the folder structure sensible, and have the old files and folders been deleted?

5. Am I coding in a style that only I fully understand, on a commercial project that may rightfully be worked on by other developers that I may never speak to?

How to duplicate a phpBB3 theme

If you ever want to duplicate an existing phpBB3 theme, you might be sorely frustrated when you can’t seem to get any of your changes to take hold. It is sometimes necessary to go to the ACP, and hit purge the cache, however there is a further trick.

First, duplicate the theme folder you want to start with, and rename to your theme name.

Second, you need to go to the theme folder, and open style.cfg, /imageset/imageset.cfg, /template/template.cfg, /theme/theme.cfg, in a text editor. All of these files contain name = value. Rename all of these to your theme name.

Upload all of these changes, then head to the ACP and go to the “styles” tab. Click install on your theme.  On the left hand menu, go to each of the style components, and select install for each one. Then head back to the main styles page and click “details” for your theme. Select the imageset, template and theme from the dropdown menu.

Now you should be done!

Funny Pic of the Day

Came across this funny site full of funny comic strips. Apparently I am the only person who has never heard of this, but in case i’m not, be sure to check it out.

Disclaimer: if your not into science or programming you probably won’t find it funny!

Relaunch of Honda CBR250RR site

After an attempted wikipedia styled motorbike info site for the Honda CBR250RR resulted in steady traffic but hardly any contributions, i’ve decided to redesign my Babyblade site into an article directory and forums. I’m already seeing an instant improvement in contributions as people seem to be alot more comfortable with another PHPBB forum site.

A big thanks to everyone who has signed up and contributed so far, it’s great seeing new posts and members every day already after less than a week, and looking forward to creating a monster resource and community for MC22 owners.

See the Honda CBR250RR forums here. 

htaccess on Yahoo Hosting

I have found a picture which I think really sums up my maiden experience with Yahoo Hosting.

For the vision impaired and slow learners, I am comparing Yahoo’s service to a steaming pile of shit. Though, when I think about it, the steaming part is probably inaccurate, as that would suggest their is some freshness about it – perhaps a pic of a dried out near-powder shit would be more accurate.

#1. No .htaccess support, means register globals and magic quotes always ON

#2. No cron job support, we are now expected to wait until 3.05am every night to manually run that script

#3. very, very slow

#4. majorly out-of-date software

#4. Crap control panel that tries to be clever

Yahoo (at your prices), you can do better.

No DVD Sound in Windows Media Player?

Had a nice little surprise today after getting a brand new computer, I had no audio available in Windows Media Player. This is basically a result of the machine not having the correct codecs – you’d think Microsoft would be smart enough to include this stuff by default, but alas no. Even after upgrading to WMP11 I still had no luck.

After a bit of research, I discovered if you have this problem, you likely need the AC3 codec. Its dead easy to install – just go here, get the installer and install and restart Windows Media Player.

Funny Pic