Google recommends using HTTP 503 “Service Unavailable” status codes. The 503 code indicates that the service (or page, or site) is temporarily unavailable, but that it is expected back again soon. This is better than using the 404 (not found), 302 ( moved temporarily), or 301 (moved permanently) codes, because it tells web crawlers that they should just come back and try again later.

Because I have no desire to manually make the cut-over to a SOPA Blackout .htaccess file at midnight (because I’m lazy), I took his .htaccess settings and made a modification to enable the settings for the tomorrow.  Here’s what I have:

<IfModule mod_rewrite.c>

# =====================
# SOPA Blackout
# =====================

# Set a custom error document for 503 errors
ErrorDocument 503 /503_sopa.html

# Cause all requests (except images) to generate a 503 error,
# which will produce the custom 503 error document
RewriteEngine on
RewriteBase /
RewriteCond %{ENV:REDIRECT_STATUS} !=503
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !\.(jpe?g?|png|gif) [NC]
RewriteCond %{REQUEST_URI} !robots\.txt$ [NC]
RewriteCond %{TIME_YEAR} ^2012
RewriteCond %{TIME_MON} ^01
RewriteCond %{TIME_DAY} ^18
RewriteRule ^ - [L,R=503]

# =====================
# NOT SOPA Blackout
# =====================

# My other rewrite magic goes here.
</IfModule>

Additionally, I’ve shamelessly stolen the php.net SOPA 503 page because it is awesome.

You want to go back 10 minutes?

:earlier 10m

You want to go forward in time by 5 seconds?

:later 5s

Sweet cuppin’ cakes that’s ballsy. Armed with this tool, you step forward and backwards in your undo/redo adventure, you make an accidental edit. Whoops. Now all the code you’ve edited in the 10 minutes that you rolled back with the handy-dandy <code>:earlier</code> command is gone…right?

Nope! Undo branching is where the real awesomeness of Vim shines. If you realize your mistake, you can find a list of undo branches like so:

:undolist

Which will show you something like this:

number changes when saved

3 3 08:59:35
4 2 09:00:13

To jump to one of those branches, you can type:

:undo 3 or :undo 4

I <3 Vim

(via Life Hacker)

First, I checked the firewall found here:

/usr/bin/system-config-securitylevel-tui

So…the firewall was fine.  Next, I attempted to restart the network via:

/etc/init.d/network restart

I was surprised to receive the following error:

Bringing up interface eth0: Device eth0 has different MAC address than expected, ignoring. [FAILED]

Alrighty…bizarre.  So with the help of this article, I was able to determine that eth0′s MAC address:

/sbin/ifconfig eth0

was different than the MAC address found in:

/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0

A simple edit to the above file and a quick network restart solved my problem and brought my sites back up! w00t!

Before our users logged in, they were met with a happy Platypus:

A groovy platypus login

Once logged in, the users’ eyes were attacked by custom header complete with Platypus and sun flare that read: “Announcing the new Plymouth State mascot!”

Announcing the new Plymouth State Mascot!

Oh, but it didn’t stop there. You can’t just change a campus’ mascot without some explanation, so forced into the top right of everyone’s layout was a nice portal channel to detail the mascot change.  It read as follows:

Plymouth State has been proud to display the Panther as the University Mascot for many years but effective June 1st, 2009 the Panther will be retired.

Why the new Mascot?

Due to recent trademark disputes, PSU has been asked to select a new symbol for the University. While the change may come as a shock to some, change is a great thing! The adoption of the new mascot is a refreshing and invigorating change that we hope will inspire the campus as the Panther does.

The selection process for the new mascot was a lengthy one where we reviewed over 75 animals that were submitted by the campus community in the recent poll sent out to all students! The top contenders were: Newt, Badger, Elk, Moose, Platypus and Narwhal.

After much discussion, we are excited to announce that the Noble Platypus will be the new mascot!

Why the Platypus?
There are many attributes of the Platypus that resonate well with Plymouth State ideals. The following were the deciding factors:

1. Mammal: As we planned the transition from the Panther to the new mascot, the desire that the new animal remain mammalian in nature rang clear with the selection committee. The Platypus fits the bill! (Yes, that was a pun)
2. Versatile: The Platypus is an extremely versatile mammal which represents Plymouth State’s versatility in it’s educational, athletic, and extra-curricular programs.
3. Egg Laying Semi-Aquatic Monotreme: The fact that the Platypus is the only semi-aquatic monotreme that lays eggs truly makes it unique. Uniqueness is an attribute in our students that we prize greatly and believe each and every one of you stand out from the crowd.
4. Venomous: Venom in ankle spurs. This is just an extra bonus.

A change like this cannot be complete without gauging user opinions, so a poll was put together that received almost 1200 votes in 24 hours!

myPlymouth April Fool's Day Poll

Various end offices received a number of calls from end users ranging from excitement that PSU played an April Fool’s Day prank to frustration that we were switching away from the Panther (those people obviously didn’t know it was the 1st). All in all, I would consider this a successful holiday!

Now…what should I do next year?

A few resources that are mentioned:

• Firefox Extensions (including Firebug)
• jQuery
• Slide Examples
• MegaMan Sprite Animation

Note: this is an updated talk on the workshop I led two years ago

Here’s some decent resources:

• CSS selector and pseudo element support from kimblim.dk. The format on this page is a bit odd, and it lacks granular details on older browsers.
• The browser support charts at dev.l-c-n.com are more detailed but a bit stale.

One such item is selecting the last inserted value on an auto-incrementing column.

Historically, when you are inserting into a table with auto incrementing values (via a sequence) you have always been able to grab the last value with a simple SELECT statement (line 22):

-- setup a table
CREATE TABLE bork (id INTEGER NOT NULL PRIMARY KEY, data VARCHAR2(10) NOT NULL);

-- create the sequence
CREATE SEQUENCE sq_bork INCREMENT BY 1 START WITH 1; 

-- create a trigger for auto-incrementing the sequence'
CREATE OR REPLACE TRIGGER tr_sq_bork
BEFORE INSERT
ON bork
REFERENCING NEW AS NEW
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
SELECT sq_bork.NEXTVAL INTO :NEW.id FROM DUAL;
END;
/

-- insert a record into the table
INSERT INTO bork (name) VALUES ('Matt');

-- retrieve last inserted id
SELECT sq_bork.CURRVAL FROM dual;

As you see there, two statements must be executed to get that new id. The INSERT and the SELECT. Well, as of Oracle 10g you can utilize the RETURNING clause like so:

INSERT INTO bork (name) VALUES ('Matt') RETURNING id INTO i_id;

That statement inserts a record into “bork” and returns the value of “id” into the “i_id” variable. Pretty sexy and all with one DML statement. Here’s what we do at Plymouth to utilize the RETURNING clause with the PHP library ADOdb:

< ?php
//do your database object initialization here:
//$db = new ADONewConnection...

$sql = "BEGIN INSERT INTO bork (data) VALUES ('Matt') RETURNING id INTO :i_id; END;";
$stmt = $db->PrepareSP($sql);
$db->OutParameter($stmt, $inserted_id, 'i_id');
$db->Execute($stmt);
?>

Yup. 4 lines of PHP but only 1 statement sent to the database! I’d take the extra lines any day over the latency of data retrieval.

When this issue happened a second time I did a little playing with the app and figured out what to do. If you find yourself in a similar predicament simply do this:

1. Open SQL Developer
2. Click on the Tools > Preferences menu
3. Click on Accelerators on the left
4. Click the Load Preset… button

Yup. That’s it. The only lame part about that is all your custom key bindings go away and must be re-done. But that is much nicer than re-installing!

Code Weavers, however, has just released Crossover Chromium built from build 21 of the Chromium Open Source browser.

The initialization of Chromium the first time I opened it took a while but once it was up and running, things were pretty solid. The browser has all the JavaScript and DOM debugging tools but it seems the process manager tool isn’t fully functional..which is really my draw to the browser (when I get dead set on playing with the Process Manager tool, I’ll break down and install Chrome with Parallels). I suppose I’ll be following CodeWeaver’s suggestion:

Until Google launches its official Mac native Chrome, Chromium will satisfy me for now.

Its features are:

All in all, the app seems pretty solid. My only gripe is the lack of a tab key for tab completion. Now I’ll be able to debug stuff remotely WITHOUT using VNCLite for the iPhone. Check pTerm out, it is well worth the $4.99.

Update:
There are some more things that I find annoying:

• No tab key – no tab completion…
• No arrow keys – this makes navigating around a line a little bit of a pain.
• You can’t hide the keyboard. It’d be nice to see a full screen of top.
• No color customization

Despite the annoyances, the app is still pretty solid. Lets just hope new versions come out sooner than later with some of my hopes and dreams attached.