Easy DNS mistake with TXT and wildcard records

I recently discovered that it's actually quite easy to get your DNs settings wrong and potentially take your site offline. Especially if you've got a lot of domains and subdomains. This issue is specifically to do with having a wildcard set up for your domain and also having TXT records for subdomains.
I thought I'd better share this to stop any one else making the same mistakes I have.

Top 10 Command Line Shortcuts

Here's the top 10 shortcuts I use on the command line. THese should speed up your productivity quite nicely. If you're using the Gnome Terminal on Ubuntu (possibly other distro's too) you might need to enable ALT+f and ALT+b in the preferences.

• ESC + .
  Escape key and the period/full stop at the same time will insert the last argument from the previous command. For example if your previous command is:

Top Command Line Tips: Apache Access Log

I said I should do some top command line tips. So I thought I'd start with some useful Apache access log monitoring and analysis commands.
These can come in useful if odd things are happening on your websever and maybe you think there are dodgy spiders or your need to only see requests from your IP, that kind of thing.

Assumptions
I'm assuming the path to your access log is /var/log/apache/access.log. So adjust if it's different.
Also assuming your access file's LogFormat is 'combined' and that you actually have permission to view the logs.

Commands Overview
Commands and options we'll be using are:

Top 5 Command Line Tip Posts

Linux CLI cheat sheet from Pixel Beat

I'm a big fan of 'Top X Command Line Tips' type posts and I keep meaning to get around to doing my own I've now done my first couple on Apache Access log tips and Top 10 Shortcuts. In the meantime I thought I'd share 5 of my favourite. Numbered but not really in any order.

Actually my favourite of these is 9 ways to recover your screen. that has come in useful countless times.

Evaluating Recruitment Campaigns

Previously I'd posted on the best IT job sites and given some tips for getting the best value for your money. This post is an update to the method used to evaluate which site performed the best. Even though I'm looking at IT job boards here, it could work just as well for any other industry or if your using multiple recruitment agents.

How The Scoring Works
I've tweaked the scoring system slightly since the last post, to make it a bit fairer.
The formula is this:

[SOLVED] Drupal db_query and date formats

Here's small issue I came across and didn't find many answers online. When using Drupal's db_query method to execute some SQL that contains dateformats in it the weekday always comes out as a zero.
for example:

db_query("SELECT DATE_FORMAT(from_unixtime(changed), '%Y-%m-%d') lastmod FROM node LIMIT 10");

This will return dates like 2011-09-0. The month day will always be zero. It will also match %s (seconds), %f (microseconds), and %b (abbreviated month name) Don't worry there's a simple solution.

How to Create Secure Passwords

As a web developer or any kind of internet professional, you naturally end up with loads and loads of logins. Maybe you use LastPasss, KeePassX or MyPasswordSafe or some other service/program, as long as you don't store them in a password protected word/spreadsheet file, or your browser! You don't do you?
Anyway I recently had to create a new password for a particular online service, one that I want a good secure password for, but starting to use a new secure password can be tricky.
How can I make a password long and include several special characters, upper and lowercase letters and numbers, and still make it memorable?
I had a brain wave that resulted in a really easy to remember password that is 21 characters, has plenty of special charecters, numbers and letters.....

How To Take Advantage of Recruitment Agencies

Trying to recruit IT staff directly can be a challenge. It's not helped by the constant calls from recruitment consultants telling you're wasting your time, and that they have the worlds most amazing candidates, and they all dying to apply for your vacancy, right now! for a big fat fee, of course.

Well here's one way of  using them to your advantage:

Best IT Job Sites

Recruiting IT staff can be difficult, especially if you're trying to avoid extortionate recruitment consultant fees. We've been trying the direct approach for a while now so I thought I'd share some tips and stats on how the some of the IT job sites perform.

There's quite a lot of job sites to choose from, you might want to consider local sites, non-IT specific sites, european sites, global sites, social media, etc, etc. One thing that's garuanteed is that as soon as you raise your head above the parapet, by posting and advert, you'll be bombarded by recruitment consultants. You'll likely also get call from the sales guys at various job sites too. but which to choose.

Here's a couple of tips to help you choose and the table of statistics for a position we are currently advertising.

[SOLVED] How To Stop XSL Outputting Unwanted Namespaces

CC Attribution Share-Alike 3.0

Unwanted namespace in transformed XML

I'm using XSL quite a lot now and several times I've had an issue with namespaces in the output XML/XHTML. In particular if you're using xpath-functions then you might have the xmlns:fn namespace finding it's way into your output. I've finally found the solution and though I'd better post it before  I forget it.

Lets see some an example of the problem.

A Note On HP Setup Ink Cartridges

Just installed a new printer cartridge and getting the "Incompatible Cartridge" message?

It may not be obvious, but when you buy an HP printer (and likely other brands) the cartidges you get in the box are SETUP ones. These are not the same as the standard size ones you'd buy from a shop. Apparently they have about the same amount of ink (although I'd question that), but the key thing is you have to use them the first time you use the printer and you can never use them again.

[SOLVED] VPN: short read (-1): 'Message too long'

While working from home I've had a really annoying problem for a while now. I've set my VPN to only use VPN for local addresses. So normally surfing and stuff is fine.
But when send an email through the MS Exchange web interface, or browse a development site on the office network, my VPN fails with this message:

nm-pptp-service-7067 warn[decaps_gre:pptp_gre.c:331]: short read (-1): Message too long

It disconnects any SSH sessions using the VPN, and is generally very annoying.
Finally I think I may have got the answer....

World Travel Atlas iPad App

We've just launched a new iPad app at work. Although I didn't get to build it, my team and I did develop the XML feeds powering the information in it.

We really think it's better than the equivalent apps from our competitors, like Lonely Planet and National Geographic.

Reduce The Risk of Human Error on Live Servers

This is another quick and easy tip, this time help to reduce human error when working between live, development and staging environments.

In short the tip is to visually distinguish between live/staging/dev environments; the idea being that you don't accidentally run something on the live environment instead of staging or testing. Assuming you're connecting via SSH, you should be able to configure your console program to use a background image and you should be able to customise your command prompt.

Enabling Alt+f and Alt+b shortcuts in Gnome Terminal

I though each time I find a solution to a problem I have I should blog it to make sure the knowledge is out there for everyone. This is a super simple one to start with.

I've been switching from KDE to Gnome in Ubuntu, but been finding it hard to let go of Konsole.
Then I realised the the Gnome Terminal allows background images the way Konsole used to. Anyway, that's another post, standard terminal shortcuts weren't working, like Alt+f to skip forward a word and Alt+b to go back a word, as they were conflicting with the window menus, as in the image above.

There's a super simple fix.

How To Interview A Web Programmer

So you've got a vacant Web Developer position, you've advertised on the best IT job sites, (you didn't use a recruitment agency did you?) you've got an interviewee. But how do you know if he can actually do the job? You need to test him. But how do you write a good test that is fair? Here's how...

Communicate
No one likes a surprise test. Least of all when at an interview. So let him know there'll be a test. Even let him know the topics that will be covered in the test.
For example you might say the test will cover:

Fixing Ubuntu 11.04 Partial Upgrade

I use Ubuntu at work and at home and normally the upgrade process is very smooth.
However, the upgrade from 10.10 to 11.04 has been a pain to say the least.
In fact I'm still grappling with it. (Haven't even started it at work yet.)

So I thought I'd share some tips to in case they might help anyone else.