Remember Nexty, the easy to use to-Do list manager using GTD principles? Well, that is ready for public release.
Nexty is a easy to use GTD tool created in PHP. It can be installed in a local server or in a online web server. The core idea behind this software is simplicity. I wanted to make a GTD tool that is the most easy to use.
The next project is ready - watch this space for its announcement.
Read More...As you already know, I have made my move. Moving from one domain to another is not new to me - I have moved a lot before. Here is a small picture that will show all my 'domain hops'...
http://binnyva.bizland.com/ (Dead now) - My first site.
http://binnyva.tripod.com/ - Started using Tripod when Bizland stopped my free account.
http://www.geocities.com/binnyva/ - Tripod became very slow due to all their ads - so I moved to Geocities.
http://binnyva.blogspot.com/ - Decided that I have to get into this 'blog' thing.
http://www.bin-co.com/ - Finally, got a credit card - thus making it possible to by web space/domain. Once I got the card - I did not stop with just one domain - I bought some more...
Serious articles from the next post...
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Lately, I am under a lot of pressure to move this blog to one of my own servers. I have thought about this before. I even have moved parts of it - like BinnyVA and OpenJS - but never moved the site entirely. Moving has its advantages and its disadvantages. Before I make the decision, I thought I will ask the site's readers for some feedback. So, what do you think guys? Should I move to my own domain?
I am forced to consider this move because many people have asked my why I am still on Blogger - despite having many sites of my own. Look at the comments on my last post - Benedict Herold has only one thing to say. Can't blame him - he already has made the move - from Blogger to WordPress. He even has a neat picture to explain which is the better platform.
Then there is Ajay. Says he won't comment on my site unless I move to wordpress. When ever I chat with him, he wants to know if I will move to wordpress ;-). So, Ajay, here is your chance to have your say - should I move or not. Comment on this post, OK? Even if you think it is a bit slow for you.
Think of this as a voting system. If enough people ask me to move, I will move. I am sure that many of my readers will have some thoughts regarding this as well.
So, what do you think? Should I make the move? Leave a comment. Do you have any experience to share about moving your blog? Let me know.
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When I was making the last post, I noticed something that was not there before - a word verification for posting. It was a rude shock for me - like a surcharge in a formerly surcharge free ATM. Turns out, the great Google bots think that this is a spam blog. Guys, this is not a spam blog! I have a spam blog - but this is not it.
Your blog requires word verification
Blogger's spam-prevention robots have detected that your blog has characteristics of a spam blog. (What's a spam blog?) Since you're an actual person reading this, your blog is probably not a spam blog. Automated spam detection is inherently fuzzy, and we sincerely apologize for this false positive.
Luckily there was an option to say that this blog is not spam. Needless to say, I used that option, and they sent out real humans to test my site. Before long, I was cleared of all wrong doings :-)
We received your unlock request on April 5, 2007. On behalf of the robots, we apologize for locking your non-spam blog. Please be patient while we take a look at your blog and verify that it is not spam.
All jokes aside, I appreciate the fact that the Blogger team is working hard to get rid of the spam blogs in blogger. Blogger is just infected with those. A side effect of this is that I cannot comment on other people's blog using my blog's address(http://binnyva.blogspot.com/) as the URL. Akismet thinks that since I use a blogger site, my comment must be spam.
Just a friendly reminder to the guys using Akismet Plugin - its great for blocking spam - I use it myself. But there is quite a few instance of false positives - ie. legitimate comments marked as spam. So make sure you check the spam folder often. False negatives I can stand - but not false positives. That's bad.
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Once again, its time to take off your stylesheets. April 5th is the official Naked Day for websites. My sites Bin-Co and OpenJS will be naked for this day.
The idea behind this event is to promote Web Standards. Plain and simple. This includes proper use of (x)html, semantic markup, a good hierarchy structure, and; well, a fun play on words. I mean, who doesn't want to get naked?
I participated in this event the last year. Some thoughts from back then...
No - this site will not drop its stylesheets - in blogger it is just too much work.
Will you be naked today? If so, post a comment with your URL.
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In my last post about the use of twitter, I said that my primary purpose for using twitter is to track my time. However twitter is not created for that use. It is very difficult to track your time using twitter. But there is an easy solution to this problem - create an offline twitter.
Twitter is a huge application - but offline twitter is not. The whole application is just 4 lines of PHP code. Yes - that's right - just 4 lines. And a database.
The database is just one table(OT) with 3 fields. The simplest solution is often the best.
CREATE TABLE `OT` (
`id` int(11) unsigned NOT NULL auto_increment,
`status` varchar(255) NOT NULL,
`time` datetime NOT NULL,
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE=MyISAM ;This code will be the entire application(if you can call it that). Just save this to a file called, say, OT.php
<?php
if(!$_REQUEST['status']) exit;
mysql_connect('localhost','root','pass') or die("Cannot connect to mysql Server");
mysql_select_db('Data') or die("No database called 'Data'");
mysql_query("INSERT INTO OT VALUES('','$_REQUEST[status]',NOW())");
If you want to use a database abstraction layer, be my guest. If you escape the $_REQUEST[status] before using it in the query, by all means do so. But, the result will be the same. An offline twitter using just 4 lines of code.
So, how does one enter new status into this system? By making a small modification to the command line twitter client...
curl --data-ascii "status=`echo $@|tr ' ' '+'`" "http://localhost/tools/OT.php"
curl --basic --user "<User>:<Password>" --data-ascii "status=`echo $@|tr ' ' '+'`" "http://twitter.com/statuses/update.json"The first line will send the status to my PHP file and the second will send it to the twitter server. Now I have all the status in the database.
I have still not created an interface that will use this database to show my time useage. If I want to know something, I just open up phpMyAdmin and run an SQL query.
I know - this method is not for everyone. You need to be on linux to use my command line client. You must have a web server and a MySQL server running for this method to work. But if you are working on the LAMP platform, you will have this stuff ready.
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In the last post, we saw various methods of storing text snippets. Each of the discussed methods had its advantages and disadvantages. I could not use any of those methods. But eventually I found one method that was perfect. It was WordPress.
My requirements for a text snippets storing system are simple...
After looking at the list for a few moments, I had an epiphany. I don't need a custom solution for this problem - all I have to do is make a few adjustments to a system I am already using. I already have experience using WordPress - so there is no learning curve.
So, I created a new domain and installed WordPress using Dreamhost's One Click install system. I made a few adjustments to the default configuration, installed a few plugins, customized the theme - and I have a shiny new site...
txt - Text Snippets collection of BinnyVA
Go on, click on that link and play around on my Text Snippets collection for a while - I'll wait.
There was one problem associated with using WordPress for this purpose - tagging. Sure, you could use categories to tag each snippet - but that is nowhere as intuitive as, say, tagging on del.icio.us. To add a new category, you have to use a separate text field - instead of just typing it after a ','. That is when I found out about a great WordPress plugin - Ultimate Tag Warriors.
Using Ultimate Tag Warrior you can tag your post with multiple tags. These are completely independent of the 'Categories' feature of wordpress. Two important features for this plugin makes it perfect for our purpose.
del.icio.us style links makes it easier for us to find the snippets later on. For example, the URL for all the text snippets with the tag 'perl' is http://txt.binnyva.com/tag/perl.
You can specify the tags within the content of the post - you are not forced to use the web panel's tags field to do it. This makes it possible to tag the text snippets even if you are posting from a client.
All you have to do is is enclose the tags within '[tags]...[/tags]'. For example, say you wish to tag a snippet, with database, mysql, sql. So you put this at the end of the snippet...
[tags]database, mysql, sql[/tags]
My Text Snippets collection site have been running for two months. As of yet, I don't have a single complaint about it. In my opinion, this is the best method to store text snippets. If you know a better way of doing this, please let me know.
Most of the saved snippets on txt are Linux Commands. There are some code snippets as well. This is a site where I store script snippets, Linux commands and other such tidbits of information. The posts will be minimal and often crude.
Before leaving you, I want to highlight some cool snippets in that site...
And for Linux users...
All programmers have their own ways of storing useful code for future use. Some don't do anything special for it. They can remember which project they had used the code - all they have to do is call up the source code for that project, search around a bit and they have the code they wanted. I used to be in this class - but now, I have too much projects and too much code for that to work. So I am exploring alternative methods to do this.
The simplest methods are often the best - storing all the text snippets as text files. You can arrange it into folders for easier management. I have tried this approach - but it did not work for me. Searching gets a bit hard after some time. Another problem with this method is that the data is limited to one computer - you will have to carry all these files around if you want to use it in other systems.
You can save all the code snippets in one big text file - this will make searching easier. Another advantage of this method is that you can carry this file around - so it is more portable approch. I have not tried this method - if I find multiple text files hard to manage, there is no way I can do it with a single text file. But there are people who have done it - and swear by it.
You don't have to use text - you can use excel or LaTeX or some other format to store everything you need in a single file. As long as the data is findable, its possible.
There are many applications that can be used to store text snippets. I have not used any applications for this purpose - so I cannot recommend any specific tool. I am sure that a google search will reveal many such software. In Linux, you could use KJots and BasKet to do this. Do you know any application that could be used for this?
If you have done a bit of Database Designing, I am sure you are already working on a design to store the code in a Database - locally or on the web. This method will involve making an interface to input, search and display the snippets as well. If you are using a database like Access, you can use the 'Forms' feature to do it. But if you are using MySQL, SQLite or something like that, you may have to create a custom application. This could be a web application or a desktop application. I almost went this way - but my work with Nexty prevented me from doing much.
There are sites that could be used store snippets. One such site is Text Snippets. It supports all features necessary for storing code snippets -
I tried it out - but did not find it very useful...
Other sites that could be used to do this are...
I tried most of the above methods - but none matched my requirements. After much searching I found a method thats perfect. I will talk about that in the next post.
Update : Saving Code Snippets - Part 2 Ready!
Read More...I know I don't put comics in this blog - but there is a first time for everything. A comic from bLaugh...
From now one, I am going to reffer to all my clients as 'Little Flies' *Insert evil laugh here*.
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Dreamhost use multiple servers to host the sites of its customers. If you have been using their service, you would know the name of your web server. If you have been praying for the servers to come back up(as I have been doing) during the recent outage, you will know the name of your Web Server, MySQL server and the Email Server.
If you are using Dreamhost and you still don't know the names of the your servers, there is still hope. Some ways to find the names of your servers...
Your server's details can be viewed in the 'Account Status' tab in the newly redesigned control panel. Just log in and click the 'Account Status' tab in the upper right corner.
If you just want to know the server name of your web server, just ping the domain. The results for OpenJS.com (emphasis mine, obviously)
$ ping openjs.com PING openjs.com (208.113.136.27) 56(84) bytes of data. 64 bytes from basic-dap.mento.dreamhost.com (208.113.136.27): icmp_seq=1 ttl=54 time=303 ms
$ hostname mento
The different servers in Dreamhost - and their configurations...
Read More...After two years, I have decided to leave Reubro International. I joined there around March 2005 as a Perl Developer. In the time I spend there, I learned PHP, Advanced JavaScript, Advanced CSS - even a bit about Database designing and server administration.
There is too many things I learned while I was there - too many to list here(two years is a long time). But lately I am finding that instead of helping me to learn new things, my work is negatively affecting my ability to learn new stuff. A lack of time is the formost problem. I have reached the conclusion that the only way to learn new things is to lose the job - and that is exactly what I did.
I have a huge list of stuff to learn - which includes - but not limited to...
So, expect some posts about these subjects here.
I have a lot of entries in my ToDo List - things I never had time for before. Time to get them done. Stuff like...
With all this free time, I should be able to produce more content. So expect a jump in the frequency of posts in this blog and my other sites. Maybe even a new site.
I have a decent income from Google AdSense. I also have a couple of other revenue streams. So I am not looking at freelance projects right now. Maybe after a few months.
In short, I had a great time at Reubro. I met a lot of great guys. I learned a lot. And I understood that Corporate life is not for me. And like many others, I chose unemployment over working at a company.
Oh, and by the way, the 'official reason' for leaving is 'Excessive Eye Strain'. Happens if you spent over 15 hours a day staring at a monitor.
So, what do you think of my decision? Good? Bad? Stupid? Leave a comment and let me know.
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I am using Google Reader as my RSS Aggregator. After using this for some time, I am still unsure of how to do some things. I don't even know weather its possible or not. And since Google Reader is publishing usage stats, I know that 35% of my readers uses Google Reader - so I want to ask these doubts to you.
There are many times when I wanted to find an old post I have read. Is there any way to search through my subscribed posts? Its ironic that Google fails to provide this option.
Can I put a folder inside another folder? I know that this is a tagging generation and hierarchical structures are outdated - that's how I like it.
Some sites change the feed URL. It is a bad thing - but it happens. My question is how do I update the URL of a subscribed feed using Google Reader. The last time I had to do this, I had to delete the feed in question and subscribe to it again.
Is there any way I can click the subscribe button in Firefox - and get the feed subscribed without any additional clicks? I had outlined one method to make the handling of feed subscription better in Firefox. But that still requires one additional click. I know Google Reader provides a bookmarklet for this - but is it possible to subscribe using the Firefox's default way? Plus, even after clicking bookmarklet you should click the subscribe button.
I like to use a lot of tags to mark a post - but I hate the fact that each new tag makes a new entry in the left side 'Subscriptions' column. I want that column small and manageable.
If any of these are not possible, I am sure that Google Reader engineers will find this post. Maybe they will add these features. So, if you are from google, please implement these features in Google Reader. Oh, and, leave a comment.
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If you are an RSS junkie you would have noticed that many feed have small links at the bottom of the post that can be used to digg the post, email it, subscribe to the comments of that post etc. These is a feature of feedburner - it is called Flares. According to Feedburner "FeedFlare is a one-step service that enables publishers to configure a very slim "footer" containing customizable actions that will appear beneath each item in a feed.
For the longest time I thought that this was available only for paid uses of feedburner service - but I was wrong. If you use feedburner, you could use flares in your feed. And that is exactly what I did - if you are reading this post using a feed reader, just go to the bottom of this post and you will see the flares.
Before anything, you must be using feedburner to deliver your feed if you want this feature. If you are using feedburner, continue reading. If you are not using feedburner, its game over for you.
An image to make things clearer...
Thats it. Now all the posts in that feed will have the flares at the bottom.
The flare form only displays the default flares. But it is possible to create and use custom flares using the open FeedFlare API. See the Flares Catlog and 101 FeedFlares for a Better Tomorrow to find all the flares that can be used.
A word of warning before you add the flares to your feed - don't use too many. It is easy to abuse flares by adding many of it. Please make sure your feeds are clutter free.
I have just finished updating the backend of my two sites Bin-Co and OpenJS. I have updated the Database Design to make it compactable with my DB Design rules. Also some part of the code base have been altered to make it easier to reuse.
Using a custom CMS has its advantages - but it has a big maintance load. The good part is that a lot of cool PHP code was created - which I will be releasing in my PHP page.
There is a problem with this upgrade - there is a possibility of errors somewhere in the site. If you notice any problems, let me know.
Once that job is complete, I will redesign this blog.
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Nexty is a easy to use To-Do list manager created in PHP. This tool adds a few of my concepts with the generally held concepts of GTD. It can be installed in a local server or in a online web server.
See Demo
This software is in beta stage - so expect some breakages here and there. I will try to release a stable version by the end of this week - by 10th February 2007 - but no promises.
Get the code from the project page of nexty at Sourceforge. Read More...
Google Analytics is a great tool for tracking your visitors - I use it for all my sites. But there is one problem - you cannot find the exact URL from which the visitor has come(the 'Refferer' URL). Well, they provide this data - but have hidden it in the menu.
To get this list, open this menu in the left side of the Analytics page...
Marketing Optimization > Marketing Campaign Results > Referral Conversion.
Now just open a site to see the incoming links from that site.
I have no idea why they have decided to hide this feature - I use this feature a lot.
Read More...Wired Magazine have redesigned their magazine - and since it is one of the best technology magazines, I decided to review the code of the site. The magazine redesign gave me the idea of doing the review for the site's design. I am not an expert in graphical design - so I am not going to say much about it.
The page I decided to review was the page announcing the redesign.
The page does not validate - and not just any small mistake like missing end tags - it does not even have a doctype! In all I found 126 errors.
The page calls 10 JavaScript files and 9 CSS files in the head section - with more in the body. Splitting up code to multiple files is a good method for managing code - but it would take up more requests. A better method for a high traffic site like Wired is using just one external file that includes all its javascript code and one CSS file.
Don't get me wrong - I would not advertise that method in smaller sites. Using just one file for all your code is a maintenance nightmare. If you want to do this the best choice is to use a merging tool like the merging tool by Ed Eliot.
<body id="storyPage" onload="setStyle();">A much better way of doing this is to store all the javascript in an external file and use this code...
window.onload=setStyle;Or you could use one of the many addEvent() functions.
Moving down, we have the navigation - this are linked images. All the images have alt attributes - but it still does not sit well with me. See the code..
<a id="nculture" href="/culture.html" title="Culture Story Index">
<img src="http://www.wired.com/ly/wired/shared/images/cs1/nav_culture.gif" alt="[Culture]" class="" />
</a>[Returns added by me]
I don't know why it has ' class="" ' - but it was there when I got it.
A better method is using a list of links and using any image replacement technique to insert the image.
And those images they used are not all that good. Maybe they look better in a CRT monitor - but in my LCD monitor they look really bad. But I am not a designer and I am overstepping my bounderies when I say that - so why don't you decide...
Wired gives the user a chance to change the size of the text. This is duplicating a functionality that already exists in the browser. Any decent browser can resize the text of the content. Note: IE does not count as a 'decent browser' - but if you use em as your font size unit, resizing works in it as well.
Currently the code look like this - ignore the inline JavaScript - we already covered that...
<a href="#" onclick="setActiveStyleSheet('Small Text', 1);return false;">
<img alt="Small Text " height="18" src="http://www.wired.com/ly/wired/shared/images/common/icon_text_sm.gif" title="Small Text" width="18">
</a>name<a class="skiplinks" name="content"> </a>This is for the skip links to work - but a much better method to do this is using ID for that section...
<div id="content">...<h1 class="lg"><cite>Wired</cite> Redesign: Change Is Good</h1><cite>? What do they mean by that? <em> should be a better choice here.
There are some code to display advertisements - but as a rule, I ignore that when I review a design. That is because most of the advertisement provider's code are very bad - and it is beyond the control of the designer.
By this time I got enough of it - after this much code cruft, I don't think anything better is going to come along in this page.
I found a few good things about wired - like their 'Standards Notification' and Skip Links.
Why did I review a site like wired - especially when all 'big' sites fail to provide a standard code. Because I thought that if a site has articles promoting web standards, they will design their site so. Clearly, I was wrong.
Just for your information, I reviewed a site and complained that it did not validate - but this site will fail validation as well. Blogger inserts too much stuff that fail to validate that I stopped trying a long time ago. But my sites will validate - if you have any doubt, take a look at the code of OpenJS or Bin-Co. Its not perfect, but still is much better than wired's redesign
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FCKEditor is one of the most feature rich web based WYSWYG editors. I use it for almost all my projects. However, if you wish to enable image uploading in it, you have to jump through some hoops. This is a small tutorial on how to enable image uploading in FCKEditor. This tutorial is aimed at FCKEditor 2.3.2 - but the principle works in other versions of FCKEditor as well
Open the file FCKEditor/fckconfig.js
Make sure that the default php connector is selected.
Line : 143 - Approx.
var _FileBrowserLanguage = 'php' ; // asp | aspx | cfm | lasso | perl | php | py
var _QuickUploadLanguage = 'php' ; // asp | aspx | cfm | lasso | phpBy default, the ASP connector is enabled. If any FCKEditor developer is reading this, please make the default connector PHP as it is more commonly used than ASP.
Open FCKeditor/editor/filemanager/browser/default/connectors/php/config.php
Enable the connector
Line : 24// SECURITY: You must explicitelly enable this "connector". (Set it to "true").
$Config['Enabled'] = true ;Make sure that the given 'UserFilesPath' folder exists in the server and has write permission.
$Config['UserFilesPath'] = '/UserFiles/' ;Open file FCKeditor/editor/filemanager/upload/php/config.php
Enable the uploader
Line : 24// SECURITY: You must explicitelly enable this "uploader".
$Config['Enabled'] = true ;All configurations are done.
Now open up the url : http://www.yoursite.com/FCKeditor/editor/filemanager/browser/default/connectors/test.html in the browser
Select PHP from the 'Connector:' drop down and click the 'Get Folders and Files' link.
If the files and folders of your 'UserFiles' folder is shown in the XML format, all is fine.
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Finally - Adobe have released Flash 9 for Linux. I have been using the beta version of Flash 9 for some time now. Still no flash for 64 bit Linux.
Unlike last time, I have not run into any problems yet.
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I am seeing a lot of sites using the Snap Preview Anywhere. I just cannot understand why people are using it - it adds almost no value to the page.
If you can read the text in the linked page, there will be some advantage - but the only thing that can be read using the Snap tool is the heading of the page. Yes, knowing the title is useful - but you don't need a screenshot for that. The '<A>' tag has a 'title' attribute that does the job ver well.
The rest of the text is unreadable because the screenshot is small. No - the solution is not creating a bigger preview - the solution is using title attribute.
If you hover over a hyperlink, a small window appears that will show the preview - and hide a lot of text. This will break the flow while reading. I constantly find myself maneuvering the mouse to avoid stepping on these 'virtual land-mines'.
Some sites use this only for external links - and some for internal links as well. But all the links are marked in the same way - making it harder for me(and others) to navigate through this 'mine field'.
The Javascript file behind this is 20.8 KB - not adding the images that will be downloaded later. Are you sure that the advantage of this script justifies this extra load?
You are calling a script from a third party site. Basically you are handing over your useage stats to this site. Snap has a Privacy Policy statement. I recommend you go through it before using the script on your site. I am not sure wether this privacy policy is for their site or their script. If you know, please let me know.
Maybe hate is a strong word - but when Darren Rowse at Problogger asked the visitors about their opinion about Snap, the majority said "No, thanks". This caused Darren to remove the script from his site.
I took a look under the hood - I downloaded the JS file and took a look at the code. It was compressed so I had to use a code beautifier. Snap uses Object Literals - so it will not wreak havoc with your javascript code. However I saw some for-in loops - I don't know how they will hold up if your site uses Prototype.
Despite all these negative things, I liked this thing about Snap. There is an option to deactivate the script globally. Just follow the 'Disable Snap Link' and snap will be disabled for all sites. More details about the Disable feature.
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