The Designspace

How to find Directory Utility in Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6)

I used to use Directory Utility occasionally, and was surprised not to be able to find it anymore in the Utilities folder in Snow Leopard. It turns out it's been moved to the \System\Library\Core Services\ folder, but the best way to access it is now through System Preferences.

Open System Preferences, and click on Accounts > Login Options. Then click Open Directory Utility.

OS X 10.6: The application Finder.app can't be opened.

I use several large external drives with my iMac to manage photos and multiple systems. Lately I've had a frequent problem with Finder crashes. Using Force Quit to "Relaunch" the finder does cause it to quit, but it never restarts.

Trying to restart it from the dock by control clicking the finder icon and selecting "Open" resulted in the error

The application Finder.app can't be opened.
-10810

The terminal command

ps -ax 

showed several zombie (Finder) processes going. From the blank state of the Desktop, it was obvious none were in working order.

I diligently killed each one after noting its PID using the command:

kill -HUP [pid]

like this:

$ kill -HUP 281

$ kill -HUP 27398

$ kill -HUP 27404

Then tried to restart the Finder but found the only way to restart it was with this terminal command:

/System/Library/CoreServices/Finder.app/Contents/MacOS/Finder & disown

It did not really help: it crashed again, soon after. Restarting the machine always fixes it, but that won't help you if you can't isolate the source of the problem.

In my case, I've tentatively located the source to one of the external drives, an old iOmega 1TB drive, although it verifies in Disk Utility. Apparently the "Finder.app can't be opened" error is a very common problem, often related to the use of external drives or Drobos, but sometimes other causes as well. Some people report that Lion clears it up, but that has not been my experience.

iPhone error message: "This accessory is not made to work with the iPhone"

If your iphone starts flashing the error message "This accessory is not made to work with the iphone" whenever you plug it in to try to sync it with iTunes, try plugging it directly into the computer, with no hub or dock in between.

Dirt or corrosion in the socket in the iPhone can also cause this, and sometimes it can be solved by scrubbing the socket with a clean dry toothbrush.

Installing PHP on Windows: if PHP pages work but phpinfo is blank?

When installing PHP on IIS, I ran into this: in general, php files worked, but phpinfo.php files were not. They were blank when browsed.

The problem was I had left out the "php" in the opening tag:

<?

where I should have used:

<? php

The first example will work only if short tags are enabled in php.in configuration file. There are reasons NOT to use this, as described in the comments in a standard php.ini file:

; Allow the <? tag.  Otherwise, only <?php and <script> tags are recognized.
; NOTE: Using short tags should be avoided when developing applications or
; libraries that are meant for redistribution, or deployment on PHP
; servers which are not under your control, because short tags may not
; be supported on the target server. For portable, redistributable code,
; be sure not to use short tags.
short_open_tag = On

Mcrypt extension error after installing phpMyAdmin on IIS

If you install phpMyAdmin on IIS and get the error:

PROBLEM: cannot load mcrypt extension. please check your php configuration

This could be due to the extension being missing or that it is not listed correctly in php.ini file. Listed below are the instructions from around the web that I followed to get this working:

Try installing the extension using the installer:

"If you used the PHP installer, go to Add/remove programs and reconfigure the PHP installation. During the process you'll be asked what items to install. From the list choose PHP > Extensions. From the list of extensions choose which extension(s) you wish to install/use. Finish the installation by clicking next.

Restart IIS and the extensions you choose during installation should be available. Restart the relevant application pool(s) also.

Move libmcrypt.dll to system32 directory

On Windows installations, for the dynamic extension (extension=php_mcrypt.dll) to load properly, you must copy libmcrypt.dll from your PHP root folder (e.g. C:\PHP) to the following location:

C:\WINDOWS\system32

With this done, the dynamic extension will load up just fine.

--php.net post

Double-check the extension_dir path listed in php.ini
Add the path to the extension directory to php.ini, if it is not already there. If it IS there, double-check the path to make sure it is correct for your installation. Make sure extension_dir sn't listed again, farther down the page, with a different path. If you make any changes or corrections, restart both IIS and the application pool.

; Directory in which the loadable extensions (modules) reside.
;extension_dir = "./"
extension_dir = "C:\Program Files\PHP\v5.2\ext"

Double-check that php_mcrypt is listed in the ExtensionList area of php.ini.
Add the name to the list as shown below. Double check the spelling. Double-check that there is only one ExtensionList in the php.ini file. If you make any changes or corrections, restart both IIS and the application pool.

[ExtensionList]
extension=php_mysql.dll
extension=php_mysqli.dll
extension=php_mbstring.dll
extension=php_gd2.dll
extension=php_gettext.dll
extension=php_curl.dll
extension=php_exif.dll
extension=php_xmlrpc.dll
extension=php_openssl.dll
extension=php_soap.dll
extension=php_pdo.dll
extension=php_pdo_mysql.dll
extension=php_pdo_sqlite.dll
extension=php_zip.dll
extension=php_imap.dll
extension=php_tidy.dll
extension=php_mcrypt.dll

Mandelbulb 3D Formula: One perfect globe

For the Mandelbulb 3D enthusiasts out there, I'm putting up some of my best images along with their formulas. Click here to see the complete list.

Mandelbulb3Dv17{
Q......1....A...M7...2A....L4brqa6gnzYDyV8nEc8.Ebe0rl4qh5zfqbP/RqPplzEG0e55NHzwD
................................Chig19/y.02........Y./..................y.2.....
.................Q.1/....6Uh....D/....E......6HuWupag2iD/Q.........c./...wH/OaNa
z.....cD12..12ED8Qxckp1..dkpX0LD8wzjg53iSIsu1.A............u1....y1...sD...../..
.wXaNadDcUsMP68iWvXotGt2w1CqycJCYbpPUUijDFXFu7N3FvnUogZYYHcvy4px8Ezkq6hjT5Ah15.l
dv9g5Fm9TMIcyukvZysgAGij......I9....M.........kD.2....sD.2E..ckpX0LD8Qwj........
.............dkpXm1...........KRe4..qdO.UObe/.oRe4.srdO..Wbe/.GSe4..............
................e0kz.kmB9/UQ.A7.z....g6...E7....20...I1...k9....O/...E1.....wNK/
...U.0aZcD6M6/naBauloKIFx..M0c..zrhe.Q6Fbf24LNvDPt41pmERrz9...........W68.UQgk0.
dKFcRtBvvzPeJ2OLSnyyz...........U6V0..3B6/...........YHbG7eFT5wj..........E/0c..
6V2G.YHbG7eFT5uDtodIWOorVy1..........IU.8.kzzzD.................................
JI01xH9OG/.305b792UvzaRdHng129vjjyDGa9yBPz9...pPI/U6jU/.axlKyR6.MZqM..bDtGvJ.2tX
E0.lRl3cb0kece8.Tt5inO4.TStZ.EaTj4Mf.YNGw..Ny/4Ha/UNiV4.YtLc0R6.zSgl.EaTIZ2c.Mfg
f0.wzJZg6/UZ/86....y3q/.zz/k.1A.yz1yAT2.xzpaqa9.................................
E....E....E/....2....A....EEh3aSdtqNU6oPs/UQ..........................k/9.......
.....................h53iSIsuFrD..........2.....................................
................................................................................
.....................I.....3.........wJKklKRnBJOid3..sqNl.......................
..............................zDaNaNaNaNazXNaNaNaNatzMaNaNaNaNyDOaNaNaNa7zXaNaNa
NaNmzcNaNaNaNawDOaNaNaNadzXNaNaNaNaxz.........zj........kz1.....................
................................r....M....k.....4x4PYZaPb/GGiF56ExqR............
..........U0.U............................2........B.1.......U.E........kz1.....
................................................................................
...........................................1....I....M....EE0x4SK3aQtBpMVlKNoE4.
......................k/..E........................4.dNaNaNaNauD........kz1.....
..............zD................................................................
........................................................}

IIS error: "The network location cannot be reached.."

If you have change the IP address that an IIS website is pointing to, then find that when you try to restart IIS services you get the error:

The network location cannot be reached.

...you may need to use a utility called httpcfg to tell IIS to listen specifically to the new IP.

To see what IP IIS is listening on, type this in a command prompt:

httpcfg query iplisten

Tell IIS to listen on a new IP address by

httpcfg set iplisten -i [ip address]

To install httpcfg, you may need to download and run Windows Support tools as described here:

HttpCfg.exe

It may be enough to restart the application pool and the website, but you may have to reboot the server to get the change to take effect.

Supporting informal learning in the workplace

Javascript testing for NaN: why doesn't !="NaN" work?

A couple of weeks ago, I was working on a custom HTML wrapper for Captivate quizzes that would behave one way if a score were already stored for that quiz, and another if the score were non-existent or zero.

So, how best to test for the existence of a score? Usually I test for the existence of a value with

if (typeof foo != "undefined"){do something}

When a quiz is not yet taken, the value of quiz.score is "NaN" (Not-a-Number). It seemed logical to assume that the type of "NaN" is "undefined".

So I tried:

if (typeof quiz.score !="undefined") {do something}

But this test failed, because it turned out that typeof quiz score always registered as "number" even when the score's value was "NaN." That made no sense to me, but I forged ahead anyway and tried to test for the value "NaN" by using



if (score !='NaN'){do something}



But this didn't work either! It took me a little while to figure out why my attempts to test for NaN weren't working. This is because NaN is a property of the Javascript Number object, and as such it's type is "number".

isNaN() is the function that tests whether something is Not-a-Number, so the correct syntax is:

if(!isNaN(score)){do something}