
Geoserver WFS-T PostGIS (PostgreSQL) Layer Read-Only
An unexpected Read-Only message is common when attempting a Geoserver WFS-T request via the Demo page. This is also true ...
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Solution, Geoserver bug with authenticated requests
Geoserver ships with a good list of helpful Demo requests — however, the authenticated requests fail if you do not ...
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Georeference a non-referenced image with gdal_translate
This technique is useful for georeferencing an image that you could be getting from a WMS server. To get an ...
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Local Vagrant VM as part of a deployment strategy
Previously I discussed setting up a Vagrant EC2 VM for web application deployment. In this post, I will walk through ...
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Vagrant on AWS with Windows
Vagrant on AWS with Windows Required installations: – AWS CLI – VirtualBox – Vagrant – an existing EC2 instance with ...
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Out to ride — back sometime in September
I’m on a cross country bike ride! My progress as of 8/4/15: Photos ...
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cakephp controller save from scaffolded “join table” relationship, non-conventional primary keys
When I build interfaces on top of a pre-established database schema, I usually can’t change schema properties. That’s a problem ...
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Auto-populate Bake/Scaffold Form in cakephp
To my knowledge, there’s no way to “autopopulate” a form created through cakephp’s bake/scaffold utility. Populating of the forms are ...
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Applying Patches on ArcGIS Server for Linux (as root)
For various reasons, I had found I needed to be root to install ArcGIS Server on Centos. I ran into ...
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ArcGIS Server on Centos, continued
When our cluster was upgraded, I somehow lost the ability to run ArcGIS Server. No problem, I said, I’ll just ...
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Undocumented KML Output Conversion, GDAL
As noted here: http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/18280/batch-convert-geotiffs-to-kmz-files, an undocumented method for conversion to KML exists in GDAL’s gdal_translate as format KMLSUPEROVERLAY. To do ...
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Disk I/O Error on sqlite/spatialite
On running sqlite CREATE and INSERT queries, I was getting some mysterious errors, like “Error: disk I/O error”, despite having ...
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github push 403 and Permission denied
Initially I was getting error: The requested URL returned error: 403 Forbidden while accessing https://github.com/.. on $ git push origin ...
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Quick GIS tip of the day, 6/10/14
To keep symbology of a shapefile or geodatabase feature class, save a layer as a “layer file” (.lyr). If you ...
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RWD Summit 2014
Here are some notes and thoughts I gathered during the 3-day Responsive Design Summit, which concluded today. Link to the ...
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UD TA speaks about using Story Maps in the classroom
We recently up put out a new LearnIT Express Webinar A Brief Introduction To Story Maps, with Jim Casey, Teaching ...
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… geocoding continued
As I had mentioned in previous email Esri has retired it’s public-facing geocoding and routing services. These services are now ...
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Plotting and Projecting Coordinates
So you have some data that includes latitude and longitude, you add it to the map … and it doesn’t ...
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ArcGIS Online for Geocoding
As I noted in my last post, UD has an ArcGIS Online subscription. As part of that service we have ...
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UD’s ArcGIS Online Subscription
You’ll be glad to hear that the ArcGIS Online Subscription is included as part of our campus site license. We’ve ...
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Doing “Bulk Imports” to OpenStreetMap
Uploading existing datasets of any significant size (“bulk imports”) to OpenStreetMap involves serious consideration, above that of ordinary updates and ...
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Excellent public remote imagery webinar
best webinar I’ve ever seen on public satellite imagery, though it’s by Exelis so expect lots of ENVI examples https://www3.gotomeeting.com/register/697671558 ...
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Render Priority and KML from PHP/Postgres in one example
Working from a Google example I wrote some PHP that outputs KML from Postgres data, using region and lod to ...
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Sublayers with ArcGIS Online webmap and Javascript API
ArcGIS Online (ArcGIS.com) does a nice job of providing front ends for your web mapping services (particularly of the ArcGIS ...
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Running GDAL and arcpy together (ArcGIS 10.1, GDAL 1.9.2, python 2.7.4)
There are many use cases for running GDAL and arcpy in the same python instance. GDAL is the most popular ...
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Debugging maptiler on Mac
Running maptiler on Mac is no easy task, as I’ve found out. While there are a few stumbling blocks when ...
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My Places Overlays on Maptiler Google Map
Maptiler is a good option for creating image overlays (such as historical maps) on Google Maps. There are some snags ...
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Hit the geocoding wall?
Google’s Geocoding API limits results to 2,500/day. So what are your options when you hit a geocoding wall with a ...
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NOAA/NCDC CLIMAPS #2 Climate Atlas of the US
I had previously written about a strange projection in the NOAA/CLIMAPS data, and am now following that up with a ...
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Web Maps for Digital Humanties
As I’m currently working with two digital humanities groups on web projects, I have been thinking about easy/free ways to ...
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ArcGIS Online Terms of Service, Notes
With the plethora of cloud services being offered these days for hosting and analyzing geospatial data, it is important to ...
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pgAgent Stumbling Blocks
In addition to doing scheduled backups from Postgres, we’ve also needed to load nightly dumps sent via scp to our ...
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NOAA/NCDC CLIMAPS
National Climatic Data Center’s Climate Maps of the United States database offers polygon data for many popular climate variables. We ...
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ArcReader 9/ArcGIS 10 Conflict
I’ve seen a few folks who’ve had trouble installing ArcGIS 10 because they’ve been unable to uninstall ArcReader (usually version ...
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Delaware GIS 2012
The Delaware 2012 GIS conference was held yesterday. It was a great opportunity to meet and learn from our colleagues ...
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Lewes Wind Turbine
I took a trip to the UD Lewes Wind Turbine on Thurdsday … I posted a few paragraphs and a ...
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ENVI/IDL and ArcGIS/Python integration
I occasionally answer questions on ENVI/IDL and ArcGIS/Python integration. ENVI functions are available as “tools” through the ArcGIS GUI toolbox: ...
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Configuring svn on Apache
I followed this page to install/configure svn on my server … it’s written for Windows-based Apache install, so I’ve summarized ...
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ArcGIS Online CSV Hosting: It’s Not All There
ArcGIS Online allows a user to upload CSVs, but as we found out, this feature provides less extensive sharing capabilities ...
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Operationalizing SDE Subsetting/Layer Registration
Q: How to get max latitude for each given longitude in a time period subset of points as a GIS ...
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ArcGIS on a High Performance cluster: Part 1, Linux
Now that we have our new community cluster running at UD it’s time to learn how I can optimize GIS ...
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The Atlas of Visual Complexity
Very cool dynamic cartograms for visualizing economic complexity: atlas.media.mit.edu ...
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Surface Climate Data
I am consulting on a research project involving bridge decay. For this project we needed to locate a number of ...
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Importing Data Dump into Postgres
I needed to take four steps to import an Oracle binary dump into PostgreSQL Open Oracle dump with something like ...
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ArcGIS Weighted Overlay Error #999999
Client was getting error 999999 (generic) error when running weighted overlay analysis. Fixed this by changing Windows environment variable for ...
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Caching (GWC) Imagery
Issues I’ve run into while caching imagery on Geoserver/GWC Out of Memory Errors (java.lang.OutOfMemoryError: PermGen space): Solved this (as suggested ...
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JQuery Each Iterator
Is your each iterator not working on an Array? Try constructing the array as an object instead. Jquery v1.3.2 ...
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Setting LM_LICENSE_FILE Environment Variable for ENVI/IDL 4.8 on Pre-Lion MacOS
To set an environment variable for ENVI/IDL on a pre-Lion MacOS System, I would recommend using the environment.plist file. This ...
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Openlayers Geoserver WMS Caching with GWC
Now that Geowebcache is integrated with Geoserver and WMS (among other OGC service types), map tile-caching is supposed to be ...
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Lookbehind/Lookahead Assertion with Npp Regex
Today I was looking for a way to get the last character of a pattern so that I could replace ...
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Lay Interpretation of Cancer Incidence
Cancer is a big deal, and the potential environmental factors make mapping incidence very appealing. This has made maps a ...
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SDE Errors
“ERROR: ESRI: error getting spatial references for srid = ” … uses public.sde_spatial_references instead of sde.sde_coordinate_systems, so cannot use standard ...
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ArcSDE/Postgres Error 000210, Could not Copy Features
It seems like there is an out of the box error in ArcSDE which causes geodatabase operations like Import Feature ...
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postgres max integer in an alphanumeric column
select max(to_number(substring(COLUMNNAME from ‘([0-9].*)’),’99999′)) from TABLENAME removes letters from a mixed column … can be used for generating a new ...
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Intersect ArcGIS Bug
There is a bug in ArcGIS with the intersect tool (I noticed it when intesecting lines as polylines) that causes ...
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Flipped Polar Coordinate System
Problem: NIC/NSIDC Antarctica data was appearing flipped 180 dg, without coordinate system or projection defined. When other polar data, thought ...
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On Simple Structure and Factor Analysis
“I had become increasingly unhappy with L. L. Thurstone’s principle of so-called simple structure and his widely accepted idea that ...
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notepad ++ special characters as replace string
While copy over a newline special character will show up in the “find” field of the “find & replace” dialog ...
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ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap
I recently had a chance to test out ArcGIS Editor for OpenStreetMap (1.1 Beta3), an open source toolbox for interacting ...
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jquery accordion breaks out of containers on ie7 (ie6?)
fixed this issue by giving css position:relative on parent container further up the tree (in this case was the tabs ...
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Google Spreadsheet Data API
I gave a presentation to the U. of Delaware WebDev group and IT-CS&S (RDMS) on the topic of using data ...
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Replacing Tomcat .jsp pages with Apache httpd .php pages
It turned out that this task was much easier than I’d expected. Here are the steps I took: Edit the ...
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WHERE NOT IN and NULL in Postgresql
NULL values trip up the WHERE NOT IN condition in Postgres. To fix this behavior, use a conditional (not null) ...
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Duplicate OSM Features in UD Campus Map
I noticed a couple places where we have two polygons on top of each other (particularly for parking polygons) in ...
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Zoom to extent of new vector layer in OL
Zooming to the maximum extent of all features in a vector layer does not work unless all features have been ...
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Random Feature Selection
I met with a gentleman today who needed to select random streets in Wilmington in order to do a field ...
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View KML Source from MyMaps
Google MyMaps allows you to export KML by using the “Export to Google Earth” feature. If you copy/paste the URL ...
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Geoserver Labeling, Font Changes
Wierd Geoserver Behavior (bug): font changed from Arial to some kind of serif font for no apparent reason. I fixed ...
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Animal Movement and Home Range Options for ArcGIS
The Animal Movement Extension was written in Avenue, and development stopped many years ago. Therefore, Animal Movement Extension is not ...
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Geoserver SLD Polygon Labels Repeat
Fix: had specified larger tile size for earlier debugging. Switch tilesize back to 256 to fix label repeat on polygons ...
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FIX! Geoserver not displaying labels
I’ve been having an extremely frustrating problem over the last month … in one word: labeling. My latest labeling challenge, ...
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Geoserver WebTileCache
I was ultimately not able to deal with cutoff labels in Mapnik (or labels not being placed because of tile/overlap ...
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Mapnik label cut off strategies
I’ve been spending a lot of time dealing with mapnik labels/shields being cut off. Here are some strategies: change the ...
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ImportError: No module named mapnik
I'm still not sure what exactly causes this error: "ImportError: No module named mapnik" .. clearly Python is not finding ...
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python zipfile.py MemoryError
Was getting the following error on zipfile.py (actually while attempting to run a cascadenik script): newdata = self.dc.decompress(newdata) MemoryError I ...
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python cgi with xxamp/apache on windows
I recently figured out that a web service class I was dealing with (WFS in OpenLayers) would only accept requests ...
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Tilecaching MXD/ArcGIS Server to file/folder-based only (e.g. google, mapnik)
So it seems like there’s no automated way to go from mxd to file/folder based (rather than web service) tile ...
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AGS error: #000569: Failed to generate cache. All server contexts failed to cache map.
I was getting the following error when trying to cache a map service in ArcGIS Server/ArcCatalog: 000569: Failed to generate ...
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Drupal SWFTools Error
Was getting the following error: “You are missing some Flash content that should appear here! Perhaps your browser cannot display ...
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Tile basemap through Views/GMaps module (Drupal)
To add a tiled basemap to a gmap created with views (and the gmaps) module: 1. First make sure that ...
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Migrating ArcIMS to a new machine
1. Install Apache (2.2.x, to c:Apache2.2, in my case) and Tomcat (6.0.x, to c:Tomcat6.0, in my case) make sure each ...
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json_encode pg_fetch_array
For some reason you need to run the result of pg_fetch_array through a loop and store in another array to ...
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Mapnik … success!
Here’s how I imported, rendered, and served OSM data through mapnik, locally: 1. Do all downloads/installs … python (2.5 worked ...
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Loading OSM with OSMOSIS
Now that I’ve decided to locally render OSM data for the campus, I need to get the OSM data for ...
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Plugging away with OSM
Update: Success! Was able to convert to OSM with Export_to_OSM.py, all was needed was to change some paths in the ...
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Installing QGIS with osgeo4w, express crashes
Installing QGIS with a standalone installer is definitely the way to go for someone with little time, no need for ...
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Basemap, prority renderers/services based on extent?
A new idea: use custom service/renderer within a given extent and cloud service outside of that extent … tag campus ...
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Directions, directions
So I am returning in the new year with a major task at hand: finish work on UD campus maps ...
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Table to table bug (ArcGIS)?
Is there a bug with the “table to table” tool in ArcGIS when using it to export a DBF from ...
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Cloud basemaps, so elusive
I wanted to use openstreetmaps as the base data layer for the new UD Campus Maps, but am running into ...
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unexpected rows in tables
Occasionally, the number of rows in a table* is not really the number of rows in the table. Sometimes this ...
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license server down or not responding -96,7
was getting an error like “license server down or not responding -96,7” when trying to get ArcGIS to run on ...
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area cropped when skinning flv to swf
try using the noscale option and enlarging the dimensions exported … you can use negative margins on the html output ...
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notepad++ insert carriage return
In notepad++ you can easily find a carriage return by copying a section of texxt with a carriage return in ...
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connecting to sde
Connecting to my new SDE was exceedingly difficult. I’m not sure if it’s because it was built on postgres, but ...
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setting percent property as3
when setting percent height property in AS3 was getting the following erro”1084: Syntax error: expecting identifier before semicolon” … was ...
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Importing ESRI GRID to ENVI
I’m not sure if ENVI documentation is lousy or just not searchable, but I could not find any good information ...
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“select * into” in mysql
“select * into” is not allowed in mysql. Here is an example to get around this limitation: CREATE TABLE newtable ...
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find/replace text mysql
update TABLE_NAME set FIELD_NAME = replace(FIELD_NAME, ‘find this string’, ‘replace found string with this string’); from: http://www.mydigitallife.info/2007/04/23/how-to-find-and-replace-text-in-mysql-database-using-sql/ ...
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Classify Dialog does not open
Problem: Classify dialog does not open when hitting button “Classify …” under Spatial Analyst “Reclassify” tool Solution: Was trying to ...
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EveryDWG CAD Command Line
EveryDWG is a utility provided by the Open Design Alliance, a consortium of firms mostly organized around DWG and other ...
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make on windows (GNU), dmake
finally found a suitable (and open source!) make executable for windows 64x, dmake. I posted it on a serve I ...
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Blocks not displaying in their regions?
Blocks not displaying in their regions? Delete the block and then create it again and add again to the appropriate ...
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copy mysql tables
mysql> create database db2; ! /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqldump -u root –password=pass db1 | /usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql -u root –password=pass db2 originally seen on: http://mywheel.net/blog/index.php/2006/01/05/mysql-duplicate-database-quick-tip/ ...
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wildcard regex in notepad
The general wildcard regex for notepad (simliar to % in sql) is (.*). So to match both of these lines: ...
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all changes cause syntax error, python
Problem: getting a syntax error whenever making any change to a py (python) file Solution: stop editing py file in ...
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load csv to mysql from local file
LOAD DATA LOCAL INFILE ‘[path to your csv]’INTO TABLE [table to import into, must be created before running with proper ...
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removing carriage return/new line character in mysql
on importing a csv to mysql I saw these little black square characters, which were carriage return symbols of course ...
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terminal server has exceeded max number of allowed connections
if you get the error just run the following command to override the error: mstsc -v:0.0.0.0 /f -console (substitute ip ...
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distinct Drupal user list with views
having trouble displaying a DISTINCT user list with views? This problem often arises because you need to choose the ‘user’ ...
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Drupal Views Templates and CCK $fields Array
Having difficulty accessing the $fields array under your Drupal Views template? Are you sure you have named your template correctly ...
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How to migrate Drupal to xampp for Development
Occasionally it is important to work on a local development machine. For this task I often use the xampp package, ...
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The $fields array in Drupal (CCK)
the $fields array is very important for accessing field content when doing custom theming. Unfortunately field names are not well ...
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Having trouble with no “active” class being generated for menu’s or primary/secondary links in Drupal 6.x?
Having trouble with no “active” class being generated for menu’s or primary/secondary links in Drupal 6.x? It has been documented that ...
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with the php domdocument class was getting the following error: Warning: main() [function.main]: unterminated entity reference 64-bit this error was ...
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create dom html with php, getelementbyid doesn’t work
I leverage the domdocument php class to create elegant, dynamic html documents via the dom tree. However, I was finding ...
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there are so many options with pear’s db library for php, I sometimes forget the optimal code for getting a ...
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When defining projection from ArcCatalog (shapefile properties) I get an error message “Failed to Alter the Spatial Reference”. If I ...
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There are multiple caching levels to be mindful of with a typical ArcGIS Server environment. This factor often makes debugging ...
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To do a non-boolean conditional insert in SQL Server (the “where exists” clause is best for boolean), use the “where ...
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Gmaps: GEvent and “a is not defined”
I was getting the (generic and fairly common) “a is not defined” (on line 287 of main.js I believe) javascript ...
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Flash Map Workflow, described
Thematic groups created in ArcMap and enhanced with Adobe Illustrator (AI), were saved as separate AI files (by region) and ...
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New Tool: Map Extent Calculator
I just created a small tool for calculating decimal degree map extents : you can access it here ...
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add arcgis service remotely from arccatalog
when adding a service to a remote arcgis server you cannot browse to the actual location of the mxd or ...
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(no title)
this is a nice pear db query which returns an associative array $data = $sqlconnectionobject ->getAssoc(‘sql statement here’,true, array(), DB_FETCHMODE_ASSOC, ...
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Setting up a Tiling/Caching Google Maps/ArcGIS Server Solution
Setting up a Setting up a Tiling/Caching Google Maps/ArcGIS Server Solution has gotten much easier with the advent of ArcGIS ...
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ArcGIS Server, not able to “input layers” for cache, or preview map in ArcCatalog
In trying to make an ArcGIS server (9.3) caching service I was initially not seeing any option for the required ...
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Arcmap geocoding error
Was getting the following error when trying to geocode, though I suspect it might come up whenever a feature class ...
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Workflow: Access to Arcmap and Back
export as .xls (with no formatting option) open w/ excel 2003 or earlier. press ctrl + A twice, do column ...
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postgres to mysql workflow
postgres to mysql workflow 1. Export database from postgres to plain text sql. You should do this with the pgAdmin ...
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Import/Copy CSV/data to Postgres
I recently was having trouble importing CSV to postgres. The trouble was with empty trailing columns (the first row had ...
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was getting the following error after installing php 5.2.6 on IIS with IIS CGI configuration: PHP Warning: PHP Startup: Unable ...
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are you getting field value with with the leading zeros excluded, but are joining to a field with the zeros ...
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I was getting the following error on my web browser: “The directory name is invalid.” I assumed this was a ...
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having problems with your pear install on a drive other than c (d?) on iis? you must run the pear ...
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a common task I come across is the need to create a table of “distinct” records based upon “uniqueness” of ...
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I had earlier shown how to do an update query based on a field from another table in MS Access ...
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using xxamp for a lamp (linux,mysql, php) environment to do development on php? perhaps you are already running an iis ...
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alright, there is actually a way to do this built into excel! good, it is as it should be! format ...
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I often get tripped up doing an update of one table from fields in other table in access sql. i’m ...
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Gone are my days of crawling ftp uploads. Now I just upload zip archives and expand with this nifty little ...
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openlayers wms manager error on iis
The WMS Manager library for openlayers is a great tool for allowing users to dynamically select layers from one or ...
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URI limit in sajax
another embarrassingly simple fix which took me a little while to figure out: While passing a hierarchical list to sajax ...
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MS Access Error on running “join/select into” query
Was getting the following error when running a “join/select into” query in MS Access “Cannot open database ”. It may ...
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complete workflow for transfering wordpress site to iis
this workflow assumes you are using the WP-DB-Backup plugin (I highly recommend) to backups of your mysql/wordpress db. Also am ...
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Adding a 3rd sidebar
I’ve begun adding a 3rd sidebar to my theme as a first step towards figuring out how to add widgets ...
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SWF Flash Maps
Are Flash (SWF) maps worthwhile, or just a gimmick? Many sites have been putting up some pretty slick SWF maps ...
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Steps for making Transparent FeatureType from PostGIS DataStore
Though OpenLayers does define an opacity property for the layer object, I haven’t been able to get it working. Therefore, ...
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proper pear db query for an awesome ass. array
If you want a descriptive associative array with Pear DB, this is probably what you should use: $data=& $dbh->getAssoc('select * ...
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