A handy little SQL statement

Posted by & filed under Programming.

Have a look at the following SQL

SET @salt=SUBSTRING(MD5(RAND()),-20);

This will set a variable called @salt that has a random string of 20 characters.

Developing in jQuery? Use $.dump instead of alert

Posted by & filed under Programming.

I just ran into the $.dump jQuery plugin. It sure makes troubleshooting and figuring out jQuery a whole lot easier. Here is how you include it in your page.

  • Download the plugin at here
  • Include it in your HTML like so


  • Now just include $.dump(object) somewhere and replace object with an object you want more information on

The pop-window you will get

Magento and setroubleshoot causing certain pages to die.

Posted by & filed under Server Admin.

Some pages in Magento were giving just a white page, with no indication of errors in Zend Server console or log files. This was apparently a memory issue, so I restarted the web server and all was fine.

One issue I noticed was the server “setroubleshoot” was taking 12% of the systems memory. This program just logs issues with SELinux and it seems SELinux doesn’t like my Magento install. I have SELinux just set to ‘warn’, but I may want to disable it all together. I stopped the ‘setroubleshoot’ program and turned it off with chkconfig.

The disappointment of cordless mice

Posted by & filed under Design.

I’ve test driven several cordless mice in the last few years. All of them Logitech because I’m biased. I really, really, hate cords. They just clutter the desk area up and seem to be less important as time goes on. I really thought that the cordless mice had “arrived” and were just as good as their corded counterparts. Wrong. While most applications will find a wireless mouse to meet their needs just fine, I’m on the computer a solid 8-10 hours a day, little things add up and turn into a big deal. Here they are in order of usage.