I seem to have got myself in a pickle with Amazon's Simple Storage Service (S3). I signed up for S3 and JungleDisk, using the latter to upload thousands of files to the space that I paid for on a monthly basis.

Unfortunatly I found the rate of file transfer too slow and without a decent alpha differencing algorithm, updating my collection of files became too slow. JungleDisk then decided to start charging for their software and that tipped the balance. I decided to empty the account in order not to be charged for it any longer.

Here's how to show the contents of a object in Javascript

function concatObject(obj) {
  str='';
  for(prop in obj)
  {
    str+=prop + " value :"+ obj[prop]+"\n";
  }
  return(str);
}

I've been grappling with Actionscript (Flash) intregration recently, largely for synchronising the dynamic elements here. In AS2, here's how it's done.

To call a function

Actionscript code

import flash.external.ExternalInterface;

ExternalInterface.addCallback( "methodName", this, method );
function method() {
   trace("called from javascript");
}

Javascript code

function callAS() {
   swf.methodName();
}

To push a variable

Javascript code

The database schema below outlines how a website could be designed from the ground up with Internationalisation (language support).

• Design (.gif)
• Design (.xls)

Put this together for a forum post on underscore@under-score.org.uk.

Fedora Core 5 ships with SELinux. Even having installed all the requisite Apache, PHP and Libcurl packages, cURL may not work correctly. It's not a package dependency conflict, or a bug - just an overprotective security manager keeping things safe.

I encountered this behaviour when trying to send a post request from my server to another. It manifested itself as a 'Failed to connect to XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX (ip): Permission denied'.

By default 'Allow HTTPD scripts and modules to connect to the network' is unticked in 'system-config-securitylevel' ('SELinux' tab). Relaxing this security restriction solved the problem.

Fantastic technologies like RDP and LogMeIn mean that the I'm spending a lot of time logged into remote machines. Like many users, I like my Desktop to look a certain way, so I configure my user account on each of the remote machines to look similar, if not identical, to my local machine. The problem is that I can't always see at a glance what computer I'm working on.

Taskbar naming

...but now here's a fix. You can effectively write names onto the Taskbar by configuring a custom Toolbar. Right-click the task bar, select Toolbars -> New Toolbar. Windows prompts you to select a folder, intentionally one containing a set of shortcuts making up this toolbar.

Cygwin provides Unix/Linux services for Windows. For small organisations, those without a dedicated Linux server, Cygwin enables tunneling of less secure services, such as Windows Remote Desktop Connection (RDC) through port 22 (SSH). Crucially, it mitigates the need for exposing insecure ports to the Internet, which compromises security and increases the likelihood of digital intruder attacks.

The following instructions comprise a rough guide:

• Install OpenSSH, and dependent packages, using the Cygwin installation tool (CTRL + click to run)

In writing this circular buffer class, I was faced with an interesting problem. I wanted to pass a negative offset (e.g. -2) to the get() method, but bound that within the range of allocated array cells (e.g. 0-3).

One option would be to rely on Java's mod function: e.g.

• k = Lookup((next_free_slot + offset)%total_slots)

Alternatively, this negative mod could be replaced by a positive mod, by adding the total number of cells to the offset:

• k = Lookup((next_free_slot + (total_slots+offset))%total_slots)

The attached code implements a Circular Buffer in Java, using this positive mod method. (CircleBuff.java has been renamed CircleBuff_java.txt for browser compatibility.)