Funny that, you can be working away at the office and notice something that sparks your interest but there’s no time to look into it.
I noticed earlier today that there was quite a bit of interest in the Canadian Dollar but it only became apparent later why when I searched for Canada! Thanks Alan for the visitors! 🙂
Author Archives: Donncha
vfat (Very Fat?) Linux
This article is a good read if you access Windows/DOS drives from Linux. The author explains how to access those drives, as well as some of the restrictions and problems when using vfat drives.
NTFS is also an option of course, but as Linux only has read-only access to that, vfat is a better solution if you want to share files between the two operating systems. Pity it’s so slow and has so many restrictions. 🙁
There’s also a warning contained within: if you’re using a Linux 2.4 kernel, be wary if you have vfat partitions over 130GB in size. You will lose data. This problem was solved in the now widely available 2.6 kernel.
Hell Froze Over – GAA to debate Rule 42
No link yet to more news, but I just heard on TodayFM that the GAA will debate Rule 42, the rule that bans “foreign sports” from being played in Croke Park, and other GAA property.
Finally, it’s happening. If it’s deleted I’m sure the Devil will build a snowman to celebrate!
Later… RTE has more details now.
Validate Email Address in PHP
It’s a common task but one that I haven’t looked at in as much detail as this devshed article. There’s a few bugs in the code, and a function was posted to the comments that’s all over the place.. here’s the same PHP function, cleaned up, to verify an email address. Note that it won’t work in Windows as-is because “checkdnsrr()” isn’t available on Windows platforms. (Remove the \ characters from before the ” characters surrounding the regex.. WordPress adds them when I post this. *grrr*)
function checkEmail($email)
{
// checks proper syntax
if( !preg_match( "/^([a-zA-Z0-9])+([a-zA-Z0-9\._-])*@([a-zA-Z0-9_-])+([a-zA-Z0-9\._-]+)+$/", $email))
{
return false;
}
// gets domain name
list($username,$domain)=split('@',$email);
// checks for if MX records in the DNS
$mxhosts = array();
if(!getmxrr($domain, $mxhosts))
{
// no mx records, ok to check domain
if (!fsockopen($domain,25,$errno,$errstr,30))
{
return false;
}
else
{
return true;
}
}
else
{
// mx records found
foreach ($mxhosts as $host)
{
if (fsockopen($host,25,$errno,$errstr,30))
{
return true;
}
}
return false;
}
}
At The End Of The Day
Yesterday was a glorious day. It was one of those rare days when the sun shone, and blue skies were the rule. It finished with this lovely sunset as I drove home.
So of course I had to stop and risk life and limb by running onto a narrow bridge while rush hour traffic edged past carefully. I think it was worth the trouble, don’t you?
Yahoo! to locate European HQ in Dublin
Yahoo! is expanding it’s presence in Ireland!
Posh and friends strip for charity
Posh and friends strip for charity
A new book will feature photos of Sarah Ferguson, Paris Hilton, Kate Moss and Geri Halliwell and it’s in aid of the Elton John Aids Foundation.
Victoria Beckham has been photographed naked – aside from a piece of Cartier jewellery and a pair of Jimmy Choo shoes – for charity.
Run, run, run away!!!!
WordPress 1.5 is out. WPMU release to follow
WordPress 1.5 is available now from the download page!
If you’re using the last snapshot of WordPress MU then you’re using a very similar version, but I’ll have another snapshot out soon with the official 1.5 code!
Congrats to the WP developers who put so much effort into this release!
All About the GoogleBot
I had cause to research search engine bots yesterday and I came across a few nuggets:
Multiple Browsers URL Spoofing Security Issue
This recently publicised problem with almost all browsers (except IE) occurs when “domain names with certain international characters” look like common domain names. It’s not a new issue however, being a well known problem for several years.
You can test your own browser by following this link – does the url say http://www.paypal.com/?
For Firefox users there’s Spoof Stick which “prominently displays only the most relevant domain information”. It’s not foolproof though, and Secunia recommends that users:
Don’t follow links from untrusted sources.
Manually type the URL in the address bar.
Later… Richard Eibrand has the scoop in an ILUG post. Here’s how to disable this feature in Firefox:
- Visit about:config
- Search for “idn” in the search box.
- By default it’ll be “true”, but double click on it to set it to false.
- You don’t need to restart your browser, just go to the test page to see if it works. It did for me!
As a side note, Fuzzbucket says that IDN isn’t used much so it might be worth while having it disabled by default!
Later Still… That’s only a temporary fix as it’s reset the next time you restart Firefox. Here’s a more permanent fix using an extension that warns of IDN characters – Japanese and other sites that use those characters will still work!