There was nothing in the logs giving much away, but I did see that TrustedInstaller.exe kept crashing! Because of the RPC error I went down that route, checking the servers could communicate properly and that I had sufficient access rights for running dcpromo.

After a few hours messing around, I tried to run a windows update and got an error about being out of space. The server was only 10% full!!? This led me to the problem, it turns out the windows update service and dcpromo run under the same user, which has a quota of only 3GB. I increased the quota to 80gb and hey presto, I had a new domain controller on the domain!

There seemed to be many ways of comparing the schema of two databases, but nothing to compare the changes in data (unless I was looking in the wrong places). I decided to write something that would help me out and have released it publicly.

You provide the connection details of two databases (server, username, password, name),  select the tables you would like to compare and hit “Compare”. The resulting page is a list of all schema and data changes.

There are plans to style the application (at the moment its simple blocks and tables) and more importantly, allow you to select which differences you would like to apply before creating a .sql diff file.

If its something you’re interested in, trying check out the google code page for the project. Its currently in beta with better performance, stability and functionality to come!

phpMyDiff at Google Code

So, to change the effect the volume keys have:

1. Press Alt+F2 to bring up the “Run” box.
2. Type in “gconf-editor” and press enter.
3. Select “Apps > gnome_settings_daemon“
4. On the right hand side you’ll have a single option named “volume_step“
5. Change the numerical value (6 by default) to a lower one (3 seems pretty good)

Simples!

After reinstalling gstreamer and rhythmbox a few times I turned to the Ubuntu Forums. The answer is in the following thread, but I missed it on first glance so thought I’d post it here: [ubuntu] rhythmbox 9.10 mp3

To save you reading through all the posts, to fix the problem after upgrading to 9.10 (not from a clean install), you need to delete your gstream preferences. Open up the terminal and type the following:

rm -rf ~/.gconf/system/gstreamer
rm -rf ~/.gstreamer-0.10

If you log off and back on again now, you should have mp3 playback in rhythmbox again. If that doesn’t work, take a look at the other suggestions in the ubuntu forum thread.

When working on the UI of a web application text would often get selected by the browser incorrectly, for example while dragging an element, or clicking on an element with an onclick event.

If you are using jquery already; download it, include it, then use:

$(‘.elementsToDisableSelectFor’).disableTextSelect();

If you need this functionality without including the whole of jquery, take a look at the source code for the plugin. It’s only about 20 lines long. It uses a different method for Firefox and Internet Explorer, with a fallback for everything else but it should be easy to convert in to native JS or another javascript framework.

Anyway, one of the more difficult problems was getting 5.1 sound out of the sound card in Ubuntu. The motherboard has a built-in 5.1 sound card, the realtek ACL662. Some people have little trouble enabling surround sound but there seems to be an issue with this card. I managed to find a solution by merging a few ideas together.

Here are the steps I took:

1. By default, Ubuntu is only set to run 2 sound channels (left and right). To enable 6 channels (5.1) we need to edit the sound config file. Theres an excellent tutorial for doing that here. But put simply, edit /etc/pulse/daemon.conf and uncomment the line "; default-sample-channels = 2", changing it to "default-sample-channels = 6"
2. The most important part for this card. Edit /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base and add "options snd-hda-intel model=3stack-6ch-dig" to the end of the file.
3. Restart the machine.
4. Open sound preferences (System > Preferences > Sound)
5. Make sure that the ALSA mixer is selected.
6. Bring up the sound mixer.
7. Hopefully, the “Front, Center, Surround & LFE” sliders will be available. If not try to add them by clicking on Properties.
8. Make sure all sliders are on full.
9. Still on the mixer, go to the ‘Options’ tab and set ‘Channel mode’ to ’6ch’.
10. Ok everything and close the mixer.
11. To test, at the command line try "$ speaker-test -Dplug:surround51 -c6 -l1 -twav"

Hopefully that’ll do it. If not, there are a tonne of other guides if you search for “Ubuntu 5.1 sound”. Checkout the forum post that helped me find this solution here, at the Ubuntu forums.

If options 7 and/or 9 aren’t available to you, I’d guess the fix hasn’t solved your problem.

There are a number of options available to do this:

1. Using a flash (swf) file to perform the upload
2. Using a java applet to perform the upload
3. Using an HTML file input box to create a hidden array of file input boxes

My issue with #3 is that you still have to individually select all the files in a folder before clicking upload. If you want to upload 50 files, thats 100 clicks and a case of RSI. So, I ignored #3 entirely.

Ideally,  I wanted solution #1, but I found a lot of answers to solution #3,  followed by #2. In the end I tried out four different solutions, all open source.

SWFUpload

By far my favourite, and the one we ended up using, this is the same tool wordpress use for their image upload plug

in. It is the most difficult to configure, but its got the most flexibility. SWFUpload uses a .swf file for the actual file uploads, which get posted to a script you specify in the setup. There are then a load of javascript callbacks that allow you to track the progress of files and update your page with the results. All in all, very impressed.

Check it out and download it here: http://www.swfupload.org

There are also demos at: http://demo.swfupload.org

UPDATE: I stumbled across a blog post with a tutorial for creating your own flash file, incase you don’t

want to use SWFUpload. It looks pretty simple, so check it out: Multiple File Upload Using Flash

jUpload

jUpload was the first tool I tried, but couldn’t get the Firefox Java plugin working on my desktop (ubuntu) and so gave up. I’m sure the tool would have done the job, but I’d have needed to compile it and more importantly, it looks ugly.

Check it out at: http://jupload.sourceforge.net

jQuery-transmit

Had this worked for me, I think it could have been pretty good. It works on the same principal as SWFUpload, but with seemingly less features. The fact that it used jQuery made me want to use it.

Check it out at: http://code.google.com/p/jquery-transmit/

jQuery multiple file upload plugin

This uses option #3 from the list above, and I couldn’t get it to work. It may have been something silly I was doing but, because it uses method #3, I didn’t spend too long trying to fix it.

If you’re still interested in trying it, check out: http://www.fyneworks.com/jquery/multiple-file-upload/

In conclusion, if you have the knowledge and patience to set up SWFUpload, it really pays off. Once the file manager is done I’ll put up a demo, I’m unashamedly impressed. For now I’ve got a screenshot. Ignore how ugly it is (and the garish colours), I haven’t given it to the designers yet!

SWFUpload concept demo

Yesterday I was unable to browse the store on my phone because I was in the UK. Today I’m able to browse the store, but unable to download Shazam, an app that I could download yesterday.

I’m also a little worried that, as it grows bigger, it will be harder to find the application you are after and with only IE support if you want to view it on your computer, that sucks.

Hopefully we’ll see a load of updates over the next few days!

One of my major concerns was that I couldn’t select multiple messages or items  to delete en masse. I flicked through the manual (for some reason I never read the manual first) and couldn’t find anything. A google search quickly solved the problem.

To multi-select:

1. Hover on the first item you need to select (using your thumb is the suggestion)
2. Quickly hover over the item below (you have to be pretty quick, use a different finger)
3. This should put you in to multi select mode, there will be a blue square in the bottom corner
4. Hovering on an item in this mode will select all items between it and the first item selected
5. To get out of this mode, click on the blue sqaure

I use the word item, essetianlly I wanted to select mutlple messages but I think the trick also applies to other things too.

I started investigating the issue tonight and tried a number of different techniques, checking various settings in folder options for what opens a folder and the double click speed for the mouse but nothing worked.

I tried unplugging the mouse and plugging it back in – that didn’t work. Another mouse did work – so I assumed the mouse was broken. I was about to throw it away but I thought I’d try reinstalling the drivers in a last ditch attempt.

Opening up device manager it turned out the mouse was somehow installed twice. I’m not sure whether this was a strange bug or perhaps it had something to do with the two wireless receivers I have (one for the keyboard and one for the mouse). Anyway – problem fixed and I can click properly again!