Daniel @ Cenix

In a week I’m going on a holiday road trip thing to the...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 18:05:49 +0100

In a week I’m going on a holiday road trip thing to the US. We’ll be covering a lot of miles taking in the sights of the South West and I want to document the experience with a blog. The holiday is drawing near and I’m busy doing last minute work, so I decided to cheat and buy a Wordpress theme from ThemeForest:

wpTraveller

It’s got all the features I imagine I’ll need. It let’s me display a detailed KML route for each post, as well as multiple markers, polylines and polyfills. It zooms the map to fit in all the elements too which is neat. A nice little ajax-powered-geocoding-meta-box in the Add Post page makes it super easy to find locations and add them to the map. And the theme looks great too! I’m really happy with this and it’s a much more complete and polished product than anything I could have hacked together in the rush before leaving.

Now that I’ve got the important bit sorted I have plenty of time to put off packing my suitcase!

Check the blog out if you’re interested in seeing the wpTraveller theme in action, or seeing my holiday snaps!

I’ve been working on running an ecommerce website / eBay...

Wed, 23 Nov 2011 20:11:15 +0000

I’ve been working on running an ecommerce website / eBay store for the past couple of months, here’s the fancy new set up that arrived yesterday and some of the results. I bought it off eBay for £80. So far I’m impressed with the results, but I’m spending a bit more time than I’d like fixing and trying to totally isolate them in Photoshop - I’m thinking I might start uploading the unfinished result regardless to save time.

Check out the ecommerce website to see them all: mandmcomputers.net

Photo

Thu, 22 Sep 2011 13:13:48 +0100

Just sent the final version to the printers, lots of ways to...

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 11:43:27 +0100

Just sent the final version to the printers, lots of ways to contact M&M Computers now!

I’ve started working on a re-brand for my dad’s long...

Tue, 13 Sep 2011 20:57:45 +0100

I’ve started working on a re-brand for my dad’s long running computer repair business. It’s long overdue and I’ve talked about doing it for years, but now I’m finally doing it. I’ve already started building an OpenCart website to replace the current static website on mandmcomputers.net

Planned release date is “eventually”.

This has nothing to do with the web, but myself and a friend...

Thu, 11 Aug 2011 18:17:00 +0100

This has nothing to do with the web, but myself and a friend were playing some Minecraft and I started toying with the idea of creating some lomo-esque “photos”. I haven’t spent long on each of these and some have noticeable problems with them, but I enjoyed trying something new creatively. Minecraft is great for this, I just need to know when to stop (before 1am is my new target).

I’m a self confessed Illustrator n00b and I found it hard...

Tue, 19 Jul 2011 15:33:03 +0100

I’m a self confessed Illustrator n00b and I found it hard to work out what the correct search term would be to find a solution to my problem. I eventually found it after wasting 10 minutes so here I am, writing it down for future me.

I couldn’t stop a shape snapping incorrectly, and the element I was trying to align it to was being snapped too, but never to the exact same place. In the interests of perfect symmetry I couldn’t let this go on, even at a zoom level that wouldn’t be visible once printed. I found out that all that I have to do to stop that is turn off “Align to Pixel Grid”. It’s in the Transform panel (Shift+F8). Simple!

New Site Launch! Little Engineering Ltd

Fri, 15 Jul 2011 19:01:58 +0100

New Site Launch! Little Engineering Ltd:

This is our latest client project that we’re just wrapping up now. We made a custom Stock Management System in CakePHP 1.3 that we’re really proud of, and we think we’ve created a really nice look and experience for the user!

http://littleengineering.co.uk

This isn’t Photoshopped at all. It probably means I copy...

Tue, 05 Jul 2011 14:46:59 +0100

This isn’t Photoshopped at all. It probably means I copy way too much though.

How to fix "Item was not deleted" in CakePHP 1.3 and delete all associated records

Sat, 02 Jul 2011 14:00:06 +0100

When attempting to delete a record that has related records, for example a User hasMany Comments, CakePHP 1.3 would not delete the item in my baked application. It was giving me this error:

Item was not deleted

The problem is caused by the fact that there are related records. Some Comments still belongTo a User, so you can not delete the User without deleting the Comment. A simple edit to the User model can solve this problem:


var $hasMany = array(
	'Comment' => array(
		'className' => 'Comment',
		'foreignKey' => 'user_id',
		'dependent' => true,
	)
);

The line to pay attention to there is ‘dependent’ => true. By default this is set to false, by simply changing this, you can delete all related records at the same time as the main record automagically.

A dribbble style sneak peek of the site I’m working on....

Thu, 30 Jun 2011 08:43:55 +0100

A dribbble style sneak peek of the site I’m working on. It’s the Little Engineering website I posted a few images of almost 2 months ago. It’s nearly finished, just content and styling changes left to do mainly. I plan to tidy up and either release the code or write a tutorial on how to do multiple image uploads in CakePHP 1.3.

Apparently the client plans to use the logo I designed on his van, and I can not wait to see that! :)

Run multiple Notepad++ windows I’m leaving this here more...

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 14:00:07 +0100

Run multiple Notepad++ windows

I’m leaving this here more as a note to myself than anything else, as this quick tip for running multiple instances (windows) of Notepad++ is all over the place, but I find my self looking for it every time I format and re-install Notepad++.

Simply add the -multInst flag to your shortcut target, so that it looks like this:


"C:\Program Files (x86)\Notepad++\notepad++.exe" -multiInst

Simple!

Send multiple records AND any related controllers to the view in CakePHP 1.3

Mon, 13 Jun 2011 12:27:57 +0100

This isn’t something particularly hard to figure out, but I was using the wrong search terms to help me figure this one out so it took me longer than it should have. Hopefully this will be of use to someone else, if just to explain it slightly differently. Recognise this snippet:

function index() {
    $this->Controller->recursive = 0;
    $this->set('controllers', $this->paginate());
}

Simply change “$this->Controller->recursive = 0;” to:


$this->Controller->recursive = 1;

This returns an array with nodes for each of the controllers related to the controller you’re using.

A better terminal window than Cygwin and Windows cmd.exe

Thu, 26 May 2011 14:55:44 +0100

A better terminal window than Cygwin and Windows cmd.exe:

I’ve been using Cygwin for ages, and while it has some great features it has some simple failures in its interface and integration with Windows. You can’t simply full screen it, and copy and pasting requires messing with cmd.exe settings.

But I’ve just discovered mintty and it’s a joy to use. Here’s the list of features copied from it’s Google Code page.

Xterm-compatible terminal emulation.
Native Windows user interface with a simple options dialog.
Easy copy & paste.
Drag & drop of text, files and folders.
Ability to open files and URLs with Ctrl+click.
Comprehensive character encoding support, including UTF-8.
Wide character display and Windows IME support.
Window transparency, including glass effect on Vista and 7.
Options are stored in a text file. No registry entries.
Small program size and quick scrolling.

Get it here: http://code.google.com/p/mintty/

Or select it from the packages when installing Cygwin.

reCaptcha and table based layouts

Fri, 20 May 2011 04:42:50 +0100

What based layouts? Table based layouts. I’ve been doing a small job making some modifications to a very old system that uses table layouts and non object oriented PHP. Frankly it’s a mess, and table layouts don’t just make it difficult to make layout changes. They were also the source of a problem installing reCaptcha that had me stumped for well over 2 hours!

Basically, if you have a structure like this:

<table>
  <form>
    <?php
      require_once('../class/recaptchalib.php');
      echo recaptcha_get_html($publickey);
    ?>
  </form>
</table>

It simply wont POST the necessary fields “recaptcha_challenge_field” and “recaptcha_response_field”. I don’t know why, all I know is that they’re called from a function in the reCaptcha library and this is how to solve it:

<form>
  <table>
    <?php
      require_once('../class/recaptchalib.php');
      echo recaptcha_get_html($publickey);
    ?>
  </table>
</form>

Make sure the form tags are wrapping the table tags. I’d love for someone to tell me why this is, but for now I’ll have to settle with just knowing that it works.

Link: Change Apache’s document root to make developing locally easier

Thu, 19 May 2011 15:56:00 +0100

Link: Change Apache’s document root to make developing locally easier:

I’ve written a new blog post over at cenix.co.uk. Check it out.

I just started on a job to make some changes to a really badly made PHP job board system and came up with this solution. I had originally thought it could be done by using Window’s “hosts” file but that only supports IP addresses, so I couldn’t add a sub dir.

Part of the footer for the Little Engineering website I’m...

Wed, 11 May 2011 23:34:06 +0100

Part of the footer for the Little Engineering website I’m working on. Really really really enjoying working on this project :D

Just trying on different colours with this logo.

Fri, 06 May 2011 16:03:58 +0100

Just trying on different colours with this logo.

A little toggle switch I’m working on. I’m not happy...

Thu, 05 May 2011 14:00:06 +0100

A little toggle switch I’m working on. I’m not happy with it yet, going to give it some more detail. I really want to use a toggle switch in something now.

Working on my first custom design in ages and loving every...

Wed, 04 May 2011 17:23:51 +0100

Working on my first custom design in ages and loving every minute of it. I worked on a logo today. Concerned I might be following the “meme” of old fashioned logos right now but I like it. I hope the client likes it too!