15 April 2008
cross-posting is about integration
09 December 2007
pink v.smile tv learning system for sale
My wife and I are selling one of Kysa's barely-used toys. It's one of Vtech's multi-awarded preschool consoles and one of the best educational toys around.It's called the V.Smile TV Learning System (the ones they're selling now are new models), and it's in pink! It also comes with the Dora's Fix-it Adventure game cartridge.
We're selling it for only P4,000, after we've taken off 20% from the original retail price. It is practically brand new as it is barely used, and it's readily available for anyone here in the Philippines.
There will be no shipping charges if you're in Cebu or in Cagayan de Oro; meaning if you're somewhere else, we'll have it couriered to you and you just pay COD for shipping.
If you're interested, and would like to buy, please email me privately (jon at doblados dot net)
my must-have's for firefox
1. mm3-proxyswitch
2. regular expressions tester
3. del.icio.us
4. greasemonkey
4. better gmail
5. firegpg
6. downThemAll
7. save as image
26 November 2007
you're looking good, opensource!
great news for those itching to modify packages and contribute to the furtherance of opensource! users can make changes on packages of their choice, and these will be published in the PPA system, somewhat like a special repository.
aptly, users get the updates from the system whenever new versions of the packages become available.
more agua
on work and blogging
work has been keeping me up at nights and i feel that if i were to write entries, i wouldn't be making much sense.
technobabble is fun, but i've long outgrown this preference for writing. call it a maturing of sorts, and i'm now ready to take things (read: blogging) to higher levels
i've almost completely forgotten about deepest sender, a cool firefox extension for blogging, and it's great to be using it again
14 August 2007
plesk won't start after tweaking mysql
we do a lot of performance tuning on mysql, and as a result, we almost always manage to get plesk mangled. not its fault, it just can't run without mysql, doh.
not of preference, but plesk happens to be there to make handling domains easier, as a single editing point when you want to change something and not worry about missing something out.
so there's a custom /etc/my.cnf that we use, and with changes to limits done (both on mysql and via ulimit), you'd think that a reload of mysqld would do. (we use InnoDB btw)
normally, that's all you need to have mysqld read off the new settings. if you've grown so dependent on plesk (like i have), you would not notice that mysqld didn't actually start, and you will get an error when you load plesk, thinking that it's a plesk error:
ERROR: PleskMainDBException
MySQL query failed: Incorrect information in file: './psa/misc.frm'
0: /usr/local/psa/admin/plib/common_func.php3:218
db_query(string 'select param, val from misc')
1: /usr/local/psa/admin/plib/common_func.php3:497
get_param(string 'mysql41_compatible')
2: /usr/local/psa/admin/plib/common_func.php3:394
db_set_names()
3: /usr/local/psa/admin/plib/common_func.php3:373
db_connect_real(string 'localhost', string 'admin', string '********', string 'psa')
4: /usr/local/psa/admin/plib/common_func.php3:353
db_connect()
5: /usr/local/psa/admin/auto_prepend/auth.php3:82
even a restart of the plesk service will not work:
[root@jedi]# /etc/init.d/psa restart
Unable to query parameter by query select val from misc where param='mysql41_compatible': Incorrect information in file: './psa/misc.frm'
Unable to query parameter by query select val from misc where param='mysql41_compatible': Incorrect information in file: './psa/misc.frm'
Mysql error: Incorrect information in file: './psa/key_history.frm'
Processing config directory: /usr/local/psa/admin/conf/httpsd.*.include
Syntax OK
/usr/local/psa/admin/bin/httpsdctl restart: httpd restarted
ERROR 1033 (HY000) at line 1: Incorrect information in file: './psa/sessions.frm'
so this is a mysqld failing to start properly problem. to fix this, go to your mysql datadir and see if the sizes of your innodb log files match those in your .cnf. we usually set innodb_log_file_size = 256M and innodb_log_buffer_size = 256M in /etc/my.cnf.
if they don't match, stop mysqld, remove the ib_logfile0 and ib_logfile1 files, and start mysqld. be careful not to delete the ibdata1 or ibdata2 files or you lose your data. avoid using rm -r ib* (yea, wildcards and fast fingers give sysads their most stupefying moments)
innodb will recreate the log files to match your .cnf and mysqld now becomes available for plesk.
apt-get install kicker-kblogger
up for this week is my dabbling with stuff around kicker, and using kblogger to do some much needed updates.
13 May 2007
Pushing on
running Ubuntu on HP laptops. If this is indeed so, do let me know your woes and I'll see what I can do to help.
1. Started a clan network. Okay, so most of them are really old and have no appreciation whatsoever for the internet, much less understand what emails are, and personalized email addresses at that. So I'll leave this up to the younger ones, who will help me teach the older ones the basics. They are yet to be informed of this new responsibility. LOL.
2. Upgraded desktop computer to Feisty Fawn Beta, and dual-booted Feisty and XP on my Pavilion dv2001tu lappy. So far, I have not had any hair-tearing frustrations with Feisty. Devices seem to work off-the-box, and the quick keys also seem to work fine (except of course for HP QuickPlay, which doesn't do anything). Touchpad, wireless, pcm+pcm2 with muting, and built-in mic all work. I've managed to get the built-in webcam to run with Ekiga (more details in a future post).
3. Started on my own list of what works and what doesn't for the HP Pavilion dv2001tu. Will try to make this as authoritative and as non-biased as possible. I love them Acer, Lenovo, and of course, Compaq notebooks too, but since I exclusively use my dv2000, I won't be able to vouch that the hacks I apply are going to work with the others.
4. Worked on more and more domains and hostings. I eat hostings for affiliate sites and stuff, day in and day out. I've optimized apache and mysql for several half-a-million traffic/day sites. Log analyzers are your best friends. I recommend Splunk for those who want to dig through files like search engines. But there's always the basic awk, grep, and myriad of other commands you can script together for the job.
5. Promised myself I'd start updating more often. 'Nuff said. =)
06 April 2007
Shelving trigger.cdo.linux.org.ph
I am officially bringing down my old tech blog after Holy Week. It has virtually become a sinkhole for all kinds of spam links and I have barely done anything to keep it up-to-date.
Two of the milestones that I've unknowingly and unwittingly accomplished would include (in order, sorry):
1. PR6 (yea, before it went offline for almost a month, and before Google deployed new algorithms sometime in Feb)
2. 20,453 spam comments since I replaced my Wordpress.com API key sometime in Nov, 2006.
Beginning today, I will post techie stuff in this blog. It's the same ol' renamed-a-hundred-times Blogger account, but with a different twist, now that it's using a personalized domain.
Fear not, for my old Blogger URI will still work. I'm just not sure if you will be redirected or if there will be a rewrite. TODO: find out how Blogger does this.
23 March 2007
The rush that's called graduation
I sometimes wish it were me. But I'd rather have my daughter bask in her moment. It's just that I clearly remember the feeling. You're all bubbly and excited, and you can't stop talking about it. My daughter's graduating from preschool tomorrow, and my wife and I are as much into the rush as she is.
1st grade, here we come. *groan*
22 March 2007
Will code for hosting
Honestly, I haven't done any coding in the last 4 months, which is really odd, because I never thought I'd be this detached from programming. But I guess there's more to life than just developing or sustaining passion for singulars. So much for trying not to stay generalist.
So I have this personal domain now, and I'm just glad google apps isn't as stiff with the applications anymore. The new interface totally rocks too. I just need to host the domain somewhere, for sites and blogs and stuff.
If you're family, and you have a blogger account, I can get you your custom domain working. The default blogspot.com publishing URL will redirect to your custom domain, so I guess you won't be losing any visitors.
I'm not that sure about this, but I feel that there will be noticeable changes in how your blog fares with SE's. Some SEO stuff that I've picked up tell me you can't have same content in multiple sites, similar to double-posting. Seems like you can get penalized for that. Question is, will the application of this redirecting exercise on blog a (that has already been indexed) be seen as same content with blog b (which is where blog a will redirect to, if and only if you decide on a custom domain), from a search engine's view?
Anyway, I need a host. :) Ironically, I handle dozens of hosts; but I can't get anywhere close to those (all dedicated servers..boohoohoo) without first coughing up lots of cash. Yea I suppose I could just code for it.
26 February 2007
Pinoy Big Brother 2
Forget the housemates! Mariel Rodriguez makes this reality TV show "watchable". Half past midnight since the new season launched and the server is already borked! Good thing I got to grab this pic of Mariel before it went down (it seems to be failing intermittently...but what can you expect from an M$ OS anyway?)
Here's the error I see:
Could not load file or assembly 'BizModules.UltraPhotoGallery' or one of its dependencies. There is not enough space on the disk. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070070)
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.IO.FileLoadException: Could not load file or assembly 'BizModules.UltraPhotoGallery' or one of its dependencies. There is not enough space on the disk. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070070)
Source Error:
|
|
An assembly load trace and a very long stack trace follows. To cap that is this:
Version Information: Microsoft .NET Framework Version:2.0.50727.42; ASP.NET Version:2.0.50727.210
Cheers!
25 February 2007
IP-hijacking and then some
So the hosting company eventually understood what was happening and started asking the right questions. The bug is that the system allowed network administrators to assign to new clients, the IP addresses that have already been assigned to a current client.
We spent crazy hours figuring out what happened. Since the domains were not loading our sites, and instead were redirecting to some domains we don’t own (real bad sites btw), we checked if .htaccess was modified and tested if it was working at all. I also did double checks on virtual host configurations and they all looked clean.
I started thinking that it was a routing issue. We were not using the publicly routable IPs for the virtual hosts; instead, we used internal IPs as mapped to the firewall hardware. A lookup on the domain/s that we were being redirected to reported different IP addresses, which didn’t readily confirm my suspicions, but stressed the possibility of IP-hijacking.
It’s not supposed to be taken in the context of BGP (border gateway protocol), as this is beyond me. Instead, think of your assumption over IP addresses that we’re using, to serve your websites. Sounds clear? I hope it does. I got pretty lost myself and it isn’t after deep digging at the hosting company’s end that their errors became apparent.
So in the light of this realization, I’ve already moved the domains to some other hosting. Way too much work and way uncool.
16 January 2007
Using symbolic links for MySQL data files
I was not certain of the performance implications to this. I heard from a fellow Linux junkie here that there may be a slight penalties in terms of access speed, since /home was meant for generic read/write, whereas /var was accessed in a very quick manner. Gotta verify this. But for now, I dwell in the power of symbolic links.
28 December 2006
Leaching for Internet Access
Sure, my bosses do this all the time...in airports, hotel lobbies, and coffee shops. The mere act of "connecting" to an unsecured wireless network doubles as a necessity and as a leaching of sorts. Gotta love wireless. :)
05 December 2006
What it means to aggregate thinking
I love thinking. They say thinking burns as many calories as when you're having sex...so you may liken thinking to sex. Sounds good, eh? But be warned. Although you can easily fake either one, you don't lose as many calories as doing it for real!
This isn't a sex column, so it's best I get straight to the point and present my thoughts on what aggregated thinking is (and what constitutes faking it). Wiktionary defines aggregation as an act of bringing together, or collecting into a mass or sum.
We programmers are more familiar with aggregation as a slight modification of composition (yeah, we're no fun). Aggregation differs from ordinary composition in that it does not imply ownership. For example, an older model of a car engine will have a carburetor (yeah, it's spelled that way). Take away the engine and the carburetor will lose its usability. That's composition. Then there's a pond with a duck swimming about. Take away the pond and the duck will still be a waddling duck, and will continue to exist as one. That's aggregation.
When used to modify the verb thinking, aggregation may denote:
- thinking as a process of collecting or bringing together facts, ideas, and other thoughts and try to make sense out of their fusion,
- thinking in order to benefit not only yourself but everyone who is in your thought stream as well,
- thinking in a radical way, such as being "one" with what is generally accepted but in a manner that retains one's identity and ownership over thoughts
Clearly, aggregated thinking is awesome brain calisthenics. So aggregate your thinking when you can. God did not create mindless people to go where mindful" people go. If you lost your backbone, get one ASAP, and start thinking for real.
To fake all these, you can cheat! You can take public opinion and adopt that as your own. You can also squint your eyes and frown like you're in deep thought, trying to look busy! Whichever way, you don't burn calories, and you don't burn off any brain cells. :)
01 December 2006
Hysteria
Casey Kasem's American Top 40 broadcast back in April 1988 is being streamed today over XM Radio. Def Leppard's Hysteria is currently playing. Measures and measures of this classic hit flood my ears and I can't help but smile. There must have been thousands of Icehouse, Def Leppard, and Nelson (to name a few) playbacks since I got them cassette and 8-track tapes.
I still think that the 1980's was the best decade to grow in. All those crazy get-ups that now look fugly, the hair, and man, the dance moves! I did all those, and proudly at that. You wouldn't blame me though, because like anyone who's an 80's kid, I'm peculiar. :)
30 November 2006
Are you an 80's kid?
1.) You have scars on your knees and elbows
2.) You owned a bike
3.) You had a barkada around your neighborhood (all of you had bikes)
4.) You loved climbing on your house's roof (and your neighbor's roof as well)
5.) You went inside an abandoned house in your neighborhood just to see what it looks like inside
6.) You ate all the aratilis in your neighborhood
7.) You plucked all the Gumamelas in the area for soap bubbles
8.) Your parents forced you to take afternoon siestas with the threat that you will not be allowed to play outside.
9.) You are never found in your house in the afternoon. You are often found playing in the street with your neighborhood friends.
10.) You loved exploring vacant lots for hidden knick-knacks
11.) You just can't resist jumping in a sand pile
12.) You know all the street games (Patintero, Agawan-base, Langit-lupa,etc.)
13.) You owned a family computer
14.) Your hand-to-eye coordination is terrific due to family computer
15.) You'd rather go outdoors in the afternoon than play family computer
16.) You gleefully boast that games today are so easy because of the character's life bar (remember when we used to play Mario? we died the minute a goomba hit us)
17.) You know this code by heart: UP-UP-DOWN-DOWN-LEFT-RIGHT-LEFT-RIGHT-B-A-B-A-START (select-start for 2 players)
18.) You owned a superhero costume (especially a superman costume)
19.) For the girls: You dressed up like Punky Brewster, Madonna, and Debbie Gibson; For the boys: You dressed up like David Hasselhoff's Knight Rider, David Bowie, or had Clarke Kent's little bangs. And now you think that the 80's had the suckiest dress sense.
20.) You had a denim jacket
21.) You had a sticker book especially that Age of Dinosaurs sticker book.
22.) You were addicted to rainbow brite, care bears, my little pony,thundercats, bioman, voltes v, mazinger z, daimos, etc.
23.) You played pc games like tapper, moonbugs, alley cat, and prince of persia.
24.) Ms Word did not exist in your vocabulary but Wordstar did!
25.) You love 80's music even if you don't want to admit it.
26.) You've climbed up mango trees to catch salagubang, tie a sting around its neck, and let it fly around in frenzy
27.) You've spent hours in the afternoon catching tutubi...yellow-green was the easiest to catch, blue being finicky, & red being a rare breed
28.) You used to take Flintstones vitamins (which you didn't mind 'cause it was yummy) and Scott's liver oil
29.) You know the cartoon show Beverly Hills Teens
30.) You know Kuya Bodgie from Batibot
31.) You watch Uncle Bob's Lucky Seven Club
32.) You used AQUA NET to fashion ur 4-inch-high bangs.
33.) Your blouses had paddings.
34.) You owned wide-studded colorful belts.
35.) You watched some of your favorite shows on betamax or even UHF 17 (the channel from Clark Air Base - or was it Subic?)
36.) You collected and "swapped" perfumed stationeries with your classmates and friends, but followed the unwritten rule that you never write on them.
37.) The only place you go to for summer vacation is BAGUIO!
38.) On that note, camp john hay served BEST ice cream
39.) Most of us were brought to the EDSA revolution
40.) You remember what Ricky Martin used to look like back then
41.) When you think that Julie Vega is a better actress that Judy Ann
42.) You get confused playing playstation because of all the buttons on the keypad (nintendo only had the direction pad, a & b buttons and the start & select keys )
43.) You know all the Bagets and Ninja Kids
44.) You got to ride the train ride at greenhills shopping center
45.) Magic Johnson and Larry Bird were the players at the time
46.) When you know more 80's music than the song "Buttercup"
47.) You were allowed to bathe in the rain
48.) You were taught to comb your hair one-sided
49.) You've collected matangpusa and mongo beans so you can have ammunition for sumpit
50.) You knew who madam bola and sitsiritsit and alibangbang was.
51.) Every Christmas you anticipate going to BIG Bang sa Alabang - with the giant slide.
52.) You know the Ewoks
53.) You had Mighty Kid shoes and Greg shoes.
54.) You know what Time Space Warp means (and you know who Fuma Lae-Ar is)
55.) You and your barkada had a specific Bioman name.
56.) You sucked all the nectar from the santan plant hence your mother got really pissed at you for destroying the santan plant.
57.) You played with marbles and text (yung cards ha!!!) And you count cards like this: I-SA, DALA-WA, TAT-LO, A-PAT... walo na iyon!
58.) For girls: You wore denim miniskirts with rubber shoes; For guys: You had those bitin na pantalon which you wore with high-top rubber shoes!
59.) You loved cheezels and chicakdees because of the great prizes it had (remember sticky hands, bear popups, and the stick on tattoos which were "banned" due to drugs daw?)
60.) Puffy cone still existed!!!
61.) Sosy ka if you bought a Magnolia drumstick
62.) Twin Popsies were meant to be shared with a friend.
63.) Ice Drop was the cheapest treat.
64.) You have those disney bow biters for your rubber shoes
65.) You know who Alf is.
66.) You're familiar with the show "Perfect Strangers".
67.) Idol mo si McGyver.
68.) Thats Entertainment" ang "the bomb" nung mga panahon na yun.
69.) Sikat ka kapag alam mo ang wordstar at lotus 1,2,3
70.) Six digits lang ang telephone number niyo dati.
71.) Tatlong 25 cents lang eh makakatawag ka na sa pay-phone.
72.) Cute pa si Aiza non sa Eat Bulaga.
73.) Si Amado Pineda pa ang nagbabalita ng panahon
74.) You drank Chocolate milk from the Magnolia glass bottle which you kept for holding water in your ref.
75.) Brown Cow tasted better than Hersheys!
76.) Shake Rattle and Roll 1 was the most horrifying movie for you then.
77.) The most comfortable shoes for you is still Sperry Topsiders.
78.) Dress shoes mo eh loafers pa rin.
79.) The best movies of all time are pretty in pink, breakfast club,16 candles. and some kind of wonderful
80.) You show off your pencil case which have hidden compartments that pop out at the press of a button...
81.) You have Bensia pencils which are refillable...
82.) Fiesta carnival was the place to be (kumbaga enchanted kingdom sya ng 90's)
83.) Takot kang mag-year 2000 ksi baka magunaw ang mundo.
84.) Masarap ang Goya and Serg's.
85.) Nakakasakay ka pa sa kotseng walang aircon.
86.) You know the lyrics ng "Tinapang Bangus" at "Alagang-alaga namin si Puti" ng Batibot.
87.) You know these commercials:
a. YCBIKINIBRIEF - remember this one? Ycbikinibrief / ycbikinibrief ycbikinibrief for the man who packs a wallop / YC had fashion / YC has
style...
b. RA Homevision - those guys from cash and carry makati couldn't have done it better. Sports. Adventure. Cartoons. Award Winners and More.
Featuring the voice talent of Frankie Evangelista. I will never forget the creepy hand at the start of the ad. Parang ET na nasa spaceship!
c. Arthur's Legaspi Towers - nuff said.
d. La Germania Mama Mia commercials - ditto
88.) Bumibili ka ng caramel candy, texas or bazooka bubblegum, tira-tira
at tootsie roll sa tindahan
89.) Naabutan mo pa na korteng flower ang singko
90.) You're familiar with this song: si nena ay bata pa, kaya ang sabi
niya ay um-ah-um-ah-ah.
22 November 2006
Remote posting to Blogger Beta
There's a pretty slick Windows application that will allow you to post directly to your Blogger Beta account. The Firefox extension Deepest Sender, which allows posting to LJ, Blogger, and Wordpress, doesn't work with Blogger Beta yet, so here's a workaround that you can do meantime.
I prefer FOSS applications that run natively on GNU/Linux, but sometimes, you really need to use a platform where you are most productive. Writing stuff from anywhere will mean doing this from my Windows-run notebook. Not so much an issue, I hope.