Using CakePHP with Plesk 10

Posted by Timothy on Jul 12, 2011 in PHP, Programming

If you haven’t already figured it out, you can’t just unarchive CakePHP and drop it into your httpdocs folder under Plesk. There’s some minor changes you need to make before Plesk plays nicely with CakePHP.

First think that needs to be done is to create a vhost.conf file in /var/www/vhosts/domain.com/conf/ directory that contains the following

 

<Directory /var/www/vhosts/domain.com>
	php_admin_flag engine on
	php_admin_value open_basedir none
</Directory>

After you’ve done that, you’ll need to run the Plesk command line tool to regenerate the vhost files.

/usr/local/psa/admin/sbin/httpdmng --reconfigure-domain domain.com

American DJ VMS4

Posted by Timothy on Feb 24, 2011 in Gadgets, Random Babble

I was so excited about the American Audio (American DJ) VMS4 that I pre-ordered it. I waited almost 4mo to get the thing since their release date kept getting pushed back. I should’ve known this was a bad sign. I understand problems come up. But announcing a release date and then having to re-announce a new release date 3-4 times is a major PR issue. It also says something about the product– Which I soon found out.

Out of the box the VMS4 looks great. It’s got a lot of knobs (which I LOVE knobs!!) It’s got “The weight of quality” (it’s heavy) and a bunch of blinky LED light buttons. Unfortunately, looks aren’t everything.

Trying to get it to work with VirtualDJ 6 took almost 2 days. The cue buttons weren’t working properly. The cross-fader wasn’t changing decks. The list of problems goes on and on. Probably a month or so later, American DJ releases a firmware fix to address these issues with Virtual DJ. A side note: American DJ promo’d the VMS4 on Traktor. All their videos showed these (so called) DJ’s using Traktor. But when it came time to ship, they send it out with Virtual DJ— Now that’s all fine and dandy for me because that’s what I’m familiar with. But the problem comes when they didn’t have significant testing with VDJ! Which I believe is where all the issues come from.

So anyhow, it’s now it’s 6mo later and I STILL haven’t used the VMS4 in a live set. I just can’t trust it. Even after I’ve sat here and configured all the MIDI Mappings to my liking and working around some of the cue/PFL issues. The cross-fader doesn’t fade. It’s more like an on/off switch. I’ve considered investing in an Innofader, but that’s $150 just to see if it’ll fix my problems.

I’m pretty unhappy with their support for this thing. I’ve just sent and email to customer support to see what can be done. We’ll see how things go form here since their forums are completely worthless.

Here’s a quick demo of some cue/headphone issues I’m having.

Vimeo, OAuth and CakePHP Session Security Settings

Posted by Timothy on Jan 12, 2011 in PHP, Programming, Software

So after ripping my hair out for a good 2-3hrs trying to figure out why my Vimeo OAuth requests wasn’t returning any sessions variables, I finally figured it out.

CakePHP’s Configure::write(‘Security.level’, ‘medium’); sets PHP’s session.referer_check and denies any other hosts from setting session variables. I was wondering why half my sessions vars were gone and it would appear I was logged-out. Setting Configure::write(‘Security.level’, ‘low’); seems to have fixed the issue. But anytime you read ‘Security Low’ in the same sentence, it leaves you with some sort of uncomfortable feeling.

I’m not exactly sure what the status of this is. But I found a link that pretty much explains it all. session.referer_check PHP ini var should be decoupled from ‘High’ and ‘Medium’ Session Security levels