Articles - Joel Lipman .Com

Convert Decimal (Person Days) to Time in Excel

: Joel Lipman; Excel; 13 February 2013; Hits: 6930

What?
We have an excel spreadsheet which reports against a mySQL database and reads time spent on projects by IT Service colleagues. The main report is a pivot table with staff members along the top, tasks down the first column, and time spent in the form of person days in the cross-join.

Why?
Currently the smallest bookable time by low-level tape monkeys and techies is 30 minutes (Managers it would appear can book whatever time, eg. 5mins). 30 minutes for us translates to 0.07 in person days (a person day being 7 hours and 24 minutes or 26640 seconds).

How?

: Joel Lipman; Cascading Stylesheets; 08 February 2013; Hits: 5621

What?
So many people asking this when the solution is a bit of aesthetic styling.

copy raw

ol{margin:4px}

-- yields
995.
996.
997.
998.
999.
000.      <-- What's going on here then?
001.
002.

ol{margin:4px}
-- yields
995.
996.
997.
998.
999.
000. <-- What's going on here then?
001.
002.

Or check out this screenshot of the issue:
Ordered List Issue

How?

Category: Cascading Stylesheets :: Article: 485

: Joel Lipman; Personal Home Page; 07 February 2013; Hits: 42870

What?
For those of you who use Preg_Replace. Preg_replace is a function that uses regular expressions to search and replace a string.

Why?
Because my understanding with regular expressions is shady and varies from language to language, I've written this article as a quick reference point.

How?

: Joel Lipman; MySQL; 05 February 2013; Hits: 19234

What?
This article isn't unique as there are other tutorials out there. This is meant to detail a process to export a database using MySQL Workbench and then to import it into another database.

Why?
If you're confined to use this product then this is how to do it. Personally, even a web-based app such as PhpMyAdmin would fare better.

How?

: Joel Lipman; MySQL; 03 February 2013; Hits: 5174

What?
This is an article on how to replace a string with another in all your joomla articles without modifying other data such as modified date and author.

Why?
I used to have a third-party plugin that would replace my HTML tags <PRE> with <PRE CLASS="brush:php">. Not I want to switch these back.

How?
For demo purposes, I'm searching a column called introtext in a database table called MYTABLE_content. First let me find all the articles that need this change:

: Joel Lipman; MySQL; 01 February 2013; Hits: 19394

What?
So this is a quick article on how to install the mySQL add-on for Oracle SQL Developer v3.0.04.

Why?
I've used various mySQL administration tools to manage mySQL databases over the years, all freeware until someone expresses an interest in using it and then the supplier will implement restrictions and trial based versions. Oracle SQL Developer is currently free at time of print (01-FEB-2013).

I also need to use Oracle databases in my day job so the Oracle SQL developer is already a pre-approved software for our work computers. We have SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) as well for our SQL Server instances but it wasn't practical to link this to mySQL databases.

How?

: Joel Lipman; Databases; 31 January 2013; Hits: 9466

Some memory aids for me so that I don't have to keep looking them up:

: Joel Lipman; Web-Development; 30 January 2013; Hits: 12571

So having moved desk from one side of the room to another, I have lost my view of the sea. Oh well, this is where technology has come to the rescue and returned my calming view...

Note: I think this is running in British Summer Time (BST) rather than GMT or it's clock is seriously off. Otherwise it's a picture from the future (see photo timestamps).

CharIndex Reverse - find occurrence starting from end of string in TSQL

: Joel Lipman; Transact-SQL; 28 January 2013; Hits: 40419

What?
This is a quick note on finding the last occurrence of a string in a longer string. This has to be in Transact SQL for a SQL Server instance only and not filtered by other code.

Why?
I have a string such as the following (column positions added for demo purposes):

copy raw

String1.String2.String3.String4
1   5   10   15   20   25   30 -> length = 31

String1.String2.String3.String4
1 5 10 15 20 25 30 -> length = 31

I'd like to end up with just the last part of this, ie "String4". So I need to delimit based on the dot/period (.) and use substring in a sort of reversed form.

For argument's sake, I'm assigning this string to the variable "haystack".

How?
Perhaps we should determine the position of the last needle first (reverse the haystack string and find needle):

Category: Transact-SQL :: Article: 478

: Joel Lipman; Joomla; 27 January 2013; Hits: 50445

What?
Apologies for posting yet another article on how to access the Joomla Database using the Joomla classes but this is just a quick note for myself as a reference sheet. Plus the official documentation don't have enough examples in my view. Source: http://docs.joomla.org/ for v1.5.x and for v2.5.x

This article applies to Joomla 1.5.x, 2.5.x and 3.x.

: Joel Lipman; IT Support; 26 January 2013; Hits: 6080

i3 workstation upgrade running Windows 7
So another year gone and our workstations running Windows 7 are somewhat lagging when opening too many apps. The recent release of Windows 8 has led to a review of our developer's equipment and the verdict is that our workstations need upgrading (it always is). So on a budget (ie. as cheap as possible), we'll skip Windows 8 and wait for Windows 9, but in the meantime we need something that flows as smooth as any other Microsoft product with Windows 7 as its Operating System:

Proposed for January 2013 (5 suppliers)

Processor	Intel Core i3 3220 Dual Core CPU ( 3.30GHz, Socket 1155, 3MB Cache, Ivy Bridge, 55W, Intel HD Graphics 2500, Advanced Vector Extensions) - Intel	£88.50
Motherboard	AsRock H61M-DGS Motherboard (Socket 1155, Intel H61, DDR3, 4 x S-ATA 300, Micro ATX, PCI Express 3.0, AsRock XFast USB, AsRock Instant Boot) - ASrock	£37.58
Hard Drive	Western Digital Caviar Blue 160 GB (7200 rpm) SATA 8 MB 3.5 inch Hard Drive (Internal) - Western Digital	£24.95
Memory	Corsair CMX4GX3M1A1333C9 XMS3 Desktop Memory 4GB - Corsair	£20.05
Optical Drive	Sony AD-5280S-0B DVD±RW 24x SATA Drive with Dust Protected Enclosure and Emergency Eject - Sony	£17.77
Other	2 X Serial ATA Sata Hard Drive Data Cable Lead - Unbranded	£0.90
	Total	£189.75

Confirmed for January 2013 (2 suppliers):

: Joel Lipman; Windows OS; 22 January 2013; Hits: 6573

What?
Applies to Windows 7.
Requires a Vogonian environment of red tape and bureaucracy.

This is an article to describe an alternative method then "right-clicking on the desktop", "selecting Personalize", "clicking on Desktop Background", "browsing to the Picture Location". The problem happens when browsing to the picture location and it doesn't seem to remember which folder you selected. At home, this would be a breeze, but that's because I don't implement group policies at home.

Why?
We get problems with this because none of our staff are full administrators of their local workstation. As IT staff we have elevated privileges but not absolute rights to configuring our computer. And we still need to re-login for every change. About a zillion group policies control our every deviation from the standard staff image and so we spend more time on "how do you make it like it was in XP?" situations.

How?
Who doesn't want to change their desktop background wallpaper? Using Windows 7, who doesn't want it to be a slideshow as well?

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