Skip to content

Home

  • in Blog
  • 1 min read

Synergy

I just set up Synergy so that I can use my WinXP laptop keyboard and mouse to slide over onto my multi-head setup at work and control those machines.

I was going to use x2x (which works under cygwin), but it seems to only see the right hand head. A bit of Googling turned up Synergy and, aside from a little bit of a learning curve, it works great.

The trick is to run the server process on the machine that has the physical keyboard and mouse, and run client processes on the machines that you want to incorporate into your virtual multi-monitor setup.

  • in php
  • 1 min read

PDO intro on SitePoint

Well, it's nice to have publicity, but the SitePoint intro by David has a few factoids (and user comments) that are slightly "off", so here are some comments of my own to bolster his post:

  • PDO is Beta now, not alpha (if you're running PHP 5.1b3 that is)
  • Use pdo_drivers() if you want to see what drivers are available. The dl() function is not guaranteed to work in a lot of SAPI.
  • David missed out on my article on PDO for IBM developerWorks, which is a bit more up to date than the OTN article.
  • PDO is all C-based native code, and will, one day in the future, eventually replace the traditional database extensions.
  • PDO is data access abstraction rather than database abstraction. They are not the same thing; data access abstraction is making the way you get at the data the same, whereas database abstraction is making databases look the same. Pretty big difference.

Remember: we're relying on you to get out there and play with PDO to uncover any bugs that might be lurking; it works fine for the test cases we have. One of the rules for good QA is to have people other than the people that built something do the testing; they're sure to use things in ways that the architect didn't consider on the first run. Please try it out and report any bugs/strange behaviour to bugs.php.net--Thank you!

EvilDesk, mini release

I've pushed 0.5.1 tonight; if fixes an uninstallation buglet that could leave you without a taskbar after uninstalling EvilDesk.

The only new feature is being able to select how many workspaces the alt-tab task switcher will cycle through; you can use up to 32, with the default being 4.

Visit the ChangeLog

EvilDesk, Release 5

I've updated EvilDesk yet again this weekend. The biggest new thing is making all the hotkeys (aside from alt-tab) user configurable.

Find out more on the EvilDesk Home Page (I've added a ChangeLog section for your tracking pleasure).

EvilDesk, Release 3

[Update: Release 4 is out]

I've updated my EvilDesk and included the user-definable context menu code I mentioned in the comments of my last post.

I've also created a new home for the project, so that I can group the docs together more easily.

I will continue to publish news about updates here on my blog, so if you're already subscribed here, you needn't do anything more to keep up to date on this project.

EvilDesk, Release 4

I've updated EvilDesk again. Aside from fixing a couple of bugs here and there, it now features built-in support for "Safer" execution of internet facing applications.

Find out more on the EvilDesk Home Page (I've added a ChangeLog section for your tracking pleasure).

  • in php
  • 1 min read

PDO in PHP 5.1 Beta 3

[Update: Beta 3 is out; please report any/all bugs via http://bugs.php.net]

With the impending release of PHP 5.1b3, it's a good time to mention the status of PDO. We've had an excellent round of QA since beta 2, resulting in the following notable items:

  • common core test suite to ensure individual driver conformance
  • MySQL and PostgreSQL drivers now support native prepared statements and bound parameters (when available), for improved performance.
  • OCI and ODBC drivers have been improved.
  • PDOStatement::closeCursor() method has been added, to explicitly free up a database connection if you're done with a result set before you reach the end.
  • Added $db->getAttribute(PDO_ATTR_DRIVER_NAME) to tell you which driver is in use (mostly useful for people writing layers over the top of PDO).
  • Enabled the unix build of PDO_DBLIB, which provides access to Sybase/MSSQL servers via freetds. This driver is not as mature as the others, so feedback is especially welcomed. If you're running on windows, you'll probably have a better experience using PDO_ODBC to talk to SQL Server.
  • There are no unresolved bugs (a couple of feature requests, but no bugs)

Enjoy :)

  • in php
  • 1 min read

Win9x support in PHP

How many people are seriously using Win9x with PHP?

There are quite a few APIs that are either server-only or Win2k and up that PHP would benefit from using. Before we just go ahead and use them (breaking support for Win9x) I thought it would be a good idea to find out how many people this will affect.

So, if you use, or know of someone that uses PHP on Win95, Win98 or WinME, please add a comment here, explaining why, so we can guage how much of an impact bumping the version requirements for PHP would have.

Thanks!

  • in php
  • 1 min read

PDO_MYSQL: now with native prepared statements (mysql 4.1 and up)

I've had a number of people ask me about this feature recently, and now it's here. What took so long? I just didn't have mysql 4.1 installed anywhere, or enough time to set aside to look into it. A patch from Guy Harrison (for multiple rowsets) caught me at just the right time today, and set me up for some hacking.

In CVS (and showing up on snaps soon), the pdo_mysql driver now has support for the following features when compiled against mysql 4.1 or higher:

  • Support for queries returning multiple rowsets, via PDOStatement::nextRowset().
  • Supports "native" sqlstate error codes, for "better" error reporting.
  • Supports native prepared statements and bound parameters.

I'm looking for feedback on these changes; even if you have an older mysql installation, please try the snapshot, as I want to ensure that it continues to build and work fine there (should be fine, but there's nothing better than physically confirming it).

Any problems, then hop along to http://bugs.php.net/ and file a bug report; thanks!

(PS: installing mysql 4.1 on a gentoo box when you only have a 56k modem takes a while)