Events 7

This page and its sub-pages are some kind of a blog, or in other words, it is an ever-growing personal computing-related set of pages with important current news and events (at least important in my opinion), therefore these pages contain current (at that time and so now past) important events, personal computing related "stories", like for example completely new things that I have discovered from the last website update, information about my current system state, un-installations, re-installations of my operating systems, any errors I am coping with, software updates and configuration instructions and similar. It was started on [ 19.2.2005 ] with the file-caching problem - that lead me to a complete un-install my Windows XP/Pro SP1 - and its basic description and solution. The solution was re-installing Windows, particularly downgrading to the non-SP version (but of course, before that I've tried almost all the possible solutions/work-arounds). And luckily back then the installation with "Unattended" parameters worked; if you're really interested then rather read the first opening entry for details below at the bottom of that page.

I am announcing a very important website-related news on the very beginning of this "events-entry". It's that from this day on, I will be updating only the 50webs, Atspace, and Voljatel website-variants, which are the only ones that have AdSense ads on them. And because of that, I wanted especially for those other four variants that will not be updated anymore (it was just too much work with keeping them updated for practically nothing), namely Bravenet, Freehost386, Geocities (Yahoo), and Greatnow variants, to be as ready for the final/permanent state as possible. They will stay in this state "online" as long as these free-hosts will continue to host them. /NOTE: Also, for details on way too many uploads that I made in this regard the following days after this entry was posted and documents uploaded (actually it was all about one tag's formatting, I know, urghhh), please see the next "events-entry" on the "events8.html" page; however, it is located only on the "still-updated" variants.

Anyways, as the conclusion of today's "events-entry" I am just posting another published e-mail message that I've sent to Terry at the Terry's Computer Tips website: http://www.terryscomputertips.com and which was included in the latest May 28 issue: http://www.terryscomputertips.com/archives/news_20060528.php of his newsletter "Terry's Computer Tips - Volume 1, Number 50 — Sunday, May 28, 2006"; this time it is located as part of the first entry on the page "Part 3" titled 7. Feedback from the last issue.

7. Feedback from the last issue

Reader Ivan Tadej wrote about my two of my articles last week, Adding a Program to the "Send To" Menu and Receiving Multiple Copies of Emails":

         Hey Terry, yet another e-mail message from your subscriber Ivan Tadej ...

         1. In the *4. Adding a Program to the "Send To" Menu* entry on http://www.terryscomputertips.com/archives/news_20060521_2.php page of your last newsletter issue, you wrote about the "Send To" directory and how to find it. Well, some time ago, I've found this small 4K in-size program (single-executable, no installation required), that opens the "Send To" directory when user double-clicks on it. I've uploaded it to my FTP server, so anyone who might want it can grab it here: /remote/sf.exe

         Also, I noticed that you've mentioned that "/WordPad is known as write.exe in WinXP/"; althought it is true that "write.exe" launches the WordPad program, its actual executable is "Wordpad.exe" located under "C:\Program Files\Windows NT\Accessories\" directory on Windows XP systems.

         2. Further, I just want to say in regards to *7. "Receiving Multiple Copies of Emails* entry on http://www.terryscomputertips.com/archives/news_20060521_3.php page, that I experience this very same problem with one of my e-mail accounts all the time, now for a year or so. However, I haven't found the cause nor the solution yet. And note that this is not spam-related, i.e. I get double copies of my friends' e-mails, in fact I get two messages even if I send an e-mail to myself !!

17.05.2006

In further regard to Google AdSense: https://www.google.com/adsense/home service, I must let you know about two "ad revenue sharing" communities that I've joined lately. The first one is a Senserely website: http://www.senserely.com (or "Senserely Yours"), here is first a link to my "member-page": http://www.senserely.com/member/tayiper.php, and as second to my "blog-page": http://www.senserely.com/blog/tayiper.php. While the other one is writingUp website: http://www.writingup.com, again, here is a link to my "user-page": http://www.writingup.com/user/tayiper, and to my "blog-page": http://www.writingup.com/blog/tayiper. Finally see these few other links here: http://www.senserely.com/senserely_faq.php, http://www.senserely.com/how-does-it-work.php, http://www.writingup.com/user_guide, http://www.writingup.com/how_much_money_can_i_make, http://www.writingup.com/getting_started for a lot of additional related information, i.e. mostly totally basic stuff, like for example how this all works, is it legal etc.

06.05.2006

To get started with today's "events entry's, I am reporting that I've finally added the Google AdSense: https://www.google.com/adsense/home service's ads to three of seven variants of my home-website (in particlar to 50webs, Atspace, and Volja free-hosts); I guess you've probably already noticed the new layout, have you? Hopefully, this will help me to earn some money through the website's visitors and click-throughs. I rather don't even try to think about how much money I would've earn so far, if I would have put these AdSense ads on my home-sites two or three years ago, however, I really thought that it is not even possible to use AdSense service with these types of free-hosts that I am using for hosting my sites. But even before I did it, I've registered at the Digital Point forums (my nick is "tayiper") to ask some questions about it. And so I opened my first thread on this particular forum titled Hey all at Digital Point, I am just saying hello ...: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=79230, and then two AdSense related threads; as first the thread titled A totally basic/newbie AdSense-related question: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=79855, and as second the one titled A further AdSense related question: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=80186. Finally, beside many other minor and few major modifications, for instance, I changed the "absolute" links to "relative" ones (I see now that this would save me from a lot of work in the past, since when I was updating all the seven variants, I needed to do it six times, for each variant separately), added the <h2> tags for better SEO etc. Then I also removed the "table" element mentioned in the previous "events-entry", because the styling with <div> tags (div style="width:800px; margin:0 auto;" in particular) is sufficient to align the main text to the center and to set its "max-width" as I wanted to do. Also, I replaced the <pre> tags with <code> ones on "config.html" and "tweaks.html" pages, but this unfortunately screwed things up. I am planning to fix this in the next update. /EDIT: Well, I did it in today's website-update anyway.

Further, on the Experts-Exchange website: http://www.experts-exchange.com, I answered the question titled Web Hosting: masking and redirect URL's: http://www.experts-exchange.com/Web/Hosting/Q_21776888.html, which gave me a Grade: A and I also earned my first 664 Expert Points. See here my profile's page if you want: http://www.experts-exchange.com/M_3356974.html, my nick is "tayiper". And finally, I am also reporting that I got my first USB drive few days ago. The drive was given to me by my mother; she got it as a gift and since she doesn't have a computer at home (only at the job), she don't actually need it. In particular, it's a so-called USB2.0 flash-drive with an official name JetFlash, TS256MJF2B, sn: 126465-0608 with capacity of 256 MBs. On the envelopment it also says that it has the following properties: "Ultra-Speed function", "Boot-Up function", "PC-Lock function", "Recovery function" and "Security function" (G1, password-protection), and "Data retention: up to 10 years", "Erase cycles: >100.000 times". I also got a small CD with some legacy "Win 98 driver", "U-storage Tool" and "User Manual". Anyway, because of those last two specifications above ("10 years", and on the other hand only "100.000 erase-cycles"), I've started to wonder the folowing. Do people in general use it for backing-up things (so that it's constanly used, i.e. written-to); meaning for back-ups of more or less small things, which are too big for a 3.5 floppy, and to small for a common 700 MB CD-ROM, or for more or less "static" storing of collection of programs and stuff things on it, for instance for a so-called "malware-cleaning/removal toolkit" etc. You see, it's that I would like for this device to work as long as possible. So in my case, some non-stop backing-up of things somehow doesn't fit into the picture, since this is IMO too stressful for the USB drive itself, again, because in that way it would be constantly used and written-to.

22.04.2006

In today's "update-schedule", I am introducing a completely new page named/titled "website.html". It's somehow a sub-page or sub-section of the "about.html" page. However, compare to the other one which is more or less about me (as a person/human),this one deals only with stuff directly related to this hand-crafted website of mine (well, and also with indirectly related things that have at least something to do with it); for instance with topics like everything related to website's design, general usability and SEO stuff etc. Then it also deals with reasons for making it in the first place, the history of important coding and general layout updates etc. Some of the text that is now located here, was moved from the the "intro.html" and "diverse.html" pages. And for the conclusion of this "events-entry", I am once again announcing that on the April 17, 2006, I've earned my second $1.00 (the first one was earned on February 27, 2006) through my Bravenet's free "Affiliate Program" service: http://pub40.bravenet.com/affiliate (also see the "events6.html" page, the "4.3.2006" entry), so now I have $2.00 altogether in my "affiliate earnings". However, it is still $48.00 to go before I will finally get paid. Well, and this is more or less all for today, see ya all.

12.04.2006

Lately I was thinking about which language to learn next, and so I noticed that in general, I am rather interested in easy-to-learn languages (such as markup languages) than in "full" programming-languages; in fact, I've become quite interested in XUL markup language, which is a cross-platform language for describing user interfaces of applications. Anyway in short, as I wrote in previous sentence, the XML User Interface Language (XUL) is a markup language used for creating user interfaces. XUL might be already known to you, since it is a part of the various Mozilla applications and is available as part of the Gecko rendering-engine. It is designed to be portable and is available on all versions of Windows, Macintosh as well various Unix distributions. Here are few related links from various sources: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/XUL, http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul, http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/XUL, http://developer.mozilla.org/en/docs/The_Joy_of_XUL, http://xulplanet.com/tutorials/whyxul.html, http://xulplanet.com/tutorials/xultu/intro.html (btw., "/there.is.only.xul" link surely applies here), and finally a link to "Awesome_XUL_Apps" entry at Digg.com: http://www.digg.com/programming/Awesome_XUL_Apps, which refers to George Nava's site with collection of various small demo-programs written entirely in XUL language: http://www.georgenava.com/applauncher.php. With XUL and other Gecko components, it is possible to create also various others sophisticated applications without special tools. XUL was designed for creating the user interface of the Mozilla application including the web browser, mail client and page editor, however, it may also be used any place you would currently use a web application. Like in HTML, you can create an interface using a markup language (i.e. the XUL), use CSS style sheets to define appearance and use JavaScript for behavior (however, XUL also provides a poweful set of user interface widgets, toolbars, tabbed panels, hierarchical trees etc.), while you also have access to programming interfaces for reading and writing to remote content over the network and for calling web services. This means you don't have to look for third party code or include a large block of JS in your application just to handle for instance a popup menu, since XUL has all of these elements built-in. In addition, the elements are designed to look and feel just like those on the user's native platform.

08.04.2006

A few days back I re-discovered the <colgroup> and <col> properties related to table element, so I re-coded my website so that now it has a much nicer layout when viewed in the full-screen mode. Also, I reverted tables back to the previous state (i.e. a week ago or so), meaning that I started to use a table class: table class="multi" in the external .css file with the following code: "table.multi { border-collapse: separate; border-spacing: 16px; }" instead of the usual "table cellspacing="8" cellpadding="8"", however, this obviously messed-up the layout in IE. I guess this because IE doesn't fully support CSS and doesn't support CSS2 at all. While the other problem that I had (and I mentioned this one too in one of the threads linked below) was about my div class="align" class in the .css file with the following code: "div.align { font: 12px verdana; text-align: center; }"), which doesn't align to the center in case of some of table elements. Therefore, for the "pool.html" page in particular (for aligning the table with pool), my friend recommended me to use the following code instead: "div style="width:200px; margin:0 auto;" (he explained that "div" only sets what's inside the <div> tags, not its position in the document), and later I figured out myself that I rather need to use: div style="width:844px; margin:0 auto;" to similarly align other tables to the center, however, my friend suggested to use "468" value for "width:" property instead, but it simply don't work that way. Also, I first wondered if this works the same way under all screen-resolutions, but apparently it does. If you want to, also check out the related Table tag's CSS attributes that IE don't understand ??:  http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/6330927813/m/994006458731 thread, and also the other somewhat un-related META: Is there really a limit to the "recommended" number of keywords ??:  http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/tpc/f/6330927813/m/425001258731 thread that I also opened under the same "Programmer's Symposium":  http://episteme.arstechnica.com/groupee/forums/a/frm/f/6330927813 section on "Ars Technica" forum.

02.04.2006

Oh yeah, once more there were many changes to the website since the last "update-schedule". For instance, I removed the VBscript from "index.html" page that was used to draw a current data and time, since it was not valid (i.e. it used an "&" char), then further, I moved many stuff into various other sections on other more "suitable" pages (and re-ordered other text), and well, I guess I should note this emediately on the beginning of this "events-entry": when I was experimenting with various values for <br> tags' "line-height" property set in my "root.css" files, I screwed-up the layout a bit, but expect it to be fixed in the next "update-schedule". Then, I've added all my sites to the XFN Friendly Network project: http://gmpg.org/xfn (of course, I also needed to modify quite a lot of sites' code), here are few other project-related links: http://gmpg.org/xfn/intro, http://gmpg.org/xfn/join, http://gmpg.org/xfn/faq, http://gmpg.org/xfn/tools, and later I added them to the Rubhub - XFN Relationship Lookup engine: http://rubhub.com right here: http://rubhub.com/main/add. Finally, I also added the counter of website's visits also to the eighth website variant: http://tadej-ivan.50webs.com/index.html, particularly on 29th March 2006. To be able to do so, I registered a free of charge account at StatCounter: http://www.statcounter.com, http://my.statcounter.com (since I already use three Bravenet's counters), while I also set the "Unique Visits" number to 500 and "Pageloads" number to 900. Finally, when I was experimenting with various values for <br> tags' "line-height" property set in my "root.css" files, I screwed-up the layout a bit. But expect it to be fixed till the next "update-schedule".

28.03.2006

Today's "update-schedule" is really an amazing one. As first, from today on, I am not using "internal" CSS-styling anymore but an "external" one (so now the content is trully separated from the presentation); even though I wasn't planning to do this until I will "convert" my whole site to pure CSS by using the Header, Content and Footer boxes, i.e. a so-called pure "three column" layout with all the three standard boxes. Anyway, here is a link to the "root.css" file: /root.css that I am currently using on all the "root-main" pages. Then as second, the "OPEN or GET" drop-down or pull-down menu script at the top of each "root-main" page finally fully works, i.e. particularly all the "bookmarks.html" files are now accessible thanks to the esnips hosting service: http://esnips.com, http://esnips.com/SignInAction.ns (see also the "4.3.2006" events entry) that I've registered few days ago. It offers 1 GB of online storage and allows so-called remote sharing/linking. Here are the links to various folders that I've created so far: http://esnips.com/web/satyr, http://esnips.com/tags/hosting, and the two links to "folders" (tags) hosting my bookmarks: http://esnips.com/tags/bookmarks, http://esnips.com/webfolder/5e3bb0d2-7236-4820-bad3-5d96734bed1e. Next, I added yet another blog/journal, this time I added a link to the one that I've created at Slashdot site: http://slashdot.org, here is a direct link to "journal" http://slashdot.org/~tadej/journal as they call a blog on Slashdot. Further, I am listing only the most important general modifications/improvements/changes to the website's code: I changed a non-valid target="_blank" attrubute with a valid onclick="target='_blank';" one, then I added the onclick="self.scrollTo(0, 0); return false;" part to all the "[ Jump to bottom ]" and "[ Return to top ]" in-page links, so that now it scrolls up and down through the document, and finally, I set various different mouse-cursors for the "active", "visited", "hover" and the default "link" link-selectors (and for "img" ones too), which are now as mentioned above, all moved to the external "root.css" file.