Saturday, September 29, 2007

Unzip: cannot find or open file.zip

When extracting the contents of a corrupted .zip file, unzip will display the error:

"unzip: cannot find or open file.zip, file.zip.zip or file.zip.ZIP."

Before you move the .zip, be sure to run a test on the .zip:

#unzip -t file.zip

If the test fails, recreate the archive with tar or gzip.

Friday, September 28, 2007

Enable .htaccess to Overwrite Apache Config

If the htaccess AllOverwrite is disabled, Apache will throw up a 500 Internal Server Error

Enable htaccesss AllOverwrite by editing the following file on the webserver:

vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

#Add or edit the line to look like this
AllowOverride AuthConfig Indexes Limit All

Thursday, September 06, 2007

Apple is on Steroids

The business model at Apple is on steroids. A few more billions this holiday season.

Two months ago, the 8GB iPhone bagged a heafty price tag of $599. Fast forward today, two months later, a price cut of $200.

The iPod line has been split into two. iPod classic and the new iPod touch.

The breakdown:
iPhone 8GB - $399

iPod Classic 80GB - $249
iPod Classic 160GB - $349

iPod Touch 8GB - $299
iPod Touch 16GB - $399

The 8GB iPhone sounds reasonable at $399. The 16GB iPod Touch that has all the bells and whistles of the iPhone - is limited at 16GB!!?? WTF!

Why would a standalone device such as the iPod Touch boast a touch interface, 3.5inch widescreen, Safari, YouTube, WiFi on 16GB of storage? I guess this is a beta release. A years worth of waiting will see that storage double, triple and quadruple.

Innovative idea one, users can now purchase music directly from their iPod Touch and iPhone devices through the integrated iTunes store. Access iTunes through WiFi and buy music. Anywhere. Anytime.

Innovative idea two, Apple cut a deal with Starbucks. If your sipping coffee at Starbucks and wondering what song is playing, you bring up the iPod Touch or the iPhone, get into iTunes (through WiFi) and buy the song instantly. I guess, with Apples design philosophy behind great interfaces, this feature will trigger millions of legal downloads. USA only (for now).

A musician could well release an album at Starbucks and iPod users would _buy_ tracks they like. This strategy has great potential to start a whole new way to sell music legally and quickly.

Just in time for the holidays.. Ho Ho Ho

Very clever!



Monday, September 03, 2007

Put Your Laptop SD Card Slot to Use, Create Backups

Backups are generally created on the following media:

- DVD/R
- External USB flash devices
- External USB HDD

A laptops SD card slot generally goes unused. Mounting an external USB flash device takes over a USB port and can break if you forget to unplug the device.


I've been experimenting in creating one click backups on a SD flash card, with great results! The greatest advantage is that you do not tie up a USB port and the SD card does not need to be ejected at all.

- Stick in a SD card
- Create a batch script that runs the backup either manually or invoked through a task/CRON schedule

The following script executes winrar with command line parameters and dumps the ZIP onto the SD card.

-- Begin Copy and Paste --

@ echo off
echo Kill a running app
taskkill /f /im APP_NAME_HERE.exe

echo cd into the winrar directory
c:
cd progra~1\winrar\

echo Run winrar
winrar a f:\ -r -afrar -m1 -rr -rv -t -ilog -ag+bck-MMM-DD_YYYY__NNN -x@F:\exclude-dirs.txt F:\SOURCE

echo Copy .ZIP to the SD Card, h:\ is the SD destination
copy /v f:\bck-*.rar h:\

pause

-- End Copy/Paste --

Dump the above contents into a .bat file and voila!

Requirements:

SD/MMC/MS Card - newegg.com
Winrar or Winzip
Laptop, duh!