I wanted to know how to force my WordPress installs to display a message that the site was in maintenance mode (as WordPress does when you are upgrading plugins and so on). Googling around for the answer only yielded various plugins to achieve this, and I really did not want to go and install yet another plugin for something this simple and which is obviously built into WordPress. [Read more...]
Outlook 2003 Unable to Connect to Exchange 2010
August 3, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Microsoft have been making no secret of the fact that they do not want to continue having public folders in their flagship messaging server. With Exchange 2010, public folders are actively discouraged, with much of the Microsoft documentation suggesting that Sharepoint is a preferred alternative to public folders, this aside, if you still have legacy Outlook 2003 MAPI clients that need to connect to Exchange 2010 (or Exchange 2007 for that matter) you have no option, but to create and activate a public folder database on an Exchange 2010 server.
Having done created a public folder database on Exchange 2010 you may still, rather unexpectedly notice that Outlook 2003 clients cannot connect to the new Exchange 2010 mailbox server with Outlook producing an error indicating that it is unable to connect to the Exchange 2010 server due to a suspected network issue.
I have seen more than one version of this error, but unfortunately neglected to get some screen grabs at the time, if I find a machine exhibiting the error, I will update this post.
In Exchange 2010 MAPI connections are no longer handled directly by the Exchange server as they were in Exchange 2007, rather all MAPI connections to a Mailbox Server are handled by the CAS (Client Access Service) Server, and specifically by the new Exchange RPC Client Access Service. The reason for the sudden inability to connect to your new server via MAPI is caused by the fact that Exchange 2010 by default expects MAPI connections to be encrypted, while Outlook 2003 does not encrypt them by default.
You therefore have two potential solutions to this problem.
- Reconfigure Outlook 2003 to use an encrypted MAPI when communicating with the server
- Configure Exchange 2010 to globally disable encrypted MAPI connections
I would suggest the first method, as disabling encrypted MAPI connections by default just seems like a Bad Thing, however, read on if you want to know how to do this.
Configuring Outlook 2003 to use Encrypted MAPI Connections
First make sure that Outlook 2003 is not running. Then open the Control Panel and find the Mail applet, and double-click that:
On this page, click the “E-Mail Accounts” button:
Check the radio button beside “View or change existing e-mail accounts” and click next:
Highlight your Exchange account and Click the “change” button to re-configure that account:
Click the “More Settings” button, and then select the “Security” tab:
Make sure that you have a check mark in the check-box in the Encryption section, hit OK, next, finish and close, and fire up Outlook and it should connect as before.
Configuring Exchange 2010 to use Unencrypted Mapi Connections
Much of what happens in Exchange 2010 is configured through the Exchange Management Shell. To obtain information about the RPC CAS service, open a management Power Shell session and execute the following command:
Get-RpcClientAccess | fl
Notice the line that reads “EncryptionRequired” is set to “True”. This indicates the default of the MAPI RPC CAS Service on the Exchange 2010 CAS server. To global set this to false, you should execute Set-RpcClientAccess –server CAS-Server –EncryptionRequired $false in the EMS.
Again, in my opinion, this is a bad idea. I haven’t checked this, but I would be pretty sure you would be able to use Group Policy to update the connection settings on your legacy Outlook 2003 clients to use an encrypted MAPI connection by default. This would be a much better plan.
Advertising Traffic During Superbowl 44
February 10, 2010 by Leave a Comment
According to the news, Superbowl 44 (2010) has surpassed the final episode of “M*A*S*H” which set the record 27 years ago by attracting a mere 105.97 million viewers, to become the most watched television show in history, with an estimated 106.5 million pairs of eyeballs on the game.
So yes, Superbowl 44 was big, it is debatable, however, if it was as big as the “M*A*S*H” finalé that held the previous record, when one considers that 27 years ago there were far fewer televisions in households than there are today and consequently the television watching population was a lot smaller. That however is not the point of Mr Cat’s post here when it occurred to him that advertising has become totally invasive in our lives since the early 80s, and that the primary way that revenue is generated from a televised event such as Superbowl 44 is through paid advertising. These days, Mr Cat would imagine that the bulk of that advertising would somehow result in a trip to the web by a party interested in this advertising, so Mr Cat headed over to try to get some graphs, because he likes graphs, of the Internet traffic during Superbowl 44.
Akamai, one of the largest Content Delivery Networks CDNs it turns out keeps figures of exactly this.
Notice the spike in the graph at the end of the 4th quarter, with the advertising consumption according to Akamai reaching around 1.17 million visitors per minute, well up from the average of about 300 thousand visitors per minute.
These are pretty astronomical figures, and Mr Cat can understand why so many people are making so much money now from online advertising on their blogs and affiliate websites; there is just so many clicks to go around and even if you started an affiliate site today, you need only a small fraction of that modest average of 300 thousand visitors per minute to make yourself very comfortable.
Mr Apple and the iPad
January 27, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Mr Cat noticed this morning that Mr Apple was showing off their brand new iPad – which looks like it is really just an iPhone with a bigger screen – although you sure as hell will look ridiculous with that thing stuck to your ear making a call.
There were millions of opinions out there today, however I stumbled on this hilarious little video on YouTube today on the new device:
Unfortunately Mad-TV has disabled embedding on this clip, so you have no choice by to watch it on YouTube. It is still worth while.
Using Post Thumnails with WordPress 2.9
January 1, 2010 by Leave a Comment
Probably like many others who dabble with WordPress, I was excited to read about the new post thumbnail support in WordPress 2.9. Of course, after upgrading, I could not figure out how to use them – only to discover that the feature is disabled by default. I finally discovered how to turn the feature on, and here is how you can do it to.
Edit the functions.php file that came with your favourite theme, and add the following:
if (function_exists('add_theme_support'))
add_theme_support('post-thumbnails');
The if statement checks to see if we actually can use the add_them_support() function, so we do not break our themes compatibility with versions of WordPress prior to 2.9. Save the file, and you can simply set the post thumbnail in the back-end.
Update: Mark Jaquith, a lead developer on the WordPress Personal Publishing System, has written a very comprehensive post on his blog on the recommended way to use this feature in a theme. It is clear and explains the official WordPress Way to do this. Definitely a must read.
The Cygnet – Aston Martin’s Concept Ultra-Compact
December 27, 2009 by Leave a Comment
Interesting when I read that Aston Martin have announced an ultra-compact concept car, based on the Toyota IQ, that will be known as the Cygnet. Quite a little stablemate for the insane V12 engined Vantage. By contrast this machine will be powered by a small 1 liter mill with only 3 cylinders and developing 50kW (67HP) in the base model — which is not actually too shabby for such as small motor, when you think about it — or by an optional 1.3 liter four cylinder that will develop about 76kW (102HP).
Westjet Waive Excess Baggage Fees to the USA
December 26, 2009 by Leave a Comment
This afternoon I happened to be checking for flight pricing on some flights for a possible January trip to the USA on both Air Canada and Westjet’s websites. I noticed the following travel advisory on both sites, stating that carry on luggage would no be limited to one small item, ie., no more roller cases etc.
Call to undefined function ctype_digit() in /wordpress/wp-admin/includes/file.php on line 238
December 23, 2009 by 1 Comment
After upgrading to WordPress 2.9, self-hosted WordPress installations may receive this error:
Call to undefined function ctype_digit() in /wordpress/wp-admin/includes/file.php on line 238
When trying to use either the Flash uploader or the browser uploader to upload new media to WordPress, or when trying to save a new post as a draft, post it and so on. This happens because PHP on your host has not been compiled with ctype support. Simple to fix, if you have control of the host, make sure that you pass the --enable-ctype flag to the configure program when you compile PHP. For more information check here http://us2.php.net/manual/en/ctype.installation.php.
If you happen to be using FreeBSD and PHP5, simply install the textproc/php5-ctype port, and reload your Apache.
Trust this helps out some folks.
Compile Problem with Chan_SCCP_B on Asterisk 1.6
December 3, 2009 by 3 Comments
When you try to compile chan_sccp_b on a machine with Asterisk 1.6.0+ installed you receive the following error:
sccp_pbx.c:588: error: ‘AST_CONTROL_T38’ undeclared (first use in this function)