Still Learning…

Tag: tech

  • So what happened?

    Any regular readers of my blog (all 3 of you) which used to be located at http://andy.xhtmlpro.com, might be wondering what’s with the snazzy new domain name.  Well…. a couple of things.

    First, xhtmlpro.com, where I previously hosted my blog was my the home of my web development/design company.  Our company did some realignment this summer, and now exists at http://waldenwebdev.com.  Xhtmlpro was too unwieldy of a name for those not familiar with web design and coding and such, and since we primarily market ourselves to churches and other Christian ministries, most of which aren’t familiar with terms like xhtml, we (my brother and I) decided we needed to charge our name and branding.  It also gave us an opportunity to redesign our site which needed a facelift.  (Btw, xhtmlpro.com is for sale, if anyone is interested. It would be a great domain for, say, those that convert Photoshop layouts to web templates.) So all that is to explain why I’m not still at andy.xhtmlpro.com.

    But why not at say, andy.waldenwebdev.com? Well, the main reason is i thought it would be good to go ahead and get my own exclusive domain.  Not that i’m really concerned someone else will snatch up andyanglea.com (afaik, i am the only one in the world), but I can do other geeky things with it too, like setting up Google Apps for your domain, email server, backup/storage, roll your own URL cruncher, etc.

    Now if you’re wordpress savvy and read my previous post, you might be wondering why i had to get my old posts from google cache, as wordpress has an export function in the control panel.  Well, I would have loved to do that, but due to some shenanigans by our web hosting company, that was not an option.  (Short version, they took down xhtmlpro.com before they said they would.)  As you might guess, this site is not hosted by that company.  Depending on how the service goes, I’ll reveal who that is sometime down the road. If you’re really curious, you can look at my whois record. So far so good, and I technically have more than I did with my previous host (storage, bandwidth, etc) for about half the cost.  Next up, the semesterly (or yearly) life update…

  • Coming to you live from Linux

    Ubuntu Dapper Drake to be precise. Over this last week I’ve been in Linux just about as much as windows, actually. As i have no room for a Linux partition on my primary harddrive, I’m running it on an external USB drive. I think i’ve posted about his previously elsewhere. But I now have it in an upgraded, fully usable state. Previously it was more of a toy, and lots of stuff (Firefox plugins, customizations, etc.) wasn’t in place. But it’s now much more “me.”
    I also was able to get my brother on linux (albeit on M$ Virtual PC). He’s running Xubuntu (uses the XFCE desktop environment instead of GNOME). I still find it quite oxymoronic (is that a word?) to run linux using a Window$ program. Anyway, I thought since i was using linux “so much” :D this week, i should at least make a post using it.

    Customizations i’ve made to the default install include (but are not limited too)…

    • Firefox 2 (not in the dapper repositories yet)
    • Automatix – nice installer for lots of common plugins (flash, quicktime), apps (gFTP, Gaim beta 3, Adobe Acrobat Reader, Bluefish and much more), codecs, etc. that make Ubuntu much more friendly to my everyday use.
    • xorg.conf customization for Thinkpad scrolling
    • Copy of file browser running as root
    • Standard Firefox and Thunderbird icons (not the ubuntu versions)
    • msttfcorefonts (Verdana, Trebuchet MS, Arial, Tahoma, ect [since almost every website we’ve created uses at least one of those)
    • other tweaks such as theme, screensaver, fonts, wallpaper, etc, to give it “my” touch

    Before i sign off, i suppose i should register at least one complaint, and others have mentioned it before… If linux is ever going to go mainstream, linux support is going to have to stop referring users to the terminal. I personally like using it, but my brother dislikes it a good deal. Eh, as a designer, he just wants a Mac, anyway.

    Current System specs:
    Thinkpad R40 2723
    80GB Western Digital external USB hard drive
    1.3 GHz Centrino processor
    Ubuntu Dapper Drake 6.06 (I’d upgrade to Edgy, but it seems to have been giving too many users problems)

  • The horror stories are true…

    Last night i have the very pleasant experience of canceling an AOL account. (Yes I’m being sarcastic, and no, it wasn’t mine.) To make a long story shorter, an older lady in my church asked me to come over and help her get her computer working. It initially wasn’t booting due to registry corruption or something caused by SBC Yahoo! Dial, so I did a system restore and got it running again. Since that wasn’t working she installed AOL. Well, I uninstalled the AOL software, and then after getting an alternate dialup ISP setup went looking for how to cancel the AOL account. After searching around at AOL.com (Yes, that is a not a link. You don’t want to go there.), I found their support page. Then about 3 links deep I found account information (how to change account preferences, payment method, etc.) 2 links deeper i found a link that said Canceling AOL account. Finally! That took me to page with their phone, fax, and address. What! No online cancelation!!??

    So after downloading and installing Firefox I disconnected and called AOL (The number was 1-888-265-8008). After talking to a friendly sounding computer voice for about 5 minutes to which i gave all the account information, they finally connected me to a human. He, of course, was from India or somewhere they can’t speak English worth beans. In addition, he would not talk to me, because it wasn’t my name on the account. So the lady had to listen to him give a high-pitched shpeel about the greatness of AOL, why on earth would she want to cancel, yada, yada, yada. She must have told him, “No, cancel my account,” at least a dozen times. Then after verifying bank account numbers, etc. He connected her to their Cancelation Legal Disclaimer. Another computer voice read off this litany of how cancelation is in effect today, any charges you have incurred, yada, yada, yada… If you would like to continue your AOL account, hit 1, etc. I noticed that this computer voice was much less friendly sounding than the first one =).

    Total time: 21 minutes, give or take. Not as bad as some accounts I’ve read online, but still way too long for something you should be able to do with a couple clicks on a website.

  • Thank goodness for Windows security holes

    I woke up Saturday morning to a very bad sound… **Click…. Whirrrrr…. Whirrrrr… Click, Click** By the time I was cognizant to what it was (the harddrive of my laptop, which sit by my bed), and attempted to save and close programs and shut it down, it blue screened.

    “Well,” I thought, “it’s windows, BSOD is pretty common.” I do a force power down (hold in button for 5 secs), reboot, and wait.

    **Windows/System32/Config/System file missing or corrupt**

    Great… A registry hive error. Pretty much irrepairable with an OEM XP installation. Oh well, I’ve been wanting to do a clean install of Windows anyway. Nevermind the fact that today is day we’re supposed to upload all the content for our client’s new site. Oh well, how long can this take? Probably not past lunch, No biggie.

    So I attach my external hard drive, and boot into Ubuntu to recover my data in case I have to wipe the drive. (Unfortunately I forgot to get my 3+ years of email… too late now.) That done, I attempted Windows recovery console. No dice there either. Well, I’ve got my IBM recovery partition, let’s try that… Good, that’s working. Let that run for 30-40 odd minutes. During the process it asked me to set an administrator password, which I did. It finishes, reboots and presents me with the login screen, and the user name of Administrator. I enter the password I chose earlier and wait.

    **Bong** Password incorrect. Please retype your password. Passwords must be typed in the correct case.

    Oops, my bad, try again. **Bong** Stupid me.. **Bong** What! **Bong** Good grief **Bong** Try blank… **Bong** **Bong** **Freeze** **Bong** **Bong** (you get the idea…)

    Not good, I must have mistyped it. How could I have made the same typo twice??? Wrong home keys? Oh well, it’s only 10 o’clock or so, I’ll reinstall again.

    This time I set the password to something really easy: abc. How could I mistype that? Reboot, and login screen.

    **abc** **Bong** Ai yi yi **Bong** Ok, the Admistrator account has a problem… Let me try some other things… **Bong** An old account name? **Bong**

    I should probably explain that because I bought my laptop from the school, the recovery partion I’m using has a custom image on it with school software. So I thought, “It must have a custom Administrator account too.”

    Well, I have another option. Because I was an IT minor last year, I was able to take advantage of Microsoft’s Academic Alliance program which allows computer science students to download free M$ software including Visual Studio, VPC, and XP. I downloaded an iso of the XP install CD complete with academic license and authentication code. This disk image was on my harddrive and part of the files I had recovered. So I used another computer to burn it to a CD, and as Nero, for some reason wouldn’t recognize the .img file type of the iso, I used a free program called Burn 4 Free. Once that was done, I put my new XP install CD in my laptop and waited. After another 40 mins or so, I was able to log in. Yea!! But I had absolutely nothing. No OEM drivers, no internet, zip, zero, nada. So I decided to try the IBM thing again, just to get that. I had an Administrator account now that worked, after all.

    Same as before, installed, rebooted, login screen… **Bong** AAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!

    How can i reset this Administrator password? So a googling we go. Oops, sorry! I mean, I did an internet search using google.com. Much info abounds on how to attempt, both legally and illegally to get around the Administrator password. But the article i found most useful was this one… I Forgot My Administrator Password!!. It informs the reader of a (may I say) scary access hole during the install process. At one point you can hit SHIFT+F10 and bring up the windows command line, from which you full access to the system. Simply call up nusrmgr.cpl and you get the familiar windows gui for changing passwords. You can wipe out the admin password, or create a new admin account. I assume you could use this access hole to retrieve data using notepad.exe “<file name>”, and who knows what else. And as this can be done during a XP repair install, it could give you full access to all the data on the computer as Administrator once the repair is done running.

    As it turned out, there was no Administrator account, just one called dormsupport (still on my computer and with no idea as to the password for it). So I created one, saved, closed and exited the command line and continued the reinstall.

    Finally, after 13 hours, I was back in. Next to install XP SP2, and 62 other critical updates, and I was back in business around midnight. Meanwhile, we got the content for EBC-EBCA’s site uploaded, and began the process of domain registration transfer and DNS propigation.

    So that was my weekend. How was yours?

  • “Meep” me!

    Google Talk came out with an update today, adding file transfer and voice mail capabilities. The voice mail is hilarious!!

    “The person you are trying to reach is not available. Please leave a message after the ‘meep’… Meeep!”

    Find out about the updates here: Google Talk

  • Happy 25th Birthday!

    Happy Birthday to you!  Happy Birthday to you…

    Well, this birthday boy probably won’t be blowing out any candles, and definitely not eating any cake, but it’s still worth celebrating.  Happy Birthday to the personal computer (PC).  Or more accurately, happy birthday to the IBM 5150, the first computer model that really took off in the business world.  Sure the Apple II was out, as was Atari’s model, but as a business manager would you rather buy a machine from the International Business Machine company or the company named after a fruit?

    IBM 5150
    IBM 5150

    The IBM 5150 has much in common with the desktops today. Separate keyboard and monitor, for starters.  It ran what IBM called PC-DOS which it got from Microsoft (MS-DOS), who bought it from a Seattle based company (QDOS – Quick and Dirty Operating System).  Most computers still run it today, although hidden.  The first program made for this program, a spreadsheet called VisiCalc, can still be run on computers today.  (You can get it here.) And it had an Intel processor.  Using off-the-shelf components made by someone else’s was new for IBM, which made it possible for other companies to clone its machine.  Thus the sale of personal computers exploded.

    Price?  $1265 + monitor, floppy disk drive (upgrade from cassette drive), and $40 for PC-DOS.  Other OS’s were available but they cost from $400-600 (M$ hasn’t always been the most expensive).  One other impressive note for the time, both upper and lowercase letters could be used (the Apple II only had uppercase).

    IBM sold their first unit 25 years ago today.  So Happy Birthday to you personal computer, how would we function today without you?

  • Merriam-Webster’s Christens ‘Google’ a Verb

    Technology News: Trends: You Can Look It Up: Merriam-Webster’s Christens ‘Google’ a Verb
    It’s official! The word we technophiles (as one of my teachers referred to me) have been using for years is now officially a word. Don’t just believe me, go google it  See it here on digg too: http://digg.com/tech_news/Google_The_Verb

  • getting it going…

    This post is pretty much a reply to previous one. I was able to get a lot of the remaining issues I had with Linux fixed last night.

    Boot XP from grub – check.
    Had to add the following line to the /boot/grub/menu.lst under Windows XP before “chainloader +1”
    map (hd1) (hd0)
    I also changed root (hd1,0) to rootnoverify (hd1,0) but I’m not sure if that makes a difference or not…

    Get programs from universe and multiverse – check.
    Not too difficult, but had to enable the correct repositories and then set up the proxy. I was then able to get Mozilla Thunderbird installed, however I’ll probably manually install the newer version, 1.5 later.

    Install fonts, particularly Verdana – check.
    With the universe and multiverse enabled, I was then able to download msttfonts, which includes Verdana, Arial, Times New Roman, etc. All the standard windows fonts that I’m used to. Getting this done was a bit more tricky though. I had to configure the proxy, not only in Synaptic Package Manager, but also in a the wget file. I also needed the cabinstall package to get the fonts to work.

    So that’s all good for now, I’ll see what I learn next…

  • Free from dependence on Window$

    Finally! I was able to get ubuntu installed on my new external hard drive. It wasn't as easy as I thought it was going to be due to two problems. (Problems on my end, not w/ ubuntu)

    First, I had a problem w/ my screen, which i mentioned before. Turns out it was just a loose connection between my screen and motherboard. So that's been fixed. (Free service is really nice.)

    Now for problem two… Getting Linux (grub specifically) to play nice w/ a USB hard drive. Thankfully, these problems were easily resolved with a step-by-step guide at ubuntuforums.org. It took about an hour to get it installed. And then another hour to figure out few tweaks (get the middle button on my Thinkpad trackpoint to work, install Firefox and Thunderbird 1.5). And in the process of doing that I began learning about using the command line and Linux permissions. Good stuff. So everything is up and running just great.

    There are still a few things on the Linux to-do list… Be able to boot Win XP from grub, get some programs from the universe and multiverse, add some fonts (I wonder if Verdana works in Linux…), and a few other miscellaneous things. But that gives me something fun to work on in between school. (Not that school's not fun, but you know…) ;)

  • Firefox extensions

    One of my favorite Firefox extensions, Web Developer just came out with a 1.0 version. I guess that means it's out beta now. If you do any kind of webdesign, or are curious about creating web pages, this extension is a must have. Some key features include…

    • Live editing of CSS and (x)HTML
    • CSS, RSS, and (x)HTML validation
    • Resizing and hiding images
    • Displaying element information (CSS attributes, parameters, topography, containers, etc.
    • And tons more…

    And since I'm talking about Firefox extensions, I might as well mention a few other of my favorites…

    • IEtab – Never click on the "blue e" again! Keep Internet Exploiter, Exploder hidden on your system and for those few site that need it (Micro$oft Update, pages w/ activeX controls) view IE inside of Firefox. (Note: use this extension with care as it still has all the security problems IE does)
    • Adblock or Adblock Plus – Get rid of popups, in-page ads, undesireable images, flash animation, iframes, and just about any other type of embeded media. Make sure you use this in conjunction with Adblock Filterset.G Updater. This other handy extension imports a whole list of filters (including several using regular expressions) to automatically block most unwanted ads.
    • Remove it Permanently – this extension removes ads and media like Adblock, but it does a whole more. It can also remove text! Just select something, right-click, selete RIP and never see it again. This comes in handy when site are content w/ just displaying an ad, but they have to put ADVERTISEMENT surrounding it.
    • A mouse gestures extension – there are serveral out there, but get one, because it speeds up browsing a whole lot!

    Do you have any extensions you can't live without? Leave a comment and let me know about them. I used to browse through the whole list periodically, but its gotten too big now, and there are more sites that have them than just addons.mozilla.org.