Dean Vaughan

XBMC Keymap for a Diamond RC118N MCE Remote

The Diamond RC118N is not a good remote to choose. I messed with this for a while without much luck. Most of the buttons work out of the box. The power buttons, those in the first row (Pictures, Radio, ect), the Back button and the row under mute (Rec TV, Guide, ect) do not work. There is no menu button. The pause button doesn't work, but you can get around that by pressing the play button.

This config below will get your ParentDir function working via the 'Back' button and the ContextMenu via * or #.

This needs to go into the global keyboard section of keymap.xml:

<code>
<key id="61606">ParentDir</key>
<key id="61600">ContextMenu</key>
</code>

Posted in Random | 2 Comments »

Excel Tip of the Day!

If you need to put a + (plus, positive) or - (minus, negative) sign in an Excel field, Excel tries to start building a formula. This is cool if you actually want to make a formula, not so much when all you want is the + or -.

You can put an ' (apostrophe) in front of the + or -, like this '- or '+. The ' is Excel's comment character. The ' will not be displayed. The + or - will be.

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How to save a PHP object to a database

This is an example from a class that deals with user accounts.

 
  function save() {
    if(!$this->id) {
 
### DUPE PREVENTION
      $sql = "SELECT id FROM users WHERE username = '" . $this->username . "' LIMIT 1";
      $db2 = mysql_query($sql);
      $db3 = mysql_fetch_array($db2);
      if($db3['id']) {
        return(0);
      }
 
### INSERT AND GET THE NEW ID
      $sql = "INSERT INTO users(`name`, `username`) " .
                  "VALUES('" . $this->name . "', '" . $this->username . "')";
      mysql_query($sql);
 
      $sql = "SELECT id FROM users WHERE name = '" . $this->name . "' " .
             "AND username = '" . $this->username . "' ORDER by username DESC LIMIT 1";
      $db2 = mysql_query($sql);
      $db3 = mysql_fetch_array($db2);
      $this->id = $db3['id'];
 
    }
 
    $to_set = '';
 
    foreach($this as $key => $value) {
      if($key == 'id') {
        continue;
      }
 
      if($key != -1) {
        if($to_set) {
          $to_set .= ', ';
        }
 
        if(is_array($value)) {
          $value = serialize($value);
        }
 
        $to_set .= "$key = '" . mysql_real_escape_string($value) . "'";
      }
    }
 

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PHP: Create a HTML drop down/select box from a database

Here is a function I use all of the time. It takes the contents of a mySQL table and creates an HTML select box (I call them drop downs) from it.

 
# $table: The mySQL table to use.
# $column: The column in $table to display
# $name: The HTML name of the drop down
# $selected: The value that the drop down defaults to.
# $show_any: If you have a row in the table where the $column equals
                    00_Any it will be displayed.
#                  This is useful for having an Any or All value.
# $distinct: Only show DISTINCT() $column
function dropdown_db($table, $column, $name, $selected,
                              $show_any = 1, $distinct = 0) { 
 
  $dropdown = "
<select id=\"$name\" name=\"$name\">\n"; 
 
  $any_sql = '';
  if(!$show_any) {
    $any_sql = " WHERE $column <> '00_Any' ";
  } 
 
  $select = $column;
  if($distinct) {
    $select = "DISTINCT($column)";
  } 
 
  $from_db = "SELECT $select FROM $table $any_sql ORDER by $column";
  $from_db2 = mysql_query($from_db) ;
  while($from_db3=mysql_fetch_array($from_db2, MYSQL_ASSOC)) { 
 
    $value = $from_db3["$column"]; 
 
    $pretty_db = $value;
    $pretty_db = str_replace('00_', '', $pretty_db);
    $pretty_db = str_replace('_', ' ', $pretty_db); 
 
    $SELECTED = '';
    if($value == $selected) {
        $SELECTED = ' SELECTED';
    } 
 
    $dropdown .= "
<option value=\"$value\"$SELECTED>$pretty_db</option>
 
\n";
  } 
 
  $dropdown .= "</select>
 
\n"; 
 
  return($dropdown);
}
 

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How to Cheat at Cafe World

Cafe World is a time management game that is all the rage on Facebook. I use the term loosely because it is not much of a game in my opinion. You click some things for a minute or two then wait a day. You do this over and over again and it is supposed to be fun.

The game's logic appears to be almost entirely in the client and the server will accept any old data. For fun and profit I used Cheat Engine to speed time up in the game so my dishes cooked 20x faster than normal.

Here is how I did it.

1. Load up Cafe World
2. Start Cheat Engine
3. Click Search
4. Find Firefox and click it.
5. Click open.
6. Check Enable Speed Hack
7. Set the Speed to 20. Any lower is too slow, any higher and it won't work.
8. Click Apply.
9. Make the longest taking highest level dishes you can.
10. Repeat 9 until you get tired.
11. Make your fiance cry because you just surpassed her months of work in a week.

A note about the speed setting. It may seem like a good idea to crank that sucker up to 500, but you quickly lose connection with the server and the game reloads. Once the game reloads the time left on your dishes resets to what they should be.

Another note... this method should work on any of the time based games on FB. Good times.

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OpenSwan to Cisco 7XXX Config

Oh hey, there! What's up? This was a week long project that should have been twenty minutes at most.

I hate VPNs.  Call me odd, but I think the protocols should have the encryption built in.  If you need it use it, if not, don't.

net-to-net.conf:

conn net-to-net
        type=           tunnel
        authby=         secret
        left=           MY PUBLIC IP
        leftnexthop=    MY DEFAULT GATEWAY
        leftsubnet=     MY PUBLIC IP/32
        right=          REMOTE PUBLIC IP
        rightsubnet=    REMOTE PRIVATE IP/32
        keyexchange=    ike
        pfs=            no
        auto=           start
        ike=3des-md5-modp1024,3des-md5-modp1536
        esp=3des-md5

net-to-net.secrets:

MY PUBLIC IP REMOTE PUBLIC IP: PSK "password"

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