May 2007 Archives

As a hungry Book reader, I download a lot of e-book from internet. Some times we call it digital copy of book.

Do you think it is illegal? No. It is 100% free legally.

Let me show you the site first.
Project Gutenberg

There are over 20,000 free books in the Project Gutenberg Online Book Catalog.

A grand total of over 100,000 titles is available at Project Gutenberg Partners, Affiliates and Resources.

If you don't live in the United States, please check the copyright laws of your country before downloading or redistributing a book.

You can download it into your palm or smartphone to read it anywhere.
Most of them are located in Public Domain. So free to copy.

There are some languages with more than 50 books: Chinese Dutch English Finnish French German Italian Portuguese Spanish Tagalog
On this site, you will find some audio book which are human read.

Ok, There is another site provide audio book to listen.
Librivox

Go there to download some and have fun when reading and listening.

If you use Firefox, it is time to update to 2.0.0.4.

It is released on May 30, 2007. Your Firefox may auto update itself or not.
Click Help > Check for Updates to get the update.

This update will fix following security issues.
XUL Popup Spoofing
XSS using addEventListener
Path Abuse in Cookies
Persistent Autocomplete Denial of Service
Crashes with evidence of memory corruption (rv:1.8.0.12/1.8.1.4)

And provide better Windows Vista support.
And also provide two more language Afrikaans (af) and Belarusian (be).

Just for the security issues, it is worth to update your Firefox.

As I mentioned before, I install a Spamwords 1.1.3 plugin on PHPBB 2.0.22. After about one and half month use, I feel it is so good to provent lots of spam from displaying on my G2Soft Support forum.

It is like a Wall to protect the phpbb. The spammer is blocked and the IP address is banned either.

Let me list some popular spam words I used when detect the message.
There are three types of spam words.
1) Adult content;
2) Medicine;
3) fake software;
4) Other items, say, Furniture;

The list of spam words keep growing. When I see some new type of Spam, I will add these into the spam words. So next time some spammers try to post will be blocked.

During past 1 and half month, it blocked over one hundred spams. It is not including the spam post I deleted manually about 10 posts.

This Spam Words is good and powerfull. If you have a PHPBB forum. I highly recommend it to you to protect your system.

I have a MovableType installation with EnhancedEntryEditing (EEE) plugin on another server.

It is good to use when I need to copy and paste a formated Microsoft Word paragraph into MT post and keep the same format.

The only think I don't like is the font size is too small when I switch to WYSIWYG screen.

Look the left one is the original EEE's editing box, the default font size is too small, compared with the middle regular font size.
I'd like to hack it and increase the font size to as same as the regular one.

It is very easy to hack it. If you know where is the file to change, it takes you only 1 minute.

OK, let me tell the security.
The only file you need to touch is located at:

mt-static\plugins\EnhancedEntryEditing\tiny_mce\themes\advanced\css\

font-size: 10px;

font-size: 14px;

Then you will see the result as the right one on the picture above.

Very simple, but big help.

I'd like to introduce this new site, Bloggerwave, with a reviewme like Ads system.

I sign up on last weekend and submit this Blog as participate blog. It took about 3 days to get approval. So, this is the first opportunity to write something for Bloggerwave.

The Signup steps look simple.

1) Register an account on it.
2) Add up to 5 blogs and wait for approval
3) Take the opportunity to do the review, Buzz or Opinion, and write you own post on your selected blog.
4) Wait for approving.

For Bloggerwave, I still think the price is very low than others.

The price is just based on the topic, not based on your blog. It is not so good.

For me, I'd like to accept a price about $25 per post with 60 words or more. And I also like to doing the review by my testing or experience. I can not say positive because it pay for it.
I just do the review by my own decision.

I feel Bloggerwave can make more improvement in the back-end.

Note: This a paid review.

British Columbia's Ministry of the Attorney General has introduced Canada's first apology legislation.

The proposed bill will allow people and organizations to apologize for an accident without incurring legal liability or fear of voiding an insurance contract. An apology made by a person or an organization in connection with any matter will not constitute an express or implied admission of fault or liability.

Accident victims often want nothing more than an explanation and an apology for waht happened to them.

The victim get a apology and fell better than nothing.
So if you hit other people's car in accident, it is OK to say "I'm sorry". It doesnot mean you are liable for this accident.

On the other hand, it is nothing to say "I'm sorry."

The Discussion Paper on Apology Legislation.

SixApart announce an update of the default plugin Spamlookup

It is a manual update. The steps as below:
1. Login to Movable Type. (Your account will need to have System Administrator privileges.)
2. Click on the “Plugins” link in the main navigation on the left hand side.
3. Look for the “SpamLookup - Lookups” plugin set listed among your other plugins.
4. Click “Show Settings.”
5. Under “IP Blacklist Services” highlight and replace the text “opm.blitzed.org” with “zen.spamhaus.org”.
6. Click “Save Settings.”

After update, the commenting speed will be improved. You can try to leave your comment to test it.
Of course, the known spams will be blocked automatically.

I went to Costco this afternoon and bought a pack of Duracell Crank Light as below.

There are following items in this package.
Two lights,
Two cable with USB and AC end.
One owner's manual.

It is not just a emergency light. It can also function as a AM/FM radio and USB charger.
Ok, let me list the full features.
1) AM/FM operations.
2) Light Operation
3) Charging Internal Bateries
3.1 Charge by using Crank handle.
3.2 Charge by using external cable from computer USB port.
4) Charging External Devices, such as Cell phone.

Cranking at 120 rpm for about 1 minute will provide enough charging to operate the 3 LED light for 30 minutes, 2.5 hours of orange blinker, or 12 minutes of radio.

I do really want to have this kind of light. It is good for use when windstorm comes to power cut, or camp out of the town.

I paid it about $16.

Some time we want to put video on our blog. The code to embeded it is very complicated, because so many different video types.

Today I tried Embedded Video with Link. It makes it simple and easy to finish this step.

I just download it from the link above. Installed it as the regular plugin.

The option>Embedded Video, I can setup the Video object width between 250-800 to fit in the width of Blog layout.

It supports following video portal:
YouTube, Google Video, dailymotion, MyVideo, Clipfish, Sevenload, Revver, Metacafé, Yahoo! Video, ifilm, MySpace Video, Brightcove, aniBOOM, vimeo, GUBA, Garage TV, GameVideos, vSocial

So after install this plugin, to embed the video is much easy.
1) Prepare Video file.
2) Upload it to Video host site, such as YouTube.
3) Get video ID.
4) When write a new post, click the Icon
5) Pick the YouTube and enter the video ID.
6) Click Insert button.
7) Finish the post and click Publish.

Done.

That's a painless publish withou touch the html code.
Here is a sample.

As shown on picture, the Ubuntu 7.04 CDs are mailed to my home now.

I made the order on April 18, 2007. It took about 1 month to process and mail it out.

WordPress 2.2
There are some new features or improvements:
* WordPress Widgets allow you to easily rearrange and customize areas of your weblog (usually sidebars) with drag-and-drop simplicity. This functionality was originally available as a plugin Widgets are now included by default in the core code, significantly cleaned up, and enabled for the default themes.
* Full Atom support, including updating our Atom feeds to use the 1.0 standard spec and including an implementation of the Atom Publishing API to complement our XML-RPC interface.
* A new Blogger importer that is able to handle the latest version of Google’s Blogger product and seamlessly import posts and comments without any user interaction beyond entering your login.
* Infinite comment stream, meaning that on your Edit Comments page when you delete or spam a comment using the AJAX links under each comment it will bring in another comment in the background so you always have 20 items on the page. (I know it sounds geeky, but try it!)
* We now protect you from activating a plugin or editing a file that will break your blog.
* Core plugin and filter speed optimizations should make everything feel a bit more snappy and lighter on your server.
* We’ve added a hook for WYSIWYG support in a future version of Safari.

Here you will find the full announcement.

I put some social network button on site. The Html Validator always tell me some URL is not correct.

Ok.

I have to code it my self to replace the original code.
Original code is as shown below:
<!-- del.icio.us -->
<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&title=<?php the_title ?>" title="Add to del.icio.us">Del.icio.us</a>
<!-- /del.icio.us -->

I change it to:
<?php
$title = wp_title('',FALSE);
$tt = urlencode($title);
$tt = substr($tt,2);
?>
<!-- del.icio.us -->
<a href="http://del.icio.us/post?url=<?php the_permalink() ?>&amp;title=<?php echo $tt; ?>" title="Add to del.icio.us">Del.icio.us</a>
<!-- /del.icio.us -->

Now the link is perfect, without warning from HTML Validator.
Perfect code.

Do you want your own Web Gallery, or Web Photo Albums. Check Gallery. It is a Open Source program

I use a one-click-installation feature of DreamHost to install this service for my Grace's site. The album is located at http://www.gogracego.com/album.

Why I choose this photo album organizer?
You know I setup a Blog for my Grace powered by WordPress. It has a Gallery plugin can connect this Gallery with WordPress.

WPG2.
The features of WPG2 shown as below:
* Gallery 2 Images, Videos, Albums (displays the Album Highlight Image) can be displayed in Blog Entries
* Random, Recent, Daily, Weekly, Popular Images, Albums can be displayed as image blocks in the Wordpress Sidebar
* Management of Gallery2 users, secured by Wordpress User Roles and Capabilities
* Automatic logging in of Wordpress Users into Gallery2
* Displaying Gallery2 Output within a Wordpress Page

It looks powerful.
I upload the photos on her own Album location.
She login the WordPress, pickup a photo, and write something about it.

It is easy for her and for us.

This is a new Blog for Dreamer named as Dreamer's Blog.

Its focus is on Hi-Tech products, Web Programs, Gadget, and so on. It also has WordPress optimize tips, Hi-Tech News and Reviews.

It is powered by G2Soft.Net.

Site Meter is the one of the Most important provider in free web analytics tools. You know, the Google Analytics redesigned their interface. I don't want to repeat it because lots of bloggers are mentioning it in their blogs. So, Site Meter start to change its face and internal things.

Site Meter launched a new site to be a replacement. The interface is changed and some users are getting problems.

You may find the link to SiteMeter on the right panel of this blog. I use Site Meter for long time. It is a great tool.

During this changes, I can only see the summary. Some pages are very slow.

I think it need a couple of weeks to fix the bugs in the new system.

The last ASP version of my Pentacle In-Out Board is released now.

The Pentacle v7.05.0.2302 is ready to download.

It is still Open Source software. Free to download and use.

In the new version, something added as below:

Sorting by user last name.
Group can be deleted.
Location can be deleted.
New attendance report.

For the final version, I does not have much word to say. It is like my baby. I will give it a new born in future.

If you want to add bandwidth throttling on any one site, please follow my steps below:

1) Login your control panel of dreamhost. https://panel.dreamhost.com

2) Under main menu on the left side, click status.

3) Then click Bandwidth Usage. There is a list of your site per domain.

4) Click enable to enable bandwidth throttling with your own settings.

I have a 2TB Bandwidth usage capacity.

Currently I have a very small blog for my daughter, Grace. So, I give the limit to 30GB per month.

Dreamhost's default setting is disable of bandwidth throttling. It will cost you much if you use over the limit. $1 per GB over.

I use Livestate for almost one year,until last week.

I got the error message as below: Error: "EBAB001A: Cannot read data from drive. An unknown exception has occurred."

I googled it, and got the answer,

Note: If you are seeing this error message while using Symantec LiveState Recovery, contact Symantec Technical Support to obtain an updated version.

The Livestate I use is 3.0. It is very old version. Symantec doesnot want to support it or let user use it any more.
They want us buy a new version, say Exec.

Ok, I hate it and switch to their competitor, Acronis.
Acronis has some very competitive products, like Acronis True Image Server for Windows 9.1 I mentioned before.

I have a copy which is server 9.1 build 3534. I install it on my Windows 2003. It looks good. I can backup one partition into other partition as a backup file or security zone, but I can not backup directly to DVD-R disk. I have a LG GSA 4081B DVD writer. The program treated it as a CD writer.
I can use this program to backup something to CD-R, but not DVD. I want it be one DVD instead of a pile of CDs.

Later I found another build of this program, build 3832. I installed it on server.

Bingo! I can recognize my DVD writer correctly. Now I backup one data partition to one piece of DVD-R.

I heard a lot of time that the Dreamhost is so powerful and it has so many included features others doesn't.

Yesterday night, I made a order with the saving coupon.

It cost me USD93.8 in the first two years. The average cost per year is USD46.9.
If I paid year by year, it will take me USD141.8 for first two years.

The calculation is shown as below:
One-Year Pre-payment: 9.95/month
So: 9.95X12=119.4/year
Use one coupon to save USD97.
Then 119.4-97 = 22.4 is the first year.
The price of following year will come back to the original price without coupon. 119.4/year.

Two-Year Pre-Payment: 7.95/month
So: 7.95X24 = 190.8/two year
Use one coupon to save USD97
Then 190.8 - 97 = 93.8 for two years.

Now you know, why I bought two year pre-payment plan on it.
In the two year term, I can save USD97 if I pay it year by year. I can save more when I pay it every two year. It save me $145

I'd like to share this promo code

"GSAVING"

Joomla, is a free, open source content management system written with PHP for publishing content on the world wide web and intranet, using the MySQL database.

I mentioned it in my SEO Website Marketing (Chinese) Blog, in Best CMS in 2006.

Joomla! includes features such as page caching to improve performance, RSS feeds, printable versions of pages, news flashes, blogs, polls, website searching, and language internationalization.

The name is an English spelling of the Swahili word jumla meaning "all together" or "as a whole".
So cool, the target of this project is All Together, put everything you need in to one application.

Please look at the roadmap of Joomla.

There will be a brandnew version 1.5, a completely re-written code base built with PHP 5.

I am strongly recommend Joomla to the CMS user. I like it.

I have a installation on 1and1 shared server, beginner package.

In the Administrator, back-end, I got the warning as below:

PHP register_globals setting is `ON` instead of `OFF`

It looks like a big risk for server and the sites on it.

I tried a lot of ways. Still have this problem.
Just like add a php.ini file on every folder, or change .htaccess file by add

php_flag register_globals off

Finally I got the answer from bikeman on this post.

1and1 hosting uses multiple levels of php. With php5, register_globals is by default OFF.

To switch from php4 to php 5 you can
i) change all .php files to suffix .php5 which is worse than placing a php.ini in every folder wacko.gif

or ii) add the line, AddType x-mapp-php5 .php, to a .htaccess in your root directory. The good news is it applies to all sub-directories smile.gif

This seems to avoid server 500 errors, unlike a .htaccess with the line, php_flag register_globals off
Such a shame that 1and1 tech support couldn't have told me of this!

I choose way 2, and it works.
Add the following line in my .htaccess file.

AddType x-mapp-php5 .php