When trying to run Windows Vista Help and Support, I kept getting "Internet Explorer cannot download / from windows" error with a blank Help and Support window. I needed to get to Help and Support so I can create recovery disks for my laptop.

Here is the solution I found online:

If you have been getting the dreaded "Internet Explorer cannot download / from help" error message when attempting to open Help and Support in Windows Vista, try this fix. It re-associates the .xml file type with its default settings, which may be altered by application installation routines such as the one for Macromedia Dreamweaver 8. Once you've merged this into the registry, re-launch Help and Support and it should work.

Fix Windows Vista Help and Support

The link on this post does not work but this link found on VistaClues.com works:

http://www.chris123nt.com/guides/RTM_Fixes/Fix_Help_and_Support.zip.

It is a registry patch:

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml]
@="xmlfile"
"Content Type"="text/xml"
"PerceivedType"="text"

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml\OpenWithList]

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml\OpenWithList\winword.exe]
@=""

[HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\.xml\PersistentHandler]
@="{7E9D8D44-6926-426F-AA2B-217A819A5CCE}"

Everytime I have an issue like this with Windows XP or Vista, I end up finding a solution and fix it and then forget about it. Well, it never fails that I face the same problem again on my computer or on another computer and I go through the same steps of searching online to find the right solution. So I decided to post these tips here for future reference. Hopefully these tips will be useful for others also.

I had imported Brian Gardner's one of free themes -- Blue Zinfandel -- to NucleusCMS for one of my blogs. Now I am thinking about switching to WordPress for that blog also, I may use his Blue Zinfandel theme for the WordPress blog. It is a clean and elegant theme.

There are quite a selection of WordPress themes available online for free. I have not purchased one yet but if I were to purchase one Brian Gardner's Revolution Themes will be on the top of my shopping list.

Since I started using WordPress fairly recently, I want to keep track of the themes, plugins I choose to use for WordPress sites I have. It is good to make notes about the installation and usage of plugins with links to developers' sites in case you need to use the same plugin again at a different site.

On one of the sites I wanted to embed the Google maps in a post. This was pretty simple to do using NucleusCMS. With NucleusCMS, embedding Google Maps, flash or video content is a snap and there is no need to use any plugins. You just copy and paste the embed code.

WordPress does not render a Google Map when you just copy and paste the embed code.

After a quick search I found Avi's Google Maps Plugin for WordPress.

This software will let you easily render Google Maps anywhere on your blog as a web service. It also includes code for easy integration with WordPress blogs, but what the code does best can actually be used with any other blog system or plain web page.

It was pretty easy install and setup the map. I needed a pretty standard map that displays a certain location with one marker. Plugin website includes detailed instructions if you need to setup complex maps.

There was one problem with the marker shown as a black square and having black background for the buttons.  Well the solution was on the same page under troubleshooting that requires to check your site's css file for “background-” related properties. Easiest way to do is to use Firefox as explained. I did not have any other problems using IE7, Firefox or Safari for Windows.

I have not had time to read through the comments of the users on the plugin page. It always is a good idea to skim through these comments and messages to see how others use the plugin and what problems if any they are reporting.  it is not uncommon to find ideas you can use that extends the use of plugin.

Thank you Avi for Google Maps Plugin for WordPress.

It took me a while to get this right. For future reference and for others who may need the same functionality here is the information:

Task:

1. Upload a CSV file to the server,
2. Use a CRON job to run a perl script that inserts the fields in the CSV file to a MYSQL database file.

Solution 1:

#!/usr/bin/perl

use DBI;
my $DSN = 'DBI:mysql:database';
my $dsn_user = 'database_user';
my $dsn_pw = 'database_user_password';
my $dbh = DBI->connect($DSN,$dsn_user,$dsn_pw)
or die "Couldn't connect to database: " . DBI->errstr;

$rows = $dbh->do("DELETE FROM table");

$result = $dbh->do("OPTIMIZE TABLE table");

# Load local comma separated, fields enclosed by quotes text database
#- File has to be in the same directory of this file or give full directory path
$result = $dbh->do("LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE '/full_directory_path_to/data.csv' INTO TABLE table FIELDS TERMINATED BY ','ENCLOSED BY '\"' LINES TERMINATED BY '\r\n' IGNORE 1 LINES (table_field1,table_field2,table_field3,so_on)");

This solution worked great on a server with a MYSQL 3.23

Challenge:

Time to move to a server with a MYSQL 4 or 5 where -local infile is disabled and it is not possible to get the web host do the necessary changes. You need a work-around fast... It is not easy to find a CSV parser in Perl that will parse a CSV file with comma separated columns that also has several columns that are enclosed by quotation marks ("). After trying several different solutions that either not worked at all or required major changes I found this here:

http://coding.derkeiler.com/Archive/Perl/comp.lang.perl.misc/2004-07/1638.html

sub parseCSVLine{
my $line=shift;
my @fields=();my $field=''; # initialize
my @fragments=split(/,/,$line,-1); # split into "," seperated fragments
foreach my $nibble(@fragments){
if($field){$field .= ','} # add the missing commas;
$field .= $nibble; # combine fragment into a field until...
my $count = $field =~tr/"/"/; # count quotes
unless($count % 2){ # ...there's an even number of double quotes
$field =~s/""/"/g; $field=~s/^\s*"//g; $field=~s/"\s*$//g; # fix quotes
# fix quotes
push @fields, $field;
$field=''; # reinitialize $field
}
}
return @fields;
}

Surprisingly this worked without a hitch. After you run each line through this subroutine do a REPLACE into the database table.

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