Software

PayPal "cart upload" – much smoother than "Add to cart"

Posted on August 12, 2009March 4, 2012 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

We have just finished some custom PayPal integration for Eaton Square Concerts (ESC). On the ESC booking page, you can now select all the tickets you want before heading to PayPal, thanks to the PayPal “cart upload” feature. Previously, the site was using the single-item “Add to cart” which is a bit clunky, and means the user heads back and forth between the ESC site and PayPal.

We handle the form submission on the ESC site, work out what the user want to buy, read their response to the optional questions, and then send the form off to PayPal. The intermediate step is needed because PayPal refuses to accept a zero-count for items, forcing us to check the item count before POSTing to PayPal.

Formatting an external drive with FAT32 under Windows

Posted on August 11, 2009March 4, 2012 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

The GUI in Windows XP later OS’s allows only NTFS as the format type for external drives; not too handy when you want to transfer files both ways between a PC and a Mac, as Macs can only read (not write) NTFS partitions.

However, you can drop into a command prompt to force formatting using FAT32:

format /FS:FAT32 X:

This is good for drives up to 32GB, which is still a bit small. For drives of up to 8TB, you’ll need a partition tool such as SwissKnife, PartitionMagic or Acronis Disk Director.

Original info from here: http://www.online-tech-tips.com/computer-tips/formatting-external-hard-drive-to-fat-32/

Loading spinner GIFs – loadinfo.net

Posted on August 9, 2009March 4, 2012 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

There is a great collection of “loading…” spinner GIF images at http://www.loadinfo.net/ such as this:

Spinner GIF from loadinfo.net

Crucially, you can also generate your own spinners, with settings for back- and foreground colours and transparency.

How to encrypt passwords in the Tomcat server.xml file

Posted on July 22, 2009March 5, 2012 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

By default, Tomcat stores passwords in server.xml in clear text, which can lead to obvious security lapses.

The easiest way to mitigate against user account compromise is to use a password digest (SHA, MD2 or MD5 are supported).

With $CATALINA_HOME/lib/catalina.jar and $CATALINA_HOME/bin/tomcat-juli.jar on your class path, just use the following to generate the digested passwords:

java org.apache.catalina.realm.RealmBase \
   -a {algorithm} {cleartext-password}

The digest technique works by having the incoming clear text password (as entered by the user) digested, and the results compared to the stored digested password. If the Two digests match, the password entered by the user must be correct, and the authenticate() method of the Realm succeeds.

Burn ISO images to CD in Windows XP

Posted on July 21, 2009March 4, 2012 by Matthew Skelton (@matthewskelton)

There are some curious anomalies when it comes to writing CDs/DVDs in Windows XP, and one of these is the lack of inbuilt support for writing ISO images to CD.

However, Alex Feinman has an ISO Recorder V2 for Windows XP SP2/SP3, which even comes recommended by Microsoft.