DennisTT.Net

Google Chrome

Dennis — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:49:30 +0000

Finally Google is releasing a beta of its browser application, Google Chrome. Scheduled release date is tomorrow (Tuesday September 2nd, 2008).

Google Chrome uses the WebKit rendering engine, which is currently being used in Apple’s Safari browser among others. I personally prefer Safari’s speed at loading pages, and I hope Google Chrome using the same engine can achieve same or better speeds than Firefox or Internet Explorer.

Also it seems like each tab in Google Chrome will be run in its own process, which should make memory leaks easier to manage (well hopefully there won’t be any to start off with).

The Google Chrome team put together a comic book outlining the development for this browser. Very interesting read.

Google Blogoscoped has a post on Google Chrome quickly listing a few features and also another post with screenshots of the new browser. Google’s official blog also has a post mainly for announcing Google Chrome’s release date. Yet another post on All Things Digital discusses Google’s tactical moves invading the browser market.

htop - an improved “top”

Dennis — Wed, 27 Aug 2008 05:51:23 +0000

For the past few months I’ve been playing around with a VPS purchased from Linode (more about Linode may be blogged about at a later date). While setting things up I’ve come across many tutorials about various things, and I’ve decided to create a Linux category here just so that I can keep track of good tutorials and share them with you

First is htop, which is a great replacement for the default top utility. There are downfalls to top, like not being able to scroll down the process list, and easy shortcuts for sorting and managing processes. I don’t know why I haven’t found this earlier! Would have saved me a lot of time trying to figure out how to use top and why I couldn’t see all the processes.

This tutorial at Go2Linux outlines the installation method.

Wordpress Upgraded

Dennis — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 06:08:45 +0000

I’m amazed at the easiness of the WordPress upgrade system. The “three step upgrade” really lives up to its name; I upgraded from quite an old version of WordPress and I had no problems with the upgrade at all. However, I wish the same could be said about themes. As you can see, I’ve reverted to the default theme for now.

MyBB - Database Import

Dennis — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 04:57:14 +0000

Ever since MyBB had a facility to create database backups, we have had questions on why there wasn’t a similar facility to import backups. The following reasons were taken into account while designing this feature:
1) Security: Reason: If a user somehow managed to get into an administrative account with the correct permissions, they could potentially revert your forum to an earlier state, or run arbitrary SQL queries on your database. The Alternative: The use of an externally-installed database administration application reduces the chances that a malicious user can perform these actions on your database through MyBB.
2) Focus: Reason: We are developing a bulletin board system. We are focused on bringing you the features that will help run your bulletin board. Although database backup and restore are important tools, they are not used on a day-to-day basis in your forum’s administration. The backup function has more frequent use than the restore anyway. Our development resources are limited and we do not have the capacity to develop a fully-featured database administration program into the bulletin board software. The Alternative: Third-party database administration programs are specifically developed for the purpose of managing your database. Their features are more robust than what we can provide. Just like how we concentrate on BBS features, their development teams concentrate on what their product is: database administration.
3) Weight: Reason: In order to keep the MyBB package a reasonable size, we have to be conscious of what features are implemented. It is a waste of both physical and human resources to have a large package (clunky to install and update) with a steep learning curve (difficulty of usage). The Alternative: Dedicated database administration solutions have the ability to incorporate more useful administrative features because that is their focus.
4) Reliability: Reason: In the hypothetical case where an import facility is indeed incorporated into MyBB, the requirement of using it is a working version of MyBB. Let’s say you just upgraded to MyBB 1.4, but you do not like it. Your database backup is 30MB. You start restoring it via the MyBB 1.4 Admin CP, but the restore times out part way. Your database is now half MyBB 1.2.x and half MyBB 1.4.x and neither version will operate correctly. You will need to resort to a third-party database administration program anyway to complete the process of reverting. A doctor can’t heal himself if he is unconscious. The Alternative: A third-party database administration program does not depend on anything you are operating on. Even if an operation times out, this does not affect the program, you will be able to use the same program to correct the problem.

I hope this sheds some light on the rationale behind not including a database import feature.

MyBB 1.4 Released

Dennis — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 06:29:25 +0000

We released MyBB 1.4 to the masses this weekend. I wouldn’t say it’s “overdue” but it’s about time we had this release out the door. We still haven’t managed to get the “self-fix” module working for MyBB to fix itself, so as usual support threads are pouring into the MyBB Community Forums. Unfortunately I was caught up in school and work to do as much development as I wanted to for 1.4, but the other developers did a great job recoding the entire Admin CP, and all the other things.

Hope you enjoy MyBB 1.4.

A wreck

Dennis — Mon, 10 Mar 2008 08:27:26 +0000

Ok something needs to be done to my site. Currently between work, MyBB, and other commitments I have found very little time to work on this. I have temporarily closed the forum section down (except for the plugins which are still available for download) until my new site is up.

Also, I recently got a Flickr pro account where I will be storing my collections of photos.

IE Desktop Online Web Browser Live Professional Ultimate Edition for the Internet

Dennis — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 08:12:54 +0000

“IE Desktop Online Web Browser Live Professional Ultimate Edition for the Internet”

Sounds like something Microsoft would name the next version of Internet Explorer? Well it was part of the list of possible names that Microsoft could have named IE8, but fortunately the team at Microsoft sided with sanity and chose simply “IE8.”

I guess it does pay off to read the default RSS feeds that come with Outlook 2007. It gave me a bit of amusement while studying for my exams which commence in…two days *dies*.

Cheerios and Lectures Don’t Mix

Dennis — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 07:34:20 +0000

Okay so I was in my economics lecture peacefully taking notes on an interesting lecture about oligopoly by Professor Gateman as some “delinquent” (as Gateman calls them) walks in late and finds a friend who happened to be sitting on one of the seats on my row and settles down beside the friend. The latecomer is offered Cheerios from the friend and proceeds to munch and crunch on a small box of the cereal for the next half hour, not noticing how loud the crunching sound really was, not noticing how the other student sitting on the other side was covering his ear, not noticing a student a couple rows down looking up trying to figure out where that crunching was coming from. Really, I wouldn’t mind if the consumption of the food does not produce sound, but *crunch* *crunch* *crunch* continuously during a lecture just annoys me.

Schmap Vancouver: Photo Short-Listed

Dennis — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 08:12:07 +0000

I just got this email today:

:: Schmap: Vancouver Photo Short-list

Hi Dennis,

I am writing to let you know that one of your photos has been short-listed for inclusion in the fourth edition of our Schmap Vancouver Guide, to be published mid-November 2007.

http://www.schmap.com/ (URL snipped)

Clicking this link will take you to a page where you can:
i) See which of your photos has been short-listed.
ii) Submit or withdraw your photo from our final selection phase.
iii) Learn how we credit photos in our Schmap Guides.
iv) Browse online or download the second edition of our Schmap Vancouver Guide.

While we offer no payment for publication, many photographers are pleased to submit their photos, as Schmap Guides give their work recognition and wide exposure, and are free of charge to readers. Photos are published at a maximum width of 150 pixels, are clearly attributed, and link to high-resolution originals at Flickr.

Our submission deadline is Sunday, November 11. If you happen to be reading this message after this date, please still click on the link above (our Schmap Guides are updated frequently - photos submitted after this deadline will be considered for later releases).

Best regards,

Emma Williams,
Managing Editor, Schmap Guides

The photo that was short-listed was one of the SeaBus:

I don’t think it’s one of my best photos, but I guess it does look decent.

Maybe I will start to post more of my photos on Flickr

Gmail: POP and now IMAP

Dennis — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 07:38:33 +0000

I’ve had a Gmail account since September 7th, 2004 and currently have 13096 conversations (and counting) in my “All Mail” box using up roughly 1GB of space. One of my first suggestions to the Gmail team was IMAP, and I am glad to see that it has finally made its way in.

The advantage of IMAP over POP is that you can see a list of your folders (or in Gmail’s case, tags) and emails that you can move around, mark read/unread, reply, forward, etc. right in your favourite email client, and any action will be synced with the server. Thus, you can mark mail as read, and label it some tags from Outlook, and Gmail will automatically do the same thing on their side as well. Also, since all the actions and mail are synced with the Gmail server, whenever you login from any client configured for your email, or from the Gmail web interface, you will see the same list of emails in the same tags. POP only allows you to get the mail (in one single inbox folder, relying on your client to filter any incoming mail), but any further actions won’t be synced up.

I’ve known that Gmail was going to add in IMAP a week or two ago while reading “Look out Outlook IMAP for Gmail is Coming” on GottaBeMobile, but I didn’t realize that I would get the functionality so quickly. So I found the IMAP feature in my Gmail today (I don’t use the web interface much) and I thought I’d try it out. It took a while to sync up all the folders and headers. Anyway, I’m still debating whether or not to keep it. I’m still trying to figure out how to archive mail from the inbox, and trying to get Outlook to download the entire messages from the server.