“Forgive your enemies, but never forget their names.”
– JFK

Archive for the ‘productivity’ Category


18
Jan

I noticed this when I uploaded an entire project files from dev server to production server. Using Web Developer plugin for Firefox, I had a clue to compare the Content-Type from the response header and the one I have in <meta> tags in my HTML.

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Date: Wed, 25 Nov 2009 01:32:28 GMT
Server: Apache/2.2.8 (Ubuntu) PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.7 with Suhosin-Patch
X-Powered-By: PHP/5.2.4-2ubuntu5.7
Expires: Thu, 19 Nov 1981 08:52:00 GMT
Cache-Control: no-store, no-cache, must-revalidate, post-check=0, pre-check=0
Pragma: no-cache
Content-Length: 6572
Keep-Alive: timeout=15, max=99
Connection: Keep-Alive
Content-Type: text/html; charset=utf-8
 
200 OK

And it was really it! Though they both have text/html, they had different character set values. Server responses with ISO-8859-1, but the <meta> instructs the browser to use utf-8, as it is declared in the document.

<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8" />

And so the second load of page occurs, its sort of trying to correct page encoding on the client-side. In the script I was working, I needed to pass some session values to the next page and clear it on page load, but when it reloads the second time, the session value had been emptied.

Hope it helps.

17
Dec

I’ve been looking on how to start a torrent session on another machine lately (on *nix flavor), and I thought there’s probably a command-line for it, and I was right. Since I can SSH thru in my Ubuntu machine at home, this sounds like a fit option.

The need arises when I’m in the office, working of course, and a movie title suddenly pops in my head and I get eager watching it. So I’d search for torrent for that movie with good remarks, at least watchable quality. Download it then SCP that to my machine at home and start session torrent on CLI. Takes at least a minute of my time to fire it up, but most importantly, it’s finished downloading when I get home. And watch on dinner I guess.

So, if you’re using Ubuntu, transmission is commonly installed there. But we need the transmission-cli package installed, which includes transmission-daemon and transmission-remote for starting CLI torrent session. First fire up the daemon, then use remote to add torrent file, like this one below

marvin@localhost:~/Desktop$ transmission-daemon
marvin@localhost:~/Desktop$ transmission-remote -a Avatar-2009-TELESYNC-XviD-ORC.torrent

If it says The program 'transmission-daemon' is currently not installed, just type the suggested install command. It should be like this

marvin@localhost:~$ sudo apt-get install transmission-cli

Now, if you want to find out download stats just add the -l or --list like the one below, will list all torrents and status.

marvin@localhost:~/Desktop$ transmission-remote -l

Use transmission-remote --help for other options. You can set upload and download limits too.

Here are useful links:

10
Nov

What if really… LOL! I found this from DaniWeb, it’s short and entertaining! Read on…

The New York Times reported today that Apple has opened its first Apple Store in Paris, underneath the Louvre no less, and just two weeks after Microsoft opened up a Windows 7 cafe in Paris in another location. The idea of these two companies competing in a retail environment, and especially a Windows-themed cafe, got me thinking about what would happen if three cafes opened each run in the same style of the operating system it was named for. I figure it might look something like this:

Windows Cafe

The Windows Cafe is in a bland store front. The furniture consists of straight wooden chairs with tables with sharp angles. Unfortunately, every so often when you sit in a chair it crashes the to the floor, but you get used to this and figure it’s just part of the experience of going to the Windows Cafe. (To be fair they have been testing chairs from a new manufacturer and they are reportedly less prone to breaking in this fashion.) Pictures of a smiling Bill Gates and Windows logos adorn the walls. The coffee tastes fine most of the time, but a surprising number of patrons get sick there, so that it’s become standard practice to use hand sanitizer before you go in to protect yourself. The coffee is expensive, and refills are definitely not free, but it’s a known quantity, and many people are comfortable going there.

Linux Cafe

The Linux Cafe is a funky place in an artsy neighborhood with eclectic furniture donated by the patrons. It doesn’t match, but it’s comfortable and the walls are covered with donated pictures and paintings by local artists. The coffee is free, served in black cups (or you can just bring your own), but you need to make it yourself. If you can’t do it yourself, the cafe has consultants available to help you for a fee. It’s great for people who know about coffee brewing, but many people are intimidated by the idea of making their own coffee and stay away, even though very few people ever get sick who go there.

Apple Cafe

The Apple Cafe is a modern, state-of-the-art facility. The tables are stainless steel and the chairs are ultra-contemporary. Shrines to Apple CEO Steve Jobs are dotted around the wide space. The cups are cool and come in a variety of bright colors. The coffee is well made by a highly trained staff, and even though it costs a lot more, people line up around the block for a chance to drink it. Just don’t ask the staff about their coffee-making techniques because they are extremely tight lipped about this. People occasionally get sick there, but it’s rare enough for the cafe to brag about its safety record.

So there you have it. Three cafes with three distinct personalities just like the operating systems they represent

Source: http://www.daniweb.com/news/story236836.html?urlhash=yp4q&trk=nus_ritm-title by Ron Miller

27
Oct

This plugin is dependent on WP/GeoTrack by Johannes Lietz, this is NOT a stand-alone plugin, it won’t work if WP/GeoTrack is not installed anyway, so it’s safe.

And don’t look for it in WP Plugins repo, you won’t find it there :D

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/*
Plugin Name: Top Visitors Flag
Plugin URI: http://www.marvinmarcelo.com/
Description: This plugin displays visitors on sidebar as widget dependent on <a href="http://dadabase.de/weblog/archives/2006/05/23/wordpress-geotrack-plugin">WP/GEO-Track plugin</a>.
Author: Marvin Marcelo
Author URI: http://www.marvinmarcelo.com/
Version: 1.0.0
*/
function tvf_get_topvisits()
{
  global $wpdb, $table_prefix;
  $sql = "select count(*) as `rows` , `country` , `flagname` from `".$table_prefix."geotrack` group by `country` order by `rows` desc limit 0 , 12";
  $flagstats = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
 
  $html = "<li id='top-country-flags'><h2>Top Visiting Countries</h2><div>\n"; /*  id string */
  foreach ($flagstats as $cf)
  {
    $cf->rows = number_format($cf->rows, 0, "", ",");
    $html .= "<img src=\"". GEOTRACK_URL . "flags/" . $cf-/>flagname . ".png\" alt=\"Flag of $cf->country with $cf->rows visits\" title=\"$cf->country with $cf->rows visits\" />\n";
  }
  $html .= "</div></li>";
  echo $html;
}
 
function init_tvf_init(){
	register_sidebar_widget("Top Visitors Flags", "tvf_get_topvisits");
}
 
if (defined('GT_NOT_INSTALLED'))
{
  echo "<!-- You need \"http://dadabase.de/weblog/archives/2006/05/23/wordpress-geotrack-plugin\" installed first-->";
}
else
{
  add_action("plugins_loaded", "init_tvf_init");
}

Also, you have to forgive the function, constants, and variables names, we all struggle for a better and sensible one :) Happy coding!

23
Oct

2qa6yp0Ok, this is actually the first post I did about Windows. I haven’t used it as my working platform for more than 2 years, though honestly, it’s also where I started, back in Windows 95 in my school years. Even if that’s the only available version we had in 1999, it was huge then! I am now more in the FOSS community, and have been enjoying doing my stuff in Ubuntu Desktop. But what I really wanted to point out in this post is the new Windows Social, it is just like any social media but it runs real time feeds, “popping in” every second into the stream area with streams coming from different major social media out there – Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, etc. And that is a “WOW”, I admit. That’s the feature Facebook Developers haven’t really implemented in full capacity. But Facebook already rolled out their version with that feature, sort of saying “we’re on the way!”, as they had also announced in that release.

Windows Social

I still remember way back the upgrade of MSN’s Hotmail (or not exactly sure if older versions work smoothly on Firefox), it was always complaining that it’s not compatible with my browser. But this one, this one is really good, so Kudo’s to Windows Social team. When I found this in the Twitter’s box in popurls, posts just started popping in, sweet! Though I suppose it would do the same as on MS and IE platform. But if someone knew of a “flaw”, “fail” or “weak link”, complain about it properly to their support, and if you can bother to let me know ;) LOL