PERL – Retrieving Data From MySQL Databases In Different Servers

Fruit Basket Let us consider the following (hypothetical/real) case: we have a fruit basket with an assortment of fruits in it. Over a period of time, let us suppose we accumulate so much fruit [will they not stink? may be – but that’s a problem beyond the scope of PERL & MySQL] that one basket can no longer hold all the fruits. One possible [and meaningful] way to solve this problem is to introduce another basket and segregate fruits into either one of the two baskets. To make it bit more elegant, we should probably make sure that a given kind of fruit is stored in only one of the baskets. Then, when someone asks us for a fruit – say an Apple – we know which basket contains apples and we can readily pick them out; when someone else asks for an Orange, we can repeat the process; and so on.

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PHP – Storing GPS Track Points In MySQL

Garmin GPSMap 60CSxThough the term waypoint has come into fairly common use in recent times, the concept has existed for as long as we have been navigating. Waypoints have traditionally been associated with distinctive features of the physical world – such as mountains, rock formations, lakes, buildings, and so on. With the advancement of technology and times, waypoints have become increasingly abstract, often having no obvious relationship to any distinctive feature of the physical world. Such waypoints are used to define invisible routing paths for navigation. And for the sake of this discussion/article, we will stick to the following definition of a waypoint: a set of co-ordinates – latitude & longitude, and sometimes altitude – to uniquely identify a point in our physical universe.

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PHP – Storing GPS Waypoints In MySQL

Garmin GPSMap 60CSxThough the term waypoint has come into fairly common use in recent times, the concept has existed for as long as we have been navigating. Waypoints have traditionally been associated with distinctive features of the physical world – such as mountains, rock formations, lakes, buildings, and so on. With the advancement of technology and times, waypoints have become increasingly abstract, often having no obvious relationship to any distinctive feature of the physical world. Such waypoints are used to define invisible routing paths for navigation. And for the sake of this discussion/article, we will stick to the following definition of a waypoint: a set of co-ordinates – latitude & longitude, and sometimes altitude – to uniquely identify a point in our physical universe.

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String2Image – A Web Utility To Convert Strings Into Graphics

Why Strings As Graphics, you ask? There are a myriad of reasons and/or applications where strings need to converted to graphics and one such, probably most commonly seen, application is to put our email address on the web. We want it there but we don’t want anyone (the bots) stealing it. If nothing else, this web based utility should help us a bit in that regard.

As I have done previously for other utilities – LaTeX2Graphics and KannadaLaTeX2Graphics – I have used Andreas Reigber‘s simple yet elegant (command line) utility called TeX2Im. Using this web-based utility is pretty simple. Just type-in (or paste) the string in the form and copy/save the graphic to your computer.

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WordPress – Plugin To Keep Track Of Visitors

I understand there are very many plugins available for WordPress that help keep track of a variety of stats. This one, wp-visitors, is simple and light-weight. Myself and couple friends (Adam & Karen and Tim Obermann) have been using it without any trouble – in some form or the other – for over a year now. I am sure this plugin will see further updates – a few bells and whistles (geographical resolution of IP address), etc. As with all WordPress hosted plugins, this too is released under GPL. So, if you like it and like to make it better, please be my guest 🙂

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WordPress – Legacy of comments.php For 2.7 And Beyond

During the State Of The Word address in not-so-recently held WordCamp New York, Matt Mullenweg gave a sneak preview of a plethora of new (and cool) features being included into the next WordPress release (2.7). I had since then been toying around with the almost ? version (of nightly builds) for a while and now that it is in ? stage, I believe I can discuss one of the really cool features and some code-change required to make some pre-2.7 themes incorporate it.

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PHP – Displaying Gravatars In A Non-WordPress Application

Citing their website, an Automattic.com joint:,

A gravatar, or globally recognized avatar, is quite simply an avatar image that follows you from weblog to weblog appearing beside your name when you comment on gravatar enabled sites. Avatars help identify your posts on web forums, so why not on weblogs?

It’s free and with one account, one can register and assign multiple email address the same (or different) avatar(s).

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BASH – GZIP or BZIP2?

BASH is a free software Unix shell written for the GNU Project. Its name is an acronym which stands for Bourne-again shell. The name is a pun on the name of the Bourne shell (sh), an early and important UNIX shell written by Stephen Bourne and distributed with Version 7 Unix circa 1978, and the concept of being born again. BASH was created in 1987 by Brian Fox. In 1990 Chet Ramey became the primary maintainer. BASH is the default shell on most GNU/Linux systems as well as on Mac OS X and it can be run on most UNIX-like operating systems. It has also been ported to Microsoft Windows using the POSIX emulation provided by Cygwin, to MS-DOS by the DJGPP project and to Novell NetWare.

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BASH – Wrappers For qstat In NPACI ROCKS

BASH is a free software UNIX shell written for the GNU Project. Its name is an acronym which stands for Bourne-again shell. The name is a pun on the name of the Bourne shell (sh), an early and important UNIX shell written by Stephen Bourne and distributed with Version 7 UNIX circa 1978, and the concept of being born again. BASH was created in 1987 by Brian Fox. In 1990 Chet Ramey became the primary maintainer. BASH is the default shell on most GNU/Linux systems as well as on Mac OS X and it can be run on most UNIX-like operating systems. It has also been ported to Microsoft Windows using the POSIX emulation provided by Cygwin, to MS-DOS by the DJGPP project and to Novell NetWare.

Continue reading … “BASH – Wrappers For qstat In NPACI ROCKS”