LEon の话: Computers and Internet

Before there is Blog, there was homepage

Fri, 27 Jun 2008 02:48:18 GMT

I was going through some of my stuff the other day and I happened to find out another homepage of mine. Beside having a homepage in Geocities, I remember that I had another one in Fortunecity.

The birth of my homepage was in 1997 when I was picking up HTML by myself Back then they are couples of popular free web spaces that allow anyone to create their homepage. Some of the more popular one that I know of were Geocities and Fortunecity. However the web space provided was rather limited. I ended up signing for both web spaces to try it out.

With the demand of people wanting more web spaces, some of this web space providers had to fight the demand of web users. Due to the unstably of some of this web space, I hop between them from time to time. Eventually I settled down to Geocities to stay focus. Geocities used to allow FTP where I can directly upload my own created pages. When Geocities go with Yahoo! it really gets unfriendly. By then, most of my content were already up and thus I stayed on.

Everything that I did back then, I have to take bandwidth as my first consideration. No point having a full graphical web page when visitor were put to wait to see the whole website. I know to some who read this may find it rather alien to you. But before the millennium, majority of home users were still using 56K connection.We are talking about World-Wide-Web. Some people on other part of the world maybe in lower bandwidth then that. 800 x 600 was a rather standard resolution. With all that in mind, I started doing my homepage. Doing web pages in frame was the way to go due to bandwidth constrain. All pictures had to be optimized in JPG or Gif for easy loading and also because of the limited web space given by the web spaces providers. You should see email capacity given then but that will be another blog entry for another time.

Javascript was fun as you can ask for visitor's to enter their names and a pop-up box will follow greeting the visitor with his/her name in customized message. In any homepage, Email contact of the owner, Guestbook and counters were found almost every homepages. Some even have survey and feedback options Having music in pages was a IN thing too. Instead of having MP3, Midi was a good choice (maybe an only choice) as it is small and some midi ain't that bad at that time.

In the new millennium, I included CSS and started to change the layout of my homepage. Removing the frame, I started to get my hands on learning Flash and put up some plug-in in the web pages.

I realized that what really make homepage work was that you got to have a theme or something that you are passionate about to share. In my case, was my artworks. You also have to be willing to learn the related programing languages. Of course you have to have some creative juice as well. As I look back, creating that home page was really a fun learning experience and it was monumental as well.

Read about Geocities history.

Yahoo Auction Singapore problems

Thu, 29 May 2008 02:38:13 GMT

I have been using yahoo auctions for years ( 8 years and counting). Often for looking out good deal of toys and stuff. Although most of the time the toys sold by individual are at much higher price but still there are some reasonable good deal around.

Now I can't even do any decent search with related result in the yahoo SG auction site. This problem has exist since last week.
Anyway of late, the condition of yahoo auction are having some technical problem. No doubt Yahoo customer service still reply inquiries and feedbacks but noting much are being done. Is it had to do with Microsoft buy over? I don't know.

Is Yahoo closing down their auction services? Seems like heading that way. Yahoo auction US was retired on June 16, 2007 which was not too long ago. If US had closed down, other sites may suffer the same fate right? Is just a sooner or later thing right?

Someone asked in Yahoo! Answer "Is Yahoo Auction Singapore closing down?" and got a few responses, but they are no official word given that they are closing down auction sites for good. However you can see the problems still remain to this day.

A saying goes if the service is FREE, you should not complain. But you can Blog and share about your personal experience!! I hope Yahoo can do something to keep or upgrade auction in Singapore.

Adding emotional icons to blog entry or MSN Messenger

Wed, 14 May 2008 01:54:45 GMT

Adding some emotion icons in your blog entries can be fun. That what I did. Actually they are some sites provide good emotional icons to your msn messenger or for your blogging entries.

UR emicons
Free Cute MSN Emoticons, Emotions, to Download - This is a really good source. :)

To add to MSN Messenger:

Select the emotion icon you wanted (which is a gif).
Right click on the icon and choose "Safe Pictures As..." and choose any location to save it to your computer.
Open MSN Messenger
Click on the arrow beside the first icon and click "My Custom Emoticons".
Click "Add"
Click "Find Image" button and browse to the saved MSN Emotion
Assign a keyboard shortcut to the icon if you like.

To use it in your Blog entry:

You need to have a place to store your pictures online.
There are some around and one of them (which I am using) is the Photobucket. You need to sign up and it is FREE.
Just upload the emotion Icon which is a gif to your online storage location.
Refer the url of the emotional icon to your blog as an image and you can see you are done.

Some words of caution
Try not to use too much emotional icon in ever sentences as it may make reading more difficult and the alignment maybe out (Just look at my next sentence and you will get the hint).
Try not to use black or dark background on your blog as some emotional icon may not turn out well (like mine. See the white lining around the icon?)

Okay that wrap up my entry for adding emotional icon to blog entry. If you have any problem can just ask here.

By the way, if you would like to know how to backup MSN emotional icon and restore it, can refer to one of my previous entry here.

Component Cable works wonders for PS2 on HD TV

Wed, 07 May 2008 05:31:35 GMT

I was trying out my PS2 on my FULL HD TV sometime back when my new TV just arrived and I was very disappointed with the resolution. Much of the screens showed was blur. It really a big turned off for me. I was using the standard composite cable back then which used to provide nice imagery on my old TV. But on my new HD TV, it does not turn out that well. For those who do not know what is composite cable can see the picture below.

As I recently got a Component Cable for my DVD player to TV, I wondered if PS2 comes with Component cable connection also. I went searching and found out that PS2 do offer component cable connection. I went and the cable from Play-asia as the price was reasonable compare to my neighborhood game shop.

Anyway Component Cable for PS2 consist of 5 connectors. Green, Red, Blue, Red and White. The Green, Red and Blue are for the video which were dedicated to transmit no compression and impose no real limit on color depth or resolution signal directly to the TV. The other Red and White are for audio. Click here if you want to read more regarding Component cable in technical terms.

Once the connection is done, I turned on my PS2 and went into the system settings. T chose the Component cable connection and select the Full Screen option. I can really tell the difference once everything was done. The image is sharper and the color is so much richer. I was glad to change to component connection. So that taken up my TV 2 Component channel. Next game console will be using HDMI connection instead for BETTER resolution. Hehehe

My GTA experiences

Tue, 29 Apr 2008 14:21:51 GMT

Oh Great! GTA IV is releasing soon. I am a fan (consider sucker?) of this franchise. I got hooked on this game ever since GTA III recommended by a friend of mine.

The 3D free game play was ground breaking. With the good storyline, it just give you a whole news game experiences. You can get any car you like on the streets and drive around completing various mission by shoot out. The environment give you day and night with a big enough city for you to drive around and do craziest things. This game was so ground breaking that it received many complains from the parents regarding the streets violence and vice in every release of these series.

Things just get more cooler in the Vice City days.I just love the 80s! Full of Neon lights, cool cars and Retro music which I grow up with. This game was rich in 80s culture. You just felt you enter the world of Scarface, Miami Vice and Hawaii 90210. You get to fly planes, speed boats, cool motorbikes and even golf cart! The weird DJs at various radio station will give you a feeling of how crazy the city was. Pop and Rocks songs will be playing in the radios and the thing I love most is their commercials as they are so funny and sarcastic The city is way bigger than the former game which allow you to fly helicopters above it. In the game, you will get a chances to own movie studios, private clubs and even penthouse.

When San Andreas first came out, it was exclusive to PS2 only. It gave me a good reason to get a PS2 and I did. Not for Final Fantasy, not for Gran Turismo but for GTA San Andreas. I even get the guild book for it! San Andreas was cool! I just loved the way the characters talks in this series. You get to groove / dance too in the game! San Andreas introduce new improvements. For the first time in GTA, your character finally learned how to swim. Your skill and physical status will reflect your training and diet. You get to go on dating with some female characters and may never get to have coffee session. As you complete more mission, your reputation will increase and you can recruit some "homies" to follow you in gang raid. It no longer a city map only, you get to in country side, beaches and town. The soundtrack was alright. Hiphops and R&B mostly.

Two releases was on PSP as well. Liberty City Stories and Vice City stories. You will be surprised that I did not really play GTA on my PSP. Reason? It is not ideal to play on a portable game console as it do not allow easy saved. It is so distracting especially on the go to play such games which sometime I get too frustrated busying in the mission that I missed my stop. So PSP GTA for me may not be really a good thing. Thank goodness these two series can be found on PS2 as well but I have not get a chances to get hold of it. :(

Now GTA IV is going to be release on Xbox360 and PS3. Between these two game consoles, it is hard for me to decide on one. Actually I am deciding between PS3 and Wii for my new game console. :P Sooner or later PC version will be release ( I hope). If that happen, I would have upgraded my PC for this game. Meanwhile I just have to wait or buy one of the game console. See how. Ultimately it is just a game to get relax so I just have to take my own sweet time to enjoy it. That the way it should be. Not to take such game so seriously. :D

Creative gets boycott?

Wed, 02 Apr 2008 01:49:27 GMT

I heard about the new of some unhappy consumers of Creative are taking boycott action against them.

Summary of what happened as reported so far were:

1. Creative Sound Blaster drivers don't work well in Vista and Creative is slow in doing anything about it.
2. A guy posts up his own drivers of SB that work on Vista
3. Community rejoices and the guy asking for donation
4. Creative threatens legal action against that guy
5. Guy removes his drivers
6. Community outraged, thread gains attention on a global scale, thousands are now on a Creative boycott for not giving good support for some products that move to Vista.

>> Click here to read first hand customers feedback of the incident.

I do not have a pleasant encounter with some Creative support also.

My first D.I.Y computer consisted of 2 Creative products. A Creative Savage 4 graphic card and a Live! sound card. The sound card was working well but the graphic card gave me hell load of problem. How bad was it? My computer did not get to full color display and I can't get it to play any 3D game! Even after I downloaded their latest driver from their website, the situation did not improve a single bit.

After sending emails with no reply. I resort to download from S3 website to install S3 graphic card driver instead to get my system going. Only then my computer start to show signs of stabilization. However my computer can never shutdown properly. It was a pain in the neck for the whole of 2 years. Since then I stay away from Creative products. I just would not want to put myself in that kind of situation again.

The above incident happen 8 years ago and I remember which mean the incident really left me a bad taste.

As for now for my sound card, I just use the on board one as my Altec lansing speakers did a great job in amplifying the sound.

How Cheap can you get for Web design?

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 08:50:30 GMT

Experiences had thought me to be wiser in my line of trade. I laughed at the common misconception of some profession not being valued sometimes. I guessed the fault often lies with the new business starters who thought having a website that will run everything for his/her business. Just a talk to these new business owners and you will know how much thoughts had they put into their business.

Normally they wanted a website but do not have the followings:

They do not have the Content
How can you not have the content for your website? Most of the time they don't even write it down about what they can offer. If you do not have it, who has it? It is your business? Do they want designers to do copy writing for them? If it is so, it will be added as cost.

They do not have a budget
To them it should be as low as possible. Okay but do they actually have a budget in mind? The budget got to be realistic as well! If you do not know the market prices (regardless of websites) that gets to shows how much he/she knows about the market.

They do not know what they actually want
Do they have anything in mind? No. They will just asked for suggestion. That isn't all that bad but at least the owner should have some vision. Most of the time it is not cleared and that is the inefficient part as they will have a hard time making decision and stick to it. If time is given for consultation (consultation need to be a cost included as well too) more details will be drawn and every requirement means efforts and efforts mean cost involved.

They do not know how to respect profession and works of others
This is the part where they will bargain but is the bargain really necessary? Your requirement gave an estimation of effort and a price was quoted with it. It is business. Take it or leave it if the price is not right. It is not proper to tell the other profession how come it cost so much. Since you are hiring for help and people are offering assistance to you. Nobody will win but business owners will always be on the losing side.

Many do not recognize that designing is a Profession by itself. They often thought that anyone with a designing software can do the job. If that was so, why not they themselves go and do it? Individual had actually invest their time to pick up designing skills together with their creativity in order to get the job done. It is not a everybody can do job like area cleaning or production line worker.

Web design is a services. It will get you a customized website. They are a number of website template offered by the web hosting. Why not use that if you are on budget? In order to customized, we need to get the requirement gathering and conceptual skills which comes by experience will be handy. The estimated amount work will then converted to cost. If they will be changes later, the cost for the afford should increase as well.

Another misconception that will be assuming Freelance should be cheaper. Thinking that these people work just for that EXTRA pocket money. Do you really expect a professional guy who does his work during the daytime to use his personal free time to work for the lower budget for his skills?

However the sad case is that they are others self acclaimed professional Freelancers who spoil the market with their low rates advertising. Whether they got deals or not no one knows but their low rates has given others in the open market a wrong impression of such profession.

End of the day. How much money you put in your business will show. Is one way or the other.

Blu-ray and HD DVD

Mon, 03 Mar 2008 13:13:34 GMT

Over lunch, my colleague and I were having a discussion about IT show, HD TV, PSP and then the difference of Blue Ray and HD DVD. One of them asked if the two format can be play on the same player and what will become of our DVDs / VCDs movie collections. We were not really sure and thus I went on the net to search for the answers.

Found out that our DVD collections will not be obsolete as well! That is good to hear. Phew… Both Blu-ray and HD DVD player can play DVD and VCD as well. However since now SONY Blu-ray won the battle, we will be looking forward for more affordable Blu-ray to come.

>> Difference between DVD, HD DVD and Blu-ray reading format diagram

Whether it is Blu-ray or HD DVD, all these can be possible only if HD TV is being make more common and of course affordable to general market. Apparently I do not own a HD TV yet, so won’t be looking into it for awhile.

In time to come, we can expect to be able to store more data in one media which can be both good and bad The Good

Saved physical storage as one media store more data as before.
Save cost as need of one media

The Bad

Since media is so bigger, may not have enough data to fully pack the media at a time.
If the whole media is corrupted or lost, more data will be lost.

Click here to read some history between HD DVD and a Blu-ray. Was surprised it was written in 2005!

Since Blu-ray look more promising, it is good that you should know that Blu-ray practice Regional Code also. Yes, something like DVD. you know those code 1, 2 and all that thingy? Apparently Blu-ray have it too but only 3 regions.

Region A	Americas; East and Southeast Asia.
Region B	Africa, Europe, Oceania; Middle East; French territories; Greenland.
Region C	Central and South Asia; Mongolia, Russia, and PRC China (mainland).

Good news is there are region-free in time to come.
>> Read more of Blu-ray regional code here.

>> More about Blu-ray

>> Difference between DVD and HD DVD

Logitech® G1 Gaming Desktop

Sun, 04 Feb 2007 14:31:30 GMT

Got myself a new keyboard and a mouse today.

Originally wanted to get a new keyboard for my GF and as we go about looking for one on offer for S$59.00. I tryiedthe keyboard and I love the softness and the silent touch. With the help of the sale person, it presuded me to make the purchase. I came back home and try on the mouse and man was it smooth and sensitive. Although I do not play game that often but I never regreted for this purchase. It is good to have a new keyboard and mouse for the new year. :)

Offical website of the product

Lightbox JS

Wed, 17 Jan 2007 01:55:53 GMT

Lightbox JS is another great option to view images on the web browser without opening a new window. What it does is to load the picture on a different layer in the same browser window. It look cool and sleek if I have to say so myself.

You need to however upload the JS and CSS files in your web hosting server. I can't demo on this site because myspace is not my server and I can't upload file in it. However, check out the official site and see how it is done.

1 Dead Pixel spotted!

Thu, 07 Dec 2006 07:46:36 GMT

In the middle of my designing, I notice a white speck of dust on my office laptop. Busy rushing my design presentation I just leave it as it is. After tea, I try to clean the screen up with a tissue and I realized it was not dust. but a Dead Pixel. It is a permanent white pixel almost at the center of the screen. Sigh... Sad. This laptop is a year plus only. :(

Zedge.net service Suckz!

Mon, 27 Nov 2006 01:34:37 GMT

I have uploaded some customise theme of K800i on http://www.zedge.net. Without apparent reason, it deleted one of my theme. Even I send them 3 emails, no reply were given to date. I decided not to upload any theme until they give me a explaination which I don't think it will come. Maybe I should delete all my uploaded themes.

K800i Theme: x3Holic & Saber Fate Stay Night Theme

Tue, 21 Nov 2006 07:00:12 GMT

Another K800i Theme and this time is xxxHolic. Now you maybe wondering there must be a typo-error in my title right? Yes but the error is intentional. Why? Because the live space server refuse to accept XXX at such I have to replace it as a x3holic. As you can see intelligent it maybe but flexibility is a No No.

Here is another one in tone of blue. Saber in Fate Stay Night.

if you are interested in the above theme, please leave a comment with your email and name and I will get back to you. thanks.

K800i Theme: Bleach Ichigo Bankai!

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 09:52:00 GMT

Another Theme for K800i that I done up. Tell me if you like it:)

if you are interested in the above theme, please leave a comment with your email and name and I will get back to you. thanks.

Talking about The TRICK behind the Image Spam against the Word Filtering SPAM Filter

Fri, 03 Nov 2006 01:59:05 GMT

A good to know for all you guys who could resist clicking on any emails. Be warned.

Quote

The TRICK behind the Image Spam against the Word Filtering SPAM Filter

CALLING ALL SYSTEM ADMINISTRATOR / ENGINEERS!!! hahaha...

Through my research of the korea mass spamming about ANZ Bank and the other spams for National Australia Bank. I found out that there is a new generation of SPAMMERS out there, making use of the vulnerability of most SPAM Email Filters. The weakness of most SPAM Email Filters are the inability to SCAN any images attached to the email.

Under a normal human's point of view rule

There must be a reason to perform an act. Let us assume the act is "SPAM" and the reason is "FUN".

To commit any inconsideration "SPAM" to others is "FUN", but the SPAMMER will not want the same thing to happen on himself from others or his program(trojan/virus).

As most SPAMs will circulate around the world and might even eventually reach back to the SPAMMER again.

How it is done!!!

The SPAMMER will attach the image file onto the email with a paragraph of words hidden on the bottom of the HTML email with the Font Color being WHITE to match the Background Color which is WHITE too...

This in return, allows the SPAMMER to actually uses his own Filtering System to actually prevent himself in getting it...

To understand better on what I'm trying to say. Please refers to those images at the bottom.

How to prevent SPAM with IMAGE using a Word/Phrase SPAM Filter System?

Option 1

Receive and Analyze the SPAM emails
Highlight the entire email body to find hidden text by pressing [CTRL] + [A]
Add those hidden uncommon text into your BANNED Word/Phrase in your SPAM Filter System.

Option 2

Reject all HTML Emails

Note:

They are just DARN SMART. Guess more research will be taken to figure out how to fully prevent them... Because it seems like the hidden texts are some how coming from some story book's paragraph while poses to appear legitimate emails.

DeathNote K800i Theme

Wed, 01 Nov 2006 02:57:12 GMT

Weekly my blog will have a average of 68 visitor and some of which they come in as they enter a certian keyword in their search. One of which is K800i theme for death note. Well because of you ( is myself actually) I decided to do up 2 theme for death note.

Tell me if you like it

if you are interested in the above theme, please leave a comment with your email and name and I will get back to you. thanks.

MyPhoneExplorer Recommended

Fri, 27 Oct 2006 09:02:24 GMT

As you can see due to recent upgrading of my HP to SE K800i, I went abit off to get the best out of my phone except really explore the 3.2 mega pixel review.

My friend Roy who hold the same model recommended me to MyPhoneExplorer which backup and show everything on K800i. One feature that draw me was the ablility to backup your own contact list in your HP to Excel/word or even HTML format.

If you are a K800i users, You should try it. Currently it is version 1.5.1

Morange: The Mobile Edge

Wed, 25 Oct 2006 07:55:49 GMT

Sharing is caring. Thanks to a recommendation to http://www.morange.com by my colleague, I can now check my mail or even go online to chat on MSN using my new mobile phone!

It is a Singapore product and it currently free during this trial period. However the program can be supported by some latest 3G / GRPS mobile phone. A plus point is that you can login to their website using your PC to check your total bandwidth usage by per day basis.

I personally tested the msn messager and it work well. Just try it out but just be mindful of the GPRS charges which come later.

Windows Live Writer Beta

Tue, 03 Oct 2006 06:38:23 GMT

Currently I am using Windows live Writer (beta) and it is so much easier to edit and add post! I am still trying out but so far it work great! Good works Microsoft!

What on earth are you doing Windows LIVE Spaces!

Sun, 10 Sep 2006 14:49:37 GMT

THis is unacceptable. Ever since MySpace have turn to live Space, all my format are gone! Even my layout now is in a messed! Windows Live Space. IF you continue to do such stuff, I will leave for good. You better wake up your senses! See how my space layout now are. I cant even change the format layout to be as before. :Angry:

MSN Messager Emotion Icon Backup & Restore

Tue, 25 Jul 2006 16:20:36 GMT

This is what I have found out today for Window users only.

To backup custom emoticons in MSN Messenger you need to do the following:

1. MSN Messager need to be turned off.

2. Open your explorer and go under Documents and Settings > *YOUR USER NAME* > Application Data > Microsoft > MSN MESSAGER > (THIS CAN BE YOUR EMAIL Address for winXP only. Win2k will not have this folder so just skip) > *This can be some numbers * > CustomEmoticons

3. Under CustomEmoticons you should be able to see number of ending with the extention of .dat . This is your emotion icon. If dont believe, you can click and open with IE and you will see it moving if it is a animated emotion icon.

* If you cannot see the file extention do the following:
a. On the "Tools" menu, click "Folder Options," and then click the "View" tab.
b. In the "Advanced Settings" box, select the "Show hidden files and folders" check box.
c. Clear the "Hide extensions for known file types" check box, and then click "OK."

4. Copy all files of this folder out to any backup folder you have in mind. Once copy out, change the copy out files from .dat to .jpg (Rename all dat file except map.dat. this map.dat should be delete away.) You need to change to JPG to import later. Not to worry as after import, it will still remain animated.

At this point if you have many file to rename, you can start to use dos command to rename all file extention. * Note that only do this if you have dos knowledge else rename manually. As for Dos users got to Start > Run > once there go to the directory of the Copy out eicons and type the following command

Rename *.dat *.jpg

This will rename all .DAT to .JPG

5. You are half way there. Now to import your emotion icon. On your new msn, open a chat interface with a online fella. In that dialogue box, click on more link as shown in the picture below.

next click on the Create button shown on the picture below

Now simply clcik on the Find Image button and locate the .JPG file which you rename and done!

You restore your emotional icon animated if it was before.

Please leave a comment or two if you find this useful :)