December 2006 Archives

I update math worksheet generator yesterday.

Some new features:
* One-Digit or Two-Digit. If you choose two-digit, you can setup the max number you want.
* Addition, subtraction or mixed with addition and subtraction.
* You can choose to print answer key as well.
* Setup how many worksheets you need.
* The name of kids and date to be put on the worksheet.

Click here to go to One-Digit or Two-Digit Addition and/or Subtraction

Do I forgot something? Oh! There are 64 questions per sheet.

It is very easy to use.

I programed a web version of math worksheet. Just addition and subtraction.
My elder daughter, Grace, is Grade 1. She is learning addition and subtraction within two figures, up to 10.

Grace can do more than what teacher requested.

I build this new worksheet generator.

All parents are welcome to use this tool.

Go to Math - Addition & subtraction
Enter the max number you want to be used in worksheet, and how many pages you need.
60 questions per page.
Addition and subtraction are random.

You can also enter the name of your kids. Then he will get his own math worksheet.

After click Submit button, the worksheet is generated as PDF file in letter size.

To see a sample, Download file

To create PDF file by PHP, you need some basic information. I record it here.

Page Sizes in PostScript Points
Paper Size - Page Width - Page Height
Letter - 612 - 792
Legal - 612 - 1008
A0 - 2380 - 3368
A1 - 1684 - 2380
A2 - 1190 - 1684
A3 - 842 - 1190
A4 - 595 - 842
A5 - 421 - 595
A6 - 297 - 421
It will be used, when I begin a page as below:

pdf_begin_page ($pdf, $width, $heifht);

Built-in PDF Fonts
courier
Courier-Bold
Courier-Bold Oblique
Courier-Oblique
Helvetica
Helvetica-Bold
Helvetica-Bold Oblique
Helvetica-Oblique
Symbol
Tuimes-Bold
Times-Bold Italic
Times-Italic
Times-Roman
Zapf Dingbats

And Font Encodings
Encoding : Description
winansi : Windows
macroman : Mac Roman (Macintosh default)
edcdic : EBCDIC, used on IBM AS/400 and S/390 systems
builtin : Coding built into the font itself
host : System-specific coding:macroman on the Mac, ebcdic on EBEDIC-based systems, and winansi on all others.

$font = pdf_findfont ($pdf, $font_name, $encoding);

Microsoft release its December update as it does every month.

My wife's computer is Compaq Presario SR1520NX. I update it as usual. This time it has one hardware drive update for video driver.

The chipset of this PC is SIS 760.
After update all critical and hardware updates, I reboot the computer.
The screen resolution become 640X480 with 4bit color.
What happen? I tried a lot of different way to change the resolution and color depth. I still kept the same low resolution and 4 bit colors.

It is crazy.

I search the Compaq's website. Go to the drivers part. Only original graphics drivers provided on site.

I just installed the Google Toolbar 3.0 for Firefox.

I saw the new feature, maybe not, which will notify you the incoming Gmail.

When you have some new Gmail, the Gmail icon looks like that in following picture. You can click the triangle right to the Gmail icon, the pulldown menu will show you the title of new emails.

When you click the Gmail icon, and open the Gmail interface, the icon will be changed to normal.

I use Firefox for all my regular web use, except some special web site I have to use IE Tab.

The current Google Toolbar for Firefox I used is 2.1.

Some IE version features were not provided on Firefox version. Say, Google Bookmarks, Google Accounts login.

Now Google release the 3.0 Google Toolbar 3.0 for Firefox.
This my most wanted feature. So I don't need Firefox Google Bookmarks any more.

This is also a good improvement for Google Toolbar.

I received the cheque from Review Me by mail today.
Because I write a review for ReviewMe - supplemental income to blog last month.
They send the payment to Publisher very on time.

Please look at the following cheque.

I will be very happy to do more reviews through Review Me.

I have a very long history to use the image viewer software. I still remember my first PC. It is 386DX40 with 4Mb memory, and 170Mb hard-disk. The monitor is 14".

Just like other teenage boys, I use ACDSee for lots and lots of photos copied from my classmates.
It is running on DOS. Even when I have a Windows 3.11 on my computer, I always reboot to DOS to watch images. It is very fast and easy to control.

I have not found any software which can let have the same experience as ACDSee 2.4. I use ACDSee Pro 8.0 now. I don't like it. It is changed to bigger and slower.
Let's see the file size of ACDSee in its version history:
ACDSee 1.0 for Windows 95 (0.5 MB)
ACDSee 2.1 (0.6 MB)
ACDSee 2.22 (0.9 MB)
ACDSee 2.4 (1.9 MB)
ACDSee 2.42 (1.9 MB)
ACDSee 2.43 (1.6 MB)
ACDSee 2.45 (German) (2.0 MB)
ACDSee 3.0 (3.9 MB)
ACDSee 3.10 (5.7 MB)
ACDSee 4.01 (11.4 MB)
ACDSee 4.02 (10.8 MB)
ACDSee 5.0.1 (11.1 MB)
ACDSee 7.0 (14.8 MB)
ACDSee 8.0 (12.1 MB)
ACDSee 8.1 (24.2 MB)

I like slim software and freeware.

Until now, I saw FastStone, it is a Freeware.
There are three products I'd like to introduce to my Blog readers.
FastStone Image Viewer 2.8

A fast, stable, user-friendly image browser, converter and editor. It has a nice array of features that include image viewing, management, comparison, red-eye removal, emailing, resizing, cropping and color adjustments. Its innovative but intuitive full-screen mode provides quick access to EXIF information, thumbnail browser and major functionalities via hidden toolbars that pop up when your mouse touch the four edges of the screen. Other features include a high quality magnifier and a musical slideshow with 150+ transitional effects, as well as lossless JPEG transitions, drop shadow effects, image annotation, scanner support, histogram and much more.

If you want to be a web developer, the following skills are required.

* CSS, HTML/XHTML/WAP.
* AJAX/JavaScript.
* XML/XSLT.
* W3C DOM methods and properties.
* Adobe Photoshop, Fireworks.
* Perl or PHP/SQL.
* Java, Google Web Toolkit.
* Unix, Perforce (or other version control system).

Look, CSS and XHTML are very basic skills.

I have a LAN with Windows 2000 pro and Windows 2000 server. One share folder in Windows 2000 server. All people in the Lan can access this folder as member of workgroup.

The requirement is to setup this share folder to two groups with different security right.

The following notes is what I do in my server.

Setting Security on a Folder before share it
1) Log on to server as a user who is a member of the Administrators group. Open Windows Explorer.

2) Click the drive or folder in which I want to create a new folder.

3) Create a new folder, named it as "shareit".

4) Right-click "shareit", and then click Properties. Click the Security tab.

5) Click to clear the Allow inheritable permissions form parent to propagate to this object check box. In the Security dialog box, click Copy.
Note: The inherited permissions are copied directly to this folder.

I received Domain Name Expiration Notice from Domain Registry of Canada (DROC).
It said my domain name "freeinoutboard.com" will expire on May 31, 2007. It provide me a quote of 1 year renew for $40, 2 years renew for $70 and 5 years renew for $160.
And it ask me to pay by Credit card.

The truth is I have never registered any domain name through DROC.

I treat it as a spam mail. DROC retrive the domain registrar information from the WHOIS server. Prepare the fake expiration notice to the owner of domain.

There is an advice from easyDNS.

Please be noticed the following important information:
Penalties Imposed by the courts posted on Canadian Competition Bureau
General Information
Company/Individual: Internet Registry of Canada and Daniel Klemann
Product: Internet domain name registration
Date: 2004-06-30
Section of the Act/Instrument
s. 52(1) False or Misleading Representations
Penalty
$40,000
5-year Prohibition Order

After above, IROC changed its name to DROC.

I have a 1and1 host plan. It provide some vouchers for clients.

I active one voucher of Microsoft adCenter. I want to sign up a new account on adCenter with this voucher. I failed finally.

Let me address the details of this trial.
Background:
I live in Canada.
I have Credit Card with Canadian currency only.
I don't have a US address.

When I register on the adCenter, and enter the voucher code into the promotion field.
It gave me some errors.

Country of Promotion and account must match.

Currency of the Promotion and account must match.

Based on these two errors, I know I can not use this voucher because of I am Canadian.

The voucher from 1and1 is US voucher. It can not be used by Canadian like me.