Oct200831

Another spammer – 65.94.2.210

Another spammer caught in action.

Some others that have come up:

  • 94.102.60.43
  • 94.102.60.77
  • 94.102.60.39
Oct200827

[Drupal] Deleting node content of a certain type in bulk

On occasions you may need to bulk delete all nodes of a certain type.

The following code requires 2 variables, the amount of rows to delete each time and the content type.

$amount = 100;
$type = 'node_type';
$result = db_query("SELECT nid FROM {node} WHERE type = '%s' LIMIT %d", $type, $amount);
if (db_num_rows($result) && user_access('administer nodes')) {
  $n = 0;
  while ($data = db_fetch_object($result)) {
    set_time_limit(5);
    node_delete($data->nid);
    $n++;
  }
  if ($n == $amount) {
    drupal_goto($_GET['q']);
  }
}else {
  drupal_set_message(t('No entries found for node type @type, or you do not have permission to modify nodes.', array('@type' => $type)));
}

This will go through all the nodes of the type you define and delete the node. Once finished doing the batch, the page is then redirected back to the same page to delete another batch.

This can be placed in a node with an Input format of PHP code or through a module.

function modulename_menu($may_cache) {
  $items = array();
  if (!$may_cache) {
    $items[] = array(
      'path' => 'this/is/the/path',
      'callback' => 'modulename_delete',
      'access' => user_access('administer nodes'),
      'title' => t('Delete Nodes'),
    );
  }
  return $items;
}

Then wrap the above deletion code into a function such as:

function modulename_delete($type = 'node_type', $limit = 100) { }

Then you can navigate to the path in the hook_menu function and start the batch deletion. To delete other types of nodes, add the content type to the end of the url. For events it would be:

http://www.domain.com/this/is/the/path/event

Depending on what modules you have enabled, this can take a long time as the node_delete function calls a module_invoke function for any module to interact with it. If you have a lot of modules this will take a long time.

Alternatively you can download and install the Delete all module which serves the same function.

Oct200826

Built my first HTPC (Home Theatre Personal Computer)

The idea of an HTPC is to have a PC that can fit in with your amplifier/receiver underneath your TV which will act as a DVD player but with more features.

Hardware wise it is identical to a normal PC with CPU, RAM, motherboard etc etc but generally put in to more stylish cases specially built to fit in most TV stands.

Case

I opted for an Antec Fusion Black HTPC case which is a fairly nice case, although it can be seen as quite costly at around £100 without a PSU. The case is steal with an aluminium front but even so it doesn’t weigh alot. There is space for 2 hard drives which are secured with rubber grommets to stop vibration and 2 5.25″ slots with one of these slots being used for the LCD display that comes built with the case, but can be taken out. The case has a few ventilation holes around to keep components cool but only has 2 120mm fans which are located on the side of the case near where the CPU will be. Both of these fans are Antec Tri-Cools and as such have the 3 way setting for fan speed, low, medium, high. I have mine set to low which gives off a little bit of noise and gives more than adequate cooling for the rest of the components.

Motherboard

After reading many good reviews I bought the Gigabyte GA-MA78GM-S2H AMD 780G Micro-ATX. The GA-MA78GM-S2H uses the AMD 780G chipset which has onboard audio and graphics. The onboard audio is a Realtek chip with your standard analogue in and outs but also has a digital out. The onboard graphics is called the Radeon HD 3200 which is said to be equal in performance to the Radeon HD 3450. The HD 3200 has AVIVO and allows for full hardware acceleration if the software supports it. The HD 3200 gives you VGA, DVI and HDMI which also carries sound. The motherboard also has a feature called Hybrid Graphics Technology. This allows you to put in another graphics card in to the PCI-e 2.0 slot which will be used in a crossfire like situation although AMD refuses to call it crossfire due to the performance levels not being the same. Unfortunately you can just shove any card in there and get this performance. It is obviously limited to AMD/ATi cards only and even then it will only use the power equivalent to the onboard graphics. In this case the best card to put in would be the HD 3450.

CPU

Keeping to an all AMD affair, I got the AMD Athlon X2 4850e which is a low power CPU said to consume only 45W. This also reduces heat which is a top priority in an HTPC as it means you don’t need a noisy fan on it, and this CPU is more than capable of processing any HD media or x264 rips.

RAM

RAM isn’t used that much in an HTPC compared to a gaming PC so I just got 2GB (2x 1GB sticks) of Corsair DDR2 XMS2 PC2-6400C5 TwinX. Of course you can easily change this to 4GB if you want.

PSU

As I was happy with my current Corsair PSU in my gaming PC I chose to keep my loyalty and got the Corsair CX400W which is more than capable of powering the HTPC with room to spare if I ever wanted to add a new sound card or new graphics card.

Hard drive

Being a Samsung fan due to the low noise from their Spinpoint harddrives, I bought another Samsung SpinPoint F1 500GB to join my growing collection of them. This drive isn’t particularly slow, but obviously won’t keep up with a Western Digital Raptor but is a hell of a lot quieter. This only used up 1 slot, so I still have another slot spare to add another drive in the future if I wanted to.

DVD Drive

Originally I was just going to buy a £20 DVD drive. But then I saw the LG GGC-H20L Blu-Ray Reader & HD-DVD ROM. For only £45 more I now have the ability to play Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. Although HD-DVD has been beaten by Blu-Ray there is still a lot of HD-DVD stock out there with stores trying to get rid of it. So when you have the choice of getting HD films for as little as £3 it seemed obvious to get a dual player. The only thing I forgot to check about this drive before purchasing was the noise, but I was gladly surprised with in once it was installed. Although not quiet, it wasn’t too noticeable, so when you have a film on you are unlikely to hear it.

Software

At the moment, I don’t have any dedicated software for my HTPC but I have got Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit to install, then I can test with further software to expand the HTPC to be the optimum it can be.

Oct200825

AVG and OpenDNS bring up some bad suggestions on searches

On a computer with IE7 and the AVG toolbar I tried to go to mail.google.co.uk, which it turns out doesn’t exist. So as no DNS record is found, the address is sent off to Yahoo. AVGs partner, then it gives some suggested results of what I may be looking for, but the results it gave certainly weren’t child friendly.

My first thoughts, were that, that was very wrong from Yahoo. So I tried it on another PC with Chrome and had been set up to use OpenDNS as the ISP’s DNS kept going down and having problems.

Quite clearly not a one off on the AVG results. The fact that they are so similar, either AVG toolbar uses Google for the search recommendations and Yahoo for the actual search feature or some SEO sites are spamming the keywords and getting some recommended words to the top of all search engines.

Either way it is inappropriate and you wouldn’t expect this, least of all when searching for something to do with Google itself. Perhaps they better put a redirect in for mail.google.co.uk to mail.google.com.

Oct200824

[FPSS] Front Page Slideshow for Drupal Update

I have updated my Front Page Slideshow for Drupal module with some new features and some fixes.

New Features:

  • Change language text within Drupal
    Within the admin screen of FPSS you can now add the language text for the slideshow within Drupal which is stored in variables. By default the module has the English text in. If you want the French text, then you will have to open up the french.php file and copy paste each item in to the form and save it.
  • Change javascript location
    Within the admin screen as well as being able to turn off the javascript library and optimize the javascript you can now selected if you want the javascript to be inserted in to the footer of the page rather than the header. This is tested and works on a default Drupal installation of 5.12.

Fixes

  • Optimize JS and Disable JS both work as expected now and any configuration of the 2 settings should work, although some javascript packages may conflict causing problems.
  • Fixed the admin settings access, missing array item in hook_perm.

You can download the fpss for drupal module at the Google Code site and you can view the demo of the Front Page Slideshow for Drupal demo at http://drupal.jamestombs.co.uk.

If you have any problems or find any bugs please submit them on the FPSS for Drupal Issue Queue on the Google Code site. Alternatively leave a comment to this post or email at jtombs1987@gmail.com.

Oct200824

Spam from 93.174.93.89

One of the sites I look after is getting a lot of spam from 93.174.93.89 with messages being posted like below:
comment2, http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/d34w79rvw Clitorus sex site, fgx, http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/d34w254d5 Clitoris sex site, :), http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/d34woxbl0 Clits major size sex, 02056, http://www.ipetitions.com/petit

and
comment4, http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/d34w76t2e Clothed sex movies free, 385, http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/d34w0mtv2 Clothed sex party, :-((, http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/d34wv876u Clothed sex pic free, %P, http://www.ipetitions.com/

The site has both Akismet and Project Honey Pot protecting it and isn’t detected by either.

Add to the ban list.

Other IPs that have been spamming the site alot are:

78.110.175.15
94.102.60.43
94.102.60.77
94.102.60.39

Oct200823

Some people shouldn’t drink alcohol

Video shot from an in car camera from the police in USA.

Oct200819

Ford Mondeo 2007+ Leaking Boot problem fixed

The ongoing problem of leaking boots on the MK4 Ford Mondeo has been successfully fixed by replacing the rear windscreen with the new style rear windscreen which has a rubber catchment around the edge which puts all the water that is held by the boot in to the area at the very top of the boot which then flows down the sides of the boot like it should do.

Please note this only affects the hatchbacks which were made before April 2008.

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