During my recent macbook pro upgrade, I had a sweet time automatically migrating my entire old macbook to the new one using Migration Assistant. The experience could not have been smoother - all my data and applications were moved without a hitch. Couple apps asked to re-enter serial numbers, but that’s all. However when I...

If you are on the latest version of OS-X Leopard (10.5.6) and Safari (3.2.1) you most probably have encountered the infamous Safari Can Not Keep Cookies problem. You can see from the discussions on Apple.com threads that a lot of people are affected by it, it has been going on for weeks now and there...

J2EE servers (Tomcat, JBoss, you name it) usually run on a port that is higher than 1000. Otherwise they would have to be run as root, which would be a serious security hole. Apache, on the other hand is a time-proven web-server that runs on port 80. Following are quick instructions for how to proxy...

CCK Node Reference is an excellent module that allows creation of complex relationships between content types in Drupal. Combine that with Views2 feature called Relationships and you have one of the most sophisticated information architecture design tools any CMS has ever seen. At least - if you stick to one language. When you are working...

I must admit, I’ve always been skeptical about portlets (or whatever else you happen to be calling the same notion in your technology). I’ve rarely seen a website where I found them a necessity. I do not use, or ever intend to use, iGoogle, because I never go to their homepage - my browser allows...

If you are working on a system with somewhat large number of tables, you probably have wanted to delete a number of tables matching a pattern (dropping all tables is a specific case of this one). You can do that, by creating a very simple stored procedure: mysql> delimiter $$ create procedure drop_tables_like(pattern varchar(255)) begin...

Ok, so you can swear Solr was working just fine on your Drupal website and suddenly it does not! You made sure nobody messed with your install and you do not believe in goblins. What to do? Keep your cool. Help is on its way and let us explain what happened. Apache Solr module uses...

The Right Way is obviously CSS 3.0: rgba(R,G,B,ALPHA), but since only Safari supports CSS 3.0 currently (to the best of my knowledge, but you bet IE does not) the “right way” is out of question. Moving on. You can, also, try using the combined CSS properties:\ filter:alpha(opacity=50);-moz-opacity:.5;opacity:.5; and think to yourself: “OK, I used three...

OK, it’s official: I am in love with a hosting company. I never thought I would ever say something like this. I have tried many hosting companies over the years, some horrible, some overpriced, some barely decent. Never have I ever felt so strong (at least positively) about any of them. SliceHost is an absolute...

I found it very interesting to listen to this Web 2.0 Summit presentation by Jeffrey A. Sorenson and see how Web 2.0 is perceived by Army. It’s a common stereotype that government is always behind as far as new and cool goes, but apparently Army is well aware of Web 2.0, is fully embracing it...

Yum is a standard installation utility for CentOS 5.2. One of the reasons I favor CentOS over other Linux distros is actually because it comes with yum. It is that good! Unfortunately, CentOS 5.2 does not generally include the latest versions of libraries, because it follows conservative path of the RedHat Enterprise. Which is not...

Fantastic news for OpenID: “This is a historic week for OpenID. Google and Microsoft announced the release of code to support OpenID 2.0 across their most important properties. On Monday, Microsoft, announced OpenID 2.0 support for their 460 million users on the LiveID platform. On Wednesday Google said it will be supporting OpenID 2.0 for...

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I finally got around developing a little, nifty Drupal module I’ve been craving for, for a really long while now. The “Edit Block” module adds inline block editing capability to any theme. It’s entirely jQuery-based, hence - no dirty intrusive theming hacks are necessary and is compatible with most properly built Drupal themes. Some nice...

Designing professional reports in Drupal is not trivial. At the same time, Drupal has one of the most advanced query builder tools (Views) that any CMS (open-source or not) has ever dreamed of. There’s clearly a gap. I’ve been cooking some stuff up for a while now and will be putting a presentation together for...