When I was using KDE 3 I was pretty fond of the right click Open Terminal Here command. I was disapointed to see it gone in the latest incarnations of KDE . Until I stumbled upon dolphin’s integrated terminal. All you have to do is hit F4 inside a folder and at the bottom of the file browser you’ll have a nice and shiny terminal. You have to remember though – and this can be both useful and dangerous if you’re not careful – that the cli current folder follows you around. Also if you type a command and then enter a folder the command will try to execute that command, even if it’s unfinished, so this is something to keep in mind.
Month: December 2009
How to recover a lost Joomla admin password
I administer a few Joomla sites so from time to time I discover that I lost the admin password for the one I hadn’t had to update for a long time. There is no way to find out what that password was because they are stored as a one way MD5 but since I usually use random characters anyway I reset the password with a new one. For that you need access to the mysql database of that Joomla site.
You can access your database either through a tool like phpMyAdmin or from the command line. Anyways, how to access your database is beyond the scope of this article.
The password is stored in the MySQL database jos_users table password field. (obviously if you changed the default jos_ database prefix the name will differ) Find the record for the admin user and change his password with the MD5 value of a known password. You can use the following samples or generate your own using an online tool like this.
- 123456 – f96b697d7cb7938d525a2f31aaf161d0
- default – c21f969b5f03d33d43e04f8f136e7682
Either method you choose I strongly suggest changing the password to something secure immediately after logging in.
Another free e-book about Microcontrollers
Mikroelektronica, beign the nice guys they are released another free e-book about programming PIC microcontrollers this time it’s about programming in C. The title is, unsurprisingly:
PIC Microcontrollers – Programming in C
What are microcontrollers, anyway? Electronics built in one single chip capable of controlling a small submarine, a crane or an elevator… It’s up to you to decide what you want them to do and dump a program containing appropriate instructions into the chip.
Author: Milan Verle
You can read the book online (or print it for that matter) at http://www.mikroe.com/en/books/pic-books/mikroc/ .
You can also order there the printed version of the book accompanied by a CD. Should you find the book useful you might want to consider buying it in order to support them.
PIC Microcontrollers – Programming in CPIC
Three browsers on a phone
The current state of browsers available for the Symbian operating system are a proof that there isn’t such thing as a one size fits all. You have the default browser, opera mobile, opera mini, skyfire and some others. I have installed on my e71 nokia phone Opera Mobile 10 beta, Skyfire and of course the default browser.
I tried to settle on using just one but I just couldn’t. If I want to watch some flash video online or browse a really heavy site Skyfire is really the only option.
For browsing mobile sites or sites that fit enough on the small display I still prefer the default Web browser because I don’t have to zoom.
For others I like Opera 10 Mobile because you have a nice bookmarks page, it’s snappy and looks good.
That’s why I don’t really get the browser wars found around the forums and the internet. Having the choice is great. The only way to get decent video and performance of heavy sites it’s trough a proxy based browser so this is where Skyfire fits. On the other hand I don’t like trusting 3rd parties with my passwords so for private pages I use the default web browser. For some pages Opera is faster and more confortable.
As always YMMV so be sure to give them a try.
bmp2h converter for ks0108 GLCD
This is a converter I wrote with the graphics library for the PIC16F microcontrollers. Others work but this one works for sure.
If you want to see the source code (I’m not particulary proud of it 🙂 ) drop a comment and I’ll send it to you.
If the bitmap is smaller than 128×64 it will be left as is, if not it will be resized proportionally to 128×64.
You can set the name you want your variable to have and you can also set if you want the picture inverted or not. Depending on your lcd colors you might want to invert the result.
You can download the converter here: glcd_convert.
KS0108 Graphics Library for PIC16F microcontrollers
Not that I’m not happy with the default mikroC library for the KS0108 graphic displays, as I always I wanted something with the source available. Considering that I’m a beginner with microcontrolers having the source available to hack around is a very valuable learning tool.
The project is based on the source found here:
http://en.radzio.dxp.pl/ks0108/
The source is made pretty universal, still it took some work and modifications to have it working in mikroC. The archive is a ready working project for mikroC.
I tested and developed it on the EasyPIC5 development board with a PIC16F887 microcontroller. You have to have the board configured for the touchscreen panel and GLCD display – i suppose you know how to do that, if not you should consult the EasyPIC5 manual.
The project has everything you need:
- a small demo program that uses text and bitmaps so you can see how the touchscreen, graphics, images and text work
- a font file
- a file to host your bitmap data
- graphic functions
- ks0108 functions
- microcontroller dependent functions.
Download everything HERE. Or you could find the code on GitHub.