Abdullah Yahya

Recently I needed to have a script have access to a file but I kept getting a “permission denied” error. Windows permissions is confusing compared to Linux permissions but here’s one way to force a file folder be accessible by “Everyone”. Right click on the file/folder and click the Security tab and follow the screenshot below.

I’ve been looking for a good book on data center network design and infrastructure architecture which includes a thorough yet not boring explanation of load balancing, clusters, caching and proxy servers, firewalls, and SSL. I also want a book that includes, most importantly, diagrams to make it easy to see the flow of information and where things are relative to each other. After much research, I have found the book titled “Data Center Fundamentals” to be pretty much exactly what I’ve been looking for, even though it was published in 2003.

The book can be purchased from Amazon or you can Google “data center fundamentals PDF” and download a free PDF of the book.

As a developer, I spend most of my time writing HTML, CSS, Javascript and PHP. But, every now and then, I need to SSH into a linux server and run commands on the command line. What I hate, though, is having to remember all of these commands which I just don’t use that often. Recently, I came across a web-based GUI for most Linux systems. It’s called Webmin and is an actively maintained projects. With it, you can perform Linux system administration from a website interface and your changes will update the actual files as if you updated them manually.

To learn more, go to http://www.webmin.com

Continue reading Webmin: GUI for Linux System Administration

Recently, I needed to take an Excel CSV file, read it using PHP, loop over each row, and insert each row into a MySQL database. The database was configured to support UTF-8 characters. Unfortunately, the Excel CSV file was not UTF-8-encoded. To figure to the file’s encoding, I opened it in Notepad++ which told me that it was encoded as UCS-2 Little Endian.

I then downloaded iconv which is available for both Unix and Windows and tried to convert the file’s encoding from UCS-2 to UTF-8 which seemed to work. The command I ran was Continue reading Converting Excel CSV File Encoding to UTF-8

When designing a website, the type of font you use can make a big difference in the readability and look of your site. While you can use Font Squirrel to generate web fonts to include in your CSS, you can also get web fonts from

• Google Webfonts (free)
• Adobe Typekit ($2 – $8 / month)

These fonts can be easily included in your website via Javascript.

UNIX BASICS

$ ls -la
list all files including hidden files in current directory

$ ls *.txt
list all files that end with .txt in current directory

$ ls -R *.txt
list all files that ned with .txt in current directory and all children directories

$ pwd
print working directory

$ cd images
change directory to images directory

$ cd ~
change to user home directory Continue reading Common Unix Commands

• VideoPad (for video editing  – Free)
• Audacity (for audio editing – Free)
• HandBrake (for cropping videos, e.g. removing black bars)
• Windows Movie Maker (for rotating videos)

Recently I needed to edit a video and insert still images throughout it and apply a simple cross-fade transition between each media clip. I couldn’t use Windows Movie Maker because it doesn’t include the timeline view anymore. I downloaded and installed NCH VideoPad, which is free for non-commercial use, and it turned out to be a pretty easy video editor. Following is a simple tutorial on how to create a simple video with one primary video, several still images, and cross-fade transitions.

1. Open VideoPad and start a new project.

Continue reading Video Editing with NCH VideoPad (Free)