Blog

  • SATs

    Ah SATs. My daughter it taking hers in a couple of months – these are the Year 6 SATs that have been so bemoaned by the public in the past.

    But what are they good for?

    Well, when I was at the same age, there were frequent “tests” during the year and the teacher was expected to know how well each pupil was doing. That was all that was needed. Now we have the SATs, which determine school-wide results, teachers pay, etc, etc. And for this reason my daughter, along with everyone else in her year, is being put under intense pressure by the school to do well. And that stinks

    And here’s the best bit… she’s currently being expected (with a book for parents to sign) to do an hour of revision each school night. And 3 hours per day at the weekend. That’s right – 11 hours of revision a week. And the exam isn’t until May.

    All of this is, naturally, because the government believe in being to prove everything with statistics (which they’ll just manipulate how they want anyway) and tables. Personally, I’d be happy not knowing all this if it meant less pressure was applied to the children.

  • New version of +Extract launched!

    +Extract is a great piece of software that will extract free-to-air programmes from a Sky HD to your PC.

    The author wasn’t planning on any further releases but changed his mind so that it could support drives over 500GB in size (which is possible, thanks to Copy+). And, whilst he was at it, he fixed some bugs, made some performance enhancements and gave the GUI a spruce-up.

    Not bad for free software… but please donate if you like it.

  • Changing the USB polling rate

    As standard, Windows will poll USB devices once every 1ms. However, this can cause the issue of laptops unable to enter the C3 processor power-saving state. By increasing the USB polling interval from 1ms to 5ms the processor can enter a C3 power-saving state during its inactivity.

    There are also suggestions that decreasing the polling rate will also save energy generally. I’m not sure.

    But, anyway, until I hear that all of this is some kind of urban myth, I’m willing to give it a try.

    Here’s a couple of scripts (save them with .reg extensions and run them as required) that I rattled off to activate the “idle” (5ms) and also to return to “normal” (1ms)…

    Activate Idle Polling Interval…

    REGEDIT4 
    
    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlClass 
    {36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}000] 
    "IdleEnable"=dword:00000001

    Deactivate Idle Polling Interval…

    REGEDIT4 
    
    [HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESystemCurrentControlSetControlClass 
    {36FC9E60-C465-11CF-8056-444553540000}000]
    "IdleEnable"=-

    Or download them from here.

  • Optimize and Backup your MySQL databases

    At the moment I’m juggling 3 MySQL databases. It could very easily be more.

    I usually use phpMyAdmin for backing them up but restrictions on port forwarding has meant I can’t do this whilst at work (and I have a tendency to forget if I leave it until the evening at home). So, I wrote myself a script to do this. And optimize the tables as well.

    An extract of the script is below… mine allows me to choose the database and compression type and then populates the appropriate database fields (username, password, etc) but for generic usage purposes, the script below should be fine for other people to use and build upon.

    if ($compression=="None") {$comp_cmd=""; $comp_ext="sql";}
    if ($compression=="Gzip") {$comp_cmd=" | gzip"; $comp_ext="gzip";}
    if ($compression=="Zip") {$comp_cmd=" | zip"; $comp_ext="zip";}
    
    mysql_connect($host,$user,$password);
    mysql_select_db($database);
    $query="SHOW TABLE STATUS FROM ".$database;
    $result=mysql_query($query);
    $num=mysql_numrows($result);
    $compressed=0;
    $i=0;
    while ($i < $num) {
       $table=mysql_result($result,$i,"Name");
       $gain=mysql_result($result,$i,"Data_free");
       if ($gain!=0) {
           if ($compressed==0) {echo "<br/>Compressing tables...<br/><br/>n";}
           echo "Table ".$table." - ".$gain." bytes gained<br>n";
           $query="OPTIMIZE TABLE ".$table;
           $optimise=mysql_query($query);
           $compressed=$compressed+$gain;
       }
       $i++;
    }
    if ($compressed!=0) {
       echo "<br/>".$compressed." bytes gained in total<br/>";
    } else {
       echo "<br/>No tables were optimised.<br/>";
    }
    $backupFile = "backup/".$name."_".date("Ymd").'.'.$comp_ext;
    $command = "mysqldump --opt --extended-insert --complete-insert --hex-blob
    --host=".$host." --user=".$user." --password='".$password."' ".$database.
    $comp_cmd." > $backupFile";
    exec($command, $ret_arr, $ret_code);
    if ($ret_code==0) {
       echo "<br/>Database backed up: <a href="".$backupFile."">download</a>.n";
    } else {
       echo "<br/>The database could not be backed up - the return code was ".
    $ret_code.".n";
    };

    Before running the above, you need to populate the following fields…

    $database – your MySQL database
    $user – your MySQL username
    $password – your MySQL password
    $host – your MySQL host name
    $name – used to name your backup
    $compression – this is the type of compression you wish to apply and should be either None, Zip or Gzip.

    When run any tables that require optimizing will be, well, optimized and the details output. Finally a backup is made of the database and a link displayed so that you can download it.

    Downloads are placed in a folder named /download, so make sure you add write permissions for this folder. The filename will be xxx_yymmdd, where xxx is the name you specified in $name and yymmdd is the date. Obviously the extension will be based on the type of compression you requested.

    Whilst trying to write this code I came across various scripts and resources which did something similar but often didn’t work (grrr) for one reason or another. In particular, often the backup files are create empty if you have the MySQLdump parameters wrong. One thing you might spot that I’ve worked around – and here’s my tip for the day – is that I’ve placed single quotes around the password. This was because one of my passwords had an ampersand in it and, well, MySQLdump doesn’t like it.

    Enjoy, play and let me know how you get on!

  • Getting Help for my WordPress Plugins

    Since I’ve started writing WordPress plugins, I’ve had a few questions about them.

    These I don’t mind at all and I’m very happy to answer them. However, I’m often limited as to how much help I can give by what details I’m actually sent.

    So, to help out, I’ve immediately implemented an attachment feature on the contact page so that you can send me examples of you code – this attachment feature only allows limited size files and only certain extensions. For code, none of these should cause an issue.

    Let’s assume you’ve tried one of my plugins and it’s not working properly. In that case I’d need the following…

    1. What’s actually happening when you try it? Is any output appearing? Are there any error messages?
    2. Please send me a copy of the file in which you’ve added my code. In most cases this will be sidebar.php.
    3. Lastly, let me know the URL of the page where it’s going wrong, assuming you’ve not turned off the plugin or removed the offending code.

    Send me this and there’s a good chance the return email from myself will have the answer in it!