The Hell That Is IT

Show the Top 'N' in a group inside an SQL query

2010-06-25T10:41:00.003+01:00

I've been trying to work out how to produce this for a while as I didnt want PHP to do the calculations and increase the server strain, thankfully after much searching I have come across this very helpful tutorial

http://www.artfulsoftware.com/infotree/queries.php?&bw=1245#104

This allows me to show the top 5 results for each group in my code it looks quite similar to this

SELECT seriesid, comicid, number
FROM (
SELECT
seriesid, comicid, number,
IF( @prev <> seriesid, @rownum := 1, @rownum := @rownum+1 ) AS rank,
@prev := seriesid
FROM comic t
JOIN (SELECT @rownum := NULL, @prev := 0) AS r
ORDER BY t.seriesid
) AS tmp
WHERE tmp.rank <= 5
ORDER BY seriesid, number, comicid;

This is an example that I was working on, it shows three columns (seriesid, comicid & number) from the table (comic)

403 Errors in Dreamweaver when trying to connect to a mysql database

2010-06-21T17:02:00.004+01:00

Afternoon all,
I've just spent the last 3 or so hours trying to solve a particulary annoying issue in Dreamweaver CS4, I wanted to connect to the mysql server using dreamweaver so I can create some code with a little more pollish than my current "nano" work. However each time i tried to fix this I got 403 error from the server. I did some minor work on the permissions (ie 755 chmod access) but nothing worked and then tried this and hey-presto it worked.

chown www-data\: _mmServerScripts/ _mmServerScripts/*
chgrp www-data _mmServerScripts/ _mmServerScripts/*

Obviously the above is valid for my setup and may require some modification for yours but it's a nice easy fix.

Creating An Overly Simple RSS downloader in Python

2010-02-16T16:53:00.003Z

I Wrote this script the other day as I was getting more and more annoyed that my version of uTorrent wouldn't download torrents from torrentbytes for reasons that I still am not sure of. Because of this I created a new script that fits my purpose.

The script is written for the TorrentBytes tracker but you should be able to modify the code to work on other sites too. Anyway here it is

#!/usr/bin/python

#######################################
# RSS Downloader for torrenbytes
# Programmed by Severed Spirit
#######################################
import os
import sys
from commands import getoutput

###Get Arguments
option = ""
if len(sys.argv) > 1:
if sys.argv[1] == "-c":
option = "check"
else:
option = "default"

###User Required Variables
cookie_file = "/home/alan/rss_downloaders/.lynx_cookies"
search_filter = "Saturday.Night.Live.*720p|" + \
"Aqua.Teen.Hunger.Force.|" + \
"30.Rock.*720p|" + \
"The.Office.*720p|" + \
"South.Park.*720p|" + \
"The.Big.Bang.Theory.*720p|" + \
"Rab_C_Nesbitt.*720p|" + \
"Family.Guy"
watch_folder = "/torrent/watch/"
prev_down_loc = "/home/alan/rss_downloaders/torrentbytes_downloaded"
tb_passkey = "###################"
tb_username = "###################"

###Initialise Variables
listoftorrents = ""
previously_downloaded = getoutput('cat ' + prev_down_loc)
rss_feed = getoutput('curl "http://www.torrentbytes.net/rss.php?passkey=' + tb_passkey + \
'&username=' + tb_username + '&direct" | grep guid').replace("&","&").split("")

for torrent in rss_feed[1:]:
torrent = torrent.split("")[0].split("\r")

#fix issue with curl data
if len(torrent) > 1:
torrent = torrent[0] + torrent[1].split("\n")[len(torrent) -1]
else:
torrent = torrent[0]

if option == "check":
print torrent

episodes = search_filter.split("|")
for episode in episodes:
items = episode.split("*")
found = "true"

for filter in items:
if filter not in torrent:
found = "false"

# Display torrent if all items are matched
if found == "true":
listoftorrents = listoftorrents + "|" + torrent

for link in listoftorrents[1:].split("|"):
if len(link) > 0:
torrent_name = link.split("&name=")[1]
if option == "default":
if torrent_name not in previously_downloaded:
os.system('wget -q --referer=http://www.torrentbytes.net/login.php --cookies=on --load-cookies="' + cookie_file + '" ' + \
'--keep-session-cookies --save-cookies="' + cookie_file + '" "' + link + '" -O ' + watch_folder + torrent_name)
os.system('echo "' + torrent_name + '" >> "' + prev_down_loc + '"')
print "Downloaded: " + torrent_name
else:
print "Already Downloaded: " + torrent_name
else:
print "No Torrents Found in Query"

All you have to do is modify the "###User Required Variables" section along with the cookie file and you should be set. I'd love to here what sites you've gotten this to work on plus if you can see where my code might have tried to join the failbus then please leave comments :)

PS3? Why?

2010-02-05T11:26:00.004Z

Recently I took the plunge into getting a nice shiny new PS3 Slim. It wasn't a quick buy though, the price was still quite expensive even though the price has gone down since launch.

The main reason I moved over to the PS3 was that I have had enough of the Xbox 360, recently practices involving microsoft policies and their hardware monoplisation had begun to annoy me more than ever. One main issue was due to XBLA, my machine had been locked out from going online (guess why) however there was a game that I wanted to play so I took my hard drive and swapped it with my brothers so I can buy it on my brothers and then swap it back and play it on mine. After I LEGALLY paid for the game I was surprised (more pissed off) that I couldn't play it because the game was not activated to play on this machine. How petty, I felt so enraged due to this that I havent played on the 360 since.

The PS3 is amazing, It's so much quieter than the 360 which lets face it was like having car revving up inside at times, I can also watch blu-ray which looks great. The thing I like about it more is that it just works and has a much more liberal feel to it unlike the 360s capitalist feel, it allows the use of things such as BBC iPlayer to be involved (The Xbox 360 will not be getting the 360 due to issues with the BBC being unable to charge viewers for content), it just works.

I'm just about to preorder the box set of FFXIII which is something that I've been waiting for a while now, I can't wait to play that soon.

BTW: My PSN username is severedspirit if anyone wants to add/check

Xbox Achievement HTML Creator Update

2009-11-25T23:59:00.004Z

Hello all,
I'm currently rewriting the code from scratch, the new code is written in python as its much cleaner than using .net code. The new code has many new features including:
- Multi OS support
- Faster creation of pages (due largely because the program downloads source only rather than leaving an ole to download the full page with flash, images, etc to ensure full data)
- Modular based.. ish (The code will feature a modular system to it meaning that new parts can be added into the code at any time, one feature in the pipelines is a twitter mod that sends out a twitter status update everytime you get a new achievement although there is a rather annoying bug I'm still yet to patch up)
- New graphs (Currently working on the last big graph but its a good one)

The only thing left to do at the moment is to check for consistancy and ensure that all user modifications has a globalised setting

I'll upload the code at some point in the very near future. To check up on the status get to http://twitter.com/severedspirit, I'm always updating it and I often update on the code progress

My Twitter Page

2009-09-23T10:48:00.004+01:00

As you can see this blog is pretty empty, mainly because I keep forgetting to update it (I will be updating it soon with some more code), however I do have a twitter page now which I update a lot, you can view the page at this address: http://twitter.com/severedspirit

XBOX Achievement HTML Creator v0.2

2009-04-13T13:24:00.003+01:00

Xbox Achievement HTML Creator v0.2 is out --> http://www.megaupload.com/?d=DS97VOX2
I decided to knock the version down to 0.2 while we get everything sorted

This includes a faster grabber which only gets data from games that you have achievements for. The other main feature is to create a graph that shows where you stand between you and another player, great for bragging rights, anyway, if you have any feature srequests or notice any bugs then please leave a comment

XBOX Achievement HTML Creator v1

2009-03-22T15:38:00.005Z

It's finally released, the XBOX Acchievement HTML creator, what this does is creates a html file that shows all of your achievement pictures on one page, nice. There is no logging of the username and passwords but if you don't believe me then run tcpdump or similar to check the traffic.

If anyone has any ideas or suggestions to improve this then please leave a comment, anyway, enjoy

This can be downloaded here HERE

New App. Xbox Achievements Viewer

2009-03-15T20:25:00.003Z

Hey alls, sorry I haven't been on recently, been really busy, a sorry present I bring you my new app (hopefully to be released sometime this week), its a .Net application to produce results of the gaming achievements in xbox live as a web page. It's fairly basic but the code should allow me create additional extras should they be needed.

If anyone has any queries or suggestions please feel free to get in contact :)

Viewing Current Transfers in torrentflux-b4rt

2009-01-31T22:54:00.002Z

I haven't used torrentflux-b4rt in a while on my server mainly due to the fact that it was slightly unstable on my machine however there are still people who use it, for those that do I have a little present.

This python script will display the current transfers of the torrents that are running, all you need to specify is where fluxcli.php is located, as with all my scripts this is free to use in whatever you want, have fun

#!/usr/bin/python

# import modules
import os

os.system("clear")

# Initialise Variables
fluxcli = "/var/www/torrent/bin/fluxcli.php"
temp = "/tmp/current_trans"

print "-------------------------------"
print "------ Current Transfers ------"
print "-------------------------------"

os.system("rm " + temp)
os.system(fluxcli + " transfers >> " + temp)

f = open(temp, 'r')

seeding = []
leeching = []

all_lines = f.readlines()
## Get Number Of Lines
number = 0
for line in all_lines[2:]:
number = number + 1

for line in all_lines[2:number - 3]:

line = line.split("\n")
line = line[0]
line = line.split("- ")
if "0.0 kB/s " == line[8] and line[9]:
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "Download Succeeded! ":
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "Download Succeeded ":
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "Torrent Stopped ":
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "Transfer Died ":
templine = ""
elif line[9] == "- ":
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "Stopped ":
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "repaired ":
templine = ""
else:
leeching.append(line[2] + line[1] + line[8])
if "0.0 kB/s " == line[9] and line[8]:
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "Download Succeeded! ":
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "Download Succeeded ":
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "Torrent Stopped ":
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "Stopped ":
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "Transfer Died ":
templine = ""
elif line[9] == "- ":
templine = ""
elif line[12] == "repaired ":
templine = ""
else:
seeding.append(line[2] + line[1] + line[9])

print "Leeching:"
for i in range(len(leeching)):
print leeching[i]
print "-------"
print "Seeding:"
for i in range(len(seeding)):
print seeding[i]

Who's using the machine

2009-01-31T18:12:00.003Z

Yesterday I was sitting at work, trying to figure out our current IP situation, it was in a mess and hadn't been updated in a long while. The problem is machines will come and will be issued with IP Addresses and machine names however when they go (or get taken away without us knowing) the log doesnt get updated. The only way we could do this before would be to go and check each machine individually and check the settings, however this is quite unpractical realistically. However we still need this information to find out where machines are located, again this may change in the future :(

Thankfully there is a little application called Nbtstat which allows us to find out who is logged into which machine and with this we can determine where the computer is located. The code can be executed by running in cmd
nbtstat -a computer_name
nbtstat -A ip_address

For the future it would be great if we could run a script that would run this each day through the subnet and export the result as a spreadsheet, with this information we could sort out our IP issues and clear and organise them a lot better

More information is available here
http://www.windowsnetworking.com/kbase/WindowsTips/WindowsNT/AdminTips/Accounts/Nbtstatrevealswhoisloggedon.html

Page Layout

2009-01-31T18:08:00.001Z

I've just updated the layout from the old boring blogger template, I'm still working on a few of the kinks but I hope you enjoy the changes I've made :)

Deleting items from an iTunes playlist

2009-01-29T22:19:00.003Z

Hi there, this is a quick tip.

When you itunes you may have realised that deleting a track from a playlist will just remove the link from your file to the playlist but not the library, if you want to remove it from the library as well do the following:
1) Select the item(s)
2) Press CTRL + SHIFT + DELETE
And thats it, it'll ask you for confirmation but it makes things so much easier, such as creating a smart playlist for podcasts with a playcount of >0 and then you can remove all of the podcasts youve listened to already. Altogether it will keep your collection nice and clean

Modifying Apple Propriety Audio Software

2009-01-26T16:02:00.003Z

So I'm sitting here in the office during my lunch break watch Hak5 (Mad props) and I'm looking for something to do, this is when I realise all of my mp3s on my server and that I need to get them onto iTunes at home. The disadvantage is that im not at home and I'm on a very slow network connection (500k for the whole office!!) so I'll need something light preferably over ssh. Thats when I remembered Atomic Parsley.

Atomic Parsley is a little unix application (windows available through cygwin) that allows you to edit the metadata inside of the m4a files (note I convert mp3 to m4a with pacpl and don't start with 'quality issues' the audio is for me and no one else). The website explains that the tags inside are now refered by Apple as Atoms and take 4 bytes for each Atom. With this you can modify almost all of the data needed in your collection.

This is particularly useful if like me you have a strict policy on the content in your Library to allow better workings on it, with this you can just drag'n'drop your m4as into the library an itunes will do the rest

Atomic Parsley can be downloaded at http://atomicparsley.sourceforge.net/

Torrent linker

2009-01-19T14:59:00.005Z

Hello there, so its been a while and I really will try to post more, to say sorry I've written some python goodness for you.

This little application was written to organise my torrents, I'm currently using utorrent over wine on my Linux server and most of my torrents are from private trackers each with their own tracker hostname. What this application does is creates a link to your torrents but puts them in a folder depending on what hostname it is, this way when I connect to my XBMC I can see all of the videos from www.thebox.bz and not the audio from what.cd or the videos from passthepopcorn. This also helps management on your system.

To set this up you need to ammend the 4 lines that are at the top of the script refering to folders
- torrentfilesdirectory (folder holding the completed *.torrent)
- torrent_completed_dir (folder holding the complteted files)
- link_directory (folder to create the links in)
- torrent_move_to_dir (folder to move the *.torrents into)

As always the code is open source so do what you want from it, happy new year

import os
import sys
from commands import getoutput

#Declare Variables
torrentfilesdirectory = "/torrent/torrentfilescompleted/"
torrent_completed_dir = "/torrent/completed/"
link_directory = "/torrent/links/"
torrent_move_to_dir = "/torrent/torrentfilescompletedandlinked/"
ary_errors = []
ary_directory = []
ary_tracker = []
ary_torrent = []

#Add list of torrents into variable
torrent_list = getoutput("ls " + torrentfilesdirectory)

#=====================================================
def WorkOnTorrents(line):
#Read data from torrent
directory = getoutput("btshowmetainfo \"" + torrentfilesdirectory + line + "\" | grep \"directory name:\"")
directory = directory + getoutput("btshowmetainfo \"" + torrentfilesdirectory + line + "\" | grep \"file name.....:\"")
tracker = getoutput("btshowmetainfo \"" + torrentfilesdirectory + line + "\" | grep \"announce url..:\"")

#Modify the directory variable
directory = directory.split(": ")
directory = directory[1]

#Modify the tracker variable
try:
tracker = tracker.split("\n")
tracker = tracker[0]
tracker = tracker.split("/")
tracker = tracker[2]
tracker = tracker.split(":")
tracker = tracker[0]
torrent_valid = "Works"
except:
torrent_valid = "Fails"

#Add torrent variables to arrays
if torrent_valid == "Works":
# Check Against Identified Errors
if tracker == "":
ary_errors.append(line);
else:
ary_tracker.append(tracker);
ary_directory.append(directory);
ary_torrent.append(line);

torrent_list = torrent_list.split("\n")
for line in torrent_list:
WorkOnTorrents(line)

#=====================================================
## Create Links
print "Executing Links"
for i in range(len(ary_tracker)):
print "Creating Link for: " + ary_torrent[i];
if os.path.exists(link_directory + ary_tracker[i]) == 1:
os.system("ln -s \"" + torrent_completed_dir + ary_directory[i] + "\" \"" + link_directory + ary_tracker[i] + "/" + ary_directory[i] + "\"")
else:
os.system("mkdir " + link_directory + ary_tracker[i])
os.system("ln -s \"" + torrent_completed_dir + ary_directory[i] + "\" \"" + link_directory + ary_tracker[i] + "/" + ary_directory[i] + "\"")
os.system("mv \"" + torrentfilesdirectory + ary_torrent[i] + "\" " + torrent_move_to_dir)

#=====================================================
## Display Error Torrents
if len(ary_errors) > 0:
print "Errors Found:";
for i in range(len(ary_errors)):
print ary_errors[i];

Microsoft Access could not find file C:\windows\system32\system.mdw

2008-02-22T09:45:00.001Z

Problem
You receive the error 'Microsoft Access could not find file C:\windows\system32\system.mdw' when trying to open up Microsoft Access

Reason
The problem is down to permissions to the mdw file, the system.mdw file is a security file in access, this has most likely gone wrong if someone has modified or deleteted the system.mdw file.

Solution
1) Go to C:\Windows\System32\ and search for system.mdw, if it exists rename it to system.mdw.backup
2) Run program wrkgadm.exe
3) Click Create
4) Change the worgroup ID to either your workgroup name or domain name
5) Click OK
6) Click Join (Not always neccesary but worth doing)
7) Select your system.mdw file
8) Open Up Microsoft Access

"Windows is configuring Microsoft Office".. every fucking time i start it: Part 2

2008-02-12T12:08:00.000Z

So I switched on my machine today run excel, and everythings running as normal (yays) but as I check my email i ralise the dreaded setup box coming back, before throwing fist at the screen i decided to have a look what was going on, I checked the other affected applications which were now also running fine it was just outlook that had this problem

Anyway to cut a long story short I discovered that the registry permissions problem was in numerous places and the only way to fix it efficiently was to give full access to HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT. heres the how to

1) complete previous steps from yesterday
2) run Security Explorer
3) select the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and press F2
4) aad the user Everyone and add the users to the user box at the bottom
5) press OK to run through the Keys, this should take 10 - 15 minutes to complete, I recommend unchecking the view option as this will take longer.

Thats it. One of the other bonuses is that you won't receive warnings on the applications about a 'ddl file missing'. Hope this helps, bye

"Windows is configuring Microsoft Office".. every fucking time i start it

2008-02-11T15:41:00.001Z

This particular problem took me ages to fix and for anyone who has experienced this it is not a good idea to have this problem popping up everytime you open an office file, so to keep you calm heres how to fix it

Although it may not seem like it this problem is regarding the registry, however rather than being a registry incorperated into the software section, its held in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT and more importantly its stored in the .pip folder

The problem is a privilage problem essentially the folder is currupt and includes access for no users. So onto the resolution

1) download and install an application called security explorer
2) run the application remove the folder HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.pip
3) run excel and ensure that all of the installations have completed then close excel
4) refresh the key data again till you see the .pip folder again
5) add your user and anyone elses user who may want to access the file or insert 'Everyone'
6) click ok to save the changes and open up excel aagin, this should follow on to the rest of the office applications

Welcome All

2008-02-11T15:36:00.001Z

Welcome to the first post of this blog, the blog is intended for anyone who works in the industry and truly appreciates how stressful, boring and annoying it is.

So whats going to be on the blog?
Multiple things really such as programming code, software fixes, rants & moaning mainly, and other crap that i can't remember right now

So hope you enjoy it
Alan