1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die
This week, on the advice of a friend I am embarking on a journey into Quintessence's "1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die".
Originally published as a book, the list is also available on their website in a handy searchable table.
It's going to be a long task, but I'm looking forward to exploring some new music as well as revisiting some classics; many of the albums are outside of my normal 'comfort zone' and I'm painfully aware that Durham's bubble doesn't do much for expanding my auditory horizons these days...
I'll list all the albums and chart my progress in this post, I'll also be tweeting my thoughts along the way.
Exporting Contacts from the Durham Uni Database
Quick bit of example php code to pull people's details out of the Durham University user database (not LDAP, this is a separate database with slightly different details) - this database is just sitting on the mysql server without a password!
The applications of this database are endless, in this simple example the script grabs everyone from one college and turns it into a handy CSV file you could import into your address book, etc...
Iris Exchequer Fails to Install
Had a strange problem with a machine at work failing to do a clean install of the latest version (v6.01.223) of Iris Exchequer (Pervasive edition) running on Windows XP... Windows reported the installer as not responding in its final stages and it crashed out.
Running the installer to upgrade other machines to the latest worked fine, but I couldn't get it to clean install. Couldn't find any support for this on the internet but after some investigation it turns out those 'final stages' are making changes to the registry -- the solution it turns out is to manually override the permissions of the Exchequer registry key in HKLM and give all users full access. (Run regsvr, browse to HKEY_LocalMachine->Software->Exchequer, right click->Permissions).