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| | Thursday, October 12, 2006 23:22:32 |
I'm playing around with using Linux as the primary OS on my laptop. Each time I've done this previously there's been a major stepping block that I couldn't get through, we'll see what happens this time. Not the point however, I stumbled upon something awesome. Lots of people probably already know this, but if you want Firefox to open a bunch of tabs on startup (Gmail, Google Calendar, and say Nasdaq FlashQuotes) open the tabs the way you want them and then go to the Edit -> Preferences or Tools -> Options window and then on the first tab, select use current pages and voila! Multiple tabs on Firefox startup. Dead sexy.
Friday, October 13, 2006 08:23:55
Ian writes:
Actually, Windows was easy to find. Fedora's default grub installer found it and called it Unknown. So I just needed to rename it in the /etc/grub.conf file. I do like the fact that a lot of the stupid tweaking is done automatically with these Fedora installations. Like the ZAxis thing on the mouse. All that stuff that geeks love to do hinders mass acceptance of their opertating systems. |
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Monday, October 23, 2006 22:30:21
finnegan's dad writes:
Lots of people probably already know this. ;-)
I like having weather (forecastfox), 3 gmail accounts (gmail manager), gmail space and downloads (download statusbar) at the bottom. I don't need gmail in a tab.
My other fav' extension is Adblock. And it's not just for ads as they say. My credit union has very annoying pictures of happy customers and slogans. I have zapped them all so I can just see my account information. |
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| | Friday, September 29, 2006 15:25:28 |
The infocentre is closed!? I drove out to the gym at lunch and on my way down the 401 just before Winston Churchill the service centre signs have had all of the logos ripped off and there's a CLOSED through the middle of the sign. FERMÉ en français. Whoa! I just found out you can leave number lock on on this laptop and still type. You have to press Fn for the number keys to work. Nice job Dell! Now, if only my 5 key would work reliably.
Anyway, back to the news... The info centre is now closed. No more hockey at 2am in the gas station, though that hasn't happened in years, but still. On my way out there, they were taking down the signage (<-- Brianne's favorite word) and on my way back it was all gone. No "Wendy's" or "Tim's" anymore. I wonder if there's anything about this online anywhere...
TheStar.com - Hortons spinoff goes ahead
Local Wendy's remains open
Wendy's restaurants abruptly close doors
Well then, those stories are interesting, but really have nothing to do with the info centre. Maybe I should buy some Tim Hortons stock... Wait, you need money to buy stock. I guess I won't then. |
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| | Thursday, September 28, 2006 09:12:52 |
You can work here, just don't have a bladder on the second floor.
You may remember, three years ago a sign got posted in the second floor mens washroom at the office prohibiting dumpage to to toxic fumes.
Now, due to noise violations, unless you can pee without making a sound, you can't do that upstairs either.
Maybe we should just bulldoze the washroom instead of posting warning signs. Or, better idea; issue company head phones and a clothes pin to those who have to work next to washrooms. How about we just tell everyone not to eat or drink all day so that they get grossly unhealthy, but they won't have to hear or smell co-workers bodily functions. I think I'm going to close down the women's washroom on the second floor citing equal rights.
Sunday, October 08, 2006 22:48:40
finnegan's dad writes:
Reminds me of a sign at one washroom at work a few years ago over the bathroom sinks telling you to turn off the faucet "gently" because the water hammer of a quickly shut tap disturbed the office behind the wall.
Why do they put offices beside washrooms? In large buildings the washrooms are usually next to stairs, elevators, meeting or break rooms. Or the male/female washrooms are back-to-back to keep the smells and plumbing noises "centralized". |
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| | Sunday, September 24, 2006 16:00:54 |
It's fairly difficult to ride backwards on a unicycle. I think it might be a guy thing though. I also can't go backwards on the epileptical machine, like many women at the gym do. I just don't operate well in reverse. I can drive a car backwards very well, so it's not a directional thing, it's a motor skills issue. Practice, practice, practice! |
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| | Wednesday, September 20, 2006 09:43:50 |
I think it's almost time to break my iPod, they unleashed the new 80GB iPod this week along with a new 8GB nano. Also, now the new nanos have colours have gone back to that rounded iPod-mini style instead of looking like shrunken iPod videos.
Good ol' extended warranty. I wonder what the best way to "brick" an iPod is... With the 80GB, I'd be able to put all of my music on the player again, for a little while anyway. |
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| | Wednesday, September 20, 2006 00:02:15 |
So there's this coup going on in Thailand. Apparently the prime minister is in the process of being overthrown. I Googled Thai Coup because it sounded like Haiku, apparently this isn't a new thing for Thailand. 1932, 1971, 1991, all years where there was a coup in Thailand. History is way more interesting when it's relevant, and there's Google.
Updated the myth box this evening. I've been having some scheduling issues and 0.20 should fix that. Plus the fact that I'm running Fedora Core 4 and Fedora Core 5 is doing me much better else where. So it's back to VHS until the box is back. |
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| | Sunday, September 17, 2006 14:56:44 |
So I've got this Dell M1710 and it's got those fancy Dell media keys on the front. Hugely awesome because they let you change tracks while you're in other applications, just keep everything the same and press the buttons. The only problem is that they don't work with iTunes by default... I'm guessing it's a "we hate your media player" thing from Apple. So the creation of the Multi-Plugin for iTunes was necessary. Just download, install and then change the Edit, Preferences, Multi-Plugin, Compatibility, Fix Media Keys setting to Mode 2 and you're go. Works with the media centre remote that way too.
Plus, now that it works with the new iTunes 7, you can play with all of the useless features, like the ability to flip through the album art of your music. It does automatically download cover art now though, which is a much-needed and missing feature.
Damn I'm talkative today, don't forget to read this article I wrote this morning if you're looking for a way to send email with PHP... |
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| | Sunday, September 17, 2006 09:03:04 |
Okay, this is it; Howto: Send HTML formatted emails with PHP with image attachments that work with Outlook and Gmail
I have to start off by saying that Gmail is excellent and has worked correctly through each stage of my testing, Outlook was the only mail reader that didn't work correctly in my testing.
Perhaps I should actually start off by saying that; yes, you can use images hosted on your web server in your HTML body of your message. Since evil-doers do this to track valid email addresses though, mail readers block your images so the user isn't exposed and they have to click on something to see your images. The solution to get your pretty message to your viewers is to send your message with the image as an inline attachment, that way there's no way you can find out who read your message by looking through your server logs.
If you want to send a styled message that works with all of the mail readers out there, it's all in the way you code it. First of all, if you're not sending out a text and an HTML format, you may get nabbed by some spam scanners. So this is how my original email looked.
To: "You" <you@your.address.com>
From: "Me" <me@my.address.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="something"
--something
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
my message here
--something
Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
<HTML>my html message here<BR><IMG SRC="cid:myimage"><HTML>
--something
Content-type: image/gif; name="myimage.gif"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-ID: <myimage>
Content-Description: myimage.gif
Content-Location: myimage.gif
[BASE64 ENCODED FILE HERE]
--something-- |
That worked great on Gmail and other sane mail readers because it could find everything it needed, but it just showed a broken image when you opened that message in Outlook. So after some trial and error, this is what the message had to look like:
To: "You" <you@your.address.com>
From: "Me" <me@my.address.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="something"
--something
Content-type: multipart/alternative; boundary="stupidoutlook"
--stupidoutlook
Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1
my message here
--stupidoutlook
Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1
<HTML>my html message here<BR><IMG SRC="cid:myimage"><HTML>
--stupidoutlook--
--something
Content-type: image/gif; name="myimage.gif"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64
Content-ID: <myimage>
Content-Description: myimage.gif
Content-Location: myimage.gif
[BASE64 ENCODED FILE HERE]
--something-- |
That's all good. So now, let's make it in PHP quickly and easily...
<?
$from = '"Me" <me@my.address.com>';
$to = '"You" <you@your.address.com>';
$subject = 'My awesome message';
$message = '<HTML>' . "\n";
$message .= 'my message is totally awesome.<P>' . "\n";
$message .= '<B>Seriously. it\'s wicked.</B><P>' . "\n";
$message .= '<IMG SRC="cid:myimagecontentidname">' . "\n";
$message .= '</HTML>';
$images = array(
'path/to/myimage.gif' => 'myimagecontentidname',
);
if (sendmessage($from, $to, $message, $images)) {
echo "message sent";
}
function sendmessage ($from, $to, $message, $images = array());
$boundary = md5(uniqid(time()));
$headers = 'MIME-Version: 1.0' . "\n";
$headers .= 'Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="' . $boundary . '"' . "\n";
$headers .= $from . "\n";
$body = '--' . $boundary . "\n";
$body .= 'Content-type: multipart/alternative; boundary="' . $boundary . '.textparts"' . "\n\n";
$body .= '--' . $boundary . ".textparts\n";
$body .= 'Content-type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\n\n";
$body .= striptags($message) . "\n\n";
$body .= '--' . $boundary . ".textparts\n";
$body .= 'Content-type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1' . "\n\n";
$body .= $message . "\n\n";
$body .= '--' . $boundary . '.textparts--' . "\n\n";
foreach ($images AS $imagefile => $cid) {
$body .= '--' . $boundary . "\n";
$body .= 'Content-Type: image:' . substr($imagefile, strrpos($imagefile, ".") + 1) . "\n";
$body .= 'Content-Transfer-Encoding: base64' . "\n";
$body .= 'Content-ID: ' . $cid . "\n";
$body .= 'Content-Description: ' . substr($imagefile, strrpos($imagefile, "/") + 1) . "\n";
$body .= 'Content-Location: ' . substr($imagefile, strrpos($imagefile, "/") + 1) . "\n\n";
$body .= chunk_split(base64_encode(file_get_contents($imagefile))) . "\n\n";
}
$body .= '--' . $boundary . "--\n";
return(mail($to, $subject, $body, $headers));
}
?>
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One last thing that you should note when sending out mail to a wide variety of clients, mail readers like Gmail ignore <BODY> tags and <STYLE> tags, for those colours, properties to be defined, you have to use the STYLE property on each item you want styled a certain way other than the default. (ie: <FONT STYLE="font-family: Tahoma, Arial; font-size: 8pt;">do it on one wheel, ride a unicycle</FONT>) The best practice is to test, test and test again. On average I send out about 10-20 test messages to myself before I get it just right everywhere. |
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| | Wednesday, September 6, 2006 22:55:44 |
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE/System/CurrentControlSet/Control/Video/{----}/0000/LidBehavior should be 10 instead of 11 to avoid resolution change on Dell XPS M1710 when you close the lid. |
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| | Friday, September 1, 2006 14:45:33 |
 Buying a Dell made me needlessly angry. I ordered a Dell XPS M1710 on August 24th. Every day I went into the site and the arrival date would increment by one, the staus would always stay at order received and the production date would always show that day. After a week of that, I was getting pretty frustrated because it looked to me like nothing was happening. So I tried calling, navigating through voice mail menus and I finally talked to someone who told me exactly what the web site was telling me. So very useful. So then that night I got the idea to email the guy who helped me out with my last Dell order to ask him to look at my order. I got an out of office reply from him saying that he'd left the office for the day and would be back tomorrow. Then first thing this morning, he replies telling me that I should make sure when I order from now on to put in his online extension number when I'm ordering so that he can take charge of the order. I logged into the order checker and bam, my order was shipped two days before (30th on Dell's system 31st on Purolator's) and built on the 26th. I think I got lost in the system. So the moral of the story is that it pays to have someone on the inside and that throwing a temper tantrum won't do anything because Dell support is immune. |
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