If you use the jQuery.scrollTo, or a plugin dependant on it, such as

/**
* SmoothScroll
* This helper script created by DWUser.com. Copyright 2013 DWUser.com.
* Dual-licensed under the GPL and MIT licenses.
* All individual scripts remain property of their copyrighters.
* Date: 10-Sep-2013
* Version: 1.0.1
*/

/**
* jQuery.ScrollTo – Easy element scrolling using jQuery.
* Copyright (c) 2007-2013 Ariel Flesler – aflesler(at)gmail(dot)com | http://flesler.blogspot.com
* Dual licensed under MIT and GPL.
* @author Ariel Flesler
* @version 1.4.3.1
*/

Then you may find on Chrome 61, the page refuses to scroll.

The solution, I found was to use these CSS classes for HTML and BODY

html {
    overflow: hidden;
    height: 100%;
}
body {
    height: 100%;
    overflow: auto;
}

Getting off your sofa is far too much exercise some days, and if you have popcorn time running on the mac, and just slightly out of reach, you really need something to remotely control it.

I found an app on the Android app store to control it, but I didn’t find an equivalent on the IOS. So I decided to write my own.

Which you can download here:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/popcorn-remote/id1290119967?ls=1&mt=8&at=1000l9tW

So, first, pairing. The easiest way to do this is to go to Settings > Show Advanced Settings > Remote Control, Create Pairing QR code. this generates a code like this

To Save you running a QR scanner on that, it decodes to {“ip”:”192.168.1.249″,”port”:”8008″,”user”:”popcorn”,”pass”:”popcorn”} – obviously the IP is dependant on your network.

Then I downloaded a Javascript library by Giacomo Cerquone, called Butter_remote.js

And wrote a little HTML like this;

http://butter_remote.js
https://code.jquery.com/jquery-1.12.4.min.js

$(init);
function init()
{
butter_remote.init(
{
username: “popcorn”,
password: “popcorn”,
ip: “127.0.0.1”,
port: “8008”,
debug: “false”
}
);
$(“#btnPlayPause”).bind(“click”,function playPause(){
butter_remote.toggleplaying();
});
$(“#btnForward”).bind(“click”,function playPause(){
butter_remote.right();
});
$(“#btnBack”).bind(“click”,function playPause(){
butter_remote.left();
});
}

Play/Pause
Forward
Back

Then just to wrap that in a Cordova/Phonegap app, and install it on my phone 🙂

When you set up a linked server environment between two SQL servers, that are not on the same network, and you try to run a transaction that includes a reference to a linked server; by running a SQL statement like

BEGIN TRANSACTION
update LINKED_SERVER.MY_DATABASE.dbo.MY_TABLE set MY_COLUMN = 1
COMMIT TRANSACTION

and you get an error message like

OLE DB provider “SQLNCLI10” for linked server “myserver” returned message “No transaction is active.”.

Msg 7391, Level 16, State 2, Line 2
The operation could not be performed because OLE DB provider “SQLNCLI10” for linked server “myserver” was unable to begin a distributed transaction.

Then the solution turned out to be – after two days of head-scratching – to : put the Net BIOS name (computer name) for each server involved in the transaction into the hosts file at both sides of the transaction.

The hosts file is in c:\Windows\System32\Drivers\etc\hosts – and you’ll need administrator access to change it.

Thanks to @reedcouk ‘s API we’ve just relaunched our Job Searcher App on iOS with a new version. 

It’s a £0.99 download, and well worth it, if it helps land your next job !

https://itunes.apple.com/gb/app/job-searcher-app/id464568239?mt=8&at=1000l9tW

A new version of our app for iOS “Book Searcher”, has just been released at

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/book-searcher/id464083711?mt=8&at=1000l9tW

It’s a $0.99 cent download, but allows access to thousands of books 🙂

Transliteration is where you convert one alphabet into another while maintaining the phonetics in as much as possible.

Visual Transliteration is much more niche, and it about maintaining the visual representation of one alphabet in another, for example  “Н” in Russian is pronounced “N”, but looks visually identical to a Latin “H”.

This code is for VISUAL transliteration, and NOT audible transliteration.

private static string VisualTransliterate(string russian)
{
var map = new Dictionary<string, string>
{
{“а”, “a”},
{“б”, “b”},
{“в”, “B”},
{“г”, “r”},
{“д”, “A”},
{“е”, “e”},
{“ё”, “e”},
{“ж”, “x”},
{“з”, “3”},
{“и”, “N”},
{“й”, “N”},
{“к”, “k”},
{“л”, “n”},
{“м”, “M”},
{“н”, “H”},
{“о”, “o”},
{“п”, “n”},
{“р”, “p”},
{“с”, “c”},
{“т”, “T”},
{“у”, “y”},
{“ф”, “o”},
{“х”, “x”},
{“ц”, “u”},
{“ч”, “u”},
{“ш”, “w”},
{“щ”, “w”},
{“ъ”, “b”},
{“ы”, “b”},
{“ь”, “b”},
{“э”, “3”},
{“ю”, “H”},
{“я”, “R”},
{“А”, “A”},
{“Б”, “B”},
{“В”, “B”},
{“Г”, “R”},
{“Д”, “A”},
{“Е”, “E”},
{“Ё”, “E”},
{“Ж”, “X”},
{“З”, “3”},
{“И”, “N”},
{“Й”, “N”},
{“К”, “K”},
{“Л”, “N”},
{“М”, “M”},
{“Н”, “H”},
{“О”, “O”},
{“П”, “N”},
{“Р”, “P”},
{“С”, “C”},
{“Т”, “T”},
{“У”, “Y”},
{“Ф”, “O”},
{“Х”, “X”},
{“Ц”, “U”},
{“Ч”, “Y”},
{“Ш”, “W”},
{“Щ”, “W”},
{“Ъ”, “b”},
{“Ы”, “b”},
{“Ь”, “b”},
{“Э”, “3”},
{“Ю”, “H”},
{“Я”, “R”}
};
var strOutput = “”;
foreach (var c in russian)
{
if (map.ContainsKey(c.ToString()))
{
strOutput += map[c.ToString()];
}
else
{
strOutput += c.ToString();
}
}
return strOutput;
}

SMTP.JS is a script that allows you send email from Javascript

By default, the SMTP connection is secure (STARTTLS) and over port 25. If you
need to use an SMTP server that does not accepts secure connections, or in on a non-standart port, like 587, then use the button “Encrypt your SMTP Credentials” to store advanced configuration.

Javascript has always limited the ability to make arbitrary web requests to third parties, this has generally meant that projects required a server side component, even if its only purpose was to ferry data from a third party to the client.

CORS changed this somewhat, it allowed API service providers indicate to Javascript clients that it was OK for arbitrary web requests to be made to them, and the fact that any related security concerns were unimportant. – After all, any statically authenticated API would have the api key exposed in client code.

However some API providers don’t declare a CORS header. This can be down to security concerns, ignorance of Javascript clients, or just misconfiguration. That’s where a CORS proxy comes in. This is where a third party will do the connection for you, and it will declare the CORS header saying it’s OK to connect to them.

You can always develop this yourself, but a free public service is  https://cors-anywhere.herokuapp.com – which is open source on github here- https://github.com/Rob–W/cors-anywhere/

All you need to do it call https://cors-anywhere.herokuapp.com/<url> where <url> is the third party API. It passes basic authentication headers through, but you need to call it via AJAX, you can’t just paste it into a browser. This is to prevent service abuse.

Thanks Rob-W, whoever you are 🙂

We’ve just packaged our Swift Module as a Cocoapod, and listed it on Cocoapods.org, you can access the GIT repo here https://github.com/infiniteloopltd/CarRegistrationPod

CarRegistrationPod

Example

To run the example project, clone the repo, and run pod install from the Example directory first.

Requirements

A wrapper for the Car Registration API in Swift. You will require a username and password from http://www.vehicleregistrationapi.com This API returns car details from a car number plate in many countries worldwide, including the UK, USA, Australia, India. A full list is shown below.

Installation

CarRegistrationPod is available through CocoaPods. To install it, simply add the following line to your Podfile:

pod "CarRegistrationPod"

Usage

import CarRegistrationPod
...
let dict = australia_lookup(registrationNumber: "YHC14Y", state: "NSW", username:"***your username***", password:"*** password ***")

label.text = dict["Description"] as? String

Other members of the car_registration package are

• australia_lookup
• usa_lookup
• europe_lookup

Both australia and usa accept four parameters, registrationNumber, state, username and password, and returns a [String: Any] europe_lookup does not require the state parameter, but instead, requires a endpoint parameter, which can be one of the following strings;

• Check (UK)
• CheckBelgium
• CheckCroatia
• CheckCzechRepublic
• CheckDenmark
• CheckEstonia
• CheckFinland
• CheckFrance
• CheckHungary
• CheckIndia
• CheckIreland
• CheckItaly
• CheckNetherlands
• CheckNewZealand
• CheckNigeria
• CheckNorway
• CheckPortugal
• CheckRussia
• CheckSlovakia
• CheckSouthAfrica
• CheckSpain
• CheckSriLanka
• CheckSweden
• CheckUAE
• CheckUSA
• CheckAustralia

Author

Infinite loop Development ltd, http://www.infiniteloop.ie

License

CarRegistrationPod is available under the MIT license. See the LICENSE file for more info.