I am busy changing the world

I used Django's generic date_based views in Django v1.1: urls.py: from django.conf.urls.defaults import * from django.contrib import admin admin.autodiscover() from coltrane.models import Entry entry_info_dict = {     'queryset': Entry.objects.all(),     'date_field': 'pub_date', } urlpatterns = patterns('',      (r'^admin/', include(admin.site_urls)),      (r'^search/$', 'cms.search.views.search'),      (r'^weblog/$', 'django.views.generic.date_based.archive_index',entry_info_dict),      (r'^weblog/(?P<year>\d{4}/$', 'django.views.generic.date_based.archive_year', entry_info_dict),      (r'^weblog/(?P<year>\d{4}/(?P<month>\w{3})/$', 'django.views.generic.date_based.archive_month', entry_info_dict),      (r'^weblog/(?P<year>\d{4}/(?P<month>\w{3})/(?P<day>\d{2})/$', 'django.views.generic.date_based.archive_day...

If you see this error when trying to mount a NTFS partition (/dev/sda5 for example) in Ubuntu: Error mounting: mount exited with exit code 13: ntfs_attr_pread_i: ntfs_pread failed: Input/output error Failed to read NTFS $Bitmap: Input/output error NTFS is either inconsistent, or there is a hardware fault, or it's a SoftRAID/FakeRAID hardware. In the first case run chkdsk /f on Windows then reboot into Windows twice. The usage of the /f parameter is very important! If the device is a SoftRAID/FakeRAID then first activate it and mount a different device under the /dev/mapper/ directory, (e.g. /dev/mapper/nvidia_eahaabcc1). Please see the 'dmraid' documentation for more details Run this command line to fix and remount again: sudo ntfsfix /dev/sda5 ntfsfix is provided by the ntfs-3g package of Ubuntu.

Whenever a user access a restricted page without a appropriate privilege, nginx server will redirect her to an error page: It will show its identity and version (nginx ). For the security's sake I want to hide those information and show my custom page instead of that default page. So, do the following: 1. Hide the nginx version: open the /etc/nginx/nginx.conf, edit the line: erver_tokens off;  save and exit. 2. Direct those 40x error to my custom page in /usr/share/nginx/www/40x.html: in the site's configuration (/etc/nginx/site-available/default) :         error_page 401 402 403 404 /40x.html;                                                                                                     ...

This is really useful: Passing a list as an argument and prefixing it with a single asterisk (*) will cause each item of the list, in order, to be used as a separate positional argument. Passing a dictionary and prefixing it with two asterisks (**) will cause the keys of the dictionary to be used as names for separate keyword arguments and the dictionary’s values to become the values of these arguments. When a Python function needs to accept arbitrary sets of optional arguments, or to accept many different arguments based on different situations, it’s common to define it like this: def my_func(*args, **kwargs): The function will then have access to a list named args containing all the positional arguments passed to it and a dictionary named kwargs containing all the keyword arguments passed to it. The function can then look at those variables to work out what it needs to do. Reference: Practical Django Projects, 2nd edition, James Bennet, Apress.

This is a super useful php snipet to debug the ldap search: #============================================================================== # Configuration #============================================================================== # LDAP $ldap_url = "ldaps://ldap.server1 ldaps://ldap.server2"; $ldap_binddn = "cn=manager,dc=example,dc=com"; $ldap_bindpw = "P@ssw0rd"; $ldap_base = " dc=example,dc=com "; #$ldap_filter = "(&(objectClass=person)(uid={login}))"; $ldap_filter = "(&(objectClass=user)(sAMAccountName={login})(!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)))"; $login = "genius"; # Connect to LDAP $ldap = ldap_connect($ldap_url); ldap_set_option($ldap, LDAP_OPT_PROTOCOL_VERSION, 3); ldap_set_option($ldap, LDAP_OPT_REFERRALS, 0); # Bind if ( isset($ldap_binddn) && isset($ldap_bindpw) ) { $bind = ldap_bind($ldap, $ldap_binddn, $ldap_bindpw); } else { $bind = ldap_b...

Xubuntu 12.04 released New default shortcut keys Alt F5 Max window horiz. Alt F6 Max. window vert. Alt F7 Max. window (h+v) In addition, you can stick a window (making it appear in all workspaces) with  Alt F8 . The shortcuts for moving and resizing windows have been removed in favor of more powerful mouse gestures. Naturally, if you need these shortcuts, you can enable them from the Settings Manager. Super W Firefox Super M Thunderbird Super F Thunar Super T Terminal The aforementioned shortcuts are bound to exo-open launchers. This means they will always open any browser, mail reader, file manager or terminal emulator you have set as the default. In addition, there is six new application shortcut keys: Super R  for Application finder Super E  for Leafpad Super 1  for Gmusicbrowser Super 2  for Pidgin Super 3  for Abiword Super 4  for Gnumeric (source:  http://xubuntu.org/news/12-04-release/ ) * To show deskto...

I had planed for my Django presentations in September and October ( see the plan here ). But, according to my agreement with the teacher at the University a week ago, plan has to be changed: 1. September :  *  Topic : A crash course on  Django *  Attendants : students *  Date Time : 6PM September 30th, 2013 *  Venue:   room C102  Saigon University , Bà Huyện Thanh Quan street, Ho Chi Minh City. 2. October :  I will do the presentation at 2 Universities, on the same topic a. Saigon University: *  Topic :  A crash course on  Django *  Attendants : students *  Date Time : 6PM October 1st, 2013 *  Venue :  room D104  Saigon University, AN Dương Vương street, Ho Chi Minh City. b. University of Information Technology: *  Topic :  A crash course on  Django *  Attendants : students *  Date Time : 7:30AM October 5th, 2013 *  Venue :...

Example: ldap_filter = "(&(objectClass=user)(|(sn=*{lastname}*)(givenName=*{firstname}*))(!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)))" & => AND |  => OR !  => NOT References: http://www.zytrax.com/books/ldap/apa/search.html

To show White Space and Indentation Guides (Tab) in Sublime Text: * Open Preferences menu, choose Setting - User to open the Preferences.sublime-settings file, add this line: "draw_white_space": "all",

This php snipet helps me to produce an ldap search against an Active Directory using php5-ldap: <?php #============================================================================== # Configuration #============================================================================== # LDAP $ldap_url = "ldaps://<ldap server 1 ip> ldaps://<ldap server 2 ip>"; #$ldap_binddn = "cn=manager,dc=example,dc=com"; $ldap_binddn = "CN=Admin,OU=ArtificialUsers,DC=MyDomain,DC=COM"; $ldap_bindpw = "P@ssw0rd"; $ldap_base = "DC=MyDomain,DC=COM"; $ldap_filter = "(&(objectClass=user)(sAMAccountName={login})(!(userAccountControl:1.2.840.113556.1.4.803:=2)))"; #============================================================================== # POST parameters #============================================================================== # Initiate vars $result = ""; $login = ""; $ldap = "...

I have to reset multiple accounts passwords. I's looking for a way to use the powershell to read csv file and then update the password just like I did before ( http://iambusychangingtheworld.blogspot.com/2013/08/activedirectory-update-user-info-from.html ). Unfortunately, the Active Directory Module for Windows PowerShell is only available in Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows 7 which I don't have now (only Server 2008 SP2). So, I's googling around and then I found this: Bulk Password Control http://www.wisesoft.co.uk/software/passwordcontrol/bulk_password_control.aspx This free tool can help me update all the users passwords which are auto generated. It even let me export the information to csv file. It's so cool! Genius!!! Note: install this tool inside the Active Directory Domain Controller.

To set a basic authentication for a directory in Apache, add the following lines to your Apache config file (usually in /etc/apache2/site-available/default ):         <Directory "/var/www/myapp/">                 Order deny,allow                 Allow from 172.0.0.0/8                 Deny from all                    AuthType Basic                 AuthName "Authentication Required"                 AuthUserFile "/etc/apache2/pwd-reset.conf"                 Require valid-user         </Directory> With the above setting, apache will only allow internal IP address access /var/www/myapp/ directory, and deny all request from outside that IP ra...

If you are working with Apache and some CMS (e.g. Wordpress), you will find yourself at least do the url rewrite  thing once to make the url friendly. Something like translate: this: http://mydomain.com/?q=abcd to this: http://mydomain.com/abcd/ In Django, you dont have to worry about it because when creating apps, Django lets you define the url pattern (regex) for a particular view. It is used in a pre-defined view. How about the user-defined view, like a blog post which will be posted by a non-programmer user using a WYSIWYG editor of your app? What will the url look like? Django core developers (who develop the Django core) know that situation and create a Model Field name SlugField which will solve our problem: James Bennett's definition from the book "Practical Django projects": SlugField is a bit more interesting. It’s meant to store a slug: a short, meaningful piece of  text, composed entirely of characters that are safe to use in a URL. You use Sl...

When a form is submitted, I wanna get the value of a key (variable) which is in the POST/GET data. For example: myvalue = request.POST['mykey'] But if for some reason, the POST/GET data does not contains that data ('mykey': 'myvalue'). In this case, I have to check if the key 'mykey' is sent in POST/GET data and check if that key is not empty: if 'mykey' in request.POST.keys() and request.POST['mykey']:       myvalue = request.POST['mykey'] There is a Python method available on any Python dictionary names  get() . get() lets you ask for the value of a particular key and specify a default to fallback on if the key doesn't exist. And, POST and GET are dictionaries. myvalue = request.POST.get('mykey', '') That get() method will save me (and you) so much time!

I have a directory which contains a lot of photos. But, for some reasons, the files's names do not have file extension. Something like: myphotos/ -------------photo1 -------------photo2 -------------photo3 ... -------------photo70 Because of that, I cannot upload those photos to facebook. The file-chooser window does not recognize them as images. So, I have to add .JPEG extension for all photos. Python helps me this time (and so many other times). Run this python script inside the myphotos directory; #! /usr/bin/python from os import listdir, rename from os.path import isfile, join def get_files_list(path): return [ f for f in listdir(path) if (isfile(join(path,f)))] def add_ext_batch(files_list): for fn in files_list:          tem_fn = fn + '.JPEG' rename(fn, tem_fn) if __name__=="__main__":        file_list = get_files_list('.')        add_ext_batch(file_list)

To create a basic authentication layer for a specific page with nginx, you can do the following steps: 1. Add these lines to your nginx config, /etc/nginx/sites-available/myconf: ... server {         listen 80;         listen [::]:80 default_server ipv6only=on;         root /myapp/root/path;         index index.php index.html index.htm;         server_name localhost;         location / {                 try_files $uri $uri/ /index.html;                 auth_basic                     "Restricted";                 auth_basic_user_file   /mnt/DATA/projects/myproject/.htpasswd;         } .... 2. Create a .htpasswd file which contains username and password, in t...

To make the php5-ldap library contactable with a Microsoft Windows Active Directory server, make sure: 1. Install OpenLDAP library: sudo apt-get install slapd ldap-utils 2. Modify the config file of ldap at /etc/ldap/ldap.conf , !important: # # LDAP Defaults # # See ldap.conf(5) for details # This file should be world readable but not world writable. #BASE   dc=example,dc=com #URI    ldap://ldap.example.com ldap://ldap-master.example.com:666 #SIZELIMIT      12 #TIMELIMIT      15 #DEREF          never # TLS certificates (needed for GnuTLS) # TLS_CACERT    /etc/ssl/certs/ca-certificates.crt # add this TLS_REQCERT never 3. Write a test script and run: <?php $ldap = ldap_connect("ldaps://172.18.1.2"); ldap_set_option($ldap, LDAP_OPT_PROTOCOL_VERSION, 3); ldap_set_option($ldap, LDAP_OPT_REFERRALS, 0); $password="P@ssw0rd"; $binddn = "CN=Admin,OU=ArtificialUsers,DC=MyDomain,DC...

Yesterday, a user of my website notified me that she didn't see anything on the website. What? I checked, and found that she used IE v9 to access the website. My website works perfectly in the current Chrome, Firefox and IE10 (or newer). There're two solutions I can think about to deal with this issue: 1. Detect the user's browser, if it is Internet Explorer and the version is older than 10, notify her and suggest to install a newer browser. 2. Add IE9 (or older) support for my website. And this will be so much pain. I tried the solution number 1, so I did the following steps: 1. Dectect the user's browser and version using Peter-Paul Koch's script : var BrowserDetect = { init: function () { this.browser = this.searchString(this.dataBrowser) || "An unknown browser"; this.version = this.searchVersion(navigator.userAgent) || this.searchVersion(navigator.appVersion) || "an unknown version"; this.OS = this.searchString(th...

In Internet Explorer 10 you can use Developer Tool's Brower Mode to see what your website looks like in different IE versions (IE 9, 8, 7). Crap is crap!