Generate Random Unique Number

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I have found many times when writing stuff in PHP that I have come across a need to generate a random number. That’s not too bad in and of itself, but what about when you need a unique ID key or something like that. For example, say you are writing the next best helpdesk application and need unique case numbers and don’t want to simply use a counter. For whatever reason, I put this little function together and it has served me well. Check it out …

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Age Of Conan Download Links

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I have seen lots of folk out there trying to find ways to download the AoC client, even though it’s a hefty almost 13GB.  I was looking too and what I found was this:

  • There is no (official) digital download/delivery method in place for the AoC client from Funcom.  Right now, if you want the game, you have to buy it retail.
  • That being said, I found that the early access client that was available for download by the players that signed up for early access to the game, will work for playing live right now.  After the download, it will patch up to live (another ~800MB) and you can then play.
  • There are two clients, one for the US and one for the EU.  If you are in the US, you need the US client, and the same for EU.

So, after much searching, I found links to the early access downloader.  This is a small file that will then download all of the game install files.  I don’t know how long this will work, but as of 5/23/2008 it was still working and allowed me to buy a key from an online retailer (Offgamers), download the game and start playing.  Make no mistake, I paid for the game, this is not a way to play for free and I don’t in any way condone stealing. However, for people like me who live in rural areas where you can’t buy it off the shelf without a long trip to another town, and didn’t want to wait for Amazon to ship to play the game it’s a great thing.

Here are the links that I found to the US and EU downloader tool:

Good luck!

PERL Trim Functions

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PERL is a wonderful scripting language, it is extremely powerful, flexible and portable. It also lacks a couple basic functions that other languages have built in. Fear not my friend, just like the PERL round function, I have functions for other things as well!

One thing I miss is a trim function. They have chop and chomp, but that doesn’t always fit what I want. Below I have included a few suns that will get the job done nicely, check it out. Continue reading →

Veritas Volume Manager Goodness

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Hi folks, it’s been a bit since I put anything new up here, life has been real busy lately.  To that end though, I have been working on stuff for the site, and I just posted something that I think is very useful.  It took awhile to put it all together, but nothing is too good for my visitors.

I have been working with Veritas Volume Manager, now called Veritas Storage Foundation lately.  I have worked with it in the past, but not as in depth as I have in recent weeks.  I decided to make a reference for myself, since I seem to get into it for a bit and then don’t touch it for awhile because it just runs.  Then I figured I would make it as comprehensive as I could, plus easy to read, pretty, etc, and then post it here for anyone and everyone that might find it useful.

I have it on the site in HTML format here, and I also have it up in the downloads section as a PDF if you wan to download a copy.  Check it out and let me know if you see anything I missed, I hope you find it useful!

Installing World Of Warcraft On Vista

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Having trouble installing WoW (Word of Warcraft) on your Windows Vista box? Well, I was. Recently I wanted to go back and give WoW a try once again, and by now I have a new machine from Alienware running Windows Vista. I popped the original first CD in and low and behold … I got an error, it wouldn’t run the executable. I got an error number 132 and something about a bootstrap problem.

I thought this might just be a problem with the older installer and Vista, since I got these disks years ago, so I downloaded the latest installer from Blizzard’s website. So, 3.5 GB later I try to install from the download and it doesn’t work either. Different error, this time Vista just popped up a box saying that the installer wasn’t working. Support at Blizzard was no help, in their opinion I had bad memory but I didn’t think that was the case since every other game I have runs great. After some log searching and Google-ing, I hit upon something that clicked for me. It seems the installer was failing because of a problem with the LAME MP3 codec. Aha!

The answer was there in front of me. I took a shot, downloaded and installed the LAME MP3 codec and tried again. Lookout, now the installer worked! I didn’t go back and try the old CD’s, but the installer that I downloaded worked great.

So, if you are having trouble installing WoW on your Vista box, and especially if you get any kind of LAME MP3 errors, go and download the codecs here (http://www.freecodecs.net/files/lameACM-3.97-final.zip) and see if that helps.