The widget collects TV data feeds for all (well, most - 237) UK TV channels currently broadcasting today. Using the widget, you can select your desired channel and date to view the schedule for your selection. The widget also allows you to send a link to the programme details to yourself or a friend - it also gives you the Sky+ code if you want to record it remotely via your mobile phone. You can also keep track of your favourite channels by adding them to your favourites list.

This widget was created for the Betavine Widget Competition 2009 which is being ran by Vodafone. The first prize is a cool £20k, so I thought why not have a crack at that!

You can download/view the “What’s On?” application at http://w0t.info/, Iphone users can view the widget via http://whatson.forbsoft.com/.

Today, they value my domain www.cj-design.com at no less than $5,089,906 (just shy of £3.7 million quid) due to it’s popularity, number of links, Alexa ranking and several other factors.

If anyone would like to buy it, I am open to offers in the £2,800,000 to £3,200,000 range, this offer will expire in 28 days time, subject to terms and conditions; this does not affect your statutory rights.

$5 million my arse.

First, a lesson in the real implementation of cron…

The crontab command, found in Unix operating systems, is used to schedule commands to be executed periodically. It reads commands and collects them into a file also known as a “crontab” which is later read by the operating system which carries out the instructions contained within.

One of the most useful cron commands, particularly from a web developers point of view, is the ability to call up a webpage silently, in the background, at intervals or at a specified time. Think of the possibilites:

• Running a routine check on users in a database (deleting inactive accounts for example)
• Scheduling an email, several days after a user has purchased an item from a site
• Checking a site is functioning correctly

So how can you get Windows to perform cron-like tasks?

It’s very simple once you know how - which I do, you’ll be happy to read. You have probably found that several web sites offer programs that cost around £50 that promise to emulate cron.

Don’t bother; especially if all you want to do is call up a web address.

This is how you do it…

• Download wget (GnuWin32 is a good, clean, harmless one)
• Install wget
• Fire up the command line (Start > Run > then type “cmd”)
• Run a command as shown below:

Where

“Test Cron” is the name of your cron job (useful for reference purposes)
“C:wget.exe” is the location of the wget.exe file
http://www.site.com/cron.asp is the URL for wget to fetch

More Examples

Let’s take a look at some more examples, that way you will understand the different options available…

Run a cron job every week

Run a cron every week on a Friday

Run a cron every friday at 11:00am

Run a cron every day at 17:00pm

Run a cron every hour, on the hour

So what’s happening exactly?

Well as you might have guessed, all you’re doing is utilising Windows’ “Scheduled Tasks” program - using a command line interface, which I actually find easier to use than the Scheduled Task UI. If you have installed wget and ran one of the commands above, you will be able to see your cron in action by going to “Start > Programs > Accessories > System Tools > Scheduled Tasks”.

And of course, you’re not just limited to fetching URL’s (using wget) - you can also execute a whole load of other programs - providing you know the right commands (or parameters, or both)!

The best thing about this Windows Cron method is you don’t need to have access to your web server for it to work - just any PC that is connected to the Internet (note: it needs to be connected when the Cron is scheduled to “fire”!). It’s also free and, because it runs as standard in Windows, it doesn’t use up any additional memory resources, which is one of the reasons birf loves it.

I hope this has helped you out.

The alternative of course is to use Linux…

First post of the year, but a quick one.

I was working on an ASP script that required a trim function similar to the PHP

. In PHP, you can start with the word “@apples@” and do

to get “apples” (www.php.net/trim).

In ASP, the trim function doesn’t allow an optional character parameter, so I wrote a character function of my own called “ctrim” that does it;

To use it, just use;

http://www.web-diagnostics.co.uk (and the same domain, just without the hyphen).

Suspended UK Domain Names naturally become available to the public 92 or 99 days from their renewal date.

I have no idea why it is 92 or 99 - but it just is and the two I managed to get today are the fifth and sixth I have managed to “steal” in my time, which includes; www.cj-design.co.uk and www.live-support.co.uk.

My tips for ensuring you snag your domain are;

1. Check the Nominet WHOIS database at www.nic.uk directly.
2. Check before and after the hour passes, usually it will become available in the morning (mine was at 8am)
3. Once you see those magical words “This domain name has not been registered” register it quickly with a registrar that you can rely on (ideally one you’ve already got an account with).

If you can’t be bothered to do the above then you could sign up for a domain-dropping service who pretty much does the same as the above, except they automate the process - which for me, can lead to problems. It’s always better to do it manually if you can.

I have big plans for my “Web Diagnostics” application, which I plan to launch as a free service in 2009, weather permitting.

Here’s an example….

If I had a table called “user” with the following contents;

And I did;

I would get;

Colin
James
Matthew
Richard

If I wanted “Richard” to appear first, I could do;

Or even;

The magic happens using the “FIND_IN_SET” function (details here; http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/string-functions.html#function_find-in-set).

FIND_IN_SET(str, strlist) is a String function that returns a value in the range of 1 to N if the string str is in the string list strlist consisting of N substrings. A string list is a string composed of substrings separated by “,” characters.

A more practical example would be if you had a table of classified adverts and wanted to show those that belong to a certain category first, e.g.;

This would show the classified ads in order of date (dateAdded) but with those from categoryId “1″ first.