September 14th, 2008 admin
I’m at a loss to explain this unless SmartBro’s DNS or proxy servers have been taken over. Here’s the deal. I’m surfing normally, and then suddenly I try to go to a normal site (economist.com, yahoo.com, facebook.com, google. com, iptools.com etc) and instead of getting the correct page, I get a weird spammy advertising page, even though the URL in the Address bar looks correct.
The image to the right is an example. Click on the image to get a full sized view. I have more examples saved if anyone is interested. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Philippines, Security | No Comments »
September 14th, 2008 admin
I was just idly playing on the youtube site, and I discovered a neat trick which their designers used. All the images from the page (with the exception of the video previews) are held in a single image, which is then re-positioned on the page using CSS to create the illusion of several images. To see the big image, click on the grey bar at the top for example and select View Background Image. Or you can just click on this link:
http://s.ytimg.com/yt/img/master-vfl55102.gif
Now check out the upload button for example. You can see this is made up of a section of the long yellow bar, and then the yellow lozenge at the top of the image overlaid to create the left and right rounded corners of the button. Very cool.
This approach means that the site only ever has to load a single image for all the design, and consequently the pages have a much quicker load time. Genius. Why didn’t I think of that …
Posted in General IT | No Comments »
September 12th, 2008 admin
Don't do it ...
I’m continually startled by the way people use email in the Philippines. Using a Yahoo address is phenomenally popular, even for business. I could forgive a mom and pop company from using momandpop@yahoo.com.ph, but when you get top management handing you cards saying ceo_888@yahoo.com.ph there is something clearly very wrong.
In no particular order, here are a few reasons why you should NOT use yahoo for your business email address. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Life, Philippines, Security | 1 Comment »
September 9th, 2008 admin
This is the ultimate breakage: a breakage in the beer chain! In a country where cheap beer is a lifeline out of the inefficiency and brokenness, the danger of an interruption in the beer supply cannot be overestimated. Nevertheless I’ve been noticing dwindling supplies of bottled San Miguel Beer in Manila over the last few weeks, and now virtually every supermarket I visit has empty shelves. A national disaster. No San Miguel Pale Pilsen, no SMB Light, and …. no Super Dry <whimper>.
That’s not to say there’s no beer at all, mind. There is canned beer, which has always been inexplicably more expensive than bottled beer — around an extra 30%. And of course because of this, its the only beer left on the shelves. And there is foreign beer of course, but who in their right mind would pay 120 pesos for a can of Heineken, when the local brew is a sixth of the price and tastes much better.
I’ll investigate further. Questions will be asked. Hang in there fellow Manilans.
Posted in Life, Philippines | 1 Comment »
September 2nd, 2008 admin
There doesn’t seem to be much information around the internet on this subject (well at least not in English), so I thought I’d post my notes here. I’ve been working on a Joomla 1.5 site with a client and they needed an Arabic site put up. I initially tried to do this using Joomfish translation agent, but didn’t have much luck, so in the end we decided to put up a separate site. Here’s how I did it.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT | 6 Comments »
August 19th, 2008 admin
As I noted in a previous post I was recently the victim of a Random Kernel Upgrade Hell (RKUH). Maybe I should trademark that acronym, although its not particularly prounounceable like SNAFU, or PEBCAK. Anyway … the fact was that I was spending several hours trying to fix various problems with wifi drivers, VMware server, truecrypt and the sound in Skype, when it suddenly occured to me that a re-install was probably quicker. The double edged sword of Linux: quick to reinstall, but then again why should you need to do it so often? Well I guess in my case I push the OS pretty hard with some esoteric applications, but even so …
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Linux | No Comments »
August 19th, 2008 admin
I always forget this one when I’m setting up a new Ubuntu machine, so this is as much for my benefit as anyone else’s …
I’ve used a lot of OSes and have always found the chkconfig command on Redhat / Centos very useful for changing runlevels of services. The equivalent on Ubuntu is the fabulously unmemorably named sysv-rc-conf. (UPDATE – Ignore most of this post and read Ernest’s comment below) … Here’s how to get it on your system.
sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf
and to run it requires
sudo ..uh what was its name again sysrc something? Dammit.
So what I normally do is a quick symlink:
sudo ln -s /usr/sbin/sysv-rc-conf /usr/sbin/chkconfig
and then I can use chkconfig as if it was really available for Ubuntu. Don’t know why they couldn’t just stick to the same name. Bah.
Posted in Linux | 4 Comments »
August 8th, 2008 admin
Depending on your background you’ll have different reactions to Free Wireless. Most people shout a quick whoopee, and plug right in there. However if your background is in IT security, you take a much dimmer view.
First of all there’s the fact that a lot of the traffic you send down the wire can be intercepted (“sniffed”) by people on the same network as you. The guy next to you in Starbucks could be snagging all your email passwords, for example. So at a minimum you need to make sure that you’re using Secure email protocols (eg Secure POP on port 995 instead of port 110, and Secure SMTP on port 465 instead of port 25), and using https intead of http wherever you get a chance.
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Security | No Comments »
August 7th, 2008 admin
Anyone remember Groove? I first saw it about 6 years ago (can it really be that long?) and I got quite excited. Our peripatetic CEO at the time got enthused because it would let him share files with all of us while he was on the road, which he was for most of the year. But then Microsoft bought the company, and our plan to use it foundered. Recently it popped its head up again in the context of Sharepoint, but I get the feeling that Microsoft has never really pushed it.
So I was quite interested when I found out about Collanos (http://www.collanos.com/), which does the same thing. Even better, it is a cross platform application, running on Windows, Mac, and Linux. I made a note of it and waited for an excuse to try it out. Finally that excuse arrived. Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Linux | 4 Comments »
August 5th, 2008 admin
I’ve been thinking of setting up a company to set people up with Open Source workplaces, and every year that goes past makes me think that the time is almost here.
There are a number of factors which are conspiring to make Linux a viable alternative:
- The fact that Linux, via distributions such as Ubuntu, Mandriva, Suse et al, are now easy enough to install and intuitive enough for the Everyday User. I set my girlfriend up with an account on a spare laptop and just let her play. Soon enough she was asking for it on her laptop as well.
- OpenOffice. Enough said. Hardly anyone uses the full feature set of Word, so why do we slavishly upgrade every time a new version comes out? Well actually we don’t … Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in General IT, Life, Linux | 1 Comment »
I’m at a loss to explain this unless SmartBro’s DNS or proxy servers have been taken over. Here’s the deal. I’m surfing normally, and then suddenly I try to go to a normal site (economist.com, yahoo.com, facebook.com, google. com, iptools.com etc) and instead of getting the correct page, I get a weird spammy advertising page, even though the URL in the Address bar looks correct.