Category: Computing


Noticebar, a jQuery plugin


Noticebar

What?

Noticebar is jQuery plugin that adds, well, a noticebar to the top of any page. Much like the one that will have shown up right about now.

Why?

A while back I wanted to drive traffic from one  of my older sites to a successor site. Inspired by the IE security alert page  I whipped up a very ugly, static solution, a purely html lime green bar across the top of the page. Before that I had searched for a javascript solution but came up empty handed.  Since then I’ve been meaning to create Noticebar for a while.

Features

It uses minimal markup and accepts several options.

  • Use of text and HTML markup
  • Custom CSS to change the appearance.
  • Optionally have the bar slide into view, like I have done here.
  • With animation on you can have the bar’s arrival delayed, again like done on this page.
  • A close button
  • Prepend the Noticebar to any div by specifying the target argument.

Example code

<script type=”text/javascript” src=”http://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript” src=”jquery.noticebar.js”></script>
<script type=”text/javascript”>
jQuery.fn.noticebar({html:  “your text or html here”,  close : false,});
</script>

To use the above code copy and paste it inside your websites head tag.  By this I mean between the “<head>” and the “</head>” part.

Options

A list of accept settings with their defaults:

jQuery.fn.noticebar({

html :  “Notice is credit to team!”, //Your message which can use html
animate  : true , //true means that the noticebar will ’slide’ down after the delay
delay  : 0 , //A delay in milliseconds, 1000 would be one second
css  : “”,  //Used to customize CSS styling
close  : true, //Whether the close button appears
target  : “body”, //Use “#id” you have the noticebar appear on an element with said id, .class for classes

})

Download jquery.noticebar.js |  Preview An example page

Program to playback mic live

Long story short my mother needed t0 playback a microphone through the speakers. Should be simple and on Windows Xp it is. But for some strange reason vista does not have the option, some drivers do but not the default Microsoft audio driver. Of course doing this should be simple so I spent at least a good hour finding a solution, it would appear that none exist. I tried googling everything “Force mic loop”, “Force mic feedback”, “vista mic live playback”, “play mic through speakers vista”, “program to playback mic” and yes I did just put that list there in the hopes that Google will get a clue.

Turns out there is no program that does it. So I’ve created my own. It is done in flash and has some minor latency due to the use of flash, but any solution will have a bit of latency and hopefully for your needs it will be good enough.

To run it you have to give it permission to use the mic, it will automatically show you the permission dialog and will start working as soon as you close the dialog.

You can download the file and run it locally should you need to. To do so right click on the following link and select “Save file as”

Download: Warll’s Microphone playback’r

Embedded below:

View Full Article »

By this I mean haveing the domain folder.example.com be hosted in the FTP folder example.com/folder.

You can do this in the “Add new domain” page by changing the “Web directory” field for the sub-domain “folder.example.com” from “/home/username/folder.example.com” to “/home/username/example.com/folder”

Example screenshot follows.

First impressions of Drupal

I’ve spent the last week or so exploring Drupal and I must say that it is impressive.

Things I like:

  • Backend dosn’t hide options behind menus or other pages
  • Strictly enforced coding style
  • Theme markup encourages presentation to be removed from data manipulation
  • A block system that effectively gives users a ton of widget panels, and everything is placed like a WP widget would be
  • A form api that takes care of mundane and verbose html input markup
  • A ton of plugins that are rather generic yet well integrated with Drupal allowing for easy adoption and extension.
  • A focus on security even if at the cost of higher minimum skill set for usage.

What I dislike:

  • code style enforces the use of spaces instead of tab chars, which is positively insane.

In the end I like Drupal and am currently working on a port of the default Wordpress Theme.

afterRead, a wordpress plugin

afterRead

Download afterRead | zip

What do you show the reader after they have read your content? Do you show them an empty comment box? A small unrelated block of automated text?
Instead use afterRead to present an active post footer driving visitors back into the site, don’t waste a prime opportunity.  Presently afterRead’s options are focused on driving visitors back into other related articles, but afterRead is capable of much more so expect to see new innovative Suggestions.

Features;
* Add Previous and Next post links to the bottom of posts.  These links can potentially be to any post, to only posts in the same category, or even only to posts with a matching tag. By default there are three styles to choose from, these styles integrate well with most themes.
* Suggestions can be anything from a donate button to a subscribe button to anything you can imagine.
* afterRead is modular and made of two primary parts, the afterRead core, and afterRead suggestions.
This allows for updates that do not revert changes and for easy custom extension of functionality.
* You can easily add new suggestions by simply pasting code into a text box in the afterRead settings page

== Installation ==

1. Upload `afterread’ folder to the `/wp-content/plugins/` directory
1. Activate the plugin through the ‘Plugins’ menu in WordPress
1. Navigate to the afterRead settings page found under the “Settings” menu
1. Select a different suggestion or use the default

== Frequently Asked Questions ==

= What is a Suggestion? =

A Suggestion is anything you want to encourage the reader to do once they have finished reading, commonly a link to other posts. A Suggestion file is a php file which afterRead core uses to generate a Suggestion.

= Do I need PHP or HTML knowledge to use afterRead? =

No, I have attempted to make afterRead extremely usable for anyone with limited knowledge or no knowledge of HTML and PHP. If there is a feature you’re confused about just tell me so that I can improve the documentation.

= I have an idea for a new Suggestion =

Perfect, the more Suggestions the better. If you get me an image of what you would like it to look like then I can see about coding it, I can’t promise I will be able to add it but I will certainly consider it.

= When using tag based Suggestions the links seem random =

This is quite confusing to see, but it’s actually logical. To illustrate this say we have a post, this post was made on the 20th and has a ‘cooking’ tag. Say there is then another post made on the 18th that had the ‘cooking’ tag and a ‘book’ tag, this will cause the 20th’s post to link to the 18th’s, now pretend that there was a post made on the 19th that only had the book tag, this will cause the 18th’s post to link to the 19th’s post and not the post made on the 20th.

= When using category based Suggestions the links seem random =

The same thing can happen for categories as happens with tags in the above question, it is less common because it is rather rare to add a post in two categories.

== Screenshots ==

1. Dynamic style 1 in a number of different styles displaying the Suggestion’s versatility

2. The backend as of 0.7.1.

3GB Enabler 1.2

Three years ago  the Sid Meier’s Railroads community over at Hooked on Railroads found that the 3GB enabler fixed crashing to desktop for Sid Meier’s Railroads.  Apparently we were not alone and a number of games from that era, ~2006, suffered and so far I have seen versions of the 3GB enabler edited for Supreme commander, Stalker, Battlefield 2142 and Oblivion. Recently I edited the 3Gb enabler to work with Sid Meier’s Railroads, before this Sid Meier’s Railroads players had to do weird things like renaming the “.exe”

No more! Now any the 3GB Enabler will work with any program. In fact it is not even limited to “.exe”s. With that said I have no clue what will happen if you edit a none exe. Read on for the readme and the download.

README:

Later Edited by Warll.Dressler to add arbitrary program selection, changed many minor portions of text to clarify and improve readibility
Editted by Chimera for Oblivian
Originally by unknown source for S.T.A.L.K.E.R CTD issues.

****** VERY IMPORTANT: IF YOU ARE USING AN x64 OPERATING SYSTEM:
****** SKIP THE “DIRECTIONS” SECTION.

Introduction:

This is for intermediate to advanced Windows users.
Follow the instructions carefully…the risk is minimal, as long as you backup a copy of your original executable, aka “program” aka file ending in “.exe”.

This will enable an executable, aka “program” aka file ending in .exe, to use over 2GB of memory in the application space.
It uses conventional tools using a batch file so everyone can see nothing suspicious goes on.
This tool will automatically set the header in said .exe so that it can address more than 2GB memory.
Normally XP will only address up to 2GB memory for applications and 2Gb for the kernel.
If we add a boot.ini switch /3GB, then XP is allowed to address up to 3GB for applications.
But unfortunately only applications that are enabled with “IMAGE_FILE_LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE” header can utilize more than 2GB of the space.

I highly recommend you look at some official information here at microsoft:
http://www.microsoft.com/whdc/system/platform/server/PAE/PAEmem.mspx

______________________________________________

Directions:

First you need to tell XP/Vista that it can use more than 2GB of RAM for applications.
Manually edit your boot.ini file by adding ” /3GB /Userva=2900″ to your boot.ini (no quotes).
Your boot.ini is normally read only and you will need to change that temporarily while you edit it.
To do this, right-click the file and untick “Read Only”. After editing the file, restore the Read-only status.
To Edit it manually you can find it on the root of your system drive or
go to system properties/advanced tab, settings under ’startup and recovery’ section, then hit edit.

Mine looks like:  multi(0)disk(0)rdisk(0)partition(1)\WINDOWS=”Windows XP Professional” /FASTDETECT /NOEXECUTE=OPTIN /3GB /Userva=2900

Yours maybe different, the only thing you should change is add ” /3GB /Userva=2900″.

______________________________________________

Instructions for using the 3GB Enabler tool:

*** Important: First make a backup of the original “.exe”. there are any number of ways to do this, the simpliest is to make a copy of the “.exe” and store said copy some place safe or to keep a copy in the same folder under a diferent name. ***
*** Without a backup of the original “.exe” you might have troubles updating the program in the future due to copy protection schemes ***

The tool will add the “LARGE_ADDRESS_AWARE” header for you to your executable.
Make sure a copy of the program is located in the same folder that the batch file is going to be ran from.
Doubleclick startme.bat then the menu walks you through.
1) Type the full name of the program including the “.exe” portion
2) Press Enter
3) Hit the A key to add the large address header.
4) Press any key to continue.
5) When back at main menu hit ‘V’ to output the headers in text so you can see the values.
6) Now you can check to see if it is enabled.  Scroll to the top and look for section “FILE HEADER VALUES”. Look for a line in that section that says “Application can handle large (>2GB) addresses”.  It’s the tenth line down in that section.  If you see that line then the executable is now enabled for >2GB, you are done.
7) Copy the enabled “.exe” back to the correct folder.
8) To avoid any strange issues with future patches, I suggest you rename your 3GB capable “.exe” to something else like “Fubar3GB.exe”, then make a shortcut to it on your desktop.  In the meanwhile, keep the original where it belongs and you will avoid any possible patching or online issues.

At anytime if you want to remove the large address header then you can restore you original backed up exe or use the app and use the Remove function and it will remove the header.  Once you run (R) to remove the header you have the original exe back, the MD5 hashes will match.

No strange side effects have been witnessed, but gladly I can play some big games now.

DOWNLOAD:

3GB_Enabler_1.2.zip

Man it has been a while since I felt like this, when you don’t really know what you are doing, following tutorials word for word yet it is just not working. I think I am just about over it for now but it has put me in a reflective mood, in the past I would have struggled and given up.  And maybe later coming back and getting it right.  Lately though I seem to be struggling and then achieving, maybe I am just trying harder, or my skill set has reached a special level where it is semi-transferable.  I must say though, programing, or at least flash programing, is very rewarding, one can see playable progress at nearly every stage.

Using an OS in Japanese is a very big part of creating an all encompassing environment, even more so if you spend most of your day on the computer in which case the transition is vital. Typically I would expect that you will have memorized how to do the things you commonly do. You should know by heart how to launch Firefox or whatever web browser you use without reading the icon’s label. There will be more complex things that do require your attention. For these it helps to be able to switch between English and Japanese, for instance while I may be able to expand a partition by memory that’s not necessary something I would want the average user to do by feel. Actually changing the language for many will be an obstacle even though the process itself is trivial.
 
Changing OS language – Linux
If you are a user of Linux then lady luck is on your side, provided there is an actual Japanese version of your distro, you will be able to get away without reinstalling in most cases. For instance Ubuntu user’s can follow these instructions to changing the primary language. You are on your own as to finding solutions for other distros.
 
Changing OS language – Windows
Microsoft loves segmenting the market as such changing languages on Windows is a lot more obstacle prone.
 
For Windows XP it is possible to change language but only if you have access to a Windows XP MUI(Multilingual User Interface). The problem you run into is that Microsoft only sells the MUI packs to OEM, companies such as HP, Dell and Gateway who build and sell computers. Chances that your computer maker bought a Japanese MUI and then bothered to bundle it with your English computer is so slim any reasonable person would round the odd down to zero. This leaves you with really only three options, buy a Japanese copy of Windows XP, commit civil violation of Microsoft’s copyright, or a third option I will cover later in this article.
 
Windows Vista changes this for the better, translations are not only much easier to come by but are also are more complete. If you are one of the few people who shelled out for Windows Vista Ultimate or Windows Vista Business then your in luck, MUI packs can be gotten directly from Microsoft and switching between English and Japanese is a piece of cake. To switch languages on Windows Vista Ultimate or Windows Vista Business all you have to do is go to Windows Update and select Japanese, boom your done. Don’t have Windows Vista Ultimate or Windows Vista Business? Luckily there is a hack to get MUIs for other Windows Vista versions such as Home Premium, this article walks you through it. Prefer not to resort to a hack or violating copyright laws? Well in that case this should help you:
 
The Third Option
One of the most likely users of Linux are students, especially geeky students. Microsoft knows this and has not let this fact go unchecked. Microsoft’s Dreamspark program gives away copies of many otherwise expensive Microsoft program for free to anyone with a International Student ID card. One of these programs is Windows Server 2008, Server 2008 is much like Vista and is able to use drivers made for Vista as well as working with any Vista compatible program. This option is not without its downsides not least of which is that many programmers use checks in program installers and will refuse to install on an “unsupported” OS, it will also require a reinstalltion of your OS. I suggest that if you do plan to go this route that you do so first in a dual booting environment so that if it does turn out that one of your programs does not like Windows Server 2008 then you can always go back. For more information on Using Windows Server 2008 as a desktop operating system see this very helpful website .
 
 

 

 

Server rebuild

Ok so the parts arrived finally.  While I love Newegg’s competitive prices the shipping factor usually dampens my enthusiasm, not only is shipping a bit more expensive but it is also slower since everything comes from the states even when ordering from the Canadian site.

  • The new parts:

DSCF8538 View Full Article »

Make Windows transparent for free with Glass2K.

So why would you want to make windows transparent, well put simply productivity.  It works expecally well when viewing an image, be that photos or video, since the colours are less likely to blend with what you are doing on top.  With text it becomes a little harder although it is trivial to decrease the transparency which allows you to easily to which peice of text is on top.  Surprisingly this program is actually compatible with Windows Vista even though it was programmed for Windows 2000 and Windows XP .  Performance wise it runs well although this is to be expected since it was written with much weaker computers in find vesus what we have today. In fact it stays at around three percent of my AMD 940 and uses 1.6MB of RAM.  All together the productivity gains are comparable to getting a second monitor, if not a bit nicer since everything is kept in one field of view and Glass2K is free to boot!

chime.tv/products/glass2k

Hardware Faliure!

Just only about a week ago I had my third Seagate 1.5TB fail,  instead of exchanging it yet again I have ordered a 1TB Hitachi to use as my primary backup. I will then use the Seagate as a archive, or shortstroke it so that it does not run into the problem areas.

Which brings me to my next failure, I just woke up today to find that my computer would not turn on.  Turns out my Silver Stone strider is striding on its last legs and that it sometimes makes a “pop” then it has to be turned off at the back for a minute or so. I’m going to take a risk with this and use it until the Earthwatts I ordered arrives, I can only pray that it does not blow up and take other hardware with it.  Especially now that I do not have a backup. What I think I will do is turn it off at the back when it is not in use.

My speakers and keyboard also have seen better days, I’ve leave them.  Really all this can be attributed to the fact that I got off the upgrade wagon, I like my new found frugality.

PS: I see that the foam on my secondary chair’s arm rest is splitting, I’ll leave it until I can justify buying a really nice chair.

This is actually quite easy so I encourage any Nico nico fan with a iPod touch ior iPhone to download the Nico Nico Douga app.  You will need a valid Nico nico account and Japanese iTunes account. If you do not have these just follow this guide to get a Nico Nico account and this post to get a Japanese iTunes account.   Once you have that we can get going.

Step #1: Change your store location to Japan if it is not already set to that. This can be done by scrolling to the bottom of the Store page and selecting the location, Japan is at the very bottom.

Step #2: Then copy and paste “ニコニコ” into the search bar and hit enter.

stepone1

Step #3: Download the app titled”ニコニコ動画”, to do this click “get app”.

steptwo

Step #4: Sync your iPod Touch/iPhone so that the application shows up there.  You can now safly change back to your local itunes location, the Nico nico app will not disappear.

Step #5: Start the application, this might take a few seconds. Then switch the far right tap labeled “設定”

Step #6: Enter the top menu, this one is labeled “アカウント設定”

Step #7:  The top two feilds are for your Nico nico account infromation. “メールドレス” is where you input your email. “パスウーント” is for your password.  Once you have these filled your done, you can now start viewing videos by going to the far left and selecting a catogory.

From left to right the Nico Nico Douga app taps are:

Categories – Featured – My Favorites – Search – Settings

Searching for “setting up Japanese iTunes account” on Google will give you outdated information, you do not need a Japanese iTunes card in order to sign up. You do need credit on your account if you plan on buying something but there are a number of free things which make it still worthwhile.  I have made this guide so that you can easily setup a Japanese iTunes account for free.

Step #1: Change your store location to Japan, this can be done by scrolling to the bottom of the Store page and selecting the location, Japan is at the very bottom.

Step #2: You then need to try and download app, it does not matter which one so just copy and paste this ”ニコニコ” into the search bar and hit enter.

stepone1

Step #3: Try and download the app titled”ニコニコ動画”, to do this click “get app”.

steptwo

Step #4: You should then get a pop-up like this one, press “Create New Account”:

stepthree

Step #5: You should then see a screen like this, if yours is in Japanese just click where “Continue” is in screenshot.

stepfour1

Step #6: This is jsut the EULA, agree to it without reading as you would any other.stepfive

Step #7: Fill in the fields correctly, although you can use a random stuff for the password recovery section.

stepsix

Step #8: First check the “none” option. You can skip adding a itunes card unless you want to spend money.  Only the “Postal code” and “Prefecture” have to have valid information.  Use 170-3293 and Tokyo as I have done, although you can just as easily go hunting for others it does not matter so long as they are valid.

stepseven

Windows Vista for free legally.

One thing that seems to have pasted a lot of people by is the fact that Microsoft gives copies of Vista away, for free.  No I’m not talking about MSDN.  Microsoft will give anyone how can provide a  International Student Identity Card (ISIC) number a copy of Windows Server 2008 Standard and Windows Server 2003 under their DreamSpark program.  Windows 2008 is with few exceptions everything like Windows Vista Ultimate.  You can use Vista drivers, change the language and can use RDP without a hack.  The only problem you might run into is  the fact that a number of moronically programed installers will check to see if you are on a “supported” version of windows and will complain when they see Server 2008.  Microsoft’s Zune software is included in this group although you can get around it by extracting the needed files from the installer. Windows 2003 on the other hand while being like XP does not share the same base which means you would be much better off with 2008.

Getting a ISIC isn’t even all that hard although it might cost a few bucks, in my case I was out $16CDN. The ISIC homepage has more information if you are interested.Microsoft also gives other programs away under the same program such as Visual Studio PRO although they do not give any of the office suite products away.

So why should you use this method vs just grabbing a torrent? After all its not like this supports the development of windows in any way. Well its simple really, no need to use your precious bandwidth since Microsoft provides a direct download. It is also faster, the Microsoft servers can saturate your connection. You also do not have to worry about WGA or its ilk.

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