This is a blog post ported from www.dedmeet.com (my old blog website, no longer maintained) - I port blogs from there as they are requested.

In this post, I explain how I made it possible for MovieTomb posters to display on the playstation. Note that information may be dated, and is old, but may very well be still valid. 

I now use an android minix box, and Plex, which 'just works'

I was tasked with implementing google reCaptcha into a magento site.

I looked at a few of the existing extension, but I was not happy with their implementations, so I decided to roll my own implementation of Google reCaptcha

For those who just want the code, and are not interested in how it was done, go grab the code off github (or install via composer)  - https://github.com/ProxiBlue/recaptcha

Recently I started using Vagrant as part of my development environment. Could not be happier, however, one small issue has become very very irretatating.

Letency!

That initial 'hang' is slowing me down

Recently I downgraded a site from magento EE to CE.

The downgrade went rather smooth, with most work involving templates. 

Sometimes you need to render a line item in the cart differently than the rest.  

A sample usage case would be to prevent the quanity of a cart item to be changed.

A built in feature of the cart rendering, is the ability to render each product type with a different template. 
You can define the template via layout xml, using the "addItemRender" action within the 'checkout.cart' block

However, it is impractical to go an create a whole new product type. This article show another, very very easy way

It is now possible to use dynamic variables in rules as values.

From version 4.1.0 of the Dynamic Categories Module, it is possible to build rules in progresseive steps of results. 

You can insert a new SUB RESULT combiner, which will use the result from the preceding rule sets to limit the results of the linked rule set.

Using SUB RESULTS, you can build a category by combining the results of multiple rule sets, progressively to one result. 

Sounds confusing? It is really very simple, and an example will explain it best. 

Recently I noticed a long(ish) SQL query happening during checkout
The same calculation could be seen in the cart.

On the site, the SQL could take up to 2ms to process, thus adding unwanted delay to the end user experience

My investigations reveal a potential bug in how magento deals with quotes where no address has yet been selected.

The site that I am working on had a requirement to list 5 of the Best Seller products inside a CMS page.

Magento can out-the-box inject category lists into CMS pages, but there is no built-in-way to limit the product count.

This article describes how I did this, with only using an observer / event, using the core Product List functionality. Thus no new blocks, no new templates.  

Recently I became aware that my Dynamic Catgeory Products module is being pirated by a company called CMSmart.net. They seem to be based in VietNam, but their site was hosted in the USA.