Must look at this software sometime: http://demo.sheddtech.com/ssm_1/index.php Description: SSM is a full-featured application which includes many powerful tools to allow you to easily add a complete Knowledge Base along with a robust support request or “trouble ticket” management system to your existing support services. Through SSM, users will be able to easily manage these effective systems and reduce the time and effort required in providing technical support.

function BSTCheck() { $ThisYear = (date(“Y”)); $MarStartDate = ($ThisYear.”-03-25″); $OctStartDate = ($ThisYear.”-10-25″); $MarEndDate = ($ThisYear.”-03-31″); $OctEndDate = ($ThisYear.”-10-31″); //work out the Unix timestamp for 1:00am GMT on the last Sunday of March, when BST starts while ($MarStartDate <= $MarEndDate) { $day = date(“l”, strtotime($MarStartDate)); if ($day == “Sunday”) $BSTStartDate = ($MarStartDate); $MarStartDate++; } $BSTStartDate = (date(“U”, strtotime($BSTStartDate))+(60*60)); //work out the Unix timestamp for 1:00am GMT on the last Sunday of October, when BST ends while ($OctStartDate <= $OctEndDate) { $day = date(“l”, strtotime($OctStartDate)); if ($day == “Sunday”) $BSTEndDate = ($OctStartDate); $OctStartDate++; } $BSTEndDate = (date(“U”, strtotime($BSTEndDate))+(60*60)); //Check to see if we are now in BST $now = mktime(); return (($now >= $BSTStartDate) && ($now <= $BSTEndDate)) ? TRUE : FALSE;… Continue reading »

A new European directive could put software writers at a serious risk of legal action! If the Dutch govenment get their own way at the end of their presidency over the European parliament, they will push through controversial law that the European Parliament has rejected, has little support from national governments and will leave millions of Europeans facing the possibility of court cases against them. Sadly, it’s getting little attention because it only really affect programmers: They want to patent computer programers. Bill Thompson recently said: After all, how much fuss can you generate about the Directive on the Patentability of Computer-Implemented Inventions, and the way it amends Article 52 of the 1973 European Patent Convention? This could quite literally… Continue reading »

Someone sent me this a while back and I thought it was very good – posting here so others can benefit! Every programmer has to have something to program, whether it’s work related, hobby related, for a friend, or even just a quick script for an automation. We will discuss hobby pro-gramming. When sitting at home and pondering upon ideas to program you sometimes get stumped and feel halted. This is a term in the programming world called “coders block”, yes… exactly like a “writers block”. I can speak from experience and from other documentation on steps to overcome this block, I will try and combine the both. The first thing to do is get focused, you don’t want to… Continue reading »

After MySQLFront repeatedly crashing on me – it was time to look for another MySQL frontend…. I’d downloaded and installed MySQL Control Center and found it refreshingly useful.. Although I’m not disappointed to find I can’t export any tables….. So, after reading this post at the MySQL bugs reporter I’ve just installed MySQL Adminstrator which looks very nice!!! Along with MySQL Query Browser (Download here) but the export functions available in this are only CSV, XML, HTML or XLS!!!! Looks like it’s back phpMyAdmin for now for exporting data. I now seem to have more MySQL programs installed than is entirely necessary but what the hell, if one goes wrong at least I’ve got a backup!!!!

For some unknown reason I decided to install MySQL 4.1 rather than an older version which is on my server… But none of my PHP scripts would connect to it… Resulting in the following error: Client does not support authentication protocol requested by server; consider upgrading MySQL client What the hell does that mean!?!? A little digging on the MySQL website produces the following piece of useful information: The password hashing mechanism was updated in MySQL 4.1 to provide better security and to reduce the risk of passwords being intercepted. However, this new mechanism is understood only by the 4.1 server and 4.1 clients, which can result in some compatibility problems. A 4.1 client can connect to a pre-4.1 server,… Continue reading »