The more I use this code snippet the more I keep having to dig this back up, so I’m posting it here for reference for others as well… Here’s the quick and easy way to insert CMS Blocks into template (.phtml) files without any layout modifications:
DirectShop Solutions has released a Magento Module that utilizes the MaxMind fraud detection service. I had written an interface with MaxMind with X-Cart awhile back and the service alone was well worth it, I was able to detect fraudulent orders a lot easier than before. Using a number of factors from free email services, IP to country/state compared to billing and shipping addresses, proxy detection and more. All with a simple rating score that can help anyone prevent fraudulent orders and cut down on charge backs, which can really hurt in the long run. As this was the main reason I set out to write one for X-Cart was I had been selling E-Goods and had gotten a large number of fraudulent orders ultimately causing my processor to increase my fee’s since I was considered more of a high risk. Its defiantly worth checking out!
Android Blogging Network Posted the full CPU Software Interface docs full of register address block goodness. I’m by no means a low level ASM programmer but I think this opens up the doors for some really cool home brew applications for this hardware. Like Hosting on any USB device, TV out?
Here’s a direct link to the PDF files: MSM-pdf.zip
Also I’ve been looking for a means to run apps off the SD card, and found this on XDA which is free, or you can pay $1 in the market for it. I’ve not tried it yet but a lot are showing success with it!
I know I’ve not been very active with my postings as of lately however, there is good reason
I have been doing a lot of developing lately particularly for the release of Core Action’s Automated Video system that is patent pending. Basically it is a system that was developed that allows kids from skate parks to have video of them skating and doing tricks and having them identified, recorded and uploaded to the web for later retrieval.
Currently the system has been successfully running at Eisenbergs skate park in Plano, Texas for over two weeks and utilized by over 200 kids riding at the park. Over 7k Videos have been recorded so far, and over 100 kids have claimed their videos.
For those curious on some of the technical details. Every kid in the park that wants to have their videos recorded are handed a Core Action sticker that contains an Radio Frequency ID (RFID), placing the sticker on their helmet. There are hot zones setup within the park where an RFID reader and antennas are setup to detect when someone enters the area of an IP Camera mounted with a fish eye lens that is called upon to start recording and capture the persons tricks and or bail. Uniquely identifying this person with their tag for later retrieval online. After it has been captured the persons video is queued and played back on a big screen projector on the wall so they can see the videos they just created. While this is going on the video that is captured is then taken and uploaded processed so that it can be viewable/shared online at the Core Action website with anyone.
The middleware is compromised of many different systems. Including VLC and C# which makes up the bulk of the actual “cool process” of Reading RFID tags, Capture the IP Camera Streams in H.264 via RTSP and saving the data when the RFID tags are detected. VLC is also used to playback the videos the big screen at the park. PHP, FFMPEG, and MySQL are utilized on the server end to process the video files and create the proper entries based on the RFID tags recorded into a file system and MySQL database to be retrieved, via an online social network written as well in PHP and MySQL.
Myself and one other developer/programmer, Matt Stapleton are responsible for developing the system.
Overall the system took over a year of Research and Development to make it a reality, there are still a few minor things we are still fine tunning but obviously it is doing what we had set out to do. (see below )
Here are just a few of the videos some people have made public so far:
Why Magento won’t allow you to show out of stock options in configurable products is beyond me, thankfuly nyah, on the Magento forums was kind enough to post a “quick-fix” for this delima, first edit:
Looking at the above fix basically all products in the configurable product are displayed regardless of their isSaleable() state. Which I’m assuming a better solution would be to modify it instead in case of other instances not just out of stock.
This won’t disable the product out the option but if a user attempts to order it will get an out of stock message. Its not perfect but serves the purpose until Magento can possibly make a more permanent solution.
Be aware this modifies the Core code of magento and its highly recommended that you make a backup of the Configurable.php file before modifying its contents.
It appears Varien is has completed the list of items in the 1.3.1 branch. Which includes fixes for the previous bugs I had previously posted about. I’ve tried pulling down the alpha version with CVS to get a sneak peak at the upcoming changes but haven’t been successful, as March 30th seems to be the last commit change for 1.3.0. There hasn’t been any news about when this release will be available publicly in a “official” form.
Anyone who applied my “jerry rigged” fix, please remember to uncomment the line mentioned in the article BEFORE attempting to upgrade.
I have also been fighting with Magento and Google base always returning “Expected response code 200, got 404″, although it appears to be on a Google API change that has caused the issue, and I’m hoping 1.3.1 will have this issue fixed for me as well.
I will post up my findings once I’m able to get my hands dirty with the changes in 1.3.1.
After upgrading a clients Magento site from 1.2.1.2 to version 1.3.0, they reported an issue not being able to add products with required selectable options, as it would always return “Option validation failed to add product to cart” Message even though all requirements are met.
The issue I’ve found to be is in a newly created file in 1.3.0: /app/code/core/Mage/Catalog/Model/Product/Option/Type/Select.php
/**
* Prepare option value for cart
*
* @throws Mage_Core_Exception
* @return mixed Prepared option value
*/publicfunction prepareForCart(){if($this->getIsValid()){returnis_array($this->getUserValue()) ? implode(',',$this->getUserValue()):$this->getUserValue();}#Mage::throwException(Mage::helper('catalog')->__('Option validation failed to add product to cart'));
}
Apply a comment to the Mage::throwException … and it will fix the issue.
Note the use of a shorthand if statement within the return for the function, which in all honesty is bad coding practice. I say Magento makes the developer go onto code review for the next week for punishment. I’ve known some shops to do this when they get lazy.
However, $this->getIsValid() will return true, for a few cycles through but ultimately seems to come back to the exception and return false, which leads me to thing there is more to bug than just a simple conditional return statement.
Keep in mind this is by no means a official fix but will tie you over until the bug fix is released, which has already been reported and assigned. Also if you do make this change you may want to keep a copy of the original file as modifying app/core/ can lead to upgrade issues in the future, and you’ll need to restore the original file upon upgrading.
It appears this also has fixed another issue I noticed, within the Admin, attempting to Create a New Order, upon attempting to add products to the order, nothing would be returned and no error presented. After my fix above this now working properly as well. This other issue has also been reported already and assigned as well.
While experiementing with Flash 5 and ASP/Access around 2001 I wrote a pretty simplistic based forum with Flash as a frontend.
Still seeing some traffic coming from ActionScripts.org that I had simply experimented with, I’ve since moved away from old ASP, and Access Databases. It is merely for learning purposes, A Novice person may find it interesting as for more advanced may find it quite amusing
I make no warranty with the zip and there isn’t any “install” instructions.
Inchoo.net has been quite busy with Magento it seems, Tomislav Bilic wrote a how to get your Wordpress, Joomla, etc. RSS Feeds into Magento with a bit of simple code and no outside libraries, just Zend’s framework to parse and display any RSS feed. I’ve seen quite a few requests for such a feature.
Out of curiousity I wondered if mbliss.com was available last night and to my surprise it was available, it hadn’t been in quite some time, since most have trouble spelling the word molotov, I decided to scoop the domain up. I’m still not sure if I will keep it pointing here or if a seperate entity will appear on it and the blog would stay here, I’m mainly concerned with back links and 301 redirecting everything properly. I am also concerned with the domain being parked here if Google will start penalizing me for duplicate content. Anyone have any thoughts, on what would be the best use for this new shortened domain?
Hopefully the thought process will end up like this:
)
Be aware this modifies the Core code of magento and its highly recommended that you make a backup of the Configurable.php file before modifying its contents.
