Converting Microsoft Access to MySQL

Have you ever wanted to convert a Microsoft Access database to MySQL?

A quick and easy way of doing this is with the excellent Bullzip Access to MySQL tool available from http://www.bullzip.com/products/a2m/info.php.

You can either transfer directly into a MySQL database or you can create a dump file instead.

Best thing about it is the fact that it is highly configurable and free! There is a commercial version available if the free version doesn’t have the features that you need.

Also if you need to split a SQL dump into multiple parts because of file size restrictions of any kind, you may want to look out for SQLDumpSplitter 2 by Philip Lehmann-Bohm, (philip@philiplb.de , www.philiplb.de).

WHS 2011 and Disk Extenders

I’ve been a long term fan of the Windows Home Server, (WHS), environment and have run both WHS and WHS 2011 machines. I started with a physical machine for WHS, but then migrated this to a virtual machine, and then continued with the virtual route for WHS 2011. Virtualisation offered a simple answer to the ever increasing number of computers at home, so perhaps a topic for a future post?

However, I wanted to write a quick post about Disk Extender, (DE), technology. In the original WHS, DE was an integral part of the OS and worked seamlessly after some initial glitches when WHS was launched. But during the course of it’s life this was a robust feature that allowed a number of disparate disks to appear to the OS as a single disk.

As I mentioned in my Vail Fail post, Microsoft in it’s infinite wisdom decided to drop this technology for WHS2011, and I pondered the idea of not moving on. But as a tech geek I was unable to resist the lure of moving on, and although the backup process has to be a little more considered, I’m generally happy without the need to add DE to the OS.

Then as the launch of WHS2011 approached and obviously subsequently, various vendors have come forward to reintroduce DE to the OS. So contenders such as DriveBender and StableBit DrivePool have appeared to “fill the void”. But is it too little, too late?

When I first heard of these I thought, “Great it’s just whats needed”, but you know what, these companies have had too many iterations of beta releases for me to be interested anymore. There is no way I would trust my data to beta software, which means that I have got used to “naked” WHS2011, and frankly with it’s twice daily backup to another disk – I really don’t think any of these DE replacements are really required. Their development cycle has frankly gone on too long and of course we will have to pay for them when they arrive.

My suggestion is embrace the backup capabilities already built into your WHS2011 machine and forget these DE pretenders….

Joomla mangling your HTML code?

In the process of rebuilding my website at cheekie.net with the beta version of Joomla 1.7, I kept running into an issue whenever I added any custom HTML code into the site. Whenever I created a module to add the custom code required to use StatCounter or other custom modifications, the code would be mangled or deleted completely every time the module was saved.

To overcome this you need to modify 2 things in Joomla.

First of all go to the Plug-In Manager, which is on the Extensions menu and click on the “Editor -TinyMCE” option. In the Basic options menu that is on the right hand side of the page, go to the “Prohibited Elements” section and remove all the items there and just replace it with the word “cms”. All this does is stop TinyMce from looking through you code and deleting any of the previously listed elements. Apparently you do need to leave something in this box and of course “cms” is not a legal HTML element so will never find it in the code, so should just leave your code alone.

The second thing you need to do is go to the article manager which is under the content menu. Once the article manager shows, select the options box on the far right of the screen. a pop up window will appear and you need to navigate to the text filters tab. Then move down to the Super Users tag and change the option from “Black List (Default)” to “No Filtering”; then click the save and close button. What this box does is allow you to add any custom code that you want, so be careful you don’t add any code that any malicious users can use on your site as an HTML exploit.

The second item in particular is not an obvious modification to make, and although it does preserve the integrity of your site for all the other kinds of site users, it destroys any capabilities you have as the site administrator to add any needed custom HTML. Personally, I think the creators of Joomla should make this much clearer and perhaps ask whether this should be turned on or off during the site install process.

I hope this helps at least one person from spending hours wondering why Joomla is killing all your neatly crafted custom HTML modules!

I’m pretty sure this will equally apply to 1.5 and 1.6 based sites as well as 1.7, but please let me know if you find anything to the contrary.

Surrey Heath Legalese…

I asked my local council for permission to widen my driveway and this was the letter I got back…

………………….

Dear Sir or Madam

RE: PROPOSED DROPPED KERB

Thank you for your letter received regarding the proposed dropped kerb at your property.

In order to assess whether the proposed development would require planning permission or not, I have outlined the criteria based on the provisions prescribed in The Town & Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order, 1995, Schedule 2, Part 2, Class B. You are advised that if the development, as proposed, complies with the following criteria then planning permission is usually not required to construct the proposed dropped kerb.

“The formation, laying out and construction of a means of access to a highway where that access is required in connection with the formation of a new hard standing within a residential property and provided that access does not cross third party land (excluding pavements or grass verges in the control of the Highway Authority) and does not connect to a trunk or classified road (A, B or C road) is permitted development.”

Please note that if the road concerned is classified as a Class D road, which is not considered to be a trunk or classified road, the formation of an access to this road would not need planning permission, subject to the criteria above.

The Surrey County Council Highway Authority (08456 009 009 press option 4 for Highways) may be able to advise you as to whether the road to which you wish to access is classified.

The above advice relates solely to the provisions of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order 1995, and you are further advised that a licence must be obtained from the Highway Authority before any works are carried out on any footway, footpath, carriageway, verge or other land forming part of the highway.

I hope this information has been helpful.

………………..

I beg your pardon?!

Air travel needs rethinking

I don’t have to fly a huge amount in my job, but over the years I’ve flown local flights, hops to Ireland, up and down to Scotland, all over Europe and pretty much the rest of the world.

One thing that sticks in my mind, whether the travel is for work or for personal situations, is the inordinate periods of time you waste. Check in can be 2 or 3 hours before your flight.

Why so far in advance? I know you can check in online in advance, but this doesn’t seem to buy you any real advantage anymore.

What’s the answer? I wish I knew, but I’m just fed up of air travel, and being treated like a pig in a truck. Come on airlines, work it out!

Where am I writing this? In the departure lounge of Dublin airport, where I’ve just been told the flight us delayed…..

Black Gold 3620 DVB-T2 HD card unboxing

Today I received my Black Gold 3620 DVB-T2 HD card, so I thought the Media Center afficionados out there might be interested in a few pics of the unboxing of it.

Why is this card different? It appears to be the first Freeview PCI card that supports DVB-T2 which means that it will display HD channels as well as the more conventional Freeview selection. At the moment there are only four HD channels, BBC 1, BBC, ITV and 4. However in time I’m sure that this will increase massively.

This card is tiny!! I added a few coins to add a sense of scale.

The next mission is to get it working with DVBlogic across my network to my media center PC…. At the appropriate juncture I will update you with my progress.

Microsoft Windows Home Server “Vail” Fail

Anybody who has read this blog at all, will realise that I am quite a fan of Microsoft’s Windows Home Server, (WHS), software, and pretty much have used it since its inception.

There has been a little bit of a buzz about the product in the last year or so, ever since Microsoft announced that there was going to be version 2 of the product based on the Windows Server 2008 R2 code. This is currently known to the world as “Vail”. Not only did this mean that the product would be based on contemporary code, (which is also shared with Windows 7), but it also meant that most of the features that we have grown to love in the first version of the product, were likely to be enhanced and extended.

The one thing that WHS users were not expecting, was to lose a feature and a major one at that. Not to go over old ground, but one of the interesting features of WHS was its ability to look at a group of hard disks, and allow the user to see them as just one. Not only that, but if you selected to duplicate certain folders, then the content of those folders would be duplicated across multiple disks. How much work did a user had to put into using these capabilities? None! That’s why everybody loved it.

However in a blog post released yesterday, Microsoft announced that this feature would be dropped from WHS version 2. Why? Well, they say it’s because most people put terabyte and larger disks into their WHS machines these days, and therefore there is no need to combine multiple smaller discs with the disk extender feature. But by dropping this “merge” capability, what they also remove from the product is the capability to do the on-the-fly disk and folder duplication.I think that the real reason it was dropped, it is more about their capability to make it work reliably, however we will probably never know for sure.

This seems to have been a universal outcry from the WHS community, is this likely to change Microsoft’s mind? Unlikely I would think, but I’d like to hope that Microsoft listened to their users and contemplate reintroducing this technology. After all it’s part of the reason that made WHS the fantastic tool that most found it to be.

Am I likely to upgrade to Vail now? My gut reaction now is no, however WHS does lots of other things including automatic backups of the connected PCs every night, and there is a wide array of add-ins written by an enthusiastic user community, that extends the functionality of the base product. It may be that one of these add-ins, replaces some of the disk duplication features of the original product, who knows? So really it’s a case of watch this space, Microsoft may yet move on their position, or there may be a developer out there who has already started the coding of an add-in that will placate us all…

HiDef Freeview DVB-T2 PCI Card available soon

It would appear that the long wait for a high definition PCI TV tuner card will soon be over. Black Gold, one of the stalwarts of the TV tuner market look set to release the BGT3620 Dual DVB-T/T2 card in December.

The card is available for pre-order at £89 exc vat and delivery from http://shop.blackgold.tv/BGT3620.

It’s all for Charity…

I came across a blog post this morning that really opened my eyes about charity giving. The post is titled “5 things charities secretly spend your money on“.

I’m naturally quite a cynical person, (“oh really”, shout my friends…!), and always felt things aren’t quite as they appear when it comes to charity walks and specifically all of the “easy” ways of giving. But the level of fees paid to event management companies and other subcontracted firms is shocking. To my mind when I hand over my contribution, I like to think the greater percentage has gone to the cause, not to some other hanger on.

I’m fully accepting of the idea that there must be some administrative costs, but some of the methods that the articles mentions, could leave the charity in a “negative donation” situation, which means that although you as an individual continue to pay your direct debit, all you are really doing is paying for people that stopped contributing earlier…

So, what I’m saying is please continue giving to charity, but just make sure that you contribute in a way that helps the worthy cause with the greatest percentage of your gift.

Like anything in life, be informed before you start.

IOS 4.2 available 8 November?

As an owner of the iPad I’ve been waiting for IOS4 because the functionality of the iPad always seemed to be somewhat restricted by the earlier version of IOS. The main feature I like is the ability to sort apps into folders. However, 4.2 will also allow the iPad to use printers without the need for any 3rd party tools, which of course adds to it’s credentials as a productivity tool.

The word on the web though seems to be that IOS4.2 will be available by November 8th, which is Monday, can’t wait!

[edit : the day came and went with no 4.2, but I'm lead to believe it will be released sometime this week]