PPSStudios

Category: Computer

  • Typecasting struct to char* for Idiots Like Me

    Want to cast from a struct to a character string? Seen all those posts out there suggesting that reinterpret_cast will work, but is unsafe? Yeah, I tried it. Yeah, it’s unsafe.

  • Embarcadero TThread Works Just Fine

    I’ve been annoyed for a large amount of time (years in fact) over some of our software we use and sell. In essence, what we have is a TCP GUI that communicates on a 250ms timer with a microcontroller that’s serving up a two-way communications protocol over ModBus FC23 – we send commands either to […]

  • PHP Access Control List

    A quick little Access Control List (ACL) snippet I made for PHP/HTML. Enjoy! <?php $acl = array( // Populate with IP/Subnet Mask pairs. // Any zero bit in the subnet mask acts as a wildcard in the IP address check. array(“192.168.10.24″,”255.255.255.255”), ); $acl_allow = false; for ($i = 0; $i < count($acl); $i++) { $ip2chk […]

  • Linux – Find what is Preventing You from Unmounting a Drive

    Disclaimer: I’ve had this problem for probably four months, ever since I started running Plex Media Server on my headless linux machine at home, whilst storing all my actual media on a nice external portable drive. Usually I just yank it, but then I watch the drive letters run themselves up obscenely high before I […]

  • Expired Domains – A Headache (but a learning experience)

    Hey all! It’s been a few months, I know. But I wanted to share an experience I had with my recent domain name headache. So as you may or may not know, I’ve owned ppsstudios.com since May 2013. I purchased it via Google Apps which in turn set my registrar to eNom. Both are useful services and work […]

  • Finally! An internal DNS server that works (for me)!

    So it’s been much too long since I wanted to do this, but thankfully, I have finally discovered the solution for which I can serve up my own DNS server for internal LAN things, but still have an external host that administers my public website! My scenario and quandry was this:

  • PLC and Hardware Control

    Take a survey related to the following Aha! Thank you, Dad for my new Arduino hardware controller (and the partially-outfitted Craftsman toolbox to make my life simpler when building stuff)! Easy easy to program, and easier to wire up! There was a time a few years ago that we were playing with a Seimen’s PLC at my old job, […]

  • Cell Phone to Sound Board for only $20!

    I have successfully finished yet another garage-shop electronics project that actually WORKS! Tuesday, Pastor Mike at Rez announced that in two weeks, when they’re on their short-term missions trip to India, they’ll be performing yet another Skype call in to 6:33 pm. However, the last two or three times they’ve been anywhere, they’ve tried this, […]

  • ISO vs. ZIP/RAR

    What is an ISO file? An ISO file put simply is a perfect copy of a disc (usually optical) stored in one file on the hard drive of a computer. ISO is uncompressed and contains even free space of said disc. According to Wikipedia, “An ISO image (International Organization for Standardization) is an archive file […]

  • Ubuntu Server – Changing Screen Resolution with GRUB2

    Recently I drug out my old Dell dinosaur (Dimension) from the closet and decided to try installing Ubuntu server onto it. Well, all went well until I also attempted to add the Xubuntu-Desktop package, so I could better run around and do things in there. A quick update for an nVidia graphics driver froze the […]