Feb 3 09

Create an Unattended Windows XP Install

by Dave

http://unattended.msfn.org/

Jan 19 09

Remember HEADERS when sending mail from a site.

by Dave

Generally speaking, the e-mail will go to junk because of incomplete and missing headers. Many spam filters pick these “lack of headers” as a commonality between all those e-mails for all those enlargement pills and pirated software we’ve all been after.

Your mail code is slightly incorrect though, generally speaking the usage for mail is:

mail(“To”,”Subject”,”Message”,”Headers”)

Which could explain why it went to junk the first time. Therefore you would have something like this established:

$headers = “MIME-Version: 1.0\r\n”;
$headers .= “Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1\r\n”; // Important to change if you ever add attachments
$headers .= “From: “.$email_address.”\r\n”;
$headers .= “Reply-To: “.$email_address.”\r\n”;
$headers .= “X-Mailer: PHP/”.phpversion().”\r\n”;

I’m sure you can work out the rest. Word of warning though, your e-mail address may be blacklisted as “junk” if you didn’t set the “from” value. There are many more headers that you may want to look up RFC2821 or some explanation on various headers.

Jan 8 09

Vigorous Writing

by Dave

Learn the art of vigorous writing.

http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk5.html

Jan 7 09

Free Virtualisation – Virtualbox.org

by Dave

The best free virtualisation software available would have to be VirtualBox.

You can download this from http://www.virtualbox.com

Oct 20 08

Windows XP Activation Backup/Restore

by Dave

When you activate Windows XP, Microsoft stores the data in the Windows Product Activation database files wpa.dbl and Wpa.bak in the folder %systemroot%\system32. If you change the motherboard or make significant hardware changes, XP will require you to reactive. But if you plan to reinstall XP on the same hardware, you can back up the activation status and then restore it after you reinstall and avoid the activation process. You can backup the Windows Product Activation database files to diskette. They are very small. A directory listing from my XP Pro workstation:

C:\WINDOWS\system32>dir wp*
Volume in drive C has no label.
Volume Serial Number is 8447-0571

Directory of C:\WINDOWS\system32

10/24/2001 08:28 PM 12,584 wpa.bak
01/14/2002 09:05 AM 12,642 wpa.dbl

After you reinstall XP, to restore the Windows Product Activation database files:

1) Start XP to Minimal Safe mode
2) Change directory to the \%systemroot%\system32 folder
3) Rename the newly created wpa.dbl to wpa.nonactivated and wpa.bak, if it exists, to wpabak.nonactivated.
4) Copy your backed up wpa.dbl and wpb.bak files to the system32 folder 5) Reboot

This should work if you want to avoid activating XP after a reinstall or restore on the same or very similar hardware. It will not work if the hardware is significantly different from that in place when the Windows Product Activation database files were created. This is not a hack to avoid activating installations.

Oct 16 08

CrossSlide – A jQuery plugin to create pan and cross-fade animations

by Dave

http://www.gruppo4.com/~tobia/cross-slide.shtml

Sep 17 08

How to Run Linux in Windows Using VMWare

by Dave

http://www.lifehack.org/articles/technology/beginners-guide-run-linux-like-any-other-program-in-windows.html 

Sep 17 08

Learn Linux Beginner

by Dave

http://linuxreviews.org/beginner/

Sep 3 08

99 Designs – Start a competition, have people compete!

by Dave

Great for getting logo designs etc.

http://www.99designs.com

Aug 25 08

Tutorials to read and learn

by Dave

Coding Style – http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/PHP-Coding-Style.html

MVC – http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/Model-View-Controller-MVC.html

OOP – http://www.phpro.org/tutorials/Object-Oriented-Programming-with-PHP.html