http://www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner Occasional articles about our "back burner" projects, and handy technical tips Sun, 01 Jun 2008 16:08:48 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en I wouldn't say I was a gadget freak, but some gadgets do appeal to me. Nor am I a fan of listening to music on the move; I originally got an MP3 player to listen to audio books and podcasts while out walking. My first was a cigarette-lighter sized Creative ... http://www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner/2008/06/01/mp3-players-for-the-over-40s/ The eee now spends most of its time being used as a convenient way to play music through the stereo. This means it needs to mount the shared directory on the server downstairs that contains all the music. This caused a few problems initially because Amarok doesn't seem to like ... http://www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner/2008/05/25/amarok-and-network-shares-on-the-eee-pc/ This is one of those things I can never remember how to do when I need to do it. I don't know why, it's really quite simple: SELECT emailaddress, firstname, lastname, COUNT(emailaddress) FROM customers GROUP BY emailaddress HAVING COUNT(emailaddress) > 1 http://www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner/2008/04/15/sql-query-to-find-duplicate-rows/ The goal for students on the intermediate PHP and MySQL course that I'm running for IWA/HWG is to create a working shopping cart. The course starts in only three days, and I decided I'd better walk the walk and prove I could do it. So I have quickly mocked ... http://www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner/2008/02/29/chocs-to-go-is-here/ Why doesn't SQL Server come with a built-in method for generating SQL dump files so you can easily port your data to another database? Microsoft in its own little walled garden I suppose; while the facilities in Enterprise Manager for exporting to Excel, Access, ODBC, CSV etc. can be very ... http://www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner/2008/01/24/another-handy-sql-server-utility/ Since 1999 I've been teaching online for the Open University. It may not pay brilliantly, but it's regular income and I really enjoy doing it; OU students often overcome major barriers to achieve a qualification they missed out on earlier in life, for whatever reason, so they can be very ... http://www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner/2008/01/24/intermediate-php-and-mysql-course/ On a trip to the UK just after Christmas I succumbed to temptation and paid a visit to Toys R Us. Minutes later I walked out with this: Then I headed straight for my hotel, and once in my room I could barely wait to unpack it. I'd heard it was ... http://www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner/2008/01/24/my-tiny-new-toy/ We built Corbières Web almost exactly ten years ago, when we first moved to France. The primary aim was to have a site we could put in the portfolio of our budding web development company. We had a wonderful time travelling around the area taking hundreds of photos and discovering ... http://www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner/2007/12/21/another-new-look/ It's always a real headache manipulating dates between PHP and MySQL, because PHP's date functions assume Unix timestamps, while MySQL has its own internal date format. They both have excellent built-in functions for handling dates, but they are fundamentally incompatible. I've torn my hair out before now trying to manipulate ... http://www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner/2007/11/06/date-handling-in-php-and-mysql/ About the only reason I ever boot into Windows on the spare PC nowadays is because I need to use Enterprise Manager or Query Analyser to manage a SQL Server database. Today it was inconvenient to reboot, because I was in the middle of doing a lot of printing. So ... http://www.archetype-it.com/thebackburner/2007/10/10/sqsh/