Update records in MySQL

You can tell I'm doing lots of work at the moment due to all the blog posts (as wrong as that sounds!). Anyway, a note to myself here. I often want to update a load of records in MySQL, i.e. setting a field from "Yes" to "No" etc. For some reason everytime I try to remember the single line query I forget! Anyway here it is:

UPDATE glinks_Category SET Category_Template='' WHERE Category_Template='navcategory.html'

Obviously you will need to replace the table and field names but that's the structure. Always back up before doing anything. Use at your own risk.
Lurking in the internet industry background since the late nineties and occasionally venturing out for an event or two. Get in touch via the email address on the "my complete profile" link below or via Twitter @geoffblog

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YUM - Repository base is listed more than once

While checking what packages were available using the yum tool I kept getting the message:

Repository base is listed more than once in the configuration
Repository addons is listed more than once in the configuration
Repository extras is listed more than once in the configuration
Repository updates is listed more than once in the configuration

I couldn't find a great deal of help on the internet (hence this post!) but eventually it turned out that I had a .repo file which was listing the same repositories as my yum.conf file. The .repo file was in /etc/yum_repo.d/ directory, but yours might be called something else. So, check for a /etc/yum* directory and see if you find any .repo files. In my case they were identical so I used renamed the .repo file to .repo.hide and used yum.conf instead.

I hope this helps someone as I know I could have done with finding it 2 hours ago!

PS. Merry late Christmas.
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PayPal UK telephone number

I've just cancelled a PayPal account and during the process it said that I could call them on 08707 307 191 if I wanted to discuss things. As I was only cancelling because I had another account I didn't bother to call them, but I thought I would post the number here in case it's useful for anyone else - PayPal don't exactly make it easy to find normally!
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"PC Not Listed" XBox 360 - Solution

This was driving me mad, my PC (XP SP3) could see the XBox from Windows Media Player 11, but for some reason the XBox kept reporting "PC Not Found". I searched the internet for hours and tried every solution under the sun, including the renaming/deleting of the DRM folder, disabling firewalls (both Kaspersky and Windows) as well as fiddling around with settings in the Netgear router. Nothing worked. Then I thought I'd try running the Windows "Set up a home or small office network" wizard found inside Network Connections, just to ensure that the settings within Windows were correct for networking. Hey presto, the XBox could now, finally, see the PC. I hope this helps anyone else who is pulling their hair out on this!
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Including random number (timestamp) in vBulletin

This is useful for 'cache busting' (most commonly used with advertising code that requires a random number). So, if you want to easily include a random number (actually a timestamp) in your vBulletin templates, simply use this code:

<if condition="$randomvar = TIMENOW">$randomvar</if>

Every time I forget the syntax for this, I end up searching vBulletin.org before eventually realising the solution is actually on this thread at vBulletin.com! To avoid me wasting time again in the future, I decided to post this to my blog for reference.
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