I’m a fan of Batcache, the Memcached-based WordPress full-page cache solution, but I’ve discovered that it ignores the content-type header set when the page is initially generated and re-sends all content with content-type: text/html. I posted a note about this at the WordPress support forums, but then I realized what the problem was: apache_response_headers() doesn’t return the content type, but headers_list() does.

The solution is to replace apache_response_headers() with headers_list() in the code, though headers_list() is PHP 5+ only, so it might be a while before we see a change like this committed. Still, I’ll shamelessly tag Andy Skelton (Batcache’s author) on it.

MySQL has some powerful, and perhaps underused spatial extensions, but the most interesting functions are still unimplemented: “Note: Currently, MySQL does not implement these functions…”

Among those as-yet unimplemented functions is DISTANCE(). Alternatives can be found here and here, though neither is clean or simple. I wonder if a simple MBRContains() is good enough, though…

I recently installed WordPress 2.5 and among the changes I noticed was a loss of Akismet’s “Recheck Spam” button (or something like that. It didn’t seem like such a problem at the time, but then I got swamped with so much trackback and comment spam that the flood DOS‘d my server. I had to disable comments and trackbacks for a time, which brought my server back, but my moderation queue still had over 500 comments waiting for me. Most of those are spam, but I like to think there are a couple real comments among them.

And that’s when I really wondered where Akismet’s “Recheck Queue for Spam” button went.

I looked inside the code and found the appropriate functions there. In fact, it even includes a WP2.5 specific function, akismet_check_for_spam_button(). I’m not exactly sure why the button doesn’t appear, but at least all the code is still there to do the work, and all I have to do is manually check the URL:

edit-comments.php?page=akismet-admin&recheckqueue=true&noheader=true

And after running that a few times (it timed out a few times), my moderation queue went from over 500 to under 100. That’s something I can manage.

It’s worth noting, however, that all a person really has to do is update the darn Aksimet plugin. Reminder to self: It installs with the rest of WP with SVN, but I it doesn’t update with the rest of WP. A quick svn up inside the directory, however, is all it takes.

It’s been a problem we’ve struggled with here for much longer than we should have, and it took a hotshot new guy in desktop support to show us the answer. But if you know the right magic, you can add a printer to Windows XP and make it available to all users.

See, if you add the printer using the “add printer” wizard, it’s available only to that user. But if you use the command line, then you can throw a switch to make it available to any user who logs in to that machine. Here’s the instructions he offered us:

1. Log in to the domain with an administrative account.
    
2. Type the following into the command prompt:

   rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /ga /n\\printers\%printername%

   In other words, to add mylj03, the command line is:

   rundll32 printui.dll,PrintUIEntry /ga /n\\printers\mylj03
    

3. The printer is now available to all users who log in with a domain account.

update: Alan Baker wants me to make it clear that we’ve been able to do this all along. He explains that a user with administrative privileges could add a network printer on a local port, and make it available to all users. Point taken. Counterpoint: why is Windows so freakin’ useless? Neither solution works as well as a little “make available to all users” checkbox would.

windows, windows xp, xp, win xp, printers, network printers, add a printer, users, user permissions, broken, workaround, xp user permissions

It turns out the Internet Explorer doesn’t properly support CSS’s position: fixed. Google led me to the following:

• How To Create – Making Internet Explorer use position: fixed;
• doxdesk.com: software: fixed.js
• Fixed Positioning for Windows Internet Explorer

The DoxDesk solution looks promising and simple, but I think bugs elsewhere in my layout are preventing it from working. It’s time to start again from scratch.

tags: bugs, css, css support, doxdesk, ie, ie bug, ie bugs, ie css bug, internet exploder, internet explorer, position fixed, workaround