Protecting Files Against Hotlinking with PHP, Lighttpd, Apache & X-Sendfile

I recently had to lock down some important files that first required some level of authentication. The problem was the only way to guard against hotlinking or direct access to these files was to pipe the data through php after an Auth check. Using fread,... [+]

Stay Out CakePHP Component

Stay Out CakePHP Component

I have recently been developing a new website which has found me in the position of writing a lot of session handling code. I came across the concept of logged out all sessions across multiple instances, and out came this CakePHP session flushing component stay... [+]

Picking up where strtotime() left off

I was working on a project where dates were being calculated (sort of) based on user input. For example the user was able to type in “Next Saturday” or the “Second Sunday of the Month”. This wouldn’t really be sortable, as strtotime doesn’t exactly allow... [+]

jQuery – Clear Default Input Values Once

I like to have default values in my text input fields. However it is an annoying user experience to have to manually clear the value out and then enter in the value. Instead I thought I would write a simple script that would work site... [+]

CakePHP Rainbow Table Protection Behaviour

So after looking over some security techniques and discovering the quite interestingly named Rainbow table password cracking mechanism I decided to look into a way around this table password cracker. The default way that CakePHP hashes its passwords into the database is via hashing from... [+]

Accelerated Learning through Pressure

So my co-worker left 2 weeks ago to have a 3 month journey across Australia. This means that I am now in charge of all the web development/projects for our business. For one developer, the amount of “active” (bugs/todos) projects we have open for one... [+]

CakePHP & Caching Until a Future Post

We had implemented a caching system for all find, pagination and pagination count methods with CakePHP. You can find a post on this here. The cache was expiring after every hour, however we failed to realise something. Our CMS system that we built allows posts... [+]

Pagination Caching With CakePHP

Pagination Caching With CakePHP

A site i was working with was using pagination quite extensively with lots of records and associations. This was producing unnecessary high load on the database and wait times on the production site. Caching had to be done. Unlike normal returned data from finds etc. Paginated... [+]

How to downgrade iPhone 3.1.3 to 3.1.2 & Jailbreak

If you would like to jailbreak your iphone, ipod or ipad up to 3.2 you should be using the new non-teathered jailbreak from spirit: http://spiritjb.com/ So I accidentally upgraded my iPhone to 3.1.3, bad news bears. I lost my jailbreak with no look of getting it back,... [+]

Fixing Vi and Arrows in Insert Mode

Recently I moved one of my sites onto another server, different installation. I noticed when i was working in Vi in insert mode my arrow keys would insert their values instead of navigating around the text. To fix this: Make a new file in your... [+]

The Year of 2009

The Year of 2009

It’s been quite a turbulent year this year. Kicking it off it began with a temperature of -35 on New Years day, lots of cleaning up from the celebrations the night before but more holiday fun ahead in Canada. Travelled through Western Canada with my... [+]

How to use FileMerge with Git as a Diff Tool on OSX

As I’m migrating from Subversion brainwaves I’ve been slowly adapting my workflow into Git’s. Problem was i was finding it hard to double check changes in my working folder to that of what was previously committed. In other words I missed the love of FileMerge.... [+]

JotPad - TextMate Theme

JotPad – TextMate Theme

Recently i started playing with TextMate because of all the hype and the billions of shortcuts it has. This was a big shift from the editor Coda.app on the Mac. Immediately i was taken by the ability to have themes! So i decided to create... [+]

Installing Ruby on Rails + MySQL + Imagemagick + Nginx + Passenger With Macports OSX

This was one epic battle for me when i tried to get rails going with Lighttpd. But with that said, i have been spending quite sometime on just getting my development environment up and running on an environment similar to how i would deploy the... [+]

What's Been Doing?

What’s Been Doing?

Well it’s been a long time since I’ve posted pretty much anything on my pages of wisdom here. Which pretty much indicates that I’ve been busy. Very busy, and loving it. I’ve been buried in books and code. My previous employer got me back off... [+]