2006 | Ady's Blog

Get More From Your Nikon D50

This magazine, or we can also call it a booklet, is produced by Digital Photography Magazine UK. I previously bought this magazine on a monthly basis, until its local publication came into the market. This booklet costs RM59.00 (~USD16.00) and at a glance you might think that it’s another way for the magazine to make money. Well, they succeeded.

The booklet contains page by page information on all the functions available on the Nikon D50. Sure, you have the manual but it only tell you how to do things, without explaining what they are for, and no suggestions given.

As a proud owner of a D50 I would recommend this publication to any D50 owner wanting to know deeper about their camera. Finally I can say “oh, that’s what that button is for”. 😉

This reminds me that I have yet to download the goodies for Digital Camera Magazine Malaysia for November and December.

Just one thing that caused me to be disappointed – the condition of the book. As Borders The Curve allows people to browse through magazines and this is the only copy left, its condition is awful! I even asked the information counter to see if there’s any copy left in storage. I wish people would appreciate books more!

Sick Day

When I woke up at dawn today it felt like I have been hit by a train. Decided not to go to work, send text to my shift partner and manager.

The weird thing is that I did not realize I have a fever. Well, a slight fever anyway. The fever is because of throat infection – so that’s why I have been coughing like crazy since mid-November. I have to believe my Doctor. The fatigue and sleepiness might be caused by this infection as well, she said.

Hope I will get well soon so that I can work full-throttle.

New Theme

I love WordPress. Frankly I was bored with the previous gray theme, as it made the site looks neutral and dull. After stumbling upon a few blogs using this fantastic 3-column theme, I decided to give it a try.

To my surprise the theme supports widgets, and I took a couple of minutes to transfer all of my sidebar items to widgets. The theme is very customizable and migration was a breeze. The theme is called Subtle, created by Glued Ideas. Too bad I don’t have any design talents like Ikram Zidane. Pretty amazing talent that guy have, undeniably.

The one and only change I had to make on the code is to add StumbleUpon links on home.php and single.php

It took me like 30 minutes to update the whole site, including the configuration items to suit the new look and feel. 🙂

By the way the header image was taken last weekend, when I was in a cab from the LCCT to Cyberjaya.

Working With Dynamic Select Inside an Ajax Container

I spent like half an hour on this, got tired, went out to The Curve Damansara, and tonight when I came back, tried a simple trick and it all worked.

I had a code similar to this (shortened for understanding):

<select id="distDst">
	<option value="1">Name of the option</option>
</select>
 
<input type="button" value="getSelected" onClick="getData()"/>

The JavaScript:

<script type="text/javascript">
< ![CDATA[
 
function getData()
{
	distDst = document.getElementById('distDst');
	if(distDst.selectedIndex == -1) { alert('Please select an option.'); return; }
	else alert('Selected value: ' + distDst.options[distDst.selectedIndex].value);
}
 
// ]]>
</script>

All three browsers: IE 6, Firefox 2.0, and Opera 9.02 gave me an undefined value for the selected element (focused, of course).

When I came back, I added name="distDst" to line 01 of the first part, so Firefox and Opera agreed while IE is still stubborn. Next I enclosed the select object within form tags and IE yielded and gave me the results I want.

I don’t understand about IE’s problem, but why does Firefox and Opera requires the name= attribute to be added when I used getElementById not getElementByName? Still a mystery to me. If you put those code inside a single HTML file it would work. In my case those two would end up on the same page but the JavaScript would load first inside a container, and the HTML loads within another container. They are nested.

Well hope this helps anyone trying to implement select objects with JavaScripts inside AJAX containers.

Sorry for the technicality. I am now implementing AJAX front-ends for my PHP codes, after I got bored with conventional PHP programming.

I forgot to mention: The problem only occurs when the dynamic select object have 1 item in the list.

Free Windows Vista

Last month, there was a radio commercial on Hitz.fm that promotes free upgrade to Windows Vista and I was fooled. Of course, it’s a commercial.

You get Windows Vista only if you buy a new PC with Windows XP now. For those currently using licensed Windows XP like me, you get nothing.

In fact, even now if you go and get yourself a new PC you’ll get Vista upgrade for free as stated here in Microsoft website. I am not sure whether this applies globally but I was brought to this page from Microsoft Malaysia.

I wonder if the final release is now available at Low Yat Plaza. I just want to take a look, nothing serious. I expect it to be more resource hungry and not suitable for my old hardware anyway.

Any of you have used Vista? Let me know of your opinion.

Malaysia OSS Master Plan Gets Truncated

As I thought. When the Government declared that they will favor open source for their IT needs I was thinking whether they have thoroughly analyzed their plan. What I can clearly see is that all they understand is the word FREE. No more, no less.

It was published on The Star Online on 5 December that the OSS Master Plan Gets Pruned. Indeed, they can’t simply disable or abort the plan so they removed a sentence. Originally it states:

OSS procurement should be based on merits, value for money, transparency, security and interoperability, as well as in accordance with the Government procurement policies and procedures. In situations where the advantages and disadvantages of OSS and proprietary software are equal, preference shall be given to OSS.

Now that the second line has been removed:

OSS procurement should be based on merits, value for money, transparency, security and interoperability, as well as in accordance with the Government procurement policies and procedures.

This effectively imply a new policy: neutrality.

As OSS is no longer preferred, the master plan is now useless. Very rarely OSS software can market themselves, and proprietary software have the big guns who can do marketing and sales for them.

The new sentence can also be applied to proprietary software, don’t you think? The sentence is there just to ensure existence of the master plan which is now obsolete.

Performancing Bug?

I tried to register to performancing today but it said I already registered (username and email taken). Tried using the request for password form, and it said unable to send email.

When I try to use the contact form, I received this:

Oh well, maybe just a bad luck day for me 🙁

Update: 18:54 GMT+8

It seems that the system was not wrong saying that I have an account in the system. The confirmation email have just arrived a couple of minutes ago, after more than an hour. Still, it seems weird about the forms failure.

RegisterFly Woes

Do yourself a favor. Do not use RegisterFly for domains.

When you submit a ticket, they don’t care. When you submit multiple tickets, they’ll reply by saying “Please do not submit multiple tickets with the same issue”. But at least I got their attention.

I am pissed off at them since I can’t even renew my domains. Their so-called automated domain renewal emails kept flooding my mailbox, but when I try to renew everything seems to fall apart. Submitting a ticket didn’t seem to help, so I did what this commenter in Vincent Rich’s blog suggested – use Firefox’s ReloadEvery extension to submit hundreds of tickets. I got their attention. One of my .com domain got transferred but for this particular domain romantika.name their buggy system seems to be ignoring my renewal requests and gave me a blank order ID.

Now I have decided to transfer my domains elsewhere. The new registrar is powerful, their automated system is really automated, helping me register a new domain and the transfer requests within 5 minutes. However, I got stuck again with the authorization code. Previously in RegisterFly’s system you can clearly see an authorization code (a.k.a. EPP code) for every one of the domains, but recently it has disappeared. Vincent also had the same problem. Currently I see that he already succeeded in transferring his domain to NameCheap. Well done, Vincent. I wonder how long it took him for the transfer to complete.

What I have done so far about the transfer process initiated today is send another ticket, and an email to their support for the authorization codes. That’s where the transaction is stuck now. And I also see another ticket I created about my problem renewing romantika.name domain. That’s not the first. The first also went unanswered.

I warn you once more, don’t do business with them. You’ll lose precious time, and money to buy aspirin because of the headache they cause.

What registrar do you use?

Narcolepsy

I think I am suffering from Narcolepsy. Even after 7.5 to 8 hours of sleep that should be adequate, I still feel tired and fatigue strikes during the whole time I am awake. It’s a sleeping disorder.

That’s why I have not been updating this blog, and why I am feeling dead tired at work.

I searched the Internet about this problem, and it seems that I have been suffering from this for quite a while now. In fact since I was studying I never seems to get enough sleep. I remember during study I did went to a doctor and asked about this problem and yet the respond was disappointing: the doctor said I was stressed from study. And yet now after a few years of hard work I am still facing this problem.

Found an interesting drug, Modafinil but I think it is not yet in Malaysia market. I tried asking in a local pharmacy but the drug is not yet in the handbook. The drug is manufactured under the name Provigil and it costs USD10 per pill online.

I can’t wait for it to reach Malaysia. I will ask my doctor about this and I hope she will not give me a dumb answer.

By the way, this has nothing related to epilepsy which is a seizure disorder. Just in case someone is wondering 😉

A Busy Weekend

I have just finished a busy weekend. Went to pick up my Mom ~400km up North East and ~400km back, and sending her off for Hajj at Kelana Jaya Hajj Complex.

Today I was dead tired, but unable to get any sleep due to the fact that I slept early the night before and woke up quite late in the morning.

And in about 40 minutes I will have to be at work, on night shift for 9 hours.

My web development client has been pressuring me, and on Thursday I will be on flight to Langkawi for the company trip. With so many events they planned for the trip I imagine that I will not be able to get so much rest after all.

Tonight at midnight will be our 3rd year anniversary and I have nothing prepared. Hopefully I can manage to go to a good dinner tomorrow night for our anniversary.

Still dead tired, hopefully I will get through the night without any problems and get back home at 7.30am. Usually that’s not possible as there were so many things to finish at work.

A close friend of mine said that when she feels tired and out of sleep, she’ll say to herself that she’ll have lots of time to rest/sleep when she retires. I said to her: what if the reaper comes and takes you before you retires? Oh well that’s so “chicken and egg“.

Oh well, at least I have a nice job. I have to learn to be thankful for that 🙂

RHCT or RHCE?

Since the company I am working for is willing to pay for the training fees + exam fees, I am actually thinking of getting RHCE. However due to the current events that are going on in the office, I will not be able to attend the 5 day training until the early of next year. Time is a big problem indeed.

There will be an RH302 exam available on 24 December 2006 at Training Choice, KL.

The catch is that I have to pass the exam and the company will reimburse. If not, I’ll lose RM1,800.00 (~USD500.00) for nothing. Gulp!

Do You Believe In Fate or Destiny

Do you believe in fate, or do you believe in working towards changing the events that can happen in your future?

  fate
       n 1: an event (or a course of events) that will inevitably happen
            in the future [syn: destiny]
       2: the ultimate agency that predetermines the course of events
          (often personified as a woman); "we are helpless in the
          face of Destiny" [syn: Destiny]
       3: your overall circumstances or condition in life (including
          everything that happens to you); "whatever my fortune may
          be"; "deserved a better fate"; "has a happy lot"; "the
          luck of the Irish"; "a victim of circumstances"; "success
          that was her portion" [syn: fortune, destiny, luck,
          lot, circumstances, portion]
       v : decree or designate beforehand; "She was destined to become
           a great pianist" [syn: destine, doom, designate]

Destiny pretty much have the same meaning.

The problem in believing in fate/destiny is that people tend to let things happen automatically, without even lifting a finger to make it better. IMHO this makes people become lazy and stupid. Don’t give me any preaches related to religion or anything, I am looking into it from a simple point of view.

I think people can work hard and achieve whatever they want in the future. What do you think?

Error on Microsoft Site

Click on “Special offers for genuine Windows customers”:

Received this:

I wonder what the offers could be. Offers not found – 404 😉

Under The Hood of Microsoft Windows

For a Linux geek like me, I always feel so much restrained when using Windows, due to the fact that I can’t really get into the internals of the system especially that now I am using Windows on my 2 year old notebook after the storage catastrophe. It looks like hard disks don’t really like to stay with me that long; or is it my own fault for overusing them? Oh well.

While browsing through this post from the F-Secure blog, I found out that Microsoft has bought Sysinternals in July 2006. Mark Russinovich and Bryce Cogswell must be millionaires now 😉

No wonder my friend who have just started today in F-Secure KL talked to me about the cool utilities. Now I know where he hangs out.

There are actually a bunch of tools, categorized into:

File and Disk Utilities
Networking
Processes & Threads
Security Utilities
System Information
Miscellaneous

I’ve actually tried only a few of the tools, which I chose based on my familiarity with the functions.

Continue reading Under The Hood of Microsoft Windows