techie « WordPress.com Tag Feed

Who woulda thunk it?

nausicaa88 — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 10:40:56 +0000

I logged into WordPress on Friday morning, thinking the name of my last post was a little clichéd and wanting to tweak it before it was read. I was stunned to find that this little blog, which was getting a modest 3-4 hits a day (mostly from friends and family and searchers after ‘liberty’ and ‘ponyo’) had been hit 228 times overnight (and this number continued to climb over the next few days), all on account of the WordPress powers-that-be deciding that a two sentence post, and a few pictures of raucous Australian native birds with attitude was worthy of the WordPress front page.

Needless to say, I was chuffed.

Thank you to everyone who stopped by and left lovely comments.

Instaling Apache - PHP and MySQL too.........

manojbs — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 08:56:17 +0000

Finally i got back to my senses after wasting too much time. I thought of finishing whatever I’ve left incomplete, so I took up php to start with. First of all I needed to install Apache and php. I had no idea that just this would take one whole day, but still it was worth it……..
I use a Ubuntu 9.04(Jaunty Jackalope) Desktop Edition, I thought this collective info on Installing and configuring apache2 along with PHP and MySQL would help people spend lesser time on just installing it rather than using it.

Installing Apache2

Apache HTTP Server is a free software/open source web server for Unix-like systems.
#sudo apt-get install apache2

This will complete the installation of apache2 web server. To check whether your Apache server is running, just open your web browser and type “http://localhost“, you will get a default page which says “It works!“. Now you need to know where the configuration files and document root for your Apache web server.
By default all the configuration files are located at /etc/apache2

Editing the document root
Default document root for apache2 is /var/www. If you want to change the default document root you need to edit the /etc/apache2/sites-available/default file and look for this line “DocumentRoot /var/www/” here you can change where ever you want to change.For example if you want to change /home/wwww the above line looks like this “DocumentRoot /home/www/”.
The main configuration file located at /etc/apache2/apche2.conf. At this stage reading through all the ‘.conf‘ files inside the /etc/apache2/ directory will be a good option.

Installing php in Apache
If you want to add support of php and cgi scripts install the following packages libapache2-mod-php4,php4-cli,php4-common,php4-cgi

#sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5 php5-cli php5-common php5-cgi

This will complete the installation of php support for apache2.
Restart your Apache server

#sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

To check whether your Apache server is parsing you php scripts just do this.

#sudo gedit /var/www/index.php

Enter the following script and save the file
<html>
<body>
<?php echo “Hello World!!“; ?>
</body>
</html>

Now go to your web browser and type “http://localhost/index.php“, you should be able to see a page which says “Hello World!!“.

Troubleshooting PHP 5
I got stuck at this point for a long time, my browser kept asking me if I wanted to download the php file instead of actually displaying it!!.
This will happen if Apache is not actually parsing the php after you restarted it, to resolve this just install libapache2-mod-php5.

#sudo apt-get install libapache2-mod-php5

It is installed when you install the php5 package, but may have been removed inadvertently by packages which need to run a different version of php.

You may also need to actually enable it, by doing

#sudo a2enmod php5

followed by

#sudo /etc/init.d/apache2 restart

If sudo a2enmod php5 returns “$ This module does not exist!“, you should purge (not just remove) the libapache2-mod-php5 package and reinstall it.

Be sure to clear your browser’s cache before testing your site again.

Recommended module
The worker MPM provides a threaded implementation for Apache2. It is considerably faster than the traditional model,and is the recommended MPM.You can install this using the following command.

#apt-get install apache2-mpm-prefork

Installing MYSQL with PHP 5

#sudo apt-get install mysql-server libapache2-mod-auth-mysql php5-mysql

This will install MySQL. Once MySQL is installed it will ask you for a mysql-root password, note that it is just mysql-admin password and not your system’s root password.

Set mysql bind address
Before you can access the database from other computers in your network, you have to change its bind address. Note that this can be a security problem, because your database can be accessed by others computers than your own. Skip this step if the applications which require mysql are running on the same machine.

#sudo gedit /etc/mysql/my.cnf
and change the line:
bind-address = localhost
to your own internal ip address e.g. 192.150.1.34
bind-address = 192.150.1.34
If your ip address is dynamic you can also comment out the bind-address line and it will default to your current ip.

If you try to connect without changing the bind-address you will receive a “Can not connect to mysql error 10061“.
You might have to go through the MySQL commands from a proper reference to create a user and play with the database.

Once you are done with all this, to verify that Apache and mysql are running just nmap your own system and if you’ve done everything right you will see something like this.

#nmap localhost

Starting Nmap 4.76 ( http://nmap.org ) at 2009-11-30 13:00 IST
Warning: Hostname localhost resolves to 2 IPs. Using 127.0.0.1.
Interesting ports on localhost (127.0.0.1):
Not shown: 997 closed ports
PORT STATE SERVICE
80/tcp open http
631/tcp open ipp
3306/tcp open mysql

Nmap done: 1 IP address (1 host up) scanned in 0.12 seconds

I got a lot of help from the Ubuntu forums, a special thanks to all the guys who ask questions and to the guys who answer those.

Hans Rosling: Amazing Talk at TED... India & China becoming Super Powers

theblogdude — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 14:13:02 +0000

Asia’s rise — How and When

Hans Rosling was a young guest student in India when he first realized that Asia had all the capacities to reclaim its place as the world’s dominant economic force. At TEDIndia, he graphs global economic growth since 1858 and predicts the exact date that India and China will outstrip the US.

TED-Nov2009

My Tech Blog

sidrulz29 — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 08:11:52 +0000

Visit at :- BlueTechspot.blogspot.com

Need a Google Wave invite??

theblogdude — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:10:37 +0000

Just comment on any of our post with your email ID.. Hurry only 5 invites available!!!!

El primer prototipo de Doraemon ya es una realidad

Genis — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 19:51:11 +0000

Ya está disponible en Japón el robot de Doraemon. De momento no han conseguido desarrollar el bolsillo mágico pero lo que sí hace esta reproducción es interactuar con nosotros. Incluye unos sensores de luz y temperatura que hacen que nos desee las buenas noches cuando apagamos la luz o que se queje del calor en las tardes de agosto. Este Doraemon conoce más de 1300 palabras que usará para hablar con nosotros y si nos situamos detrás de él nos detectará y girará su cabeza.

Si te se sientes solo y nadie te quiere hazte con el robot de Doraemon. Querid@ otaku, él seguro que te escucha, o por lo menos te hablará. Aunque la broma te costará unos 273€ y unas clases aceleradas de japonés.

PRANAV MISTRY... Man from India !!! What a brain he has got!!!!

theblogdude — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:06:33 +0000

Pranav Mistry, a PhD student from MIT Media Lab has earned his fame through his greatest invention of all, the “Sixth Sense” device. Retrieving informatio-Ion from the web could be a challenge sometimes. It’s now made easy with the invention of this Sixth sense device. Sixth sense device consists of inexpensive components which include a webcam, smart phone, a projector and colored markers. The total cost of the device would just come around $350(Excluding the smart phone).

This is how the device works:

The webcam recognizes the user gestures and the projector in turn returns the relevant information with the help of the smart phone. Then the same markers attached to the fingers can be used to select options from the image obtained from the projector. For example, if you want to see the time just draw a circle with the help of your fingers in your wrist and the projector will display you the watch in the place where you have drawn the circle(Just simple as that).

It is remarkable that Pranav Mistry developed this within a period of 5 months. No wonder he is called as “one of the two or three, most, best inventors in the world right now” by Chris Anderson, the curator of TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) Conference.

Way to go Pranav !!!

About Web Databases

joomlatutor — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 03:31:01 +0000

When you want to buy a computer, so you figure the Internet is the best place to look. You get on Alta Vista, Google, or Bing and type “computers” in the text box. It comes back and tells you that it has found about nearly one billion pages (at Google) matching your query terms. You try another tactic – you type in “I want to buy a computer”. More than 16 million pages this time.

Frustrated ??, you try one more time – you type in “computer shopping”. Alta Vista happily tells you there are 700,000 pages matching your request. and google tell you there are 928,000 pages. The first listing is indeed about shopping for computers – and the rest on the page refer to on-line malls.

If you’ve done any amount of Web searching, you’ve undoubtedly run into this same problem of too much information. This tutorial will you by showing you how these Web Databases work, how you can more efficiently search them, and how to select the best Web Database.

A web database is an organized listing of web pages. It’s like the card catalog that you might find in the library. The database holds a “surrogate” (or selected pieces like the title, the headings, etc.) for each web page. The creation of these surrogates is called “indexing”, and each web database does it in a different way. Web databases hold surrogates for anywhere from 1 million to several billion web pages. The program also has a search interface, which is the box you type words into (like in Alta Vista or Google) or the lists of directories you pick from (like in Yahoo). Thus, each web database has a different indexing method and a different search interface.

Methods of Indexing

There are two important methods of indexing used in web database creation – full-text and human.

Full-Text Indexing

As its name implies, full-text indexing is where every word on the page is put into a database for searching. Alta Vista and Google are examples of full-text databases. Full-text indexing will help you find every examples of a reference to a specific name or terminology. However, a general topic search will not be very useful in these database, and you will have to dig through a lot of “false drops” (or returned pages that have nothing to do with your search).

Human Indexing

Yahoo and some of Magellan are two of the few examples of human indexing. In the above two indexing, all of the work was done by a computer program called a “spider” or a “robot”. In human indexing, a person examines the page and determines a very few key phrases that describe it. This allows for the user to find a good start of works on a topic – assuming that the topic was picked by the human as something that describes the page. This is how the directory-based web databases are developed.

Spiders, Robots, or People

How do the web databases select which pages are indexed? As there is no centralized Internet computer, there’s no one place where these services can learn about new pages. Thus, many services use automated programs called “spiders” or “robots” that travel from site to site, looking for new WWW pages. Some spiders only go to the “What’s New” or the “What’s Hot” pages and use those for indexing the “popular” sites. Others methodically examine every link leading from a page, and every link leading from that page, and so on… In some cases, people examine the pages brought back from these programs, and don’t index the pages that don’t meet certain criteria. So, these tools create three classes of web databases – those that look at all WWW pages, those that examine popular WWW pages, and those that examine quality web pages.

Search Engines versus Pick Lists

Now that the web database has a group of pages indexed in their database, how does the user access it. This is through one of two methods – a search engine or a directory (otherwise known as a pick list). A search engine allows the user to type in any terminology he wishes, and will search the database to find those web pages that match the terms entered. A directory structure has pages organized by subject (like the Yellow Pages), and can then be navigated by selecting things off the directory. The directory structure usually allows a good starting point for a search, assuming that the topic you desire has been selected as a directory entry.

One thing not to get confused about – Yahoo has both a search engine and a directory tree. Instead of searching the pages, however, the search engine just looks through the directory at Yahoo. It can be used as a quick way to find the area of the directory with the information you desire.

Presentation of Results

You’ve entered in your search terms, the computer has matched them to the indexed database, and you are given a list of results. There are two important concepts here – Relevancy ranking and Abstracts

Relevancy Ranking

The documents are almost always listed in order by relevance. Based upon your search request, the computer ranks all of the documents that contain your search term, and lists the ones that it thinks are most relevant first. That is why you really shouldn’t worry about the fact that there are 17 gajillion pages matching your query term. All you care about are the first 20 – 40. The better your search terms, the better ranked the pages will be (and the less work you will have to do).

Abstracts

If there are pages listed that say nothing in the listing about your search topic, you may wonder how they got there. The second important concept to realize is that the abstract presented to you is usually not the same as the database entry used by the computer to search. The abstract is much shorter than the database entry, and this can lead to frustration because you then have to load up the actual page to see why the search program feels this page is relevant to your search.

No desktop cam only webcam in windows 7!!!

conian — Sat, 21 Nov 2009 06:00:57 +0000

Last week my friend’s laptop got loaded with Windows 7.He installed it from a usb drive that is really cool .This option will be very helpful to the netbook user.Many things are similar to vista one major difference is the performance much improvement in tat… We can compare Windows 7 with Windows vista or with Windows XP then Windows 7 will be winner but don’t compare with MAC os or Ubuntu …… always compare Microsoft with Microsoft …hihhihihi

When my friend checked for the camera option oops no camera option is there but when is connect to the web ,cam detected by the yahoo messenger then we googled and found out that in windows 7 cam can be used only through the Windows live sorry no desktop useage.Finally he downloaded one freeware cam software ….

Free Shipping

classicsimpleliving — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 22:25:03 +0000

Especially helpful to avoid crowds during the holiday season: http://www.freeshipping.org/

Optimizing Websites

gimmefree — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 13:31:25 +0000

SPONSORED REVIEW:

The search engine Optimization and web positioning is the result of the retrieval of information in the database of the major Internet search engines by using search algorithms in software. The task of adjusting the information on pages that are intended to appear on top of the results is known as SEO, English acronym of Search Engine Optimization, search engine optimization. It Is to apply various techniques aimed at ensuring that Internet search engines to locate certain webpage in a high position and category (first place) within its search results page for certain key words and phrases search. It is also understood as the web development techniques aimed at improving the position of a certain website through its pages in search results of Search Engines in English is identified as SERPs and is part of the jargon of webmasters speaking. The application of SEO techniques is intense on websites that offer products or services with much competition for the position on certain pages of its competitors in search results (SERPs).We also refer to SEO to define the persons who perform such work , Boston SEO is one organization that does it commercially for may websites. Strictly speaking, we are positioned URLs of pages. The sites achieved high rankings as a result. SEO techniques may be excessive and affect the natural results of major search engines so that they breach the terms and conditions of use of them can be considered, in some cases as a form of SPAM, spamdexing. The work is broad, involving the positioning program code, design and content.

iFrames and Javascript whine

Laura Cruz — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 05:39:00 +0000

So I’ve been pretty excited about tracking my crochet projects on ravelry.com and some months ago I found out the guys over there created a really neat progress bar thingy for blogs….

But it only works for Blogger….SAD FACE.

I dont really want to switch to Blogger because of that….and I’ve been trying to find some kind of solutions for this problem. There’s a whole group of people over at ravelry (We <3 progress bars) that works on this nice contraption and I’ve volunteered to help testing the wordpress version when it becomes available. Hopefully they’ll get back to me and I’ll be able to help somehow.

I really hope we can find some way to throw that neat functionality in here….<shakes fist at iFrames and Javascript….why must you be “dangerous” and blocked by WP.com> . Also, I read an article from ‘08 explaining how Silverlight doesnt function 100% in WP.com due to iFrames as well. I’ll try to read more about it and see if they have made a solution for that in later releases.

Fantastic giraffe pattern by TinyOwlKnits

Laura Cruz — Thu, 19 Nov 2009 04:48:56 +0000

giraffe baby 02

Originally uploaded by tinyowlknits *

Isnt this the most adorable little giraffe you’ve ever seen? I was looking around the live journal amigurumi page and saw this beauty! It’s also a free pattern on ravelry so it’s extra beautiful! Thanks tinyowlknits.:)

Also, I’m testing how to blog from flickr into the wordpress blog. I’m writing this in flickr after seeing the “Blog This” icon over the giraffe pic. Maybe this could be an interesting tool to blog quickly with pics.

Paying for online content

classicsimpleliving — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 00:28:22 +0000

According to new research by Forrester 80% of people roaming the internet would NOT pay for content.

Life without TV (& how to survive with internet alone)

classicsimpleliving — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 22:01:26 +0000

We gave up TV in March of this year. We moved to a new city and as an experiment we thought,

Semantic Embed: Part 3

Kate Ray — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 01:39:20 +0000

Librarians are all about categorizing things. So is RDF. Are they a good match? That’s what I

Thesis Jitters

sara — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 00:27:48 +0000

Its your senior year in college and graduating is just a few months away. You feel it in the air and you can see it in the faces of all your classmates. But wait, aren’t you forgetting something?! Ah yes…The good old thesis…you can’t graduate without it.

I remember my thesis and I gotta tell you I would’ve died if it hadn’t been for my out-dated but very reliable laptop and the internet. Beyond the endless experiments, surveys and constant research, technology was my saving grace. Sure the library is always the best source of all references but some international journals crucial to the study can only be accessed online. You do know that feeling right? You’re running around looking for that right reference, juggling a hardbound book just to get it to the copiers only to find in the end that what you’re looking for was in a journal and accessible with just 1 mouse click. Hassle right?

That’s where the beauty of electronic journals come in. In my day we used international sites and the drawback was we could never find any applications that would fit the country setting. Lucky for you guys these days, we have philippine journals that can be accessed online! It means that whatever study you may be doing, you can be assured that it is relatable to the Philippine setting and you have better ideas of its applicability and feasibility in the country.

Thesis just got easier, and before I forget, the website for the best philippine journal reference is www.ejournals.ph

Hope this helps you guys out!

Have a nice day people! ^^)v

Long Live the Techies.

alicevaughan — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:52:04 +0000

Last week, each group had the opportunity to show the development of their work to the rest of the class. It was interesting to see the different stages of progression from each group, as well as the team dynamics which were clearly developing. There seems to be alot of interesting ideas flying about, and the session definitely highlighted the teams that we should try to keep up with!

In terms of our own presentation, we decided to create a video highlighting the main points of our team’s work so far. After hours spent with props and our lovely little camcorder (as per usual!) and a large part of the day editing the finished product, we were all sort to wow the group. Unfortunately, the Techno-Gods were not smiling down on me, as it was a complete and utter failure when it came to show-time. Anyway, the video is up and running on the team blog now, but I think we managed to get our main points across.

It was quite a tricky session, as it seemed as though our group (we were second from last) didn’t get as much time as the others for feedback from the group (or maybe people were just a bit exhausted by then, and couldn’t think of much to say!) However, after a little appeal for feedback from fellow MACErs on Facebook and Twitter dealt us a multitude of responses. Main points seemed to focus on the development of an online/electronic product (which we are in the process of developing now – oh so ridiculously excited!)

We have various ideas on the go at the moment, ranging from a purely online magazine in website format, advertised online or by business-card style handouts, to a pdf magazine available to download from a website, or distributed on a CD (in some pretty nifty wallets, including 8 pages which could act as a mini-magazine, hello tiny tear-out recipes!) We’re in the process of getting quotes from stardiscs.co.uk, who look like a perfect supplier of that is the road we choose to go down, and I’ve registered the domain name temptationmagazine.co.uk – website coming soon! With all of these options, we address the issues raised in the feedback from our presentations, the fact that we DO need to move into the 20th Century and go with the flow when it comes to doing things electronically, and not jump the gun. Producing a prototype magazine as a first issues is by far the most cost-effective way of testing our business strategy, and will also provide us with a physical product to show potential advertisers (and hopefully raise our profits!)

Although I may have shown myself to be a bit of a techno-muppet with my epic film-presentation-fail, the ideas we have been discussing as a group show that maybe this whole computer malarkey is the route we should be following. Long live the techies!

The “E” in e-Learning

sara — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 05:29:29 +0000

Many have come to appreciate the ease and comfort technology has given to everyday tasks. From letters, to conferences, technological advancements have indeed become an integral part of our lives.

The scope of technology has increased since it was first introduced. From business to leisure, technology has been applied, and these days it is also being incorporated in education. Far from the usual classroom setting, technology has opened many doors to make education more accessible and standardized to cope with globalization.

Dubbed e-Learning, this aims to provide standardized, quality education to all students. By presenting lessons in an attractive and engaging manner, students are expected to be more encouraged to study and learn more. Also, it promotes studying beyond the four walls of the classroom. It also helps in cultivating the individuality of a student and applying this individuality to solve a problem.

Many things are yet to be considered to have a flawless system to present lessons and integrate classroom and outside learning methods. This though, is a good start. To consider the possibilities and to polish procedures so that one day the next generation will be able to reap the rewards of our educators’ labors.

Auriculares de Dragon Ball

Genis — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 09:21:53 +0000

La verdad es que los japoneses realizan merchandising de todo tipo ¿quién no recuerda los míticos preservativos de Evangelion? Pero lo cierto es que hasta la fecha no había visto ningunos auriculares con motivos de alguna serie de anime. Así que cuando he encontrado que una empresa japonesa ha anunciado que en enero lanzará una edición limitada de unos increíbles auriculares de Dragon Ball no he podido resistirme…

Visto en: AV Watch

Las perfectas gafas de sol

Genis — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 08:58:32 +0000

Hoy me gustaría comentar una de las novedades tecnológicas que más me han llamado la atención, se trata de las Otas Spy Camcorder Sunglasses, unas gafas de sol con un diseño algo desafortunado pero cuyo atractivo reside en sus funciones. Estas maravillosas gafas de espía llevan incoporadas un mp3, una cámara de video y foto con memoria interna. Las gafas, que se pueden conseguir por internet, está en dos versiones de 4 o 8 Gb, costando la más barata 12450 ¥, menos de 100€.

No hace falta esforzarse mucho para imaginar las posibilidades que tiene este gadget para los otakus de Akihabara.

+ Info: http://www.geekstuff4u.com/otas-spy-camcorder-sunglasses.html

Treated cruelly by wife, techie ends life

iluvshrutiverma — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 18:52:54 +0000

One more ends his life like 56,000 do every year.

Yes you read it correctly – more than 56,000 married men end their lives every year.

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/19204/treated-cruelly-wife-techie-ends.html

Allegedly hounded by a greedy and cruel wife, who was fully supported by her parents, a 32-year-old techie ended his life by consuming a full bottle of anti-depressant tablets here on Monday.

Shubhankar Katyayan was married to Nandini, 27, also a software engineer, for the past two years. Their marriage was registered and solemnised here. Although the two hailed from Jamshedpur in Jharkhand, they had been working in Bangalore after their arranged marriage.

The couple had taken up a rented house at Rajajinagar. They worked for different multinational software companies. Before Shubhankar left for the United Kingdom on a company assignment early this year, he was happy to learn that Nandini was pregnant.

Soon thereafter, Nandini also left for an overseas assignment.

She returned to India a couple of months later and left for Jamshedpur to live with her parents. Shubhankar and Nandini were in touch over e-mail. But, differences cropped up when he failed to return to be at her side during delivery.

But, Shubhankar managed to take leave and returned to Jamshedpur to see his newly born son, Purunjay. Recounting the events prior to Shubhankar’s death, a close relative told Deccan Herald: “Soon after returning to Jamshedpur, Nandini and her parents began ill-treating him.” Shubhankar allegedly fell at their feet, begging to let him see his child.

Though later he was allowed to see their son, his in-laws convinced him to return to Bangalore on the assurance that Nandini would follow soon. He found to his consternation that his in-laws had taken a separate house for Nandini on rent on Gangadhar Chettiar Road under Commercial Street police station limits.

Since their marriage was floundering, the couple decided to settle for a mutually agreed upon divorce.

Shubhankar’s lawyer Anand said the divorce petition (MC1732/09) was filed on June 24, 2009. In the judicial separation petition posted for hearing on January 1, 2010, Nandini had claimed Purunjay’s custody and return of all gifts she received at her wedding.

On July 14, Nandini’s mother Anmana Jha lodged a complaint with the Commercial Street police, alleging that Shubhankar, demanding dowry, had assaulted and attempted to kill her daughter. A number of criminal cases were also lodged against him. He was arrested and produced at the magistrate’s court on July 19. The magistrate directed the police to investigate the matter, and he was sent to Parappana Aghrahara Central jail. Anand said Shubhankar was virtually a broken man in jail and had undergone treatment. Last Saturday, he consumed a bottle of anti-depressant tablets. The authorities rushed him to Victoria Hospital in a critical condition where he died. The authorities refused to hand over the body till Nandini gave her consent. Finding her house locked, the police allowed the release of the body.

A day after the body was taken to Jamshedpur for cremation, Shubhankar was granted bail. His parents, Sunkantha and Narmada Devi and his younger brother, Diwakar, were granted anticipatory bail. When this correspondent met Nandini at her residence on Tuesday night, she said she would not comment on the issue without consulting her advocate.