Chris Mckee Designs, by Chris McKee, who'd of guessed

A new plugin to simplify some of the more irritating bits of Google maps (i.e. GeoCoding and all the usual gubbins)

I’m looking at testing the new developments that Magento plan to release in version 4, but I need a few sizable databases to test the new speeds etc with.
My own test bases generally range up to 1000 products, 30 attributes. So if anyone has higher and wishes to help-out by lending me their database [...]

Anyone who already knows me knows I have a ridiculous amount of books; mostly e-books thesedays (the future-wifey takes exception to a book-based house-invasion) and mostly for reference. I am by all definition a book whore.  So when PACKT offered to send me their latest so I can review it and didn’t stipulate any real [...]

Ever wondered why Magento Layered Cache Was SOOOO Slow and Greedy, as in it sees mysql as its bitch and likes to consume as much resource as humanly possible.

This is a SINGLE update query based on my test ‘footwear’ store, several attributes etc. Course the more attributes you have the slower it goes.

Credit Card validation is a Pain in the Arse
My Co-Worker pointed out this wont validate all Maestro Cards; Now hunting a list of registered prefixes.
But its not going anywhere fast. So I’ve combined two of the scripts I’ve found to meet my needs, added UK credit card data (Maestro/VisaDebit etal) and here it is.
Base Sources: [...]

I was nocking up a client script to drag down a news-feed and post it to a Wordpress blog; the script ran fine, no posts appeared and no errors occurred… irritating.

So I figured I’d share this pain in the arse issue fix to the “HTTP/1.1 417 Expectation Failed Error”

PHP-CLI Edition
* Auto Product Count
* Auto On Completion Destroy Temp Files
* Various Optimizations

*NEW* PHP Web Browser Edition
* Three files;
* Wrapper (which you run from your browser)
* Two IFRAMES: The main functional script and a counter to show its not fallen asleep

When encoding use content to XML there are often issues that occur… 99.9% of the time stemming from users copy-pasting from MSWord in to text boxes and all the odd characters being carried through. PHP will play dumb and happily save this, then winge like a b’tch about displaying it.

A few quickfixes on saving the [...]

Taken from http://nightjack.wordpress.com/ before Sir David Eady QC merrily allowed the removal of anonymity privileged to the the author, losing him his blog and very nearly his job. That’s Sir David Eady of Tenterden, Kent who values anonymity up to the point where it exposes legal incompetence.
Source: NightJack

In these days of us increasingly having to [...]

Ok to save time (and the fact I type enough to drive me nuts) I’ll cut the bull and just give you a set of great tools for browser testing.

IE Tester – this neat FREE bit of software lets you test in all the IE browsers since 5.5 within one browser. Great stuff; the [...]