Matt Thiessen

Adding Text to the Sidebar

Posted on May 10, 2009 by matt

You can add any text,HTML or JavaScript to the sidebar of your WordPress site. The first thing you need to do after logging into the wp-admin is to select Widgets.

Select Widgets

It’s possible that you have more than one sidebar, if you do select the desired sidebar you want to add text.

Select Sidebar

Add Text Widget

Now you add the Text Widget to the sidebar.

Editing the Text

Saving the text

Add the title for your text, add the text you want to display, press the done button and then press the save button. And you’re done. Visit your site to see the new text widget.

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Posted in How-to, Wordpress | Leave a comment

The day after my surgery I had a follow up visit and my eyes measured 25/20 in my left eye and 15/20 in my right. The Doctor said that my right eye was over corrected, but may clear up in a couple of weeks. If not I may need to have a touch up.

During the last week I was struggling with dry, and at times fuzzy vision and was using drops every few hours. Today I was able to go entire day without needing drops. Both of my eyes are seeing excellent. I’m going to guess that tomorrow’s follow up visit is going to show that both eyes are now 25/20. That’s great because I’m not even sure I was able to see 20/20 when I had my glasses.

It’s been one week after having UltraLasik surgery. I am seeing with more clarity than I can ever remember.

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Posted in Family | Tagged UltraLasik | Leave a comment

USPS Web Tools

Posted on March 27, 2009 by matt

I was trying to add the USPS API into osCommerce. I received the following error when adding this shipping module:

RateV3 is not a valid API name for this protocol

This is because when you create an account for the Web Tools at USPS you only have access to their test server. The USPS test server can only use RateV2, so test using this code below, then request to be switched to use the production server. Then you can use RateV3 on the production server and the USPS module for osCommerce will work.

<?php
 
$request1 = <<< XMLREQUEST
<RateV2Request USERID="xxxxxxxxxxxxx">
<Package ID="0">
<Service>PRIORITY</Service>
<ZipOrigination>10022</ZipOrigination>
<ZipDestination>20008</ZipDestination>
<Pounds>10</Pounds>
<Ounces>5</Ounces>
<Container>Flat Rate Box</Container>
<Size>REGULAR</Size>
</Package>
</RateV2Request>
XMLREQUEST;
 
 
$request = "http://testing.shippingapis.com/ShippingAPITest.dll?API=RateV2&XML=" . rawurlencode($request1);
 
$ch = curl_init();
 
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, $request);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HEADER, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_HTTPGET, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, true);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SLL_VERIFYHOST, false);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_SSL_VERIFYPEER, false);
 
 
$response = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
 
echo($response);
 
?>

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Posted in Family, PHP, Python, Z350 | Tagged shipping | Leave a comment

Use Python to Save an FTP Directory List to File

Posted on March 13, 2009 by matt

Written for Python 2.6

#!/usr/bin/python
 
import ftplib
 
ftp = ftplib.FTP("ftp.server.com")
ftp.login("username", "password")
ftp.cwd("path/path")
 
data = []
 
ftp.dir(data.append)
 
ftp.quit()
 
outputFile = open('dirList.txt','wb')
 
for line in data:
    outputFile.write(line + "\n")
 
outputFile.close()

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Posted in Python | Leave a comment

Chicken Fried Lyrics

Posted on March 1, 2009 by matt

Zac Brown Band

Using Python to replace spaces with underscores in filenames.

Posted on February 25, 2009 by matt

Python can be used on Window, Linux and Mac. It just a simple install.

download code

#!/usr/bin/python
 
import string
import os
import re
 
# task:
# loop thur input directory
# look for .pdf
# replace space with underscore
# rename/move to output directory
 
inputDir = "./" # Current directory
outputDir = "./new_location"
 
for filename in os.listdir(inputDir):
    if filename[-4:] == ".pdf":
        tempName = filename
        tempName = tempName.replace(' ', '_')
        os.rename(inputDir + "/" + filename, outputDir + "/" + tempName)

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Posted in Python | Leave a comment

Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD)

Posted on February 24, 2009 by matt

How to earn your MCPD certification on Visual Studio 2008

Each MCPD certification on Visual Studio 2008 requires that you pass two to four Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist (MCTS) prerequisite exams and one Professional Series exam, as shown in the following table. When you pass all the exams in a specific MCPD path, you earn the related MCTS certifications as well as the relevant MCPD certification.

I will be focusing on this particular track: MCPD: ASP.NET Developer 3.5 so I’ll need to pass the following exams: 70-536, 70-562 and 70-564.

Exam 70-536: Microsoft® .NET Framework 2.0 Foundation

Just purchased a book to pass Exam 70-536.

MCTS Self-Paced Training Kit

Exam 70-562: TS: Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5, ASP.NET Application Development

Exam 70-564: PRO: Designing and Developing ASP.NET Applications Using Microsoft .NET Framework 3.5

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Posted in Coding | Tagged .NET, books | Leave a comment

Sony PRS505SC Over Amazon’s Kindle

Posted on February 23, 2009 by matt


Sony PRS505/SC Reader Digital Book
by ComputerTV

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Posted in Chatter | Leave a comment

Displaying Child Page Links in A Template

Posted on February 22, 2009 by matt

<?php /*
	Template Name: Child Page List
*/ ?><?php get_header(); ?>
 
			<div class="narrow_column">
 
<?php if(have_posts()) : ?><?php while(have_posts()) : the_post(); ?>
<div class="post" id="post-<?php the_ID(); ?>">
 
	<h2><a href="<?php the_permalink(); ?>" rel="bookmark"><?php the_title(); ?></a></h2>
	<div class="entry">
 
		<?php the_content(); ?>
 
		<?php $children = wp_list_pages('title_li=&child_of=' . $post->ID . '&echo=0');
			if ($children) { ?>
 
<ul>
  <?php  echo( $children ); ?>
</ul>
<?php } ?>
		<?php edit_post_link('Edit', '<p>', '</p>'); ?>
 
		<!--
		<?php trackback_rdf(); ?>
		-->
 
		<div class="comments-template"><?php comments_template(); ?></div>
 
	</div><!-- end entry -->
 
</div><!-- end post -->
<?php endwhile; ?>
 
<?php include (TEMPLATEPATH . '/browse.php'); ?>
 
<?php else : ?>
 
<div class="post">
 
	<h2><?php _e('Not Found'); ?></h2>
	<div class="entry">
<p class="notfound"><?php _e('Sorry, but you are looking for something that isn&#39;t here.'); ?></p>
	</div>
 
</div>
 
<?php endif; ?>
 
			</div><!-- end narrow column -->
 
<?php get_footer(); ?>

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Posted in PHP, Wordpress | Leave a comment

Linux and Apache commands

Posted on February 16, 2009 by matt

Here are some commands that we use at the Gazette on our Linux web server. It is running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2.

Reload Apache Conf file
/etc/init.d/httpd reload

Restart Apache
apachectl -k graceful (didn’t work on Rackspace)

Restart Apache from ssh
/etc/rc.d/init.d/httpd restart

Modify Apache conf file
vi /etc/httpd/conf/httpd.conf

vi commands
i enter edit mode
esc to exit edit mode (command mode)
:wq to write changes and quit (in command mode)
:!q quit without saving

Memory Use

free -t -m

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Adding Text to the Sidebar

Select Widgets

Select Sidebar

Add Text Widget

Editing the Text

Saving the text

After UltraLasik

USPS Web Tools

Use Python to Save an FTP Directory List to File

Chicken Fried Lyrics

Using Python to replace spaces with underscores in filenames.

Microsoft Certified Professional Developer (MCPD)

Sony PRS505SC Over Amazon’s Kindle

Displaying Child Page Links in A Template

Linux and Apache commands

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